Programmers are most likely to work from home - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/950973/remote-work-for-programmers-the-ultimate-office-perk-is-avoiding-the-office-entirely/ <comment><USER3> The article does not discuss the impact of the open office movement. I've worked from home, in actual offices, in cubicles both cramped and spacious, and open offices. It can be quite difficult to focus at home due to various distractions, especially if you do not have a separate room or area for work. It is difficult to separate work and non-work with a home office. There are a variety of communications issues with colleagues when working from home. However, programming requires high levels of concentration and focus; I work on complex algorithms and mathematical software which requires extremely high levels of concentration and focus. Open offices are simply too noisy and full of interruptions. Thus, given a choice between an open office and home, home wins.

But in general I would rather work in a quiet office near my colleagues. There is a clear separation between work and non-work. Communication is faster and easier, less prone to misunderstandings. This however means something like an actual office or a quiet spacious cubicle with high sound absorbent walls.

In his book Deep Work, Cal Newport argues in favor of a "hub and spoke" office layout where knowledge workers can work in quiet in offices on the spokes, but meet and collaborate at hubs, such as common areas with food, coffee machines, printers etc. This seems like a much better way to balance the need for deep concentration on the one hand with "collaboration," annoying MBA buzz-word at present.

<comment><USER4> I think working from home is superior (for tech/programming work). In terms of work, it's the best way to not only avoid distractions, but also lay out your time in a way that is conducive to completing a project in the way you intended, and to let your ideas be fully implemented. This means projects finish sooner, much sooner than in a 9-5 environment. I believe that, when you know that you cannot escape the office until 5, that introduces some intellectual laziness and willingness to just kill or dilate time. The office does offer some perks, but they are not related to work itself, they are all about socializing / banter / feeling of being part of a team. Working from home does mean that home becomes workplace , and vice versa, but that is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as work gets done faster. People used to work mostly from home until the industrial era.

Personally, I have gotten a second job in an office for the 'office experience', yet i often do even this work at home, because i work faster there.

I think some "work from home" problems are problems of perception. It's not very well accepted to say that you work from home yet[1], making you feel like the job is somehow inferior. Also, the location of your home matters, if you live in a mixed commercial/residential place, it doesn't feel wrong to be at home and work all morning.

Discipline can be an issue until you establish a work routine. Much like driving to the office primes you to get into work mode, a morning walk to the local bakery can prime you to begin working at home.

1\. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW3lhfVpLL4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW3lhfVpLL4)

<comment><USER5> > I think working from home is superior (for tech/programming work).

I disagree with you, specifically one point.

>The office does offer some perks, but they are not related to work itself, they are all about socializing / banter / feeling of being part of a team.

That "banter" or "socializing" _is_ work related. I've found that working from home (been doing it 2 years now) has one very big disadvantage - unless the whole team is remote.

You _will_ be excluded from meetings, decisions and conversations. You _will_ always have a feeling that you're missing something. You _will_ miss important hallway conversations that can impact the work you do.

<comment><USER6> I'm the only one at our small company that works remotely. I miss so much of what is going on decision wise.

Any talk of new clients, potential new business, larger future projects are all communicated to me once they are mostly already hashed out. This keeps me from playing a bigger part in the company and thus the work they throw my way is more on the grunt/boring side.

I love working remotely though and I'm not working in the tiny open office they have. I would be interested in seeing what the dynamic is like with a full remote team.

<comment><USER7> I've mostly worked at home since my son was born (he's 26 now). I used to go in one day a week, I worked for startups for years and would start full time, drop off to 4->3->2 days a week. These days I never go in (I live 10,000km away at the moment, it's no longer a 1 hour drive in the Valley).

I think there's a few things you have to realise about working at home: \- you get to avoid almost all office politics \- you will eventually lose at office politics

Essentially you need to have a manager who will step up and root for you, and you guys need to talk so he/she knows where your head is at

<comment><USER6> > you will eventually lose at office politics

Yup. We are small enough that we all report directly to the CEO. Though anywhere I've worked remotely or not it is always me looking out for me. Never had a manager help with that.

<comment><USER7> I've found that having that explicit discussion with every new manager helps a lot, eventually you get a crap one and lose, but then that's probably time to move on

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like working from my office. I don't understand people that like working from home.

Possible confounding variable: I live exactly two blocks from my office and don't have to commute. Perhaps, in actuality, people don't like to commute?

<comment><USER9> I will name some the reasons I like to work from home and none involve a commute:

\- I'm in an open office situation.

\- Standing desk is awkward when everyone else is sitting.

\- If I make a loud noise eating or sneezing or something like 5 people stare at me trying to figure out what is going on.

\- I can't have twitch or a baseball game on in the background because nosey co-workers will walk by, see my screen, and comment or internalize that I'm a slacker because I like a running commentary instead of music when I work.

\- _Constantly_ being pulled aside for conversations that can be answered in a sentence or two via slack or email. (not having me in person forces people to think about and write down exactly what they want to say or ask before they actually say it)

\- My home setup is significantly nicer than my office set up.

\- Open office means I hear all about everyone's past or upcoming weekends, vacations, etc.

\- I enjoy stretching or doing small exercises throughout the day, which is super weird to do while in the office (plus no yoga mat).

\- People low key hate me because I am the only person with a mechanical keyboard and make lots of noise when I start typing a lot. (I've learned to ignore the not so subtle stare downs)

So probably my biggest thing is the open office problem. As a programmer, being in the middle of a group of chatty 20-30 somethings all day is not great for productivity.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, all but one of your complaints would be solved by a door[1]. Are there actually programmers who prefer the open-office setting? It's not like I magically stop socializing if you put me in an office.

The only thing worse than open-office for me is a setting where my back is to a space that people are walking through. I can't even have my back to an open doorway in an office (assuming the hallway outside is somewhat busy), or I spend much of my time in a low-grade fight-or-flight situation.

If you put me in an open office where people are regularly walking by behind me, you are probably getting (at best) 60% of my productivity in an office with a door. Actually, in this job market, you are getting 0% of my productivity because I will work elsewhere.

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

<comment><USER9> Well also, my preferred attire (work or otherwise) is barefoot+gym shorts+shirtless, I would enjoy nothing more than consecutive full days without human contact during the week, the ability to fart and pick my nose without hesitation, and not having to worry the bathroom stalls are full when I need to take a shit, but I realize most of those are unreasonable to ask of an office so I left them off the list. However, those are more reasons unrelated to an open office I would prefer to work from home on the regular.

<comment><USER11> You forgot climate control too. Office buildings always seem to have their HVAC poorly calibrated and controlled by some mysterious ghost.

There are _so_ many reasons... I think you either get it, or you don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've worked both in offices and remotely. They each have their pros and cons. I prefer remote.

The biggest pros of remote work for me are no commute + not needing to get dressed in business clothes every day. I don't have to fight traffic, I don't have to iron clothes every day, I don't have to find parking and spend 10 minutes walking to and from my car, etc. I don't have to do a whole bunch of little things that going into the office required.

So the biggest advantage for me is saving time. And now I get to use all that extra time for spending more quality time with my wife and dog, side projects, exercise, video games, etc. I get more sleep! That's an important one.

The downsides to working from home is that it is harder to communicate in some situations, especially if you're the only guy working from home. It is easier to be overlooked for promotions since people don't know your face and see it every day. You miss out on the social aspect of work, though this can be mitigated if you're able to drive/fly-in to see your team occasionally. You miss out on the office banter, though some people would consider that a good thing.

Many other points people raise such as having lack of focus, being taken advantage of, and so on apply equally to being remote and working in the office (depending on the office) so I consider those to be moot points. If you can't focus at home, that's a fixable problem with your own mind and your environment.

</comment><comment><USER13> After 38 years of commercial programming, 15 of them remote, here's the thing that almost no one talks about: working remotely actually benefits the company much more that the programmer. Here's why:

1\. Profitability manufacturing something increases dramatically when lowering overhead and driving direct labor. Direct labor in software are the programmers. Time spent programming (usually) produces product. Time spent not programming flushes money down the toilet. I have never found a better way to increase the direct labor / overhead ratio than by working remotely.

2\. Proper process building software can give geometric increases in value. Things like business requirements, technical specifications, test plans, UAT, QA, project management, etc. When programmers are in the office, it's just too easy for managers and analysts to "wave their hands" and "call a meeting". Too often, that's their answer to everything. The meetings rarely serve their (ususally undefined) purpose. They give the appearance of progress without the progress. Problem #1: You've just wasted a little bit of your programmers' time. Problem #2: You will waste a whole lot more of their time at the other end when things aren't right.

3\. Workingly remotely enforces discipline. Things need to be written down. It's hard to peer review meeting notes or Skype recordings. Specs, reqs, test plans, etc. need to be documented and reviewed BEFORE wasting programmer time. I generally try to turn down any meeting or Skype without something in writing. (Skype / Webex is just another way for managers to waste programming resources that doesn't feel as bad as a physical meeting.)

I have hard data via thousands of tickets over the years to say that working remotely has easily made me at least twice as productive. Mainly by getting others to leave me alone and to drag them kicking and screaming into the 21st century by doing their jobs. The most important job of someone who doesn't program? Enabling those who do.

The main reason I love remote is not because of my home office, or short commute, or good 4-legged company, or working in my underwear, or anything else about _me_. It's because I have never found a better way to get shit done.

<comment><USER14> > Workingly remotely enforces discipline.

This is key, and one of the main drivers I used to convince the owners of my company to become remote friendly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've worked remote for about 5 years (and about 18 years total). When I lost my last job, I resolved to only look for remote work. Commuting is a giant waste of time, which is the most precious resource we all have. I could live near Boston and have a tiny house with no yard and mediocre schools, or I could live an hour outside Boston and have a huge yard and amazing schools. The choice is clear. But it means that if I were to work in the tech hub, I'd never see my kids during the week.

When done right, remote is awesome. There's no reason every programming company couldn't be remote-friendly these days.

There are two things that companies often do that screw up remote workers:

1.) Having meetings in meeting rooms. This _does not work_ for remote people. Remote people cannot participate in a conversation from a speakerphone when the majority of people are in the same room. You just can't break into conversations between people in the room.

2.) Having an open office. This prevents the fix to #1 - which is to have meetings via hangouts or other video chat, with everyone (even people in the office) participating via headset & personal video camera. The open office makes cross talk between mics too painful (with judicious muting you can sorta fix it, but it's a hassle).

These are fixable problems, but the company has to be committed to good remote culture to do so.

</comment><comment><USER16> I've been thinking a lot about this lately and I've decided that working remote IS the most important benefit of my job.

I've been fully remote doing iOS development for nearly four years now, and I am not interested in entertaining any new job offer unless my fully remote status can be retained.

Are there downsides to this mentality? Yes. Am I missing out on networking/schmoozing opportunities by being remote? Almost assuredly. But as I've been thinking about it lately, I don't think I want any of that stuff. I can't see myself enjoying the job of management or being a director, etc. I would probably enjoy the pay, but not the work.

So for me the most important thing is that I love my job, I get paid very well, and I'm home to watch my five kids grow up.

I don't think I'm interested in trading in that setup, not for any job title.

<comment><USER12> >> I'm home to watch my five kids grow up. <<

And when you're old and looking back on your life, this is what you're likely going to appreciate much more than being a director inside of an office's four walls. Good stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> If I actually had an office and not some little box with neighbors talking the whole day I may be ok with going to an office. Working from home is my only chance to actually think without distractions.

</comment><comment><USER18> I work in a big company.

It's easy to see all the useful things I would have missed out on if I worked remotely. Examples:

\- Networking: Serendipity plays a bigger role than anything else. And you get a lot less of it the fewer people you interact with. Simply bumping into people at the cafe is quite valuable.

\- Career coaching: Lots of classes, talks, invited speakers, etc. Some can be done remotely, but roughly half require you to be live.

Also: Going to work makes it easier to leave work there when you come home.

<comment><USER19> To your first point, Richard Hamming's essay _You and Your Research_ hits on this topic by distinguishing between people who work with their door open and people who work with their door closed.

As he put it, the people who worked with the door closed got more work done in the short term, but in the long run had fewer serendipitous strokes of brilliance.

<comment><USER20> When comparing this to today's workplaces, the most striking point is that _they all had doors_.

<comment><USER18> To be fair, we're comparing Bell Labs, where almost all researchers are the best in the world, to an average tech company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've invested thousands of dollars in my home setup (which will never be done), to create an amazing working environment. Why would I want to give that up? Sure, employers may give you a little $ to customize your desk and equipment, but if I'm going to be spending so much of my life at a computer, it'd better be amazing.

<comment><USER22> My employer's work environment is worth much more to me per year than the entire cost of your home setup thanks to all of the free meals and the gym equipment alone. Just something worth thinking about.

<comment><USER23> I don't know what bothers me more. People willingly selling their souls to companies or the companies that spend humongous amounts of money to keep their employees away from their homes and lifes...

<comment><USER22> Why do you think I'm "selling my soul" just because I go into the office and eat the free food they provide? I work normal 40 hour weeks. I'm not being dragged away from my home and my life. You've got an overly cynical take on it. They're just nice perks that the company can provide cheaply at scale, e.g. I'd rather get three free meals per day than the $5,000 it costs my employer to make those meals per employee, because if I were buying those meals out it'd cost more than $5,000 per year.

<comment> nommm-nommm Usually when offices offer those perks it is to keep people at work and blur the line between work and home. It's not cynical to point that out. By offering really expensive perks they are filtering for people who value those perks over salary (because there really is no free lunch)

<comment><USER22> I don't think that's true. We don't have any perks that are explicitly targeted at keeping people in the office longer than the normal workday, e.g. we do have beer for various weekly events but it's from 5-6pm only. Again, I think you are being too cynical. The perks exist in order to provide a desirable workplace and be competitive in the hiring market. They help attract and retain talent in a way that simple salary does not. They also take advantage of the company's economy of scale in order to provide greater utility for the same amount of money, e.g. I'd rather my employer spend $5K per year on feeding me three meals a day than get the ~$3K after-tax and have to pay for my meals myself.

<comment><USER23> I know people have different priorities and that's okay.

I see it like this: I did things to improve my quality of life and people who can't do this are missing out.

I can use a computer system of my choosing, most companies admins aren't too BYOD friendly.

I can bring my girlfriend to work, buy groceries, prepare my own food and eat it. I could not do this if I was at an office somewhere else. Most companies got small kitchens where you can't cook as good as at home and many companies only grant you 30-60min break, which aren't enough for all this.

Also, my girlfriend works shifts, so when I work at her place, we sit together in the living room most of the time. The social interactions I normally would have with some random coworkers I now can have with the person I love. When I stop working, she often starts, so when I would get home from office, I wouldn't meet her there.

I can sleep till 10 and have my first meeting while I'm still in bed.

<comment><USER22> > I know people have different priorities and that's okay.

That's quite a change of tune from your previous statement:

> I don't know what bothers me more. People willingly selling their souls to > companies or the companies that spend humongous amounts of money to keep > their employees away from their homes and lifes...

If you'd said originally what you said now then I'd have had no disagreement, but instead you literally accused people like me of "selling our souls" for going into the office to work and taking advantage of the perks there.

<comment><USER23> Yes, I'm sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm more of a "cat herder" than programmer these days, and I probably would have great difficulty doing my job from home, or with others working from home. Face-to-face conversations and in-person meetings are tools that have their uses, just as E-mail and asynchronous chat, phone calls and video conferences are tools that have _their_ uses. To me, the cost of tossing out those "in person" tools does not make up for the pleasure of eliminating my [2 hour each way] commute.

<comment><USER23> Good to know that remote work prevents me from becoming a "cat herder"

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is so obvious, but so few roles allow for that. I am below my market rate but happy and motivated, as I am 100% remote. Imagine if someone offered market rate, they'd still be ahead, without the need to pay for the office space.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'd be bored sitting at home all day instead of being around people, and then there's the more subtle ways my work is more effective when in-person contact with others happens by default rather than letting the temptation to do solitary work win out.

If I chose a job with a bad commute or bad co-workers or bad working conditions I guess I'd be unhappy about going into the office. But it seems more logical to address the root cause than the symptom. Fundamentally wanting to be separate from other people doesn't seem like the most functional pattern to encourage. But I get it, the uninterrupted coding is the part of the job that's the most fun.

</comment><comment><USER27> I've been working from home now for a year and a half, and I love it. It's really quiet, and no one interrupts me. The best possible arrangement would be a private office at work, but working at home is miles better than an open- plan office.

<comment><USER28> I find that when I'm coding, if I get stuck I take a break and go to my baby daughter and start talking to her about the problem (she's 4 months old so her skills are not that great).

3/4 times while talking to her I find workarounds. Her smile is the extra bonus!

<comment><USER29> Indeed it is the process of describing the problem verbally that helps me think about it in different ways. I would guess my mind takes shortcuts when thinking about it. However when I have to engage the speaking part of my brain, I can't take the shortcuts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I would rather work from home. I lose about two hours commuting to and from. I would save on gas. My home office is confortable. I can cook lunch. I can go to the gym before everyone gets off at 5. I wouldn't have to listen to co- workers who likes to eat lunch with their mouths wide open. I won't have to smell the sack of diapers my co-workers like to microwave for lunch. I wouldn't have smell the daily onion odor from co-workers that enjoy showering bi-monthly. No broken A/C at the start of summer every year. No death/suicide commute dodging idiots that can't drive. I need another job...

</comment><comment><USER31> I've been working remote almost exclusively for 13 years now. It has its own benefits and problems but I really, really hate hearing it described as a "perk". We've had the technology for many jobs to be 100% remote for a very long time now, and I still see it treated by companies as a benefit like "summer hours" or casual Fridays or whatever.

It's pretty insulting, actually, to frame people like me as entitled slackers.

</comment><comment><USER32> As someone who's stuck in open office torture chamber and dreaming about working remotely I can't help but notice an obvious trend - developers from poorer countries are "outbidding" those who are not in what seems to be just another race to the bottom. Unless of course you're a highly sought after specialist with experience in some narrow area, or you have good contacts.

</comment><comment><USER33> I think I'd be utterly depressed if I worked from home. Every day without any human interaction. Plus I really love the clear boundary between work and home. Wouldn't want to pollute my home with work.

<comment><USER34> > Every day without any human interaction

It's the best, I love it. Any human interaction you get is chosen, rather than imposed.

<comment><USER33> Yeah, well my current situation is that since I live alone in a new country with 0 friends the _only_ interaction I have during the day (excluding shopping for food) is at the office. So I have to take both the bad and the good (i.e. the noise of the open office and the chance for some socialiazing)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> It depends on the office and your personal circumstances. If I dread going to the office for whatever reason (uncomfortable, noisy, bad commute, dislike coworkers) then of course I'd rather work from home.

I think this argument of WFH detracts somewhat from the issue of making the office itself a better place. There is so much that can be done in that area to alleviate some of the issues around not wanting staff to wfh.

For me, the main issues are noise, lack of privacy and lack of environmental control. I get some of the same stress in my office that I would get standing in a busy highstreet during rush hour. I dislike open plan office, hot-desking etc - give me a space, I'm comfortable working and relaxing in - a second home almost. Or maybe I'm just a spoilt millenial.

</comment><comment><USER36> I've been working from home for a few years now, and I think the one thing I would miss the most is having my own private bathroom. If I'm ever in a position to design an office, the bathrooms will all be individual, or at least have stalls that go all the way down.

</comment><comment><USER37> Never being on call is the ultimate perk.

<comment><USER22> I actually like being on call, because I get paid for it and we've written a stable service that rarely has issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Many companies frequently build a hierarchy of "direct reports". That hierarchy really loves having people they oversee being local. It's kind of a cultural thing, but it requires a very, very patient and rational manager to oversee people they can't physically interact with. In my experience, most managers don't fit this bill.

Add to the fact that most of these direct reports are done via a direct 1:1 meeting, most company cultures just really, really want to do critical communication verbally.

I've rarely encountered a company that puts quality written communication at a high priority. The last few I've worked at have these half-assed wiki's (e.g., Confluence) where pages are written poorly and then forgotten about about 15 minutes after the page is updated. And then random email blasts.

It's this focus on verbal instead of written communication that is a blocker for remote work. As a remote employee, if nothing important is clearly written down, it's difficult to be a "self-starter". You can't just research a problem yourself, you frequently need to be handed work. Thus, in most businesses I've found, the remote employees end up in this strange "in house consultant" style role.

I suspect companies where everyone is remote also prioritize written communication.

</comment><comment><USER39> I have worked in a quite office and an open office and I think at the end of the day my feelings are the same. I am more productive and can get more done in less time when I do my own thing in my own space.

One thing I think worth mentioning though is as our systems become more and more distributed there is a clear advantage to having the limitations in communication folks are bringing up. It really forces you into a mindset where you have to nail down your API so others can neatly interface with your work. When I'm in the same location as a teammate, I'm more likely to just go over and ask them how their module/service works, which I might argue leads to more intertwined, less decoupled code. If I am physically removed from other team members, I am forced to make more independent resilient systems because in order for projects to be more successful, I have to more closely stick to the predefined API specs from the outset.

I am fortunate in that I have garnered enough skill/demand that I can work from my boat, sailing around Mexico, so for me, the freedom independent contracting has allowed in my personal life is unmatched. I undrrstand why managers and business owners are loathe to offer this kind of work, and I think partly it's because a few bad eggs has given wfh a bad rep

</comment><comment><USER40> I really think the best situation is a place that doesn't care all that much if you work from home, but you aren't technically a WFH employee. I used to be 100% remote and yes that had it's perks, but I think overall wasn't the best for me as someone who, left to their own devices, will likely sit out my couch at home all day every day. I actually enjoy going into the office for at least half the day and leave for home when I feel like it. Usually that's after breakfast and lunch from the cafeteria :)

It's nice though, to have real life friends at the office. Especially when you move to a new place and don't really have your old friends around. I don't really feel any loneliness because of this. I still keep in contact with my remote friends, but you know... it's not quite the same.

</comment><comment><USER41> Anecdote but I'm sure other people feel the same:

I get cabin fever working from home more than a few days a week. I need human interaction and video chat and Slack don't cut it.

I found working from home I cooked a lot less (went out to eat instead just to get out of the house) and the days tended to blend together.

</comment><comment><USER42> Hard to imagine why. Better work environment, better equipment, better office mates, better commute, fewer distractions, lower stress, etc. Plus it structures the communications better, so you have less of the random conversations and more use of ticketing systems and like.

</comment><comment><USER43> Well, I'm self employed and work for customers mainly from my home (backend development, web technologies). One or two on site meetings per week and that's it. Sometimes I had to go to customers sites in my town two or three days per week, usually during design phases. Working at home (I live alone) and avoiding the office is definitely great. Zero commuting time, I worked this morning, went on a 2 hours 50 km bicycle ride in the afternoon, got a shower and back to work. I'll probably get back those working hours on Saturday morning. I try very hard to allocate some time for my interests. I'll be back to working in a office only if business goes very bad and I can't avoid it.

<comment><USER44> For how many months, or years, have you been working from home? And, how often are you interacting in person with people?

I've found WFH to be great, but, after a while I really miss human interaction.

<comment><USER43> Eleven years after thirteen as employee. I go out almost every day. Friends, family, technical meetups are the main activities. Customers, of course. I must plan to do something outside home or it would be unbearable. We're social animals after all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> You spend 8 hours a day working. Why would you want to be isolated from other people? As a kid you go to school you are around people. Working from home seems like you are kind of isolated from people. Its not the same as over skype or slack.

<comment><USER46> "You spend 8 hours a day working. Why would you want to be isolated from other people?"

So that you can get the work done and not have to think about it when you go socialising with people you actually choose to spend time with?

"As a kid you go to school you are around people."

....and for a lot of people that was the most frustrating, difficult time of their lives that they wish to avoid reliving. Personally, I can't stand office politics, find smalltalk very distracting when it's happening around me and would much rather avoid the 1 hour commute each way.

I can't work from home in my current position, sadly, but I'd jump at the chance to do so. If I found myself feeling isolated from people, it would be much preferable to go somewhere with my laptop for lunch rather than fighting over the microwaves in the office kitchen every day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I enjoy working in an office environment because working in my home can be isolating. But cubicles with low walls where I'm constantly seeing and hearing my officemates is awful. Who thought this could possibly be a good idea for work that requires focus?

Also, a year after moving to San Francisco to work for a team based in the city, they relocated us to the South Bay. Now everybody on the team spends 3-4 hours daily commuting from SF/Oakland/Berkeley and it's awful.

I suspect these are the kinds of measures companies take when they want to reduce their workforce without layoffs.

</comment><comment><USER48> So many companies require you to relocate to work for them, and then fail to provide an acceptable office environment that allows concentration, so they let you work from your (new) home. It's bizarre.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm much happier since I started working remote.

I've never been the 9-5 office guy and my coworkers were always joking about me not being in office before 10.

When I finally missed a promotion to head of development because the higher ups said it can't be the 10-o-clock guy, I left the company and with it employment in general.

As a contractor I can work from wherever I want, get paid much more per month and can keep much more of it because of cheap private insurance and pension funds.

I also can take as much holidays as I like.

I see my family and friends more often AND get more exiting new projects.

<comment><USER49> This thread has been eye opening. I had always assumed companies seeking remote employers were looking for cheap labor. Do you have any wisdom to share for someone looking to make the switch to remote?

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I've had really good experiences working from home, and awful ones too. It usually comes down to having a distributed-first mindset among the team and management.

The ideal would be to have an office with a super short commute when I need a change of scenery, but the option to work from home whenever I feel like it.

The requirement to sit your rear in a specific chair at a specific time is pretty stupid when you can code anywhere you can carry your laptop.

</comment><comment><USER28> Not only for devs. I was working for a mega-big US company doing audit/sec and 90% of the time I was working from home, and it was the best thing!

</comment><comment><USER51> Having worked from home and on remote teams... I didn't like it as much as working with others, because I never felt attached to the team.

A shocking amount (to me, anyway) of my motivation comes from caring about the people involved in the organization... That attachment just doesn't form with people I hear on the occasional conference call or daily slack messages.

</comment><comment><USER52> So many comments in this thread are comparing working at the office vs. working from home -- but there is a 3rd option, which is to rent your own office! I do this, it's not very expensive (a few hundred dollars a month -- if I get 2 extra hours of productivity per month then it's paid for itself).

</comment><comment><USER53> I always used to want to go into the office to give me structure. Recently I worked with a client where the office was so loud it was impossible to get stuff done.

The difference in productivity working quietly at home vs in an office with loud music being composed and conversations being had across it was night and day.

</comment><comment><USER54> That's why I prefer open space office, because if I want privacy I can just work at home or somewhere else. What's the point going to an office where i will be in my own private space.

</comment><comment><USER55> "working from home" aka "actually getting work done"

</comment><comment><USER56> I actually prefer working in the office. When at home there are too many distractions, too easy to go to the shops (or driving range) or start working on your own projects.

</comment><comment><USER57> > For programmers, the ultimate office perk

will vary depending on which programmer you ask

</comment><comment><USER58> how about them phone meetings? i really dreaded them made me almost hate wfh

<comment><USER59> It's not that it's a phone meeting. It's that it's a pointless meeting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Bose 35 noise cancelling headphones (or similar) should be provided to every programmer who is required to work in an open office environment, and even for remote programmers who have to work from coffee shops.

It's a hustle to find remote work at top pay, not impossible but harder than getting top pay for onsite. When will that change?

I've been remote since August 2015, and it's been a challenge to keep getting highly compensated remote work, but I managed it somehow.

</comment><comment><USER34> Any day I don't have to go to the office is a good day.

</comment><comment><USER61> There is a dirty secret that nobody talks about and the real reason that companies want programmers in the office.

Companies want their top performers in the office so they can serve as trainers/mentors/teachers to the new college kids and the incompetent older people they hire.

I think this is the real reason companies crack down on working from home. It's infuriating as a top performer - I just want to get my assigned work done and leave it at that. I don't want to teach all your shitty college grads how to actually code.

edit: I'm not against mentoring people and helping build teamwork, knowledge sharing, etc. I'm just saying that an all out ban on WFH makes me feel like I am sitting in an open office all day doing other people's assigned work.

I actually am very social and enjoy teaching and helping people. I just wish it wasn't one extreme or the other - I can still mentor/knowledge share with tools like WebEx.

edit2: I am a contractor who was recently banned from WFH. We used to have a very lax WFH policy and it was great. Now I'm banned from WFH completely. The article was discussing the merits of WFH policies, which I am commenting on.

<comment><USER62> This comment doesn't read like it was written by a "humbleMouse" :)

I don't think this is a healthy attitude to have towards less experienced developers. Literally every experienced developer was once inexperienced, and I think for the vast majority of people, it's hard to become a senior or even intermediate developer without some mentorship along the way.

I believe this is especially true for aspects outside of writing code. This probably isn't true at every company, but from where I've worked, a big part of being a senior engineer is understanding how to tie in business goals to development. That's not really easy to learn in a tutorial online or by contributing to open source.

Anyway, I would just take caution when writing comments like this, and realize that in order for our profession to live on, we need experienced people mentoring inexperienced people. You were there once upon a time, and you probably wouldn't have liked it if people called you a "shitty college grad" and refused to help you out.

<comment><USER63> I completely understand where he's coming from in writing that. Sometimes it feels like my entire day is spent training new hires, repeating the same things over and over again. In jobs where being an expert is a requirement, it's very frustrating to see the company hire employees fresh out of college and expect the senior employees to feed them 10 years of experience in a matter of weeks. And then either they take that knowledge and leverage it into a higher paying job or they get discouraged that they were hired for a job they are woefully unprepared for (through no fault of their own) and they leave. And then the company hires more college grads for pennies on the dollar and the cycle repeats.

There's a real danger as a senior level employee that if you go out of your way to mentor younger coworkers, you become the go-to training guy. Your coworkers stop asking their peers or their manager for help and start asking you directly. Other coworkers send the new hires directly to you so your manager doesn't even see the amount of questions you're answering. And all the while your actual workload isn't getting any lighter. And if you complain, you look like an asshole. What kind of person won't help train new employees? Why are you so anti-social? Why aren't you a team player? It's just one or two questions here and there. And when it comes to performance reviews, your mentoring counts for a hell of a lot less than the number of projects you finished on time, so now when the company isn't doing so well, your output per dollar is a heck of a lot lower than the people you trained, so you're out the door. No one sees that the new employees never would have finished their project without your help. Your name isn't on that checklist, it was _their_ project. What do you mean you helped? We gave you two weeks to train them, why are they still coming to you for help? Did you not train them properly?

So either you get laid off, or you quickly realize that you have to start turning away questions and mentoring. I love training new employees. But that's not my job. My job is finishing projects. If mentoring gets in the way of shipping, guess which one I'm going to drop first?

<comment><USER64> My god this sounds exactly like academia: your job as a professor at a research university is to obtain grants, publications, and donations. Pretty much everything else is incidental. "Service" to a department, to students, etc. is "emphasized" in reviews, but if push comes to shove, the asshole with a bunch of big grants is going to steamroll the "nice" junior faculty who "mentors" the asshole's students. If you're teaching, preparing to teach, or holding office hours, you're not writing grants or manuscripts. And the odds are that everyone will say "thank you so much!!" as you get turned down for tenure, UNLESS you managed to satisfy your true primary responsibilities so efficiently as to leave time for the "fun" stuff (teaching, watching people discover, blah blah)

There's a balance -- you can do more with more hands, and they need to be well trained hands. But if they're not your direct reports, ultimately they're not your problem. (This also means that you will need to be responsible for the outcomes of those you mentor, and you'll need to learn how to let slow learners go. Oh noes, you're becoming management! It's almost as if there's a reason that good managers with domain expertise are hard to find.)

I guess it comes down to, are you going to be a "helpful" "mentor" or are you going to accept formal responsibility for the success or failure of mentees (vis-a-vis grants, contracts, successful projects, etc.)? Instead of being a martyr, it seems that explicitly accepting or denying responsibility for people who eat up your time (within reason) is the best long-term strategy. You can still succeed without doing this, and you can still fail while doing this, but the odds are in your favor if you demand accountability. (Also, there's nowhere to hide if you aren't as good as you think you are; I think that's a feature, rather than a bug, but opinions may vary.)

<comment><USER65> Just like academia the onus of learning is on the individual in all settings. The senior guy or the professor owes nothing to the junior folks or students, if they themselves don't care.

The issue in a corporate setting is you are expected to make up for other people. Same in college.

Sorry but almost all forms of failure have individual liability. Merely knowing this helps a lot of people take their situation seriously and do something about it.

<comment><USER66> Or lack of documentation/communication within the company.

When key information regarding how you're supposed to do this thing or where that thing is located or how you're supposed to test Y, or how should this particular bit that wasn't communicated in the user story but was talked about in a meeting you weren't at be tackled, or whatever is locked inside people's heads you need to consult with them to get that information out of there.

And yes having information locked inside of senior employees is a bad idea for the company overall, but that's been the case to some extent at pretty much every company I've worked for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> > I don't want to teach all your shitty college grads

humbleMouse's profile: "Mid-Twenties"

lol.

<comment><USER68> Please don't personally attack other users like this, no matter what they've said. We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14098242](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14098242) and marked it off-topic.

<comment><USER67> I'd advise you to read the rest of the thread as the vast majority of the responses were criticizing his vitriolic attitude, and based on the number of upvotes my comment received, I'd argue a large percentage of the HN userbase agreed with it.

<comment><USER69> It doesn't matter how many people agreed with it—HN is a constitutional democracy and some rules override upvotes. In this case, the rule is that you shouldn't respond to a crappy comment (which that one was) with an even crappier and less civil one.

<comment><USER67> I point out irony with the age of one user and somehow that's "even crappier" and "less civil" than his comment which is ridiculing _every single college graduate_ and "incompetent older people" as being useless and a waste of this his time? Why was his comment not detached?

I think you and Scott need to re-evaluate your heavy-handed rules and consider your direct role in enabling the entitled, elitist, and often misogynistic attitudes that are so prevalent within the current tech culture. Instead of allowing the community to let this user know that, hey, maybe you shouldn't diminish every single person other than yourself, that maybe the problem actually lies with himself? Someone needs to let these individuals know their behavior is unacceptable, and you are in a unique position to achieve just that: You could have detached his thread, but instead you choose to focus on anyone criticizing him?

Instead you're providing this ridiculous protectionist world in which people like him get away this attacking an entire class of people but as soon as someone turns the tables on him, you swoop and provide protection? This is pretty fucking ridiculous.

<comment><USER70> Please, what Dan and Scott are trying to do is promote civility. It's a hard and thankless job. It's your choice to make it harder or easier for them.

They agreed with you that the comment you were replying to was inappropriate; they just wanted you to be civil in pointing that out. If you look at their comment feeds, that's what they consistently and tirelessly do, regardless of the topic or ideology at hand.

 _I point out irony_

... but you did it in a personally pointed and uncivil way. That's what matters here.

 _ridiculing every single college graduate_

The comment was overheated and crass, but it didn't actually say that.

 _Why was his comment not detached_

It was a root comment. Root comments can't get detached. But the comment is ranked low in the thread.

 _I think you and Scott need to re-evaluate your heavy-handed rules_

From the guidelines and Dang and Scott's comment feeds, the rules are simple and reasonable: be civil. Even in response to incivility.

They seem perfectly happy for people to call out bad behaviour in others - <USER2> it saves them from having to do it.

But they hate it when users go tit-for-tat and create a cascade of incivility, as it diminishes the community for everyone and makes their job harder.

They're even happy getting suggestions from the community, but again, be civil about it. Attacking them as being partly responsible for all the ills in tech culture is a bit much, given their long history of relentlessly and earnestly working to curtail incivility and bigotry in all its forms on this site.

But hey you got it right with this follow up comment:

 _maybe you shouldn 't diminish every single person other than yourself..._

That's very well said :)

But in all seriousness, you're getting outraged and taking things personally when it would just make things better for everyone if you could be a bit reflective and say "OK guys, fair cop, I'll try to do better next time".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> It's not really a perk. It comes with its own set of problems, friends.

<comment><USER72> Your comment does not provide any value until you list the problems you have found.

<comment><USER22> Social isolation is a huge issue for me. When I spend multiple consecutive days working from home I start to get mildly depressed. Going out at night after a day of working from home doesn't fix it. I think it has to do with what I'm used to from nearly two decades of schooling: socializing with and being in the company of many other people during the daylight hours of weekdays.

<comment><USER73> A stipend so remote workers can rent a desk at a coworking space would help solve the socializing issue. It might sound crazy (or at least rare), but renting a desk at a coworking space is probably far less expensive than providing space and a desk and facilities at a company's own offices.

<comment><USER22> That's definitely one solution, but at that point you're eliminating a lot of the benefits of working from home. If I'm going to be commuting to a coworking space anyway, why wouldn't I just commute to my actual office, and be physically colocated with my actual coworkers rather than random people? I should point out that my commute to work is only ten minutes one-way.

I suspect that the coworking space idea only works for people that are located a long distance from the main office (potentially 1000s of kms), but have a coworking space nearby.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Inside Story of Microsoft's Nokia Purchase - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20130904/from-can-we-talk-to-a-coffee-table-mishap-the-inside-story-of-microsofts-nokia-purchase/?mod=atd_homepage_carousel <comment><USER2> This is a great article about how deals at this level get done. I hope it does not get buried.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. This is an unprecedented level of detail compared to the snippets and vague "sources say" rumors you hear otherwise. Probably intentionally leaked by one or both of the parties, but can't imagine why.

<comment><USER4> Well it's all told from Microsoft's perspective so they are the prime candidate. It also supports the narrative that they wanted to buy Nokia, rather than Nokia threatening to go Android or Bankrupt to force the sale.</comment></comment></comment>


Don't Start Big, Start a Little Snowball - <AUTHOR> https://blog.nugget.one/2016/09/04/dont-start-big-start-a-little-snowball/ <comment><USER2> The problem with articles and discussions like this is that the "markers of success" pointed out may all be true, but incidental.

Take Slack as an example. Yes, it was a simple idea with low product surface area and easily protypeable etc etc. But other people had built Slack-like products before that met the all those same criteria and were not successful. The critical factors for Slack were the connections the founders had (or made), the VC money, and perhaps a whole bunch of other things.

As much as we'd like for there to be a nice, neat guides for successful businesses e.g. "build a little snowball", the truth is that the reasons for success are often totally unique, contradictory and unrepeatable.

<comment><USER3> Slack also has an amazing UX, I haven't used a competing product that was as enjoyable to use. Yes I know this is subjective, but of the people I know that like Slack actually love it. Whereas I've never met somebody that loves HipChat.

<comment><USER4> I'm not fond of the Slack UI.

First of all I don't want to talk to "@jjm", I want to talk to John Jameson. Why can't it show me the full, human name?

Second, chat is basically the hello world of push based apps, but any other update, like renaming channels, editing documents etc. aren't real time. I have to close the app and reopen it to see the update. Come on!

Third, the document feature is not multiplayer. You have to lock the document in order to edit it. And for todo lists, you can't even tick off a box without locking the whole document.

<comment><USER5> Slack has an option to display full names, which you can set. An admin can also make that the default.

Secondarily, the reason for @username is because you basically have to use usernames of some kind to ensure you can directly refer to another user consistently. Users can also setup "highlight words" which will notify them if someone says them in a channel they're in. This could be their name for example, or other things.

<comment><USER6> I set up a Slack channel for the PTs at the gym my wife and I run, and have defaulted it to real names and I get an alert for my first name, our last name, and a handful of other words. Having never used Slack before I was pretty impressed with the customizability of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is somewhat interesting, but relies on the all too common tautological device of "hustle," a quasi-magical activity whose details are usually elided over.

Start a small company. "Hustle" diligently for a while. Profit. Repeat. Now you have a large, successful company.

What makes a successful company? "Hustle." What is "hustle"? Why, it just means "working hard at doing all the things that make a company successful." It's a perfectly circular definition.

Proposal: always avoid the word "hustle." Instead, talk about specific actions and decisions that led to success in particular cases.

<comment><USER8> > Start a small company. "Hustle" diligently for a while. Profit. Repeat. Now > you have a large, successful company.

And, also, survivor bias. Lots of companies hustled and hustled and died.

Elon Musk is a _really_ good example. At one point he couldn't meet cashflow-- and then the government contract for SpaceX finally came in.

3 months of delay on that contract and Musk is a goat instead of a hero.

<comment><USER9> This one drives me crazy. Sure, you have to be good and smart and you have to hustle, but you also have to be lucky, and luck is a bigger factor than anyone likes to admit. People who make it big forget the luck aspect and start believing that because it worked, they did everything right. They then go around dispensing questionable advice on the basis of 'it worked for them' while knowing full well that they're a massive outlier.

It's like when old successful people give "life-affirming" advice like "quit your job, follow your dreams, take risks, LIVE!" Which is great advice if you're already financially secure and you know that doing so didn't result (in your case) in you ending up as some peon working in a fast food joint. Never mind the other 99% of people who did the exact same thing and it didn't work out, because who listens to a failure?

<comment><USER10> I agree with you, but there's a valid psychological reason that people don't admit to being lucky more often. It's because to maximize your chance of success you have to focus on what you can control. Sitting around and looking at others to try to dissect what was luck vs skill is a sort of armchair criticism where the practitioner is immune to failure by virtue of not even trying. Ultimately the question of luck is so subjective that it starts to become philosophical at some point. After all, so many small things happen via day-to-day serendipity that anything that actually happens can be considered incredibly lucky. On the other hand, one has a lot of agency when it comes to building a company, and the art of building a startup is about matching incredibly limited resources to the highest return activities, and ratcheting that over and over again through years of changing circumstances. All the luck in the world won't drop an Instagram-like success in your lap without just the right preparation leading up to that amazing moment.

In short, it's not that luck isn't super important, but if you are _thinking_ about luck then you probably won't be ready to capitalize on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have this magical formula for building a startup that is 100% guaranteed to work, but no-one discusses.

\- Do something illegal, then lobby for your rights!

\- DDOS your competition

\- Be evil

\- Ignore regulations designed to protect your workforce (often referred to as 'partners', hah!)

\- Tell everyone you have a special insight in making successful startups - something to do with 'hustle' and 'product market fit'

\- Burn investor money while shouting stuff about self driving cars

\- Underpay your staff and/or take a huge cut of their value

\- Take massive equity stakes in already existing/launched companies and call it seed funding

\- Be Elon Musk

/snark

<comment><USER12> Another business plan that can be very profitable:

\- Build something rather generic, mediocre, but serviceable

\- Donate a lot to politician campaigns

\- Enthusiastically explain how great it would be if people (or a certain segment of people) were required to use a product with certain requirements

\- Your product somehow is the only on that matches those requirements

<comment><USER13> Also known as "how to guarantee the survival of the Z80 architecture well into the 21st Century".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As much as I hate to admit it, the author isn't wrong.

Ideas too big to feasibly execute in typical startup fashion (i.e. incremental funding rounds tied to key metrics) have a snowball's chance in hell of actually succeeding. It doesn't matter if it's the best idea in the world; the ability to adapt to and survive within the existing funding eco system ultimately has more utility because it moves the company forward.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

Just curious, why do you hate to admit it? :)

<comment><USER14> The project I'm working on has evolved over the years into something I can no longer feasibly accomplish alone. I truly believe the idea is solid, but that's worthless without being able to go from zero to one.

The best I can do is hack together tiny glimpses of the final vision. As a solo founder with no track record, pitching a concept for a product that has high funding requirements with no hope of revenue until late-stage is virtually impossible.

Years ago I reasoned the only way I'd get off the ground is to launch _something_ and get organic traction. Despite my best efforts to delude myself into believing the contrary, that seems to have proven correct.

If anything, thinking too big for your own good is tantamount to a mental prison of sorts. You just become obsessed with an idea that has a significantly lower chance of being realized. Hence why your snowball advice is on point. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's very interesting. Thanks so much for the answer.

From all the work you've done on it, if you really think outside the box, is there some single facet that could potentially be turned into do-one-thing- well?

<comment><USER14> The product is ultimately _n_ -facet, with each facet relying upon the same underlying core technology and principles.

There's three conceptualized facets. Two of them are relatively easy to implement from a technical perspective, but are otherwise rendered very difficult by non-technical considerations. The facet I believe to have the widest appeal is paradoxically far harder to implement than the others in all respects.

I think I'll take your advice and either try simplify an existing facet with laser-focus, or perhaps think far outside of the box and hopefully come up with something that's both stupid-simple yet feasible to implement. Something that gains traction while acting as a proof of concept at the same time.

Thanks for your help, much appreciated.

<comment><USER15> It sounds like you're afraid to share your idea, despite the fact that implementation is very difficult.

This means everyone else is too busy with their own ideas anyway and no one is going to jump on board and join you because you won't share your idea.

Read what Derek Divers has to say: [https://sivers.org/multiply](https://sivers.org/multiply)

<comment><USER14> There's nothing to gain from doing so. I'm not seeking co-founders, nor do I think a quasi-open remote work model would be a good fit.

Besides, I could use the five dollars. :)

<comment><USER16> "The project I'm working on has evolved over the years into something I can no longer feasibly accomplish alone" ... "I'm not seeking co-founders"

i dont know your situation, but maybe this is a mistake? 25% of something is better than 100% of nothing? just a thought

<comment><USER14> That's true, and while there is a huge benefit to having co-founders there's also drawbacks (e.g. time spent on recruitment and vetting, potential drama down the road, less equity for employees, a fractured vision). In my situation, that time and energy is likely better spent pushing forward.

Regardless, I should have qualified that statement by saying that a sizable team is required at a minimum to ship anything resembling a final product. It's far beyond what a few co-founders could accomplish together.

<comment><USER15> I have some ideas that probably fit that description. But does the "lean startup" concept still not fit? In other words, is the MVP feasible alone, developed to a point where it can be announced and tested by real users, and possibly gain popularity and possibly income, and ultimately facilitate the necessary growth?

<comment><USER14> No. My only shot at completing a user-facing MVP with no funding would be to either think up an entirely new facet that requires far less work and is congruent with existing plans, or somehow trim down an existing facet. Otherwise I'm just stuck pitching concepts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is the Google example oversimplified, or is my history wrong? It's reduced here to a "simple database search" but I thought some of Google's novel search technology was there from the get-go, so who cares how the index was persisted?

<comment><USER18> Oversimplified to the point of absurdity. The original Google was based on Pagerank [1], which came out of the postgrad research of Larry and Sergey.

They also had to build a crawler, systems to calculate pagerank on relatively huge graphs, and the search engine.

That is years of decidedly non-trival hard work, both academic and engineering - pretty much the opposite of the 'snowball' the author claims it to be.

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

<comment><USER19> The snowball idea for Google was "download the web, keeping only the links" [1], and from there it grew into PageRank, sorting by PageRank, sorting by PageRank with a filter for keywords, a search engine, etc. The description in the article is largely bullshit; Google search has never used a database, and PageRank predates the idea of Google as a search engine.

[1] source: Larry Page, explaining to Nooglers why they shouldn't be afraid to work on ideas that seem crazy or useless at first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It seems the best kind of startups to create this days are about teaching other people how to start a startup! Take the OP "nugget", "The Foundation" (Dane Maxwell), "The Secret Society Mastermind" (Timothy Marc), etc, etc... It's a pattern better explained on this comic:

[http://thegentlemansarmchair.com/comic/escape- the-9-to-5/](http://thegentlemansarmchair.com/comic/escape-the-9-to-5/)

As someone who is currently on the process of trying to find his "Own Little Snowball" and has sent over 500 emails on the last couple of weeks trying to interview people to find that "one-thing" to do well.

I have to say that the whole process of funding an startup has come to be oversimplified by most trying to talk about it, they present it on a nice little set of steps from A to B and from B to C.

But once you get started trying to follow the path, you notice the "magic" happens on what's in between the steps, and that's something nobody talks about.

</comment><comment><USER21> I find the "do one thing well" advice to almost always be sound. Great ideas are a dime a dozen, execution is the hard part. Sticking to one thing allows you to focus on executing it well.

</comment><comment><USER22> Sound and well written advice; however, I would add: don't expect your snowball to reach über size. There are tons of problems to solve/improve but the great majority of them have a small market size/potential. The big markets are too hard to disrupt.

</comment><comment><USER23> I don't agree that the only way to make a company is to build something small and iterate. It's just one way, not better nor worse than other ways. Some companies have succeeded doing this, other have not. Which means that the point of the blog post is basically wrong. Don't "build something small and iterate", build the product that you have in mind that you think people will want - that might be big and need lots of functionality or it might be small with minimal functionality.

Just because plenty of companies have done this does not mean it isn't equally valid to build something with a broad set of functionality.

Survivor bias.

It's also painfully true that uncountable companies have built something small that got no bigger. Maybe they would have been better to build out their idea into something more full featured.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it goes without saying this is not the only way you can build a sucessfull company.

There are so many existence proof examples of companies that are precisely the opposite of little snowballs.

Hootsuite, Salesforce, Microsoft, etc.

Perhaps I should have been more explicit, but the implicit understanding is that this post is aimed at the lone wolf or small teams with no funding.

Sure, you can be a lone wolf or small team and try to build a large complex project. I actually know quite a few folks who've done that. Most failed. Some were sucessfull - [https://www.centraldesktop.com](https://www.centraldesktop.com) \- comes to mind.

But, the main point is, it is simply easier on most business vectors to tackle a do-one-thing-well rather than build a big-complex-product.

<comment><USER24> Hootsuite was absolutely a little snowball. Invoke Labs was an agency in Vancouver that build Ow.ly (a link shortener that's still around). They then continued to build an early ver of Hootsuite to manage their clients' social media campaigns. Then they realized that other people might want it and offered a free version. I had dinner with the founder the night before they turned on their paid plans, and he was unsure what the reception would be since they gave so much to so many people for free.

The reception was somewhat positive but they continued to grow and sell the crap out of Hootsuite and now it's on track to go public. But they started SUPER small.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> They missed the point where little plucky bootstrapped Uber bought growth with VC money in every market they entered. It's a model, but I'm not sure there are many lessons your average bootstrapped business can learn from Uber.

</comment><comment><USER26> I really want to know how to be better in noticing the problem. I do get annoy by some regular task, however I will easily adapt to it and lost the incentive for solving the problem.

</comment><comment><USER27> While I don't know if my snow balls will go anywhere, one thing I've noticed is that many (most?) successful entrepreneurs have a high risk tolerance. I went to a meetup where Alan Grant (Hired) talked about his tolerance for risk- sometimes it even involved activities on his part that were a violation of TOS. The point is sometimes to do creative destruction you have to get your hands dirty. Try to maintain a "chaotic good" alignment if you will ;)

</comment><comment><USER12> Here's my little snowball: [http://www.zerobugsandprogramfaster.net/essays/3.html](http://www.zerobugsandprogramfaster.net/essays/3.html)

Trying to spread the idea that code can exist with a low bug count, and that it's better to write code that way.

</comment><comment><USER28> Unix philosophy for the business world!

</comment><comment><USER29> Chris Dixon's bowling pin post is among my favorite on this topic:

[http://cdixon.org/2010/08/21/the-bowling-pin- strategy/](http://cdixon.org/2010/08/21/the-bowling-pin-strategy/)

</comment><comment><USER30> Nicely written. Although uber and Airbnb are big because of the big VC money that can afford the lawyers and engineers. Not a lot of places around the world where capital + talent is available for snowball ideas.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know about that... There are quite a few little snowball startups that started out as self funded that do pretty well.

I'm thinking about Buffer, Drip, Litmus, Basecamp to name a few.

Sure, some of them did raise money, but that was a long time after they were profitable.</comment></comment>


Homemade Liquid Nitrogen Generator - <AUTHOR> http://homemadeliquidnitrogen.com/ <comment><USER2> Needs more safety!

Commercial full pressure handling tubing starts at 0.049 to accomodate stress at fittings and thermal cycling. Don't think I'd be comfortable next to 1/4" / 0.035 at full pressure after forming like that! Fittings deserve a mention, they're specialized. LN storage needs more than a mention. An all-stainless thermos can work, but if you've made it this far you can afford $150-200 for a real LN dewar.

Source: Dad worked at an air liquefaction plant and is full of usually hilarious stories about gas handling done wrong.

<comment><USER3> Would love to hear them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There was a chap here in the UK who used to go around giving STEM demonstrations, and in particular would do some wonderful lights, smells, and bangs with simple chemistry.

Then the company supplying him with lox found out what he was doing and deemed it too dangerous, so they stopped selling it to him.

So he bought liquid nitrogen and distilled his own lox instead. He said it was a great demonstration, and cheaper to boot. He just made sure the supplier never found out.

But with this rig he could have done the lot for himself ... I wonder why he never did ...

<comment><USER5> I think I saw one of these demonstrations! I recall him mentioning the tiny temperature difference being enough, as liquid nitrogen is a few degrees colder than liquid oxygen. Wasn't sure at the time if he was kidding about his supplier refusing to sell him oxygen; now I know he wasn't.

Assuming I have my memories straight, I must have been about 12 at the time. I had the honour of being handed some candy from his stash [0]. Seemed like a nice gesture. Of course, his next demonstration was some kind of sugar-fuelled pyrotechnics. Evidently, he made a lasting impression.

It seems unfair that chemistry has fire and explosions as such a universal and compelling demonstration. I suppose computer science has graphics.

[0] Of course, this being in England, I was in truth handed _sweets_ , but one makes accommodations for our American cousins.

<comment><USER6> Fear not! I am a ~heathen~ American cousin and would have perfectly understood the reference to sweets. Though I can't speak for all my brethren, I would think most could at least infer what you were talking about.

<comment><USER5> Almost the Queen's English, too. Purists discourage the ending of a sentence with a preposition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't see this mentioned elsewhere, so I'll mention it here.

Liquid N2 is benign and hard to harm yourself with, apart from frostbite. But it is colder than the boiling point of oxygen, and if you leave open containers of it around, or chill empty glassware, you can condense O2 out of the air.

One dangerous scenario is where you chill an empty flask that has organic residue in it, and liquid oxygen condenses onto that. It can go boom.

It's not easy to hurt yourself this way, but something to think about (while running at top speed in the opposite direction) if you see pale blue liquid in an N2-cooled apparatus.

On the bright side, you can make fantastic ice cream by pouring liquid N2 into a bowl of heavy cream with walnuts and sugar added. The crystals are super tiny so the ice cream has a fantastic texture.

</comment><comment><USER8> What kinds of safety risks are there in storing liquid nitrogen in a DIY context? If your container is well sealed and sufficiently strong (define sufficiently...) can you store it in a room temperature garage?

What happens if it's a freakishly hot summer one year? Do you have a ticking time bomb in your garage?

<comment><USER9> There is no danger in storing LN in your garage. Your container won't be tightly sealed (a tightly sealed container full of LN likely is a bomb); gaseous LN will continually leak from your dewar. It's nitrogen, who cares?

The major risk with LN is storing it in enclosed spaces, as it can quickly asphyxiate you. So, like, don't take it in an elevator.

I'm not sure I understand what the ambient temperature has to do with LN safety.

<comment><USER8> Actually can't leaking N2 cause asphyxiation via air displacement?

<comment><USER9> A large spill is what you're worried about. The container has to leak, so as not to, you know, explode. It's worth keeping the asphyxiation risk in mind, but you're probably overthinking this; people keep large dewars in tiny restaurant kitchens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A piston detander should work reasonably well for a small scale liquifier.

Last time I ran the numbers it was reasonably possible to liquify air with 2 relatively cheap compressors.

</comment><comment><USER11> Interesting to see how it works. I've sometimes pondered if you could do cheaper cryosuspension awaiting the singularity.

<comment> throwaw4y-plate This wouldn't seem to be the sort of thing to cut corners on! Five nines and all that.

<comment><USER11> Though given the chances of it working at all are questionable you could argue that's not such a big deal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Neat article, the picture makes me think he refrigerated his entire neighborhood.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's better to use Celsius for such articles and in general too. Metrication process in US is really way too slow.

<comment><USER14> It would probably go faster if they just concentrated on length, area, volume, and mass. With those you can make a good case for switching because we routinely deal with quantities of those units over a range of several orders of magnitude.

That means we regularly have use of smaller or larger units than the base unit for each, and in the metric system all those smaller or larger units are related to each other and the base units by powers of 10.

That fits well with our decimal number system, and makes conversions between units nearly trivial. If you have, say, kilometers and you want millimeters it is a lot easier than if you have miles and want inches.

You can make the case that we should switch to metric for length, area, volume, and mass because it is better _and_ because it is used by almost all of the rest of the world.

With temperature, on the other hand, we do not generally deal with a large range, and generally don't use larger or smaller units. We just stick to the base unit (C or F).

The only significant differences between C and F are the size of their degrees and where the 0 point is. Historically, C set its 0 point at the freezing point of water and the degree size indirectly by setting 100 as the boiling point of water. F used the temperature of a specified eutectic mixture to set 0 and tried to set 96 as human body temperature.

(Actually, C _originally_ set 0 at the boiling point of water and 100 at the freezing point, but that was fairly quickly reversed).

F came before C by about 20 years. People decided they liked using freezing and boiling of water as their reference points.

What _should_ have happened is that F should have simply been redefined so that its reference points were freezing of water at 32 and boiling at 212, keeping the same size degree. That would be compatible with the old F. There was no need to come up with a new degree size to switch to a freezing/boiling of water basis.

So because C does not have any inherent superiority over F, unlike other metric units compared to Imperial units, the case for switching comes down to pretty much _only_ that it is what most of the rest of the world uses.

Furthermore, F actually has some advantages. F's smaller degree size means many times an integer temperature is adequate where you might need to add a decimal place with C. On F, 0 to 100 is a pretty good match for the weather in most of the US. That would be about -17 to 38 in C.

So it is hard to make the case to most people in the US that they gain anything tangible by switching to C, let alone gain enough to be worth the switching cost.

Thus, I think US metrification efforts need to table temperature, and just work on the others.

<comment><USER13> I'd simplify the above. It's hard to make any argument for switching, because it's annoying to change habits. That's about it.

Even if it offers advantages, some will be reluctant, because of the above habit issue. So they should just push metrication, period, instead of dragging it for decades. Other countries did it successfully including for temperature, so how is it a bigger problem in US than for them?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Maybe he shouldn't have poured liquid nitrogen next to the cat.

</comment><comment><USER16> A really good description for how to do it. I've only found one instruction for self-making liquid nitrogen before this site, the one by Ben Krasnow, but that one cheats and uses helium cryocooler.

I don't really understand why separation of nitrogen from the air is so essential. I'd also like to see a Kapitza liquifier, where in addition to Joule-Thomson effect you use a turbine for cooling and you need less than 8 atm pressure from the compressor, that would be cool :) .

</comment><comment><USER17> Something that struck me as pretty amazing was that if you can get liquid nitrogen, you're already cold enough to get liquid oxygen (in fact separating the two may be part of the process here, I don't know)

Anyway, liquid oxygen is pretty crazy blue and amazing in its own right.

<comment><USER18> Definitely a hazard to be aware of - liquid oxygen can be a lot more dangerous than liquid nitrogen, especially if you're not expecting it!

<comment><USER19> Yeah - talk with a couple scientists after a liquid nitrogen experiments demonstration. They mentioned even just liquid air is dangerous, as the liquid oxygen in it makes many hydrocarbon materials flamable and even explosive in some cases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does the article/tutorial talk about how you remove water and oxygen from the liquefied air?

<comment><USER21> Yes: he mentions (and links to) his home made pressure swing adsorber setup to remove oxygen from the air before cooling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> One of my favorite chemistry memories: "what is that dripping out the back of the crystallography setup?" (ans: "okay would be a liquid nitrogen leak, explosive risk oxygen condensing out of the atmosphere.")

<comment><USER23> > okay would be a liquid nitrogen leak, explosive risk oxygen condensing out > of the atmosphere

I don't think that's very likely. I used to work in cryogenic labs and a simple LN2 leak would not have been considered a danger (except in a confined space). The only concern we had related to LO2 condensation was to never let a cryostat warm up or cool down while full of air.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> (deleted - misinformation)

<comment><USER25> Expansion into a vacuum, also called free expansion or Joule expansion, is not the same as an adiabatic process, there is no piston and no work is done. For an ideal gas the internal energy does not depend on the volume, so conversely such an expansion does not change the temperature. And of course it's not isentropic either, since the same amount of gas with same amount of kinetic energy now can spread itself over a larger volume.

<comment><USER24> I stand corrected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Homemade yes, DIY not really.

<comment><USER27> I've read over the plans, doesn't look to be that hard assuming you already know how to weld decently.

<comment><USER28> What plans? The sped up video of his hand made sketches? The video was so poorly done, it's hard to even see what is occurring. He spent more time on fucking with his cat with liquid nitrogen than he did on the actual concept/plan/build.

<comment><USER29> There's a whole website there that includes images of the sketches, lots of photos, and large blocks of explanatory text. If you only watched the video you're missing out.

<comment><USER28> i saw the links at the bottom to his about the heater, but totally glossed over the "next" link. i honestly thought it was just a simple write up and was disappointed. thanks for letting me know there was more to be read

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> > Celcius

ಠ_ಠ

</comment><comment><USER31> Despite the attempts at monetisation very nice content, containing both theoretical and engineering exposition. Also has descriptions of dead ends on the way to the final working design.

(how much revenue can a niche subject like this generate anyway? a dinner per month?[1] at least now the ad-trackers have all incremented the geek bucket for my profile. hope they use saturating addition; I'd hate to see what ads I'll get if my geek score ever wraps around.)

[1] this is a serious question.

Edit: based on "web site value" sites (as if those are trustworthy), I was way too optimistic with that estimate; it's more like the NPV of the whole domain is a dinner.</comment>


Ask HN: When should a startup do a patent search? - <AUTHOR>

With some (postgraduate) classmates we're starting a new project aimed at solving some problems for the elderly.
During our initial search, I came up with some similar projects, some are under development and others are already on the market - but we think we can add value to customers anyway :)
Should we do a patent search around our initial concept, or wait for a possible pivot? If we find similar patents, should we abandon the project and focus on something else? Has someone licensed patents as a proto-startup? Do you do a patent search when starting a project or startup? <comment><USER2> You do a patent search when a potential investor asks you to, and not sooner.

<http://paulgraham.com/startupfaq.html>

Scroll to the bottom.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, should have re-read that first !!!

We do have some potential angel investors :) and we might apply for government funds.

Edit: pg says "You probably have to worry more about it in hardware than in software" and we do want to do hardware, and that's my main concern.

We can pivot into a software-only solution, but I really liked the hardware approach (as a kind of app-cessory).</comment></comment>


How to make decisions - <AUTHOR> http://www.outoftheborders.com/2008/07/how-to-make-decisions.html

<comment><USER2> Misleading title...</comment>


GitLab 8.11.2 released - <AUTHOR> https://about.gitlab.com/2016/08/25/gitlab-8-dot-11-dot-2-released/ <comment><USER2> The progress GitLab is making is great but lately it feels like HN frontpage is a GitLab release announcement page. It would make much more sense to see announcement on HN about some very useful or ground breaking changes instead of links to every single changelog.

<comment><USER3> Although I'm grateful that dwaxe is a fan of GitLab I agree that this is not frontpage worthy. Maybe our just released CD tutorial isn't either but I thought it was nice [https://about.gitlab.com/2016/08/26/ci-deployment-and- enviro...](https://about.gitlab.com/2016/08/26/ci-deployment-and- environments/)

For the upcoming stuff that might be frontpage worthy:

\- Review apps [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues/20255](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/20255)

\- Cycle analytics [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues/21170](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/21170)

\- Merge request version [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues/13570](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/13570)</comment></comment>