Coding skill vs. employee skill - <AUTHOR> http://mikecr.it/ramblings/coding-skill-vs-employee-skill <comment><USER2> Alternatively work at a company that prioritizes quality and clarity of thought over deadlines and interruptions. Most of management's problems are management's creation. If you want to create quality products don't embrace their philosophy. Hiring people like Gabriella is how the company goes out of business as faster and more nimble competitors roll out updates to customers while managerial companies pile hack on top of hack.

All the deadlines may have been hit but nothing of value was produced. It's the classic efficiency vs. effectiveness trade off.

If Rodrigo wants to hit deadlines all he needs to do is increase his estimates. It's usually easier to teach someone how to game the managerial system than it is to teach someone to code.

This is a classic case of the CSL dynamic as expressed in the Gervais principle, the issue is that Rodrigo is a loser, he know's he's not being fully compensated but his coding skill makes up for having to participate in the bureaucracy, hence he doesn't care because he isn't clueless and thus will never be promoted to middle management. He's making the best of a bad situation.

<comment><USER3> > If Rodrigo wants to hit deadlines all he needs to do is increase his > estimates. It's usually easier to teach someone how to game the managerial > system than it is to teach someone to code.

This is what so many developers don't seem to understand. This isn't "gaming the system". This is just giving better estimates which leads to better (or at least less annoying) management because they won't be breathing down your neck when you're far from done.

If you don't do this, you're not a cool hacker who doesn't care about management stuff and politics, you're just an idiot. Unless you are a masochists, in that case, enjoy your self-imposed agony....

<comment><USER4> if you are always meeting your estimates then surely your estimates are incorrect. unless an estimate is given as x% of the time you will complete the work faster than the estimate then I would assume an estimate is 50% of the time you will fall under 50% of the time your will fall over.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder which is easier: training Rodrigo to communicate well, or training Gabriella to program? I suspect it's the former, though you might first have to convince him that communication is important at all. Being able to train in both directions is important when your company gets big enough.

I suspect that companies which are product-focused can probably get away with (a little) less concern for deadlines, as they can more easily push back a release if they want to focus on quality. I've often worked in service or client-oriented settings, and the temptation of hiring the Gabriella is real: she might not be the best programmer, but at least she actually answers your damn emails when the client is angry! It's not a recipe for long-term quality, but occasionally short-term is really damned important. :)

<comment><USER6> Actually, I would expect the latter to be easier.

Teaching someone who is bad at coding means fixing 2-5 years of mistakes. Teaching someone who is poor at communication means fixing 20+ years of mistakes.

Plus, it's easier to convey coding mistakes than social mistakes since it's more difficult to communicate the large amounts of unwritten social rules.

<comment><USER7> > Rodrigo is an MIT graduate who writes compilers in his spare time. He is a > core contributor to Haskell and wrote a few very well known Python packages. > He can generally write very solid code that's readable and handles edge > cases beautifully. However, he takes days to answer emails, he rarely picks > up his phone, he doesn't seem to have much of an understanding of the > importance of deadlines, he does things his own way, and you can't get a > clear thought out of him without rambling incoherence surrounding it.

If you take 20 programming novices, maybe one will be as good as Rodrigo at coding after 5 years of intensive practice.

<comment><USER8> Maybe, but there's a difference between the real Rodrigos, and the programmers that just think they are in that class, but only match up on the negatives (unresponsive, don't show up to work, think they are above the rest of the group).

I'll take a team player who has room for improvement almost every time over some rockstar who can't take constructive criticism.

Not that we only have these two choices, but the truly great AND nice are kind of rare compared to the wanna-bes who think being an amateur professor at work translates into business value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >> she takes 30 lines to write what should be written in 15 or 20, she introduces bugs that QA has to spend their time on, and she doesn't really grasp the concept of writing code that performs well

>> she is a great communicator and is able to explain complex technical issues quite clearly to clients

I haven't yet met a developer/programmer who writes a code like the one described in the first statement being a great communicator as described in the second statement. Most of them who could articulate complex technical issues seem to be great programmers too. Any counter examples?

<comment><USER10> I agree with you, but most of the time it's not the ability to explain technical issues what pulls these people ahead, it's the social skills that ease friction among coworkers and clients.

I used to work with someone who had this gift. If an unimportant feature was difficult to implement, instead explaining technical details and ROI, he'd somehow make the client talk himself into removing the feature.

Psychologists do something similar, they guide you into a train of thought hoping that you will arrive to some conclusion on your own. It completely undermines whatever defensive stance you had and all you need is some reassurance that it's the right decision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm a manager who focuses on good communication. I strive to hire and retain Rodrigos. It's extremely difficult to attract talent of that caliber (writing compilers...). My experience has been that when I do build my pure-Rodrigo team that my boss (usually the CEO) just can't deal with employees of that caliber. I end up spending 90% of my time executive handholding because they continuously try to force the team around their (usually primitive) objectives instead of letting the geniuses drive progress forward.

Rodrigo will get his work done 10X faster than another dev, regardless of the artificial deadlines.

I shield my team as much as I can from the bullshit from above but in the end I usually walk because if you're unwilling to take advantage of the resources in your own company then there really is no hope. Executive/management ego is THE problem.

In the future there will be Rodrigos, scripts and the unemployed.

<comment><USER12> This is music to my ears. While I wouldn't necessarily go so far as to say that all management is useless, they certainly seem to go out of their way to create barriers and waste time. They tend not to understand the observer effect: Making programmers spend more than five minutes a day reporting their progress adversely affects their progress.

And you're right about the ego. So much ego...

<comment><USER11> I've been spending a lot of time thinking about where this is going and how we can accelerate the outcome (again speaking as a high level manager). The problem seems to come from access to capital. I've never seen an executive who adds "10x" value in terms of what they actually can produce through "work", instead what you find are 10x executives who create value through their ability to literally increase company valuation 10 times via their connections and network. Their network unfortunately will be founded on structural advantages they've gained from society (rich parents mostly). The right rich guy will get your company sold for millions of dollars more than an engineer can because his friends will be doing the acquisition. It has NOTHING to do with the actual value being created by the company.

As for middle management, they are a resource that should be subordinated to the engineers and other high value producing individual contributors. Non- creative work needs to suit the needs of the creatives not vice versa.

So, how to get around executive domination? Lowered costs to deploy technology is a great first step. When you can launch your product on ec2 and get going for an order of magnitude less money than was possibly 10 years ago, then you don't really need to raise millions of dollars (which by the way would be spent by the MBA types trying to attract top talent anyway). If you are top talent, run with it. Avoid ANYONE who isn't going to be producing value for you and your vision. Avoid the cult of VCs. Tech talent needs to take ownership of the success narrative and not give in to temptation to bring execs and vcs on board regardless of the capital boost they may provide. In the end they will make your product worse 100% of the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Okay, now a real example:

Gabriella is only able to explain the technical stuff because Rodrigo explained it to her first. Her summary is the watered down version, so more people understand her. She doesn't quite get the details anyway.

Mostly, Gabriella gets her job done because Rodrigo helps her at every turn. Without him, she'd be lost. He has to spoon feed the solution to her often. He leaves out the last step occasionally to see if she can figure it out on her own. He enjoys this game so both win. Gabriella feels like she's actually contributing something. All this happens while Rodrigo is getting his own job done. The team is happy.

Rodrigo gets more work done since he tries to avoid distractions. He understands that the most important 'thing' is actually what he's currently working on and not what project managers have coming down the line. Gabriella is focused on what is coming down the line so that she can identify and get assigned the easy work first. Rodrigo gets assigned the hard stuff.

Gabriella keeps her job by appearing busy through socializing while Rodrigo keeps his by keeping the ship afloat.

At standups Gabriella can talk half an hour about a single line code change while Rodrigue provides a single brief statement on an entire system he's currently working on.

Gabriella's checkins:

+5 -2

+1 -0

Rodrigo's checkins:

+78 -45

+22 -10

+55 -0

+85 -20

Rodrigo makes 1.6 times Gabriella. Gabriella leaves early, Rodrigo puts in a full day.

<comment><USER14> Why is your example more "real" than the original? You've made Gabriella a worse programmer, Rodrigo into a worse employee.*

*The most important task is the current one; no allowance for business priorities?

<comment><USER13> 'Extreme example' vs 'real example' ...hmmm, did I interpret the article incorrectly in that it was a hypothetical where mine was my own experience. Thanks for calling me a 'worse employee' too. Guess I won't be getting a job at tinyco anytime soon.

<comment><USER15> Judging by the 90/9/1 rule, you've already alienated 20 people other than xsmasher and myself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Becoming a skilled developer is hard, therefore many of us seem to think that when a business hires us to develop software they're hiring us for our hard- earned skills.

However, businesses really hire us because they want to achieve Objective X, which requires some software in order to get there. The overwhelming majority of of businesses frankly don't care about the code, and are concerned only about whether it gets them closer to Objective X.

Though Rodrigo is a better coder, if Gabriella is more capable of getting the business to Objective X because she's able to better distill business goals into actual solutions, she's exponentially more valuable than Rodrigo.

I've hired a lot of people - quite a few of them were incredibly talented developers. But at the end of the day, building the _right_ software, even if not the _best_ software, trumps the inverse. We often fail to quantify how destructive a poor communicator can be to the success of a business.

<comment><USER17> > many of us seem to think that when a business hires us to develop software > they're hiring us for our hard-earned skills. However, businesses really > hire us because they want to achieve Objective X, which requires some > software in order to get there. The overwhelming majority of of businesses > frankly don't care about the code

Why, then, does virtually every programming job advert list screes of acronyms?

<comment><USER18> Because approximately all managers are retarded. Consider how many programmers can't program, despite daily feedback from their compilers and a pretty objective definition of success.

Now consider that managers don't get errors when their teams don't perform well, actions are not going to have a direct outcome on the user, etc and it should be clear why there are so many bad managers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> While I understand what the author was trying to say, the argument is flawed in several ways.

First of all, as several people have already pointed out in their comments, not all companies are the same. Some companies place higher value on hard skills, some on soft skills. Most programmers will find their place somewhere. "Rodrigos" will fit better into a software/tech company, while "Gabriellas" will fit better into a company where software is just a necessity (e.g. a credit bureau).

Second, the whole "Rodrigo and Gabriella" example is not only contrived to support a flawed argument, it also features several inconsistencies that it conveniently sweeps under the carpet. For example, Gabriella is said to be "able to explain complex technical issues quite clearly to clients", yet "she doesn't really grasp the concept of writing code that performs well". The concept of writing code that performs well is a lot simple than "complex technical issues" you might need to explain to clients. Similarly, Rodrigo has risen to fame in open source community despite the fact that he is so inept at communication and teamwork that "you can't get a clear thought out of him without rambling incoherence surrounding it."

Third, the author states that "a manager would rather work with Gabriella" because "managers are the ones who would have to deal with missed deadlines". There's an assumption here that the fact that Gabriella "introduces bugs that QA has to spend their time on" would not lead to missed deadlines. I can attest, based on lots of personal experience, that in the companies that prefer to hire mostly "Gabriellas" the whole concept of success has been redefined so that nobody will mind the fact that the projects consistently miss deadlines and exceed the budget.

Fourth -- and I guess this is the one that hit my nerve -- the whole thing is presented as a matter of being able to impress managers "to get jobs and promotions and raises and pats on the back". Believe it or not, but some of us actually care more about producing software that does what the users/clients/customers need in the best possible way. Some of us are motivated by professional pride. We expect to get "promotions and raises and pats on the back" based on our merits, i.e. not because we're focused on impressing managers, but rather because we expect managers to be impressed by quality work.

Look, if you're slightly bitter about seeing "programmers who are great employees but not great coders move to the top", I can understand that. If you feel the need to rationalize about it, I can understand that, too. The problem is that you are offering your rationalizations as advice, without any regard for the effect it might have on shaping new generations of coders, such as teaching them it's okay to be a mediocre suck-up.

<comment><USER20> Alright, interesting, but I want to counter your points.

1\. I've mentioned in another reply, but Gabriella often comes across as if she explains complex technical issues well -- but perhaps this is because her understanding of it is somewhat superficial. So, when the manager listens to her explanation, he understands what she says.

Rodrigo, on the other hand, has a deep understanding of the technical issues. When he tries to explain them, he involves the listener with some details that are necessary to understand before understanding what the issues are. Manager doesn't care about details, so Rodrigo comes across as "unable to explain technical issues to manager".

2\. When you work on an open source projects, you can always push the deadline to next week. I don't think the OP implied that Rodrigo can't get stuff done, but rather, because Rodrigo cares about the quality of his work, it comes across as if he's deliberately ignoring the deadlines.

I've seen managers that prefer a Gabriella who hits the deadline even if the thing is full of bugs.

<comment><USER19> _Alright, interesting, but I want to counter your points._

Either I didn't communicate my points correctly or you're not really countering my points.

 _Manager doesn't care about details, so Rodrigo comes across as "unable to explain technical issues to manager"._

The point is not about Rodrigo's (in)ability to explain technical issues to less technical people. The point is that Gabriella is supposed to be able to do so well, yet unable to grasp the concept of performance. To quote the author, Gabriella's attitude is that "if it works, it works!" I was pointing out that this is rather inconsistent with the ability to understand complex technical issues well enough to be able to explain them to non-technical people.

 _Gabriella often comes across as if she explains complex technical issues well -- but perhaps this is because her understanding of it is somewhat superficial._

Unless I'm totally misinterpreting you, you're saying that Gabriella isn't _actually explaining_ complex technical issues well, but instead misrepresenting them as simple issues.

While that might counter one part of my second point, it really does underline my final conclusion about the message the author tries to convey.

 _I don't think the OP implied that Rodrigo can't get stuff done, but rather, because Rodrigo cares about the quality of his work, it comes across as if he's deliberately ignoring the deadlines._

Again, you seem to be countering a point I wasn't making. My point wasn't about deadlines, but about communication and collaboration. The phrase "you can't get a clear thought out of him without rambling incoherence surrounding it" describes a kind of person that can't communicate well enough even with their peers. Maybe my understanding of open source is naive, but I somehow find it difficult to believe that they can thrive when their "core contributors" (as the author claims Rodrigo to be) have such a low signal-to- noise ratio.

 _I've seen managers that prefer a Gabriella who hits the deadline even if the thing is full of bugs._

Yes, I've seen quite a few of those, too. What invariably happens is that the "client" (i.e. whoever the software is for) either ends up "paying" extra for those bugs to be fixed or living with crappy product if they can't "pay". And when I say "pay", it's not necessarily in money -- it could be in time before they can use the software or reap expected benefits from it.

Like I stated, wherever this is acceptable behavior, it's because the concept of successful project is redefined to accept this. The reality is that you didn't really hit the deadline, you just strongarmed everyone into accepting the fact that you cheated by redefining rules.

<comment> loup-vaillant There's what the OP wanted to describe, and what he actually described. While your criticisms are valid (Rodriguo and Gabriella as described by the OP are indeed inconsistent exaggerations), this post does strike a chord.

For instance, I do see at work some people who care more about short term "done" than the quality of their code. Such code can often be shorten by 30 to 50% merely by applying local correctness-preserving transformations (my guess is, such code is written by shotgun debugging, then is left as-is when it "works", instead of being reviewed one last time for clarity).

I don't like this. But maybe that's because I don't understand that in this case, short term "done" really _is_ more important: like we have to show "something" soon, or else there won't be any long term to speak of.

We can understand what makes good code. We can understand what people want to hear. We may even be good at both. _Caring_ about both is harder. So when they're at odds, I think most people will bend one to meet the demands of the other. That's probably the essence of the Rodriguo & Gabriella trade off.

Hmm, I think we could go even more meta: hard facts vs politics. The best decision to _make_ is often not the best decision to _call for_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I realize that choosing genders by coinflip would give 25% probability of this outcome, and if that's what the author did, I'll shut up, but if not, making the antisocial cerebral character male and the technically weak, pleasant communicator female seems like lazy writing to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here, I can promise that genders weren't chosen on purpose. I was thinking of names and the guitarist duo Rodrigo y Gabriella came to mind so I went with it.

I probably should have swapped the order or gone with two males or something, sorry!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Gaah this is such a strawman, and the gender aspects of it, a woman who cannot code but is a great coworker, talk about stereotypes. Obviously trolling but I cannot help but bite.

The first thing one has to ask is, what kind of programming is it? Modifying a company's Wordpress installation hardly requires a compiler specialist. Actually, it doesn't matter if somebody's code is 50% longer just as it does the job, and doesn't create a larger instability in the codebase or production environment.

I find that beginner programmers and refactoring aficionados have the same tendency to introduce weird little bugs. The article talks about introducing bugs like something bad. Every non-trivial code change in a large project has a good chance of introducing a bug, it's just how shit works.

This argument also totally bypasses the problem of good UI. Compiler guys might be very good at getting those loops tight, but are they really interested in good UI for business software? They may, but they may also not be able to execute on it. I think that for a good operation we need a diverse group of people who cover all areas of expertise needed to build a great experience. OTOH if we're talking about building a kernel extension instead of an iOS app then different needs apply.

<comment><AUTHOR> > the gender aspects of it, a woman who cannot code but is a great coworker, > talk about stereotypes

See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4503317>

As for the rest of your post, try not to get lost in the details. Questions like "What kind of code is it? Who can design/build the better UI? Can't good developers introduce bugs too?" are valid in general but sort of miss the point of the post, which is that _in general_ , people who are "bad" at programming but "good" at communicating and staying organized tend to be favored by management instead of the good programmers/bad communicators.

Of course there are exceptions (based on the specific skills each job requires and what different companies value in employees), but that's true of all writing that speaks in general terms.

<comment><USER22> I see what you mean. I just don't think great programming skills are needed to do most of what accounts for programming work these days. Load a couple of objects from the database, change something, put it back and display some HTML, as long as you don't totally mess it up it's OK. The lesser skilled in programming often have some other thing they are great at to validate their place on the team, like understanding what the business side wants, styling, UI or organizing the team.

I think the best solution for working with less skilled programmers is to have a framework in place that lets them be productive without having the chance to mess up too hard, lots of enterprise java frameworks are built on this premise "Write your code >>here<< \- and you may only call on >>these<< apis" - enforced in strict rules. Truly skilled programmers are a limited resource, especially when you need a couple of hundred ones for a boring project.

So what if their code is a little bit longer and buggier as long as it works, as a lead developer once told me "if their code breaks, they'll just have to stay a little bit longer that day and fix it".

I'd rather have a medium skilled programmer which is a team player than a really skilled programmer who is a loner. OTOH I have fired bad programmers, like one guy I had to explain what a for loop is to and who delivered something completely unusable.

Off on a tangent:

I'm just generally bored with the Software Craftsmanship pipe dream. It too easily becomes an ivory tower - creating software for it's own sake. Real requirements are messy and real programs run in a messy environment, and I'm not sure that "Doing things properly the first time" is the right approach. I think it's more important to iterate and be prepared to throw stuff away, instead of being more rigorous and shooting up design patterns. I do understand the need for pride especially if there's pointy haired bosses around, but I think that some of the reactions to that kind of environment are too extreme. It's about shipping software that works, and if it does work in 90% of the cases to 30% of the cost of having a 100% solution, then maybe that's a good business decision, especially if it fails gracefully with a good error message "I'm sorry can't do that Dave". It just might be that a couple of months later business has changed so things needs to be scrapped and rewritten anyway. Of course it depends on who is funding the bill, but I rarely see people willing to pay for military-grade software consultancy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Another major example is being able to identify which problems matter to the company. Rodrigo works on whatever his manager tells him to do and executes splendidly, while Gabriella identifies the big problems that most people don't even realize can be solved with code and fixes them. In this case, Gabriella can easily be massively more valuable. I've mentioned on HN before that I used these same problem-identifying skills, combined with very crappy, amateurish coding, to save a former employer $2MM in under a year. And I've continued to do this-e.g., by writing SQL Stored Procedures to solve problems that many people in a company run into, which has been a tremendous help for my career.

That's not to say communication skills aren't important, but identifying the projects/problems relevant to the business at large are even more so.

</comment><comment><USER17> > a manager would rather work with Gabriella

Managers avoid Gabriellas because Gabriellas try to get out of their coding jobs as fast as they can, usually by going for the manager's job, usually with a few freshly sharpened knives in their holster.

> [Gabriella] takes 30 lines to write what should be written in 15 or 20

That's a typo. Should read "takes 30 hours to write what should be written in 15 or 20 minutes".

> Gabriella comes out way ahead. And I've seen it happen many times-- > programmers who are great employees but not great coders move to the top > while the great coders but poor communicators stay on the bottom.

What is the top and what is the bottom? Is getting out of coding as quick as possible your definition of moving to the top? Gabriellas also get to "the top" by passing off Rodrigo's work as their own.

</comment><comment><USER24> Interestingly, people usually complain about people who can't pull their weight technical skills wise, yet in my experience, I've found it way more frustrating picking up the slack for other people's lack of employee skills so I'm happy to see this on the front page.

I go to great lengths to be responsive and send very carefully crafted short, succinct emails. I've been working since I was 14 in IT in some capacity or another. This means over the years I've developed a savvy as far as maneuvering in a corporate/professional environment. Being paired with people who lack this has been somewhat frustrating.

</comment><comment><USER25> Perhaps it is because I've spent the majority of my career as a developer that I when I put my manager hat on, I want a team full of Rodrigos. Quick standup meetings and dev-owned granular task breakdowns are easy ways to address Rodrigo's lack of proactive communication and disinterest in deadlines.

I haven't been in a situation where Gabriella is someone I'd want on the team. Devs are often more productive if they check their email a few times a day, rather than every minute. If there's an issue that needs urgent attention, I'm generally capable of stopping by their desk or calling them on the phone.

I'm also annoyed by the subtle sexism that underlies this article. In my experience, female developers are much more likely to be highly skilled than not.

<comment><USER26> In my experience, people come with various talents and skill levels.

Seeing any correlation of ability, skill level, or talent with some shared physical feature is more often than not confirmation bias.

<comment><USER25> The bias you are looking for here is survivorship bias. Minorities have to outperform their majority-peers or they don't get hired or promoted. So those that remain are disproportionately skilled.

But my concern is the narrative fallacy - we ascribe far more importance to narratives than they deserve. The way to defeat that is to fill our narratives with the future that we want rather than the future that we don't want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Perhaps OT: but is it only me that sees Gabriella as a female name and thinks the article is a little implicitly sexist? If the author chose it and tries to point out that there's a sex difference then fine. But otherwise, implicitly inserting a sex difference suggestion is not good.

</comment><comment><USER28> > ... programmers who are great employees but not great coders move to the top > while the great coders but poor communicators stay on the bottom.

"Staying on the bottom" apparently means making a six figure salary while doing intellectually stimulating work. If you've got the portfolio to back you up, you don't even need a college degree.

I like it at the bottom. It's cozy down here.

#firstworldproblems

</comment><comment><USER29> Of course - what you actually want is the best of both Gabriella and Rodrigo. And there are a bunch of those folk out there. If you're a Rodrigo go learn more from a Gabriella. If you're a Gabriella go learn more from a Rodrigo.

But - y'know - if I was _forced_ to pick between a Gabriella and a Rodrigo I'd pick Gabriella every time.

Because she can "explain complex technical issues quite clearly to clients, she has never missed a deadline, she is constantly looking for feedback to improve her work".

I've worked and mentored people like that before. People who are actively looking for feedback are _easy_ to coach into being better developers. A team lead can polish up Gabriella's coding skills. She's open to feedback. She'll get better fast.

Conversely I've found it really _hard_ to coach Rodrigo types into being better team players. They think that the stuff Gabriella is good at is just about the "need to impress to get jobs and promotions and raises and pats on the back". They don't understand that the stuff Gabriella is good at is _vital_ to building products with a team that meet the client's needs and make them and the end-users happy.

And these days - most of the time in most places - software development is a team sport. I've seen more teams of Rodrigo's kill projects through inattention to deadlines and client needs than I have seen Gabriella's kill projects through bad code.

</comment><comment><USER30> Gabriella is the perfect employee for cost centers, places that consume rather than produce technology.

Rodrigo should go work in a technology company that makes the products Gabriella will use.

</comment><comment><USER31> Managers are always claiming coders have bad "communication skills". That's fine because on the other side most programmers feel that managers are incredibly stupid and focused only on their careers and getting attention above all else.

For example, this article: Managers as lazy, stupid careerists?: Contestation and stereotypes among software engineers <http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1615745>

Software devs for the most part understand that many managers and analysts have no concept at all of what it means to develop software and be required to produce complex deliverables. Their only taste of what it might be like is to quibble about things like capitalization and punctuation in their powerpoints. Yes, if you spend all day going to meetings and aren't required to produce anything except opinions, then it would be very easy to see someone working a software component into existence for the entire day while ignoring all the super important, self-absorbed people as a 'bad communicator.'

As for what Rodrigo should do, its obvious he needs to move to a start-up as a founder as there's never going to be a satisfactory employee position for someone like him.

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra If you by some miracle has got a hold on Rodrigo, now you just need to weave a management framework _around_ Rodrigo. One which will keep him fed, undistracted and with a nice queue of interesting tasks.

Think of all the plumbing and shields that make nuclear reactor use feasible, and then of massive amounts of power this configuration will produce.

That's like the Grim Reaper management in Dungeon Keeper if you understand the idea.

</comment><comment><USER32> Hiring one or two engineers (per team) who are as technically capable as they are socially capable is ideal. The Rodrigos on the team will rely on this person to communicate what the hell is going on, and the Gabriellas will (must) raise their game -- although, I think that you can do without a Gabriella if you have one or two of these ideal engineers around.

The combination of coding and employee skills usually also means that this person is a good candidate for a team lead.

If you've never worked with someone who's an A+ engineer as well as a fantastic teammate/subordinate, you don't know what you're missing. The unsocializable uber-geeks can do what they do best, which is produce great code, and the managers are much more informed (and relaxed). And the teammates (like me) find working with them a pleasure.

In summary, coding skill vs. employee skill is a false dichotomy; the alternative is someone who has both skills and whose value to a team and to management acts as a team & production multiplier.

</comment><comment><USER33> These two things are contradictory:

1\. "He can generally write very solid code that's readable and handles edge cases beautifully."

2\. "you can't get a clear thought out of him without rambling incoherence surrounding it"

It would be better to talk from actual experience than to invent things that don't exist, in support of a point that must necessarily therefore be bogus.

</comment><comment><USER20> Very interesting. Can definitely relate ..

This part made me chuckle:

> [Rodrigo] does things his own way, and you can't get a clear thought out of > him without rambling incoherence surrounding it.

However, I would argue (and I'm biased, of course) that if you're a technology company, it's the manager's responsibility to adapt to Rodrigo

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm more like Rodrigo than Gabriella. I have all the soft skills that are needed but I'm not a great fan of following "deadlines". When I was working for a company I completed most of the tasks assigned to me before deadline but I wasn't happy doing that. I love to do the best possible work in least possible time humanly possible but as I have noticed most of the "deadlines" created by managers are unrealistic and stupid. Let me give you an example. Our project manager at that time(MBA from a top university) committed to client(electricity board) that the project we were working on will be completed in 3 days time and they can have a trial of it on 4th day. He didn't consult with programmers before making commitment. The reality was that it required another 20 days of work. Three of us had to work 56 hour continuously to complete it - an untested crappy code that just worked. I didn't liked it. Eventually after some months I left the job and never worked for anyone else again.

So this is how it works - Stupid clients will pressurize stupid managers for unrealistic deadlines and the stupid manager will accept it and will further pressurize programmers to do it. Good programmers will eventually leave the company/project and programmers like Gabriella will continue to meet the deadlines writing crappy code that just works and will eventually break down someday and it will be really hard for someone else to correct it because the code is a mess resulting in loss to client. It bites back.

</comment><comment><USER35> This is a question of trade off. As a developer if you bug me and ring me every 5 minutes so I can extinguish fires to please the management, I tell you I won't hit _any_ deadline and I gonna produce shitty code.

As a dev team manager I always try to create the correct environment so people are protected from management noise. They can be efficient at what they do and hit the deadlines. At the same time you need to tool your team to clearly separate what is urgent from what is not so you can disturb their work flow only if the emergency worth it.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is a false dichotomy. While there are people that rely on one skill to support another weak skill (social skill to support lack of technical skill, or vice versa), not everybody is like this. The best people are not over- reliant on either skill, they have both.

You can understand your objective, explain to the business in a simple way what you will be doing, and then implement it in a high-quality way. You might be better at one thing, but there's no reason that you should become either of these dysfunctional types.

</comment><comment><USER37> I personally, as a programmer and a person, would rather work with Gabriella than Rodrigo. While it is definitely true that Rodrigo is a much better person, if I can't depend on him to get me his good code by the deadline, I would rather have Gabriella's "working" code, because, hey, it WORKS, and it meets the deadline -- the biggie here. If I can't depend on him to communicate with me and who ever else we work with, it is another negative for him.

I don't know about other programmers, but for me, the better I understand my teammates and/or colleagues, and the better we perform as a whole, the better I perform individually.

I also would rather optimize Gabriella's code than have no code at all from Rodrigo. Although, after reading one of the comments below, if Rodrigo was missing deadlines by a small margin, let's say only by a few days, I would much rather get code from him. If I was his manager instead of his project teammate, I wouldn't mind his in-depth technical explanations as much, mostly because I do the same thing, and I value expanding my own knowledge well beyond its borders over just getting a brief overview without the how and why because without them, the what is almost worthless by itself if the manager has to turn around and provide instructions to the team based on the how and why that s/he was not given.

</comment><comment><USER38> This is an interesting read for me. I am 33 years old and work as the CTO of a large fund in NYC. I started off as a coder and then got promoted all the way up to the glorious rank of CTO, which really means the guy with the most responsibility and doesn't get to code as much anymore :(

I agree with this article in many ways but I don't think you can separate out the two characters in such a black and white fashion. Where I work, there is no such thing as "bad coders" because the standard for hiring is so tight. Everyone here really knows their stuff (including me!) but I do agree what separates people apart is their communication skills. I was one of the few people that was not afraid to talk to management and express my opinion on certain things. Most of the other programmers just deferred to me and I was almost always the representative of the coders to management. I work with some really smart people, genius-level guys, but most of them are extremely introverted. The ONLY difference, from what I can see, is that I am almost exactly the opposite. I am an extrovert through-and-through but also love nerd-type things. Someone that can bridge the gap between the technical and non-technical worlds is a worth a lot to an organization.

        def toot_own_horn(self):
            pass

</comment><comment><USER39> Actually the problem children are excellent coders who are toxic to the Gabreillas in the office. As a manager having a person who writes perfect code but pisses everyone else off, is less useful than one who writes moderate code but gets along, even if they are quiet and moody.

</comment><comment><USER40> I think a good team will have some of each and a good manager is responsible for everyone getting along. The interesting question is what happens when Rodrigo reports to Gabriella a year down the road - will he realize that her people skill got her in that position?

</comment><comment><USER41> I have a mantra that I repeat on a regular basis in a lot of contexts:

"You espouse a false dichotomy."

</comment><comment><USER42> This article is pretty true to what I've encountered.

In a previous job I worked with hands down the most knowledgeable computer tech I've ever encountered. He got fired from his job as a computer tech.

The reason he got fired was because he didn't gel with the team (use deodorant, hygiene in general). His skills made him arrogant (elitism) and his communication to clients was woeful (he spoke tech talk to non tech people).

I think the simply way to communicate this idea of coding skill vs employee skill is Yin and Yang. Strong technical skills (Yin) are wasted, unless you have good employee skills (Yang).

A good employable programmer will have a balance of both.

</comment><comment><USER43> I won't answer the question of who I'd rather work with on a daily basis as I can see both of their strengths and there's no reason they cannot both fit within a team.

If I were management, I'd groom Gabriella to be a Development Manager/Project Manager. She has the skills to speak to developers and actually understand their problems yet she also has the skills to face off with stakeholders.

Rodrigo will need to be babysat and is more suitable for less structured roles that offer more freedom from daily rigors of development work; such as an Architect or Technical Lead.

<comment><USER44> Well in all likelihood, Rodrigo will probably leave/get fired and then go do his own startup! This is clearly not working for him!

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Oh puhlease...all the rambling incoherence...no wonder twitter is so successful...besides too many of you are reinventing the wheel...google the answer, tweak it and make it work - if that doesn't work contract one of you guys for 2 to 3 months for some outrageous fee and you go away in your hole and make it work...then we're happy...next subject?

</comment><comment><USER46> Good coders work for glory, not money nor power.

<comment><USER47> This is incorrect. Coders are as diverse as people. Some work for the money, some like coding, some hope to move up to management, some are marking time until they find something better, some are this, some are that; they cross the whole spectrum of humanity just like everyone else.

<comment><USER46> Humm... I was talking about "true" good coders (kidding).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> My 2cents, I'd be recruiting Rodrigo hard and just pay him to hack on ghc full time, and that other one I'd at best refer to another company that might be a better fit.

Granted, what I'm up with Wellposed is pretty darn special, and I am planning on pulling baller solid computer scientist engineers in as fast as capital permits starting late fall :-)

</comment><comment><USER49> Just imagine Linus Torvalds being nice and cuddly about a bad software and not telling(shouting)you to fix up your shit. Thank Universe for the Rodrigos of the world.

</comment><comment><USER50> Yes, and that's why service companies look for employees who respect deadlines and product companies look for coders who get-sh*t-done.

</comment><comment> UK-AL I don't like the idea of trying to make code as small as possible. You might end up with perl one liners...

</comment><comment><USER51> If you have such extreme people as your only choice, what you do is hire both, part time!

</comment><comment><USER52> Yeah, "don't be a dick" is a good baseline for most things in life.

</comment><comment><USER36> Does anybody know what blog software is being used here?

<comment><USER53> Drupal</comment></comment>


3D scanning and printing within reach? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wired.com/geekdad/2007/04/is_home_3d_scan.html <comment><AUTHOR> added this because It seems a cool thing to be able to write code that creates things in 3D ~ a good app would be CAD.</comment>


The English-Likeness Monster - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/2005/09/english-likeness_monster <comment><USER2> I'm not a remarkable programmer by Hacker News standards, but I have experience in what I think is a decent variety of languages. I've done C and assembly; I've done a stack-based language; I've done the popular dynamic imperative languages (Perl, Python, JavaScript, a little Ruby); I've done Lisp and Haskell. Heck, I've even programmed in Visual Basic.

And in all my programming adventures, AppleScript has to be the weirdest, most backward, hardest to figure out language I've ever had the misfortune of using. I think Gruber nails it here -- English and other natural languages are not nearly precise enough to express program text, and the problem is exacerbated when you try to support multiple natural languages simultaneously. Visual Basic may not be a terrific programming language, but at least it's internally consistent.

To quote Einstein, "Everything must be made as simple as possible, and not simpler." AppleScript's designers tried to simplify away the essence of programming, and wound up making scripting much, much harder than it should be.

To anyone out there who needs to script OS X, save yourself a great deal of pain and avoid the temptation of using AppleScript just because it's OS X's "native" scripting language (this is was my mistake). Access OSA through a sane language like Ruby or Python instead.

<comment><USER3> I've met many many non programmers who are happy to write scripts in Apple Script and find languages such as Python and Ruby too complex.

As a programmer I agree with you...my experience tells me it's horses for courses though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Scripts are stored in a language-independent internal representation. A dialect defines a presentation for the internal language. Dialects contain lexing and parsing tables, and printing routines. A script can be presented using any dialect – so a script written using the English dialect can be viewed in Japanese. For complete localization, the application terminologies must also include entries for multiple languages. Apple developed dialects for Japanese and French. A "professional" dialect which resembled Java was created but not released."

— <http://userweb.cs.utexas.edu/~wcook/Drafts/2006/ashopl.pdf> . The example it gives for the "professional" dialect is "{ words | style == bold }.character[1]", which as far as I know would have made it one of the first non-research languages to use pseudo–set-builder notation like that.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> An interesting read in light of the lively discussion around HyperCard. HyperCard used HyperTalk, which also used an English-like language, although I recall it is being dramatically easier than AppleScript yet more difficult than JavaScript.

</comment><comment><USER5> OS X has `sdef` and `sdp` commands that can translate any application's applescript dictionary into .h files for ScriptingBridge API:

        sdef /Applications/iTunes.app | sdp -fh -o -

This was a life-saver for me, as I find AppleScript absolutely impossible to use.

</comment><comment><USER6> For another take on an English-like computer language, try out Inform 7 [1]. It also suffers from being too English-like, but it's a somewhat more successful experiment. Also, writing obfuscated code is fun. [2]

[1] <http://inform7.com/> [2] <http://slesinsky.org/brian/code/i7_poetry.html>

</comment><comment><USER7> This may not address all the issues, but it certainly allows a more concise syntax. rb-appscript allows you to utilize apple scripting / apple events from Ruby.

The instructions on this page for building and testing worked fine for me.

[http://oreilly.com/pub/a/mac/2007/02/27/replacing- applescrip...](http://oreilly.com/pub/a/mac/2007/02/27/replacing-applescript- with-ruby.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> Certainly Gruber gets a lot of flak here for his love of Apple (the products and the company) so it may seem shocking, though it is not, to see him write something like:

"It was a grand and noble idea to create an English-like programming language, one that would seem approachable and unintimidating to the common user. But in this regard, AppleScript has proven to be a miserable and utter failure."

</comment><comment><USER9> [2005]</comment>


Here are the 20 games shipping with the PlayStation Classic - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/29/here-are-the-20-games-shipping-with-the-playstation-classic/ <comment><USER2> Disappointing, but it kind of showcases that the PS1's biggest strength was in its third party support. This then provides an issue for any classic console deal based on said era, since third parties hold pretty much all the cards and that if they're not on board... well the reasons to buy it become signficantly less.

Add Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Tomb Raider, Castlevania Symphony of the Night... etc and this thing would be a much more compelling purpose. But it's not really under Sony's control, and hence the line up here.</comment>


What is ChatOps? And how do I get started? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pagerduty.com/2014/12/what-is-chatops/

<comment><USER2> I started working with Lita a few weeks ago and really liked it. I wrote up my experience at [http://engineering.lonelyplanet.com/2014/11/19/lonely- planet...](http://engineering.lonelyplanet.com/2014/11/19/lonely-planet-at- hack-nashville-6.html)</comment>


Test-Driven Development vs. Test-After Development - <AUTHOR> http://stephenwalther.com/blog/archive/2009/04/08/test-after-development-is-not-test-driven-development.aspx <comment><USER2> I wonder if, one day, people will realize that none of this stuff really matters. Write and comment your code clearly, think your designs through, and comply with your team's conventions so that people know what to expect.

None of this stuff (TDD, TAD, XP, Agile, whatever) is computer science. None of it is science _period_. They're all essentially shamanistic rituals which "work" by giving you a direction so that you can start writing code. If you find a methodology works for you, great! Use it! But all this squabbling about the _one true path_ is nonsense.

<comment><USER3> If something as simple as a checklist [1] can have a meaningful impact on patient care in hospitals, I think it's worth talking about the equivalent in software.

Neither claims to be any kind of science, but both can save the day by compensating for the natural human foibles of the practitioner.

[1]: [http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_gawande)

<comment><USER2> Sure, having an organization strategy is a good plan, and I didn't mean to imply otherwise. The problem I have is with people claiming that their way is the "right" way without having any legitimate scientific backing for the claim.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Early adopter of speed reading web-tools, built similar app for iOS - <AUTHOR> I've been an early adopter of speed reading tools. I have tried to maximize my use of speed reading tools for browsing.
But, I travel a lot and I couldn't find any such free app for my iPhone. So, I built one for iOS - 1000 WPM (http://1000wpm.in)
I have received positive feedback from users and people are finding it useful. I just hope that you guys will find it useful too.
Here are some promo codes for HN early adopters.
3H4ELR6AFYYX W3HE9WHYT3FX ME9HN3TWF9WM YAKEAY67HYML 6MHLXNXMKR46 JJH4T9Y7AXL9 T9EAY9YRYFKL W4JXTPWL4HTR LJ4RMWFJ3WL9 P7Y3XR4YN7LH
Feedback/comments are always appreciated.
tl;dr - http://1000wpm.in <comment><USER2> Thanks for the promo code! App works great so far.

Here's some feedback:

1\. Would be nice if I could swipe left/right or up/down anywhere on the screen to adjust the speed. Hitting the tiny buttons in the corner is hard when I'm trying to focus on that one spot in the center of the screen.

2\. Swiping to scrub forward/back could be nice too, in case I missed something important or want to skim a section. (One swipe direction could adjust speed, the other could adjust position.)

3\. I would appreciate a setting to adjust the number of words (or characters) displayed on screen at once. I imagine the optimal amount varies per person (and I seem to recall reading somewhere that the ideal might be more than a single word).

4\. The progress indicator still looks draggable while reading. I actually thought it was a speed adjustment slider at first, and I tried to drag it a few times unsuccessfully. I'd suggest either removing the nub while reading, or allowing it to be dragged even while reading.

5\. I don't find the name to be very memorable or even searchable. I actually lost this post, the app was buried inside my desktop iTunes and I had a pretty hard time finding the app again.

</comment><comment><USER3> First of all, thank you for the promo code.

One of the first things I've noticed is that the app lacks a night mode (a dark theme). I think that would be really great. It's somewhat hard to concentrate on the text with a bright white screen blinding me in the dark.

It would be really nice if the app would ignore archived texts, or even better, move them to a different section of the app, so that we can revisit them if we want to.

Maybe ability to paste text into the app as well?

I noticed some reviews suggesting a pause at the end of the sentence or after longer/unusual words. That might be a good idea, although I didn't really suffer from the lack of those pauses.

Apart from that, I just went through a long(ish) text at 550 WPM without a hitch, so it works as advertised. Nicely done!

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks like all the promo codes have been redeemed at this point. Any others available?

Curious if you used the Spritz ([http://www.spritzinc.com/developers/](http://www.spritzinc.com/developers/)) API for this or something else? I'm able to do the 700 wpm they have on their website - look forward to trying something faster.

</comment><comment><USER5> Perfect, exactly what I needed especially with Pocket integration. I was learning iOS development and building this exact thing with my friend.

Thanks for releasing it, I might start reading off my iPhone now.

</comment><comment><USER6> Thank you, I used code W4JXTPWL4HTR. Going for a week of traveling tomorrow, so will test it out with my Pocket account.

</comment><comment><USER7> I liked the demo of the app. After a couple of articles, I am reading at 400WPM. Lets see how much I can improve.

Thanks for the promo.

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice app! Could you give some more promo codes? All of them are used.

</comment><comment><USER9> thanks, pocket integration is a big plus for me. thanks for the promo code too.

</comment><comment><USER10> where do I put in the promo code?

<comment><AUTHOR> From iOS device: Open App Store -> Redeem

[http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1574#iOSdev](http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1574#iOSdev)

<comment><USER10> code not valid. :(

<comment><AUTHOR> somebody might have used that, you can try different code

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> thanks for the promo code! :)</comment>


Ask HN: Managers of remote employees, what's hard for you? - <AUTHOR> I've been a remote person for a little while now and a big advocate for it. I've thought a lot about what's hard for me, but, I'd love to hear the other side of it. What's hard about managing a remote person? <comment><USER2> I found out that developing trust with other people is much harder remotely

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting! What makes it hard for you to develop trust? For me, I think that if I can't trust someone than I don't want them working for me in any capacity (office or remote!)

<comment><USER3> Not the OP, but I would imagine part of this comes from the fact that when you work side-by-side with someone, your level of non-verbal communication and just the ability to get to know one another is generally going to be a lot higher. You trust someone through getting to know them better. I'm not saying you can't achieve this level of communication, familiarity, and trust remotely, but I would assume it takes more planned effort to do so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I manage and work on a small team of 4 people. Myself and one other are remote, I am at a 13 hour time difference from all of them(!) The hardest part for me is knowing what's going on during their normal workday. Something can come up that de-rails their whole day and I'm not there to be their buffer or to help prioritize. So I guess the hardest part for me, isn't my employees, it's the other employees in the company that distract them or take up their time.

</comment><comment><USER5> We are keeping person in the office at least half a year (6 payrolls). During this time they are trained and you can understand if she/he/it fit your company. After that period we can give remote login only.</comment>


Confidence Through Feedback, or Why Imposter Syndrome Is the Wrong Metaphor - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bethcodes.com/confidence-through-feedback <comment><USER3> I really liked this read.

It's a topic my mentor/friend (I always add mentor because he means more to me than just "friend" and he teaches me stuff) have discussed before. Our work environment is lacking in a lot of feedback and review; we're often reporting to people who don't work in our company and touchy-feely stuff is indirectly seen as unnecessary in this culture. Add that to the fact that we're separated from the majority commercial IT world and there's a sense of "we're just hacks" and really don't know what we're doing, we're just her because of a lucky credential that gets us hired and riding the contracting gray train.

In trying to evaluate my skills absent feedback, I look to compare myself to those around me. And there, I've noticed, is dangerous territory. I need to state that what happens here, is not good, but it should be recognized. If I'm on a team of engineers and operations staff, building a system, I look around and see what others are doing. Did the configure something wrong that resulted in a fault? Someone screw up and dump too much on that datastore? "Ha!" I guiltly laugh. Because I knew not to do that, I must be better than them. And since, given I hold a very critical view of my own skills, if I'm simply average or "getting by", then they must be really bad indeed.

Of course, that's a terrible thing to think about one's colleagues. There's a danger in thinking that because one knows something, that knowledge must be common because to know something esoteric would be exceptional and therefor, better. Keeping with the narrative that we're average, and knew it anyways, then it must be exceedingly simple and the other person should have known better. That's not the case. We can know uncommon things. We can be deeper in our fields than we think.

The other fallacy of course is that it's also a degree of confirmation bias. Everyone else's failing below ours is a sign of their ineptitude. It assumes that our own mistakes wouldn't have been caught in turn.

All of this I'm trying to illustrate is, impostor syndrome can be harmful to more than just ourselves when we fail to believe in our own abilities and at the same time, measuring ourselves against others. I've caught myself trying to drag my colleagues down in my private assessments in this way, and that's not good.

</comment><comment><USER4> There's the fourth option of not judging yourself on whether you are a good programmer or bad programmer but instead just trying to become better (which I think is essentially the conclusion eventually reaches).

It's the shift from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset a la Carole Dweck. That is quite a tough shift to make however when you've been conditioned with lots of feedback from school and university telling you are good and then suddenly that feedback disappears when you start work. Indeed I imagine most programmers aren't actually especially good when they first start - <USER2> if I looked back at the code I wrote 10+ years ago, I'm sure I would cringe.

<comment><USER5> > just trying to become better, which I think is essentially the conclusion > eventually reaches

Yes, though there's a lot more detail to it than "just trying", mostly about good ways to get there: shortening the feedback cycle of improvement through peer feedback, getting past the fear of failure by lowering the cost of mistakes through blameless review. And that "being smart" is the wrong criterion, which I think is the "growth mindset".

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a misreading of imposter syndrome, at least how I understand it to work and how it has been used in common parlance around me. Granted that has included a lot of academic circles and math/physics types, not only programmers.

Imposter syndrome refers to beliefs about your own lack of competence, skill, experience or whatever - in contradiction to _good_ evidence to the contrary. And the uneasy feeling that you're going to be "found out" at any moment. As such I think it is a useful characterization, and understanding it will help you mentor some people more effectively.

</comment><comment><USER7> I get the point in the article, and I do think a lack of feedback does contribute to this in some way (especially in smaller or newer companies where getting any sort of code 'review' is pretty much non existent), but I think the simplest reason for imposter syndrome might just be same as the reason so many are unhappy on social media.

You just can't see how much other developers might be struggling with issues. You can picture your own struggles and time online looking through Stackoverflow answers and documentation and what not, but not the nightmare some other 'better' developer might be having with their own work.

So you think other people are simply not struggling, and hence know more than you do, or can pick things up more quickly, or whatever else.

Maybe it's just more of a 'grass is greener' thing.

</comment><comment><USER8> This kept reminding me of "Daring Greatly"

[http://www.amazon.com/Daring-Greatly-Courage-Vulnerable- Tran...](http://www.amazon.com/Daring-Greatly-Courage-Vulnerable- Transforms/dp/1592408419)

This book addresses a lot of these issues in broader sense, so it applies to all areas of life.

</comment><comment><USER9> _> Next time, I had learned the coding conventions and how scope worked in JavaScript. The time after that I finally understood closures. _

Is this normal in some companies? This seems to imply they shipped production javascript in which the author didn't understand scope or closures. I can't honestly wrap my head around this one.. how could you write functioning code without understanding scope and closure? Repeatedly moving code lines around until it doesn't give an error or something? Putting everything in a single function?

<comment><USER10> "I learned how scope worked" does not imply that the author was previously unaware of the concept or didn't understand it at all, it just means that there was some aspect that she didn't fully understand until it was pointed out in the code review. I don't find that hard to believe at all. How many developers have you met that never had any questions or misunderstandings about, for example, the scope of `this` in JavaScript?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The three options without feedback are rather extreme. Why can't someone believe themselves to be mediocre?

</comment><comment><USER12> There is a third option when confronting failure other than "blame others" or "drop out": admit the failure, learn from it and know you will do better next time. That's what successful people do.

<comment><USER13> That's what the author did. That's the entire point of the article.</comment></comment>


The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the Market - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-08/the-bitcoin-whales-1-000-people-who-own-40-percent-of-the-market <comment><USER2> It's interesting to see how this is playing out. Libertarians have long argued that government-issued fiat currency is a tool of state oppression. Now we have a real-world experiment demonstrating on a grand scale what happens when you create a currency by consensual fiat. I'd be interested to hear what libertarians think about this: Is Bitcoin truly the kind of currency libertarians have been advocating? Have I mischaracterized the libertarian position? What do you think about the concentration of Bitcoins in the hands of a small number of people? Where is this experiment going in the long run?

<comment><USER3> Government-issued currencies usually come with legal tender laws and citizens are required to pay taxes using the government money. Since taxes are not voluntary, this creates built-in demand for the fiat money. The creators of alternative competitor-money are punished as well. The libertarian position is that human interactions should be voluntary, so the coercion problem is where libertarians find issue first.

A side note here about capital controls: Bitcoin allows money to be borderless, which is natural. Capital controls are an artificial construct of the state, often used to prop up the perpetually failing fiat money.

The second issue is economic. When the money supply of your currency is not constrained (by gold, or otherwise), then it inevitably inflates, often unpredictably and uncontrollably. The death of a fiat money usually has disastrous effects on the people, especially on the poor. Unfortunately, fiat money has a short lifespan, on average.

The libertarian position on wealth inequality is that as long as the distribution of wealth was determined voluntarily (without state privilege, in particular), then there is no problem. Bitcoin is such a system: all participation in Bitcoin has been voluntary. Early adopters took a big risk on a fledgling technology, and some have been rewarded with handsome returns.

Early writing about cypherpunk money usually mentions anonymity, which Bitcoin does not have (yet).

 _> Where is this experiment going in the long run?_

Isn't that the trillion-dollar question? :-)

<comment><USER4> >Since taxes are not voluntary

>The libertarian position is that human interactions should be voluntary, so the coercion problem is where libertarians find issue first.

Do you believe obeying property law is voluntary? I find it to be coercive.

<comment><USER3> Instead of answering your question, I will leave this:

Very small children understand and recognize property, since it is a natural right. The toy in my hand is "mine," and when some other kid comes along and takes it, I get upset.

<comment><USER4> >Very small children understand and recognize property, since it is a natural right. The toy in my hand is "mine," and when some other kid comes along and takes it, I get upset.

When a very small child in a poor family looks at what is under a wealthy family's Christmas tree he's also going to be upset. Does that make a relatively equal distribution of Christmas presents a natural right?

I see no basis for decrying all coercion and mandating transactions be voluntary yet also overlooking the biggest contributor to coercion: property.

<comment><USER5> Upset/uncomfortable - maybe, but at who? The rich family? His own family? Himself? Society? All of those?

People on hackernews and in general tend to view "negative" feelings, envy, etc... as generically "bad". These feelings are evolutionary signals from your primal brain that something isn't going right. Its up to you to fix that, however you see fit.

<comment><USER6> > These feelings are evolutionary signals from your primal brain that > something isn't going right. Its up to you to fix that, however you see fit.

So rape and pillaging it is then.

<comment><USER5> I mean those two have pretty clear risks as well. Morality might moderate people's primal feelings but they are even better moderated by understanding opportunity - costs of the actions. Nevertheless, there is nothing inherently "bad" about "negative" feelings. They just tell you something isn't going right and you have to fix it. How you do that - is up to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's absolutely no source to the claim that 40% is owned by 1000 people. Only at the very end of the article we see a lateral claim, that 17% of bitcoin is held in just 100 addresses.

It's not unlikely the same reasoning (i.e. 40% of coins on top 1000 addresses) is used for the larger claim.

But that says very little. A bitcoin address after all can be shared by many users, in the same way a bank vault can contain money from many individuals. It's quite likely that the top addresses are held in a (semi) custodial function by parties like Coinbase or Kraken, which have hundreds of thousands to millions of customers, but may store their users' coins on a number of addresses that's a tiny fraction of their user count.

Regardless, unequal wealth distribution isn't entirely unique to bitcoin, either. The top 1% worldwide own about 50% of the world's wealth, the richest 10% own about 85%.

<comment><USER8> While I agree with you, it would be hard to dismiss the title of the article since looking at the btc rich list there's quite a few addresses with low number of transactions, but massive amounts of btc in them.

[https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin- addresses....](https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin- addresses.html)

<comment><USER7> Well that's sort of my point... me a large amount of coins stored in a low- transaction account would to me be characteristic of reserve-type funds stored by big exchanges.

In fact, many parties like Coinbase have come out and openly stated that only a small percentage of their users' coins move around, and therefore the vast majority can, and is, stored in 'air gapped cold storage'. i.e. on private keys that never touched a network of any kind. This could result in a few cold storage addresses which carry funds for orders of magnitude more users, rather than a few individuals.

In fact, if you follow your own link you'll find many of the addresses are in fact identified as belonging to exchanges like Kraken or Bitfinex cold wallets. e.g. the second richest address is a $1.9 billion Bitfinex wallet.

So I don't think the title of the research '1000 people own 40%' is hard to dismiss at all. It could well be true, but a mere list of addresses isn't proof to that claim.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Market manipulation is a big risk here. Basically "wolf of wall st" style shenanigans, or the stuff that salomon brothers did in the mortgage bond market in the 1980s.

Essentially a few big investors who've cornered the market, acting in concert, can move the market essentially according to their own desire. I read yesterday that the order book for btc was $33 million (don't know what the daily volume is; could anyone enlighten me? Not an active bitcoin follower but have experience in markets). The top 1,000 BTC holders own about $100 Billion at current prices. Even a few of them could concertedly buy small amounts of BTC at rapidly increasing prices, then if that leads to a huge rally and increase in volume (like yesterday) they can sell into that volume and make a nice profit. Lots of other things like that they can do: [https://www.girardgibbs.com/securities-fraud/stock/market- ma...](https://www.girardgibbs.com/securities-fraud/stock/market- manipulation/examples/)

Not saying they do those things, but that is a real risk in unregulated, concentrated markets where there is no real way to quantify value

EDIT: montecarl pointed me to the gdax site, also [https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/price/6m/USD?c=e&t=l](https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/price/6m/USD?c=e&t=l) shows price and vol data (im a noob) and it looks like volume is much higher, on the order of 100-150k BTC / day so over $1B USD volume at $17K / BTC.

<comment><USER10> I don't understand the idea that a whale could move the market and make money off it.

To move the market, you need to spend money.

The only way it works is if you create some kind of momentum and the market continues to go up. But rational markets will sell into the artificial momentum and the price will be be close to where you started. The net result is that you lost money.

I believe there is momentum in markets (they are definitely NOT perfectly rational). But is there enough momentum to really make money with this scheme? I highly doubt it.

Also consider that a group of whales would have to work together to do this. Do you really trust your whale friend to buy at the same time you do? What if he front-runs you and you end up buy the bitcoin he just bought last week for 10% lower?

I don't buy the theory that there are a group of "whales" sitting around planning how to manipulate markets together.

<comment><USER9> You are right, it doesn't always work, but it can work, and work really well. The way you make money is by creating volume and momentum. You buy in a low volume market, where it's cheaper to move the market, then if volume takes off and price momentum builds, you can sell much more volume without moving the market. We aren't talking about people liquidating their entire stakes, but you can make a few million here and there easy.

There is strong incentive to collude: collusion unlocks the potentially powerful profit engine of market manipulation. You make more money working together than you could on your own. If people try to screw each other too much the whole thing falls apart, as market movements are no longer predictable to the colluders, and their advantage is gone. So yeah collusion can break down in cases but as a rule people understand they make more money together

If you don't buy that theory, id recommend reading about Solomon brothers or even watching the wolf of wall st. Martin shkreli did this stuff too. I think it was Jim cramers tactic for a while (talk your book on tv, get retail volume in small cap stocks and sell into that) JP morgan and other early wall st financiers did this sort of stuff. It happens in the real world even now; I've heard from friends at big banks that they know people who will sometimes do stuff like this

market manipulation is how people make real money in unregulated markets. cornering the market is and always has been the holy grail for market manipulation and profiting in unregulated markets. It's why regulation exists. Its a theory in the same way that evolution is a theory

<comment><USER11> > _We aren 't talking about people liquidating their entire stakes, but you > can make a few million here and there easy._

This is the important part that took me a while to get.

This isn't someone with $100 million in BTC selling their entire stock for $150 million. This is someone with $100 million in BTC spending $200k to jumpstart a rise in price and selling off $3 million in the process and ending up with more-or-less $100 million in BTC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I really enjoy investing in cryptocurrencies. However, I have a lot of doubt this is going to make the world a more fair or better place. It's going to create a wealth gap like has never been seen in first world countries.

<comment><USER13> It seems pretty obvious to me as well. Given huge speculation surrounding them at the moment I'm surprised we don't hear more people warning about these things. I don't think I want to live in a world where BTC replaces the USD/EUR/...

Untraceable money means that corruption and tax evasion would be easier than ever. Democratic governments would be worse off in dealing with that, because unlike totaliatrian regimes they won't be able to round up BTC-rich people and break their fingers until they give their secret keys.

Deflation means that the rich will get richer doing nothing while the poor won't be able to get a loan to bootstrap their businesses. Forget about trickle down economics, this is downright "trickle up".

I have yet to hear a reasonable rebuttal to these claims. Every time I see these points brought up in the bitcoin community it's met with a bunch of hand waiving and claims that they're "FUD" and that the poster doesn't know what they're talking about. So please, BTC enthusiasts, educate me so that I can stop spreading this "FUD", where's the flaw in my reasoning?

<comment><USER14> > Untraceable money

Bitcoin is not untraceable money, it can be even more traceable than normal currency. It could be stablished as a law that public money when being spent in the blockchain needs to be auditable by the people (identities of sender and recipient known), and this way you would end up with even less corruption than the current system.

> Deflation means that the rich will get richer

Wrong. Rich people don't have money, they have holdings. Most of the holdings that rich people nowadays have are not money. Deflation just benefits the savers, as opposed to the spenders. Some savers might be rich but not all. Incentivising saving instead of consumption may make the planet a bit greener. Plus, if one day we stop measuring cryptocurrency value with a fiat-unit of measure, maybe we find out that the cryptocurrency value is actually the stable value. The asset that is not stable is the fiat currency because it's being depreciated all the time. The day all stores in the planet denominate prices in cryptocurrency, the bad consequences of deflation (hoarding for the sake of profit) will be almost imperceptible.

<comment><USER13> >> Deflation means that the rich will get richer

>Wrong. Rich people don't have money, they have holdings. Most of the holdings that rich people nowadays have are not money.

Isn't one reason for not hoarding cash (and instead investing it in various holdings, stock market, etc...) is that money loses value? If I was a millionaire in dollars I definitely wouldn't keep that on my bank account, slowly having it lose its value. If I was a millionaire in BTC I'd have a hardware wallet with my secret keys in a safe and that's about it.

>Deflation just benefits the savers, as opposed to the spenders. Some savers might be rich but not all.

Sure, but conversely I can tell you that the people who don't save money are overwhelmingly poor. For a big chunk of humanity saving money is a luxury.

>Incentivising saving instead of consumption may make the planet a bit greener.

Coin mining will take care of filling that gap, don't worry.

If rich people reduce their investments because of deflation how do you redistribute wealth?

>Plus, if one day we stop measuring cryptocurrency value with a fiat-unit of measure, maybe we find out that the cryptocurrency value is actually the stable value.

Well yeah, 1BTC == 1BTC, that's stable I guess. If BTC replaces fiat it'll stabilize eventually but it will still be deflationary. My arguments were about that, not the current instability.

>The asset that is not stable is the fiat currency because it's being depreciated all the time. The day all stores in the planet denominate prices in cryptocurrency, the bad consequences of deflation (hoarding for the sake of profit) will be almost imperceptible.

That's kind of the hand waving I was talking about in my previous comment. I don't see how you can justify you jumping to that conclusion.

How can you assume that switching from an inflationary to a deflationary economy "will be almost imperceptible"?

<comment><USER14> > If I was a millionaire in BTC I'd have a hardware wallet with my secret keys > in a safe and that's about it.

Lending or investing your BTC would always make you net more than just hoarding it (at least when all prices are denominated in BTC already).

> Sure, but conversely I can tell you that the people who don't save money are > overwhelmingly poor. For a big chunk of humanity saving money is a luxury.

True, I didn't say that low-class can save. But most savers are middle class IMO.

> Coin mining will take care of filling that gap, don't worry.

Wrong, 2 links:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-07/bitcoin-i...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-07/bitcoin- is-greener-than-its-critics-think)

[https://blog.bitcoin.org.hk/bitcoin-mining-and-energy- consum...](https://blog.bitcoin.org.hk/bitcoin-mining-and-energy- consumption-4526d4b56186)

> How can you assume that switching from an inflationary to a deflationary > economy "will be almost imperceptible"?

Because when all prices get denominated in BTC, you won't see your holdings appreciate. The only effect you will see, caused by deflation, is that prices of things diminish over time. Which is kind of what happens nowadays with hardware (because it's the goods where the effects of technology improvements are noticed in the most sensible way), however I don't know anyone that hoards their holdings to be able to buy a better and cheaper computer tomorrow.

<comment><USER15> The problem with a deflationary currency is that prices, wages and income go down over time. Someone borrowing 100 BTC today will have a hard time paying back that 100 BTC one year from now (let alone the interest) because they will be earning less than they do today.

<comment><USER14> So loans would need to be short-lived and with high scrutiny, to make sure they are payed back. I consider this a good thing, as opposed to the other extreme: give everyone a loan no matter what (the root cause of the 2008 financial crisis).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> FLUX-YOU >Holders of large amounts of bitcoin are often known as whales. And they're becoming a worry for investors. They can send prices plummeting by selling even a portion of their holdings.

That's not indicative of something that's a store of value.

<comment><USER16> Is there any currency or commodity or derivative for which that statement is not true? It seems self-evident that if you own a lot of something like gold, dollars, BTC, sterling, etc. and you sell it, its value relative to what you're selling it for declines.

<comment> FLUX-YOU I'd bet that large holders of gold sell small amounts all the time without the market going nuts and kicking off volatility swings. But I could be wrong.

It's less the mechanism and the implication that people imply by following whales. Why should a store-of-value market react when someone sells a small amount regardless of their current holdings?

<comment><USER11> I agree with you but this is an apples to oranges (or perhaps apples to 747s) comparison. The top 1000 holders of gold don't have anywhere _near_ 40% of the market. Not to mention that 40% of the market for BTC is only a few million coins.

<comment><USER17>
        > The top 1000 holders of gold
        > don't have anywhere near 40%
        > of the market.

You're right, they have a lot more than that. Total world gold reserves are around 30K tons. The US alone has 8K tons, Germany 3K, IMF 3K, Italy 2.5K etc.

So just the to 2 holders of Gold have almost 40% of the market, and the top 10 have 80%.

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

<comment><USER18> I guess you didn't read the article you posted as evidence. In that article it says all the gold ever mined is 187,200 tons. Percentage of reserves != percentage of gold market. That would have the USA at ~5% and that is a country of 300+ million people. This is a lot different than 1000 individuals.

<comment><USER17> In the context of this discussion, which is gold holders hypothetically pumping & dumping the market it's pretty much only the big reserve holders that matter.

How do you think someone who's gold holdings are 1 kg in a warehouse embedded in motherboards is going to extract that to dump it on the market? Most gold by weight is effectively illiquid, while every Bitcoin is equally liquid.

As the source the article uses[1] discusses the breakdown of those 187,200 tons is:

* Jewellery: 89,200 tonnes, 47.6%

* Private investment: 40,000 tonnes, 21.4%

* Official sector: 31,500 tonnes, 16.8%

* Other: 26,500 tonnes, 14.2%

* Below ground stocks: 57,000 tonnes

So around 50% of the number you're quoting is gold still in the ground. To repeat your snarky remark: Did you read the article?

I guess counting the official sector and private investment the top 10 official holders "only" have around 30% of the liquid market, which is way more distorted than Bitcoin, and very comparable in this context of a few owners of large liquid assets being able to distort the market.

1\. [https://www.gold.org/about-gold/gold-supply/gold- mining/how-...](https://www.gold.org/about-gold/gold-supply/gold-mining/how- much-gold-has-been-mined)

<comment><USER11> > _it 's pretty much only the big reserve holders that matter_

We're talking about the entire BTC ecosystem. You can't compare that to a 16% sliver of the entire gold market because that fits your argument better.

> _Most gold by weight is effectively illiquid, while every Bitcoin is equally > liquid._

Which was basically my point, is that BTC-to-gold is an apples-to-airliners comparison and is at _best_ a strained analogy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Most of these "whales" are hot and cold wallets for various exchanges, investment fund holdings, seized coins waiting to be sold.

It's nearly impossible to map an address to its owner (or owners).

<comment><USER20> Isn't the US Gov one of these whales ever since SilkRoad was seized?

<comment><USER21> These coins were mostly sold off to venture capitalist Tim Draper, for $50m: [https://hacked.com/tim-draper-has-made-over-110-million- sinc...](https://hacked.com/tim-draper-has-made-over-110-million- since-2014-with-his-bitcoin-investment/)

Might sound like a success story now, but at a certain point he was down 70% on his investment!

<comment><USER20> Wonder if he sold them after he made his 10% or so

<comment><USER21> I think he still owns them, according to a recent interview.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I read an interesting analogy yesterday in a poker chat of all places.

The guy basically said, let's put bitcoin to buy a coffee litmus test. If I were to buy a cup of coffee in the current frenzy, I would be at the cashier waiting a day for the transaction to go through and when it does go through the fee for transaction would be greater than cost of the coffee.

If that is true, how is bitcoin better? Would that transaction even go through considering miners would prioritize transactions with larger fees.

<comment><USER23> The narrative has shifted as the dynamics and value have shifted. It's more like gold now. You wouldn't pay for coffee with gold.

<comment><USER22> Right, I wouldn't. Maybe it's better termed cryptomineral instead of cryptocurrency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> In classic gambling, whales are the people you comp high worth rooms, food, drugs to, because they are willing to drop huge sums on the games of chance. You nurture whales, to make a living off whales. You fly your whales to interesting casinos and then quietly wait for the odds to fall in your favour.

Is this the metaphor the bitcoin-digerati want?

<comment><USER25> The whale metaphor in this sense means something completely different. Language is highly subjective, so no the gambling metaphor is not applicable here.

<comment><USER24> the whale metaphor is subject to multiple interpretations and gambling is pretty much what hodl is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Whales can only sell once. It's also not in their self interest to make a market collapse, why would they depress the price of the thing they are trying to sell? When whales do sell many smaller buyers then take ownership of their coins decreasing the chance of future volatility. These concerns are being exaggerated too much.

<comment><USER27> It's not in their interest but things happen. Lots of these people live in China right? Let's say some economic downturn happens in China, or government policy changes or something and they need to liquidate some of their bitcoin assets in a hurry all the sudden you could have a market collapse.

<comment><USER26> The same can be said of gold, or anything else. I don't see why this is significant. Whales being forced to sell would allow people to buy coins at cheap rate and solve the problem that the article is reporting on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> So let me get this.. 40% isn't being traded, 30% isn't yet mined, say 10% lost in between. Are we left with 20% that is being traded?

</comment><comment><USER29> Second to last paragraph provides some perspective:

 _" Among the coins people invest in, bitcoin has the least concentrated ownership, says Spencer Bogart, managing director and head of research at Blockchain Capital. The top 100 bitcoin addresses control 17.3 percent of all the issued currency, according to Alex Sunnarborg, co-founder of crypto hedge fund Tetras Capital. With ether, a rival to bitcoin, the top 100 addresses control 40 percent of the supply, and with coins such as Gnosis, Qtum, and Storj, top holders control more than 90 percent. Many large owners are part of the teams running these projects._"

</comment><comment><USER30> Is this really that surprising? To me, it just seems to be mirroring wealth inequality. 63% of total private wealth in America is owned by the 1%[1]. I'm sure the top 1,000 have a significant amount of that 63%.

[1][https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-16/the-u- s-i...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-16/the-u-s-is-where- the-rich-are-the-richest)

</comment><comment><USER31> If they have access to their wallets.

</comment><comment><USER32> That means Bitcoin has a lot more to grow. That 40% can be sold off to many more people eventually.

What worries me more is the elextricity consumption:

[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/aek3za/bitcoin- co...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/aek3za/bitcoin-could- consume-as-much-electricity-as-denmark-by-2020)

<comment><USER33> What should worry you is more than 200K transactions sitting in the queue and not being able to get confirmations for 3 days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Wow, such FUD, much propaganda lately, all against BTC.

Is it risky? sure. Do you HAVE to buy? of course not. Anybody can sit on the sides and shout "bubble, ponzi, pyramidal scheme", but then don't whine when the early adopters and risk takers got to buy it at just $16K and 3 years later it trades at $1M.

</comment><comment><USER35> Btc prices can still being manipulate by whales? (Honest question)

I know shitcoins can, because the Market Cap is low and it is easier for whales to manipulate the market.

But... This also happen with BTC now days? There are millionaires who puts all their BTC in one exchange? Jesus.. they are crazy.

</comment><comment><USER36> Additional article of how "decentralized" cryptocurrency is: [https://news.earn.com/quantifying- decentralization-e39db233c...](https://news.earn.com/quantifying- decentralization-e39db233c28e)

</comment><comment><USER37> I am very curious to see what this will do to Chinese style capital controls. They probably have started cracking down on exchanges but even with an outright ban it sounds like a more powerful method to get money of of the country.

</comment><comment><USER38> Wasn't there stories recently about how just nine people had 50% of the world's wealth?

Edit: Nevermind, it was eight people.

</comment><comment><USER14> Large holders of bitcoin are probably believers so I don't think they would do any detrimental action to the ecosystem on purpose. Plus, if they wanted to sell BTC they would not be so stupid to do it with a large market order (because it would act against their favour), OTC market exists (or even limit orders, which don't move the market but if anything, they make it more price- stable).

<comment><USER39> How about their heirs?

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> > Because bitcoin is a digital currency and not a security

And in that statement, there is the fraud.

<comment><USER41> No one has classified Bitcoin as a security.

Per Wikipedia:

>The U.S. Treasury classified bitcoin as a convertible decentralized virtual currency in 2013.[1] >The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, CFTC, classified bitcoin as a commodity in September 2015. >Per IRS, bitcoin is taxed as a property.[2]

[1][https://www.fincen.gov/news/testimony/statement-jennifer- sha...](https://www.fincen.gov/news/testimony/statement-jennifer-shasky- calvery-director-financial-crimes-enforcement-network)

[2][https://www.irs.gov/uac/newsroom/irs-virtual-currency- guidan...](https://www.irs.gov/uac/newsroom/irs-virtual-currency-guidance)

In the US it is classified either as a currency, piece of property or a commodity, and as of Monday it will also be available as a futures contract of a commodity.

Neither commodities nor futures contracts are consider securities, as they fail the clause of the Howey Test that would make them dependent on a single entity or management group.

This is why commodity futures trade is managed by the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trade Commission) rather than the SEC (Securities Exchange Commission).

In fact, while some other tokens and ICOs have been found to be securities both in the US and abroad, no country has formally noted Bitcoin as a security - many treat it as a currency under a new classification for eMoney, Digital Currency or Virtual Currencies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> these are exchange accounts that hold volumes of BTC.

</comment><comment><USER43> Whales or sharks?

</comment><comment><USER44> There is so much volume and volatility in Bitcoin markets that a whale can sell insane amount of coins (e.g. 10k) in within days without much effect on price. Placing limit orders in front of the best ask and moving them in case the price goes down will do the trick. Bitfinex traded over 100k coins within last 24 hours. it's reasonable to assume that you can capture 1% of this volume on the daily basis using the limit orders. Selling 10k Bitcoins can be easily done within 10 days without pushing the price down. I think it's possible to do this within 1 day.</comment>


Ask HN: When can get any response for YC S15 any idea? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Invites are sent April 10th.

<comment><AUTHOR> ok but what about rejections?they also sending on 10 april or before that?

<comment><USER2> Yes, from what I've read about previous batches, invites and rejections are sent at the same time. ~6pm PST.</comment></comment></comment>