A programmer's view of the Universe, part 1: The fish - <AUTHOR> http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/10/programmers-view-of-universe-part-1.html <comment><USER2> Say what you will about Steve Yegge's usual posts, but whether you like him or not, this one is outstanding. Not a blog post, really, more like a short piece of literature.

Socrates once said: the unexamined life is not worth living. I believe in that statement. Tracing out that vine is part of what makes life worth living. But what if the tracing of the vine is ultimately pointless, because it only points to the inescapability of death? Are then the blissful masses who don't examine anything better off?

I don't think so. I'd rather die with my eyes open, having traced out the vine and made sure there's really no way out.

<comment><USER3> This is a gripe, so excuse me for nit-picking, but I don't think this is exactly "literature." It's not particularly well-written, and it still has the attitude of an enthused amateur.

I'm not saying I didn't like the article. I did: it's the first Yegge I've actually cared to read in its entirety. But people, particularly people who aren't word people, tend to attribute superlatives to things that they like, and the word "literature" in particular is one that bugs me.

This was a good story, absolutely. It was heartfelt and sincere. But that's only a part of what makes good writing good. Literature is about the art of crafting words, of putting them together in ways that are aesthetically pleasing. There are people who can write great yarns who aren't writing literature. And this blog post, while it's very good for a blog post, isn't literature.

Which isn't to say it's not worth reading! Some people assume that literary merit is all that makes writing worthwhile; those people miss out on a lot of things that are beautiful and worth reading, just for the manner of the prose. I don't think that's true, and I agree with you with everything else you said. Just... don't assign attributes to a thing needlessly. It's like people that listen to a rap song and praise its harmonies. There are other ways to compliment a piece of writing.

Excuse me if this was unwarranted with your writing. I'm hoping this didn't come across entirely as somebody's being a dick needlessly. It's just something little that sets me off, and it provoked my writing something this time.

<comment><USER4> Why do _you_ get to decide what is and is not literature?

<comment><USER3> I hold very specific definitions for terms. For me, literature is defined by aesthetic quality, and that is measurable. The rhythm of the sentences, the flow of the actual _sound_ of the language, and the conciseness of the language... all of that is what makes writing literature to me.

But I use literature as a very specific phrase. I don't hold it to encompass all of writing. I use it to define a very particular branch of writing: the sort of writing that has an emphasis on language. However, I don't dismiss things that I don't call literature, either, and I don't hold literature necessarily on a level above everything else, either. For instance: I think that the _Narnia_ series is better-written than _Harry Potter_ , and that it's a more literary series. However, I think that Harry Potter is a better story, and I think that it has more about it that interests me than Narnia. I think the characters are more interesting, the arc of the story is more powerful, and I think that Rowling singlehandedly changed the face of the "children's literature" genre. If I were to pick which of the two series to keep and cherish for the rest of time, I'd go for Harry Potter.

So, as I said. Take what I said precisely for what I said. I'm not dismissing Yegge's article. I'm just saying that I take the term "literature" to define writing that is memorable for its aesthetic. Steve Yegge is an interesting writer, and at times he's compelling, but he is not particularly good with using the English language. He isn't bad, he just isn't good.

<comment><USER5> and in what way is "aesthetic quality" measurable? can you ascribe a number to measure "the rhythm of a sentence"? If you can, what number is good? is a higher number good, a lower number good?

You think Narnia was better written than Harry Potter. That is cool, and you are entitled to have your own asshole. What makes your opinion any better than anyone else's? What gives you the credentials to define the word "literature"?

If you want to say you didn't like Yegge's work, that's cool, if you want to say you don't think it is literature, that's cool too. But to say no one else is allowed to consider it literature .. that is not cool at all.

<comment><USER3> Of course you're _allowed_ to call it literature. I was giving an argument as to why I don't think it is, in the hopes that perhaps people would read what I said and change how they think about literature in turn.

It's possible to determine aesthetic quality, but no measure is by any means accurate. However, aesthetic is absolutely present. The easiest way is to determine how things sound when spoken aloud. There's no "formula" to it. It's entirely a matter of personal taste. However, Steve Yegge is not somebody who writes for the sound of his language. He writes to express ideas. Is it worth reading him? Yes. Does his writing have aesthetic merit? No, and he doesn't care, and swombat probably doesn't either. As I first said: I didn't post that to try and be a writing nazi. It was just something stewing in my mind, and I wrote it down as a response to something small that swombat wrote. I upvoted both swombat and the story itself: this was not meant to be an assault on either.

If you don't think there's a such thing as aesthetic in writing: read Joyce. Read Nabakov. Absolutely read Beckett. All three are writers with immediately identifiable styles, and each one certainly has a powerful aesthetic about his writing. "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins." There's a coupling of ideas (light/fire, life/loins). There's the name Lolita itself, which Nabakov expands himself in the story's opening paragraph. It flows. It spikes in the beginning, stretches out in the second and third phrases. These are all things that you can discuss. Compare that to "I write a column for computer programmers called "Stevey's Blog Rants." The second is informative without any styling whatsoever. And there's nothing _wrong_ with that. It just isn't literature.

Narnia almost certainly _is_ better written than Harry Potter. Don't take my word for it: read both. Narnia focuses on its language much more than Harry Potter. That's not saying Rowling writes without meaning: I wrote a minor dissertation about the first line in _Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone_ once, because I thought it was interesting and because I like picking things apart. Harry Potter has moments where it sounds beautiful, but those moments are few and far between, and Rowling does resort to clichés rather often. That doesn't make Harry Potter bad: I think that it defined a generation, _my_ generation, and that the final 200 pages of the final book move me like very few things in writing do - that despite its lack of emphasis on beautiful language.

My credentials? I write. I've written since the sixth grade. I've gone to programs where I learn how to write. As such, I've developed informed opinions on things. My opinions are better than many people's opinions, because I've taken time to think about what I mean when I say things about literature. Most people don't think about how they define the term. I do. Therefore, I already know what I think about this.

I'm certain other people have other opinions, but they haven't responded yet. Why would _you_ call Yegge's article literature, if you do? We could talk about that, and chances are both of us would learn something new in the process. I don't want to dictate literature and its definition: I only wanted to start a discussion.

<comment><USER6> This thread branch looks like it could go on for some time.

<http://xkcd.com/451/>

<comment><USER3> It's really sad. I went to college to be an English major and switched when I realized how full of crud a lot of this can be.

If this goes on, I promise to be down-to-earth, and to never once mention Derrida or deconstructionism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The pathos is there, but it's a terrible, jumbled metaphor.

The problem of the fish, or at least the persona he projected on it, is not that it was humbled by its own limited ability to understand. It was precisely the opposite: the world was too limited for its apparently oversized ability to understand.

I can't wait to see those "ramifications for the way we think about things today".

</comment><comment><USER8> Amazing piece. It makes me feel sorry for all those fish out there, stuck in tanks... and all the people in similar positions as well. I've spent my entire life trying to avoid prisons, whether it's a job I can't get out of or a really long-term commitment (military service not withstanding... although after nearly 6 years I'm really starting to feel that one)

While I can't speak for all programmers, I must admit that I have a very high demand for adventure -- or at least routinely changing circumstances. I don't like to be "safe" or "secure" and I don't like starting adventures that I know will end. Perhaps that's why programming appeals to me so much; no matter how much I learn or try there will always be more. There's no way for a person to "master programming" in general because there are just way too many adventures out there to ever finish them all.

Of course, the ultimate adventure that will end is life itself. Then again, I guess that one is _supposed_ to end. Otherwise we'd never have a reason to start truly living in the first place.

<comment><USER9> Death is not necessary to give life meaning.

<comment><USER8> Life and death, up and down, pleasure and pain, you and me. Without contrast you have nothing. Life wouldn't exist without death, it would just be... nothing. Never experiencing pain would suck because you could never experience pleasure. Without you there couldn't be me because there'd be nothing to define my individualism. This leads to the idea that we all define everything else in the universe and are everything at the same time, but I'm getting off topic.

Grab a piece of printer paper. It's blank; nothing there. Grab a pencil; add some contrast. Now you're onto something.

Then again, you could have a completely different opinion on the matter. I wish you would have explained it :)

<comment><USER4> _Life wouldn't exist without death, it would just be... nothing. Never experiencing pain would suck because you could never experience pleasure._

Do you really think this is true, or did you write it because it sounds good?

Life is about self-awareness, not about death. Would your life really change if you couldn't die? Mine wouldn't... although I would probably jump out of my window to get downstairs instead of waiting for the elevator. Death is an implementation bug, not a defining characteristic of life.

Pain is not necessary to understand pleasure. I can enjoy things without thinking about pain to counter it. (Again, pain is just an implementation bug. You can break your body if you are not careful, and pain is your body's way of getting your brain to stop breaking it.)

Finally, I don't look to others to define myself. Other people are nice to have around, but not for the reasons you list.

I don't want to be cynical, but I think your world view is misguided.

<comment><USER8> Yes, I do indeed believe it.

How, pray-tell, do you know how your life would change if we couldn't die? It's not something you'll ever be able to experience. Hell, as humans we can't even comprehend infinity. That being said, I'd argue that "life" would change a lot if it were no longer actually "a life." Would you plan to jump out of that window to get downstairs to go to work or whatever for the rest of eternity? How many centuries could you live until it just became... meaningless?

Of course pain is simply "your body's way of getting your brain to stop breaking it" (or something similarly boring, at least). I'm not arguing that there's some deep philosophical reason that pain exists. I'm simply arguing that if you had never experienced pain (physical, emotional, or otherwise) you wouldn't know real pleasure either because you couldn't define it. Logically, you'd have to be happy all the time if you could not experience sadness, but you wouldn't know what happiness was because you never experienced anything else. I suppose you could be truly neutral, but that's the same thing as feeling nothing which, consequently, is what happiness would feel like if it's all you could experience. I'm not saying you need to consciously remember a time you got punched in the face in order to enjoy sex or something asinine like that.

Finally, it's not about _looking to others_ to define you. It's simply about realizing that your "being" or whatever you wish to call it is based entirely on context and circumstance. For instance, if I hadn't read your comment, you wouldn't exist to me. We've never spoken before, I don't know you, etc. Luckily for your psyche, you have friends and family and lots of other people/things to define your existence. If you didn't, well, the fact that you are physically _here_ wouldn't really matter much at the end of the day. Of course you wouldn't just disappear off the face of the earth, but for all intents and purposes you wouldn't exist.

<comment><USER10> I dig the existentialism in your last paragraph, but I'm not sure that existence has to necessarily be divided into happiness and sadness, for example. Without pain, we probably wouldn't feel the _contentment_ or _satisfaction_ that comes from a long struggle (for example, the entrepreneurs here probably would agree that the end result of a successful company, whether you define that as an IPO, acquisition, being profitable, whatever, is a lot sweeter because of the struggles and the pain that went into getting there).

But I don't think it follows that _all_ types of happiness and pleasure would cease to be. Some things might be inherently pleasurable, or rather are pleasurable just because of the qualia (<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/>) of such experiences, and not because of a reference to a prior pain. Orgasms. The taste of a delicious meal. Etc, etc.

Lastly, the absence of pain and death wouldn't necessarily mean that all our goals would be attained - there could still be room for struggle and therefore satisfaction. For example, I don't doubt that if someone with a lot of intellectual curiosity like Aristotle or Isaac Newton or Einstein were immortal and still alive today, they would still be able to find plenty of interesting challenges and probably wouldn't be bored of life yet. For the curious among us, as long as there is the unknown there will always be challenge and there will always be something interesting to do...and in the end, who knows if the unknown is even really finite?

<comment><USER8> Very good points, thanks for the reply!

 _Some things might be inherently pleasurable, or rather are pleasurable just because of the qualia_

I completely agree! However (and perhaps I misrepresented my own view here by making things too simplified and black/white for the sake of comprehension) you still have _contrast_. For instance, an orgasm would likely always be more pleasurable than eating a piece of toast, regardless of whether or not you could experience any sort of displeasure. My argument was more of, "If an orgasm is 10/10 on the pleasure scale and everything felt like an orgasm, it's the same as being 0/0 because there is no longer a scale." Of course the counter-argument here (not much of an argument really) is "Everything would just feel awesome!" Unfortunately, that assumption is made from within the context of a life that _does_ have a scale, so it's meaningless.

Since I can't rightly say that the unknown is finite as I have no idea, I won't argue that eventually Einstein would become so bored that he wished to die. However, I stick by my opinion that if life where eternal it would most certainly redefine the idea of life as we know it and would likely ultimately dilute the experience. To visit the orgasm analogy again, I think life is sort of like one -- a very brief period of heightened pleasure, awareness, etc. If you remove the brevity from it, you eventually remove the pleasure.

I think most people would agree that life is about the _moments_. The orgasms, the successful companies, the broken hearts. We define our lives based on these moments, we don't define them based on the dull in-between; eating breakfast, taking out the garbage, brushing our teeth. Many of us, I think, strive to fill our lives with as many positive moments as we can mostly because (consciously or otherwise) we realize that we have only so many moments to make before there's simply no time life to make them. If you could live forever, would you honestly work so hard all the days of your long life to make those moments? Or would the lack of urgency dilute your desire for that? Even cause you to eventually lose that desire entirely?

Hell, I don't know. I'm just of the opinion that it would.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There were so many good points made in this post that I'm left speechless. This reminded me of similar experiences I've had with my betta, and all the curiosity I saw in him. I miss that little guy.

</comment><comment><USER12> "We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year" -- Pink Floyd

<comment><USER13> Perfect. Pink Floyd at their best.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Bettas are known to jump out of their tank if they can manage it. I never knew why, but now I think I might have a hypothesis. Maybe he never saw this happen because he had a covered one.

</comment><comment><USER15> He should have bought a female betta.

<comment><USER16> A new winner for the most mystifyingly dead post:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=348571>

<comment><USER17> Shh!...

... they don't know they're dead!

 _At the threshold I saw more than a thousand angels fallen from Heaven. Angrily they shouted: 'Who is this, who is not dead, yet passes through the kingdom of the dead?' ... Then they reined in their great disdain enough to say: 'Let him be gone, who has so boldly made his way into this kingdom. Let him retrace his reckless path alone -- let him see if he can, for you shall stay, you who have led him through this gloomy realm.'_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I guess I'm the only one that found this article to be really awful. Having kept tropical fish for many years -- with much greater success than Steve apparently -- I found many parts of it hard to swallow. I don't doubt the activities of his betta, only his conclusions.

Having said that, cichlids are a great choice if you are looking for intelligent freshwater aquarium fish. Many species of cichlids are very easy to breed in captivity (removing the need to harvest them from the wild) and they tend to be very hardy. I highly recommend Kribensis and convict cichlids.

</comment><comment><USER19> Really good. I like this more than anything he's written for a while now.

</comment><comment><USER20> The best part? The promise contained in "part 1."

</comment><comment><USER21> Wow. That was insightful and sad at the same time. This guy can write!

I've got a lump in my throat right now.

<comment><USER22> The style is a little jarring for the web. In a good way.

<comment><USER17> It seemed fishy to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> There's nothing wrong with writing long. My problem with Steve Yegge's blog is that it's absolutely not set up in a way to encourage long writing. Fluid width, to start, means that on a big screen I get little dangly lines of text, which makes reading his stuff seem like a pain. His stuff is written in a very generic gray Georgia; the style looks completely amateur. Compare his site to Paul Graham's, to pick the one source I'm sure everybody here has read. PG's site has thinner, stable margins, and it's written in a sans-serif font, which makes it easy to read his essays no matter the length.

And it _is_ possible to use sans-serif well. Yegge just doesn't. And psychologically, that turns me off from his essays before I begin to read. I've got it in my mind that somebody with something to say will at least take the minimal time to ensure it looks good.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm not sure I agree that there are complexities beyond our fundamental ability to understand (that's what the tank is a metaphor for, right?).

It might just be that if we are able to conceive something complex, we are able to abstract away and simplify it. It's just a matter of finding the right metaphors and abstractions.

<comment><USER24> I'm not sure we can say one way or another; something beyond our understanding may be beyond our perception.

<comment><USER23> But how can can things outside of our perception be said to "exist"? (pass the bong, dude)

<comment><USER24> If they have minor, persistent effects. So technically within our perception, but not really noticeable. If some force of nature made your shadow .1% shorter on even-numbered Thursdays, it would exist but be outside our perception for some value of perception.

Something whose existence cannot be observed or falsified doesn't 'exist' in any meaningful sense, but I suspect that there are things that exist, in a meaningful sense, even though they won't be noticed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Two thoughts:

1\. Great post. I hope Steve Yegge continues down this path (i.e. parts 2..n). I wonder if he's ever read Donald Knuth's "Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About."

2\. I had a betta once. It lived in a 20-gallon tank with two goldfish. The tank was on top of a bookcase by a window, so they had plenty of interesting trees and birds to watch (not to mention the cat which no doubt terrorized for a few minutes each day). Eventually, the goldfish killed the betta. And then they killed each other.

<comment><USER26> A good read about why they kill each other: Konrad Lorenz, On Agression.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> According to this link, bettas do particularly well in fish school:

<http://www.fish-school.com/gallery.htm>

I wonder how Steve's pet would have reacted to exploring a fish tube:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxMRqZ9dUx8>

</comment><comment><USER28> This is my favorite piece that Steve has written so far (also, note the "part 1").

While not on the usual subject matter, this was a beautifully written piece that makes a point on multiple levels - and is probably appreciable by people outside of the "programmer / IT culture".

Bravo, Steve. I _felt_ for that fish.

</comment><comment><USER29> Um yes. So maybe stopping keeping animals as slaves in tiny cages might be a good idea. Just a thought. Would almost make one want to think about the animals that are kept for food and the like. Kind of puts me of my food just thinking about it.

</comment><comment><USER30> I don't usually read long blog posts, but I couldn't stop reading this one. Very well done. Poor betta.

</comment><comment><USER31> Best Yegge essay in quite a while; illuminating and to the point.

</comment><comment><USER32> This sounds like me and my day job. At least 50% of the time.

</comment><comment><USER33> Steve, did you think of putting a female in there?

</comment><comment><USER34> Maybe most hackers should spend more of their real time in real nature?

In fact, most of us live in a box, most of the time.

</comment><comment><USER35> I liked the post, however, we should save the baby human first, then we can worry about the fish.

Sorry for bringing this up, but life begins, when, well, when it begins.

Neither Roe or Wade are pro death anymore. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norma_McCorvey>

<comment><USER36> "Sorry for bringing this up"

No you're not.</comment></comment>


Stack Overflow Jobs Pricing - <AUTHOR> https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/351964/stack-overflow-jobs-pricing <comment><AUTHOR> I was surprised by how terrible the experience is for job posting on stack overflow. The only way to get a price is to talk to a sales rep.</comment>


Hacker News mini Redesign [Unofficial] - <AUTHOR> http://www.vcarrer.com/2010/03/hacker-news-mini-redesign-unofficial.html <comment><USER2> One of the things I really like about the current HN is that it is easily skimmable. I think a combination of smallish fonts, fairly small font-size range, and the user of a non-serif (if I've got that right) font enables that.

The redesign you have done makes each article pop more, but for me, that isn't a concern. I want the 'pop' from the content, not the design.

I also think that the Verdana or any other non-serif font has a cleaner edgier look which fits HN well.

<comment><USER3> I like the color changes, but I also dislike the typographic changes. Verdana seems more readable than Georgia. A Calibri / helvetica / arial font stack looks better to me, like so: <http://gist.github.com/349177> (although you might prefer slightly bigger fonts, depending on your screen's DPI)

<comment><USER4> Wow, I love it! I hope you don't mind, but I made a GreaseMonkey script out of your gist: <http://gist.github.com/349227>

<comment><USER3> Go right ahead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I agree with his decision to go with a serif font, and Georgia is not a terrible decision. But I can't help but feel like Georgia is the wrong voice for hackernews.

Something that is cleaner and slightly more geometric seems to me to be useful. Something like Athelas or Adelle for headlines. If we want to keep that classic cut-journalism feel, there are still other options.

And yes, these fonts are available for inexpensive licensing as a font-face.

</comment><comment><USER6> The titles stand out more from the rest of the details. Although I usually do two scans of the page. First for the titles and second for the points, often a title I skip over has high points and I go back and read it. This seems to make my first scan easier and my second harder.

</comment><comment><USER7> the funny thing is the font definition is

      font-family:Verdana;

which obviously reverts to serif without verdana. So if you are running linux without ms fonts installed thats what I thought hacker news looked like for over a year</comment>


Why Stuff From China Is So Cheap - <AUTHOR> http://jacquesmattheij.com/why-stuff-from-China-is-so-cheap <comment><USER2> One of the issue that comes up with this type of discussion about low pay to workers on developing worlds like China, India, Bangladesh (recently you might have heard some news about it in the media).

I am in Bangladesh, while I agree that a lot can be done to improve working conditions and worker safety, and in some cases worker's payment too. But its not nearly as bad as people make it (esp the ones who have never lived in such circumstances or in those countries). They may not get paid the same salary according to western standard, but the worker are doing (for the most part) pretty fine with the amount of money they are making. As a matter of fact, most of them have never seen so much money in their life, and most of the garments workers (mostly women) who without garments work would either be house wife, or beggars or do seasonal farming work 2-3 months a year with 1/10th of the pay, if at all (usually they get paid by farmed goods like rice, instead of money).

You have to understand, you can live a very good life with very little money in this part of the world, as far as the living standard of the local economy is concerned, the pay is not bad at all (there are few exception where garments owners take advantage of workers, but its not the norm). Garments industry alone single handedly have improved countless people's life and directly or indirectly have saved many people's life too.

To give you an example, we live in a pretty well off part of the city in dhaka, a family of 6 with 2 maids and 2 drivers (thats how the local culture works). Our monthly grocery shopping cost rarely goes over 500-600 dollars. And we eat pretty good too, even compare to my 12 year stay in NY. For a single person my monthly grocery bill could easily go to 400-500 dollars in NY, and I used to be fairly frugal. So I think a perspective is necessary when talking about wages in this part of the world.

This obviously comes at a cost sometimes, but honestly I don't think any sane person believes the alternative (not having enough jobs, however underpaid they are) would have been better. Every, so called developed countries, has come to where they are on the back of cheap labors and poor worker's right and poor working conditions. That doesn't make it right, but thats pretty much how it works.

<comment><USER3> You're in Bangladesh and in a well of part of the city, you say. A family of 6 with 2 maids and 2 drivers too. Your entire post reminds me of something else I read :

[http://newint.org/features/2013/01/01/india-elite-sense- of-e...](http://newint.org/features/2013/01/01/india-elite-sense-of- entitlement/)

While the countries are all different (I'm from Sri Lanka originally), the attitudes are astoundingly similar.

It's the Western equivalent of _let them eat cake_ since they're used to eating grass. Underpaid labor is better than no pay is an excuse of the privileged; and only the privileged.

<comment><USER2> Please get off your moral high horse. I used to be like you all smug-faced and judgmental sitting behind a computer, until I was on the field with brac (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRAC_(NGO)>) and see for myself how the real world works.

They are NOT underpaid for the most part (If you actually bothered to read what I wrote). They are under-paid to "western living standard" but not according to the local living standard (for the most part). There are some exceptions and exploitations, but its very small percentage, but those are the examples that the media and people like you try to bring up when discussion these issues.

Lets be oblivious and ignore the world of good garments industry has done for literally millions people in the poorest parts of the world.

Change takes time, its not pretty, its not shiny, and its not fairy tale and sometimes people die in the process.

<comment><USER4> You are from BRAC! I have heard they are some sort of BLOOD SUCKER, by giving small money to poor they take 80% interest. Even some rural farmer had to suicide after taking loan from Brac. And you are talking about "living standard" how funny man :)

<comment><USER2> You are confusing brac with something else that happend in india.

<comment><USER3> No, I think he got it pretty spot on.

I.E. From just December last year :

[http://www.eoi.es/blogs/amyblyth/dp-the-grameen-and-brac- exp...](http://www.eoi.es/blogs/amyblyth/dp-the-grameen-and-brac-experience/)

For balance, here's the response straight from the horse's mouth before that story was written :

<http://www.brac.net/node/861>

Very convenient when borrowers are unaware of those choices all too often as happened in Sri Lanka too after the tsunami.

And a guardian piece from 2008 :

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/feb/20/internationala...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/feb/20/internationalaidanddevelopment.bangladesh)

Ah, but these are "Western media" outlets with a clearly biased view spewed from behind the computer. I was born there, but let me return to the modest shack my granddad built so I'll have better standing, shoulder-to-shoulder, with you.

Your organization is the NGO equivalent of the U.N. with greater far-reaching tentacles in every aspect of the poorest communities you influence. The garment factories you hold in such high esteem are exploitive in the extreme and the level of self-delusion you exhibit would have been funny if the consequences weren't so tragic.

Edit: Reply link not showing up yet. Meanwhile, since microcredit is the bread and butter, so to speak, of the BRAC scheme :

<https://www.google.com/search?q=consequences+of+microcredit>

<https://www.google.com/search?q=effects+of+microcredit>

<https://www.google.com/search?q=repercussions+of+microcredit>

<comment><USER2> Can you please point out the reference of BRAC charging 80% interest rate and farmers committing suicide?

I didn't find any such thing from your links after a quick glance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hacker News response:

"They knew the risks they were taking. They were all expert electricians who fully knew that their pay of almost $10,000/year would compensate them for the risk they were taking. If we started regulating companies like this, pretty soon there wouldn't be any companies and the entire world economy would collapse, people eating people, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, and you don't want that, do you? Besides we all know government is bad. These people preferred their life of liberty and horrific, agonizing electrocution to a life lived under repressive workplace regulations like putting insulation on high-voltage wires."

Does that about sum it up?

<comment><USER6> Hacker News certainly seems to lean toward the Libertarian-right.

Some of the comments I read regarding regulation (or abolishment of it) is frightening.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5647898>

<comment><USER7> _Hacker News certainly seems to lean toward the Libertarian-right._

That's funny, I feel like HN drifts further and further to the (American style) Left with every passing month. It's like a flood of refugees from /r/politics have stormed into the place and set up shop.

I sometimes feel like I'm the only Libertarian left standing. Probably many of the others have just been browbeaten so much lately that they are commenting less. _shrug_

<comment><USER8> What if we just _canned the politics_ so that people don't feel the need to defend a point of view for approximately the 13873878972616th time on the internet, in full knowledge that no one is going to change their mind? That means flagging articles like this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's a bit disingenuous to suggest that accidents like this don't also happen in the U.S. (or other "first-world" countries). In the mid-to-late '90s I was working on a project that had a fatal accident in the Omaha NE area (fortunately I wasn't present to witness it).

Another contractor was lacing new fiber-optic cable to the existing coaxial cable and realized they'd run the fiber over a safety ground about 7 poles back. Rather than unlace that much cable, they opted to lift the safety ground, move it outside the fiber and reconnect the ground. These ground wires are not supposed to be carrying current when things are working correctly - this one was an it electrocuted those working on it.

Regulations are pretty explicit about how to add cable and telephone wires to a power pole ... and only the power company is supposed to mess with the power. The SCTE and NCTA both have training regimens that obsess over safety, especially when you're working around power (since none of us are actually power experts).

So why did this accident happen? The workers were contractors of contractors of contractors who got paid by the mile. The more fiber they laced up in a day, the more they got paid. They knew there was a slight risk the ground wire would be hot once disconnected but they chose to ignore it for financial reasons.

I've seen tall scaffolding on wheels being moved around in the U.S. and I'm hoping the workers were well versed in the perils of letting their metal structure touch power lines, but what you can't tell from this video is how well these workers were trained and whether they realized the wire they hit was active.

I'm not disagreeing with your article's main points ... that we need to value human life and protect the environment. But I also don't think this video is particularly good at promoting those values.

<comment><USER10> > They knew there was a slight risk the ground wire would be hot once > disconnected

Is there some way you could measure that before touching it or messing with it? And then call in the power company if its properties are not what they are expected to be?

<comment><USER11> Only in a perfect world would there be zero current on a ground wire.

The current can be measured by measuring the field around the wire. There are many manufacturers of clip on ammeters which make a loop around the wire and then measure The current or potential induced in the loop by the field resulting from the current in the ground wire.

That video was truly horrible. Was that metal scaffolding? I am surprised that fault carried on for 3 Minutes. A fuse should have blown or other protection operated.

Maybe if it was wooden scaffolding it was a high impedance fault undiscernable from high loads.

<comment><USER9> A clip on ammeter is is a good recommendation. I don't know how sensitive they were and the nature of the stray voltage.

The video was indeed terrible. I'm guessing the scaffolding was metal but that the wheels were rubber (it seemed as though the current was only going though the workers).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The headline is a lie. If you follow the link trail, you'll find that the workers were on a construction site for a municipal biogas facility. If this is the most disturbing thing Matheij has ever seen, then he clearly knows very little about workplace safety. Accidents of this sort happen on a daily basis in the developed world.

Outsourcing is _the_ key driver for workplace safety improvements in China. The worst working conditions are consistently found in factories producing goods for the local market. Working conditions in the major OEM factories routinely meets and exceeds western standards.

Chinese businesses that trade with the west are subject to a degree of scrutiny that simply doesn't happen within the country. International buyers are very keen to avoid being the centre of a PR disaster, so they're fastidious about safety and environmental health.

Corners do get cut in the developing world, but it's ludicrous to paint western buyers as the bad guys. They're working night and day to make sure that their contractors abide by the labour conditions set out in their contract, conditions invariably far higher than the norm in China.

If you want to improve working conditions in Chinese factories, keep buying Chinese made goods, but demand quality. You can't make an iPhone in a filthy shack.

<comment><AUTHOR> > The headline is a lie.

Because you say so?

> If you follow the link trail, you'll find that the workers were on a > construction site for a municipal biogas facility.

Thanks for pointing out the link. Link?

Also, such a facility will be somewhere in the chain of production and it is a fairly good example of the way the typical workplace in China approaches safety: not.

There are a few efforts underway to counteract this, the best one is probably the one initiated by Nokia. But there is nothing in that video that you could not witness in the very large majority of places involved in industry in China, specifically:

      - no oversight

      - no safety gear

      - no safety procedures

      - inherently unsafe environment

      - not even the basics in place to safely provide power

And a whole host of smaller and less important elements.

It's not just corners that are being cut and the western buyers are the ones who have the most power. They are definitely not 'working day and night to make sure that their contractors abide by the labour conditions set out in their contract', that's only a _very_ select few of them.

Yes, outsourcing is a key driver in improving workplace safety in China, but it's a drop on a very hot plate so far, with the few companies that practice this doing it largely in response to some very bad PR.

It simply shouldn't be possible to gain an edge over a competitor by cutting corners (and a lot worse than that, structural abuse is the more correct term). As long as that is a possibility this stuff will continue.

So indeed, keep buying Chinese goods. But demand they're made using a supply chain that insists on a certain minimum level of workplace safety and environmental controls.

The fact that factories/facilities churning out stuff for the locals are even worse is not in any way an excuse to tolerate these conditions.

<comment><USER13> I know people that outsource to china and over the years the conditions have gotten much better because of the skills and IP trade. From talking to people in the industry your ideas seems feasible in theory but not in practice. I talked to people that have had their coffe businesses harmed because they were running "free trade" coffee since the 70s but now they are asked to pay for a license to allow them to put that on the label. It's one thing to talk about the impacts over here but I think for a solution we need to work with people in-country.

Australia is losing one of its car manufacturers as we speak because our cost of producing a car here is 4 times the cost in Asia. One of the highest costs is in labour and OH&S. There is a cost to OH&S.

<comment><AUTHOR> > There is a cost to OH&S.

I know, but that does not make it optional.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> >Western companies doing business with China and other 3rd world countries should demand compliance with the client countries' OSHA regulations, ditto when looking at things like labor laws (minimum age for instance) and so on

I think part of the difficulty here is that supply chains are often very long and complex, across many countries. Companies often have no idea where their parts or materials really come from, although this may often be wilful ignorance. They do seem to have some legal obligation to know where things are coming from[1]. George Monbiot wrote a couple[2][3] of articles recently about trying to find out where the materials in smartphones are really coming from:

 _Of the manufacturers, Nokia appears to have gone furthest, and its efforts are quite impressive. Since 2001 – long before most other companies began to take an interest – it has tried to remove illegally mined tantalum from its supply chain. It now instructs its suppliers to map the routes these metals take before they reach the company. The problem is far from solved: it tells me that "there has been no credible system in the electronics industry that allows a company to determine the source of their material"_

 _Apple's response was less detailed and less persuasive. To give you an idea of how complex the problem has become, it has discovered that its metals are supplied by 211 smelters, liberally distributed around the planet. Any of them could be using minerals seized by militias in Congo._

As you can probably guess, he ended up not buying a smartphone.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodd_Frank_Act#Disclosures_on_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodd_Frank_Act#Disclosures_on_Conflict_Materials_in_or_Near_the_Democratic_Republic_of_the_Congo)

[2] [http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/11/search-s...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/11/search- smartphone-soaked-blood)

[3] [http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/25/smartpho...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/25/smartphone- samsung-tin-bangka-island)

</comment><comment><USER15> Yes, on the one hand the working conditions are shocking and horrifying and deplorable and I would move mountains to keep my children from ever working anywhere even remotely like that.

On the other, every kid working in one of those factories is one that didn't get their legs broken or worse so they'd be a better beggar, who isn't searching through garbage for food or things I can't even imagine.

Within my lifetime, the conversation about China and India has gone from "How do we keep them from starving?" to "How do we fix their horrible working conditions?". That's an incredible, historic achievement. Is there still a long way to go? Absolutely. Plenty of horrible things had to happen in the US before we got OSHA. But things are heading in the right direction and we need to keep it that way. Push to make them better, of course, but realize that the only sustainable change is to broadly raise the standard of living so that workers want more and are in a position to demand it. Anything less is a house of cards that will collapse once the spotlight is off.

</comment><comment><USER16> Disregard for human life in the People's Republics (not just China) precedes cheap stuff from Asia by decades.

<comment><USER17> It's actually the same disregard for human life that could be seen in the not so distant past in Europe or America. But youtube wasn't around back then.

<comment><USER18> It was wrong then and it is wrong now.

<comment><USER19> Saying it's wrong fixes nothing. What realistic alternative would you prefer instead, how do plan to get people (e.g. factory owners) to follow it without harming the people you're trying to help?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This article has it backwards. These workers don't work is unsafe conditions, _because_ we don't pay them enough. Rather, the economic reality in China means that in order to compete with production elsewhere (e.g. in the US) even a high risk for workers still seems acceptable to them if that means they can get the job. If we would pay more, the jobs would be done elsewhere or by robots and those workers won't be happy about that, either. Still, this is capitalism at its worst, I guess.

<comment><USER21> I think it is a good thing that wealth is rebalanced between countries, and that these wealth transfer are not UN donations, but the result of commerce and labor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> There is a quote from Larry Niven's novel "Lucifer's Hammer" that is something like "a society has the ethics that it can afford." Its pretty easy as an uncontested industrial super-power to take the hit to GDP that comes with regulation of working conditions, environment impact and so on. We didn't become an industrial superpower under those conditions and we are certainly no longer uncontested. China is going to do what it has to do, just like we did.

</comment><comment><USER23> This post (like many others) completely ignores the fact that these people _choose_ to work in this environment. Statistics show that factory / industrial workers in China are doing better than those who stay in rural jobs. Human development indicators in China have constantly risen since the 1980's [1] and the economy is booming [2].

These sweatshops are horrific to our standards, but to their standards, these are great places to work.

[1]: <http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/CHN.html> [2]: [https://www.google.fi/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&#...</a>

<comment><USER24> ...and there we go, the proverbial, libertarian "choice".

<comment><USER17> It's not about "libertarian choice". It's about not being able to change all the world in an instant. Workplace safety in China looks to be increasing. Wages too. For that matter, the Chinese workforce is shrinking while Mexico has lower labor costs.

Also this constant global coverage due to youtube or other media is improving things in China. Without the unprecedented awareness the internet affords us, I don't think China would have done more to address these issues

<comment><USER24> Yes, work conditions in China are slowly and steadily improving.

But somehow, whenever the concept of _choice_ comes up, it's always about the privileged giving the oppressed a pep talk, claiming that whatever position society has put them in "it's really totally fine".

"Safety is increasing" - would /you/ work at such a factory?

<comment><USER25> If I were in the same position as those workers in China were, I certainly would work in the factories. When you options are working a dangerous manufacturing job getting paid relatively well, or a slightly more dangerous farming job where you can barely afford to live, the choice is easy.

The US investing in Chinese manufacturing has and is increasing the quality of life (and safety) for the workers in China. This takes time, and there is nothing we can do to avoid that. If we were to go in and demand North American manufacturing salary and safety standards for the entire supply chain, you can bet their goods would cost more to produce than if we just did it here and we would therefore just make them here. That would destroy the Chinese economy and send everyone back into worse conditions than we currently have. Therefore I would argue that the result would be a net harm if we force conditions to rise too rapidly, rather a balance must be maintained.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> There are a lot of comments about the awful working conditions in China and how we should push for better conditions, but none I've seen are by the workers themselves. I can't help but wonder: what is the sentiment on this issue in China itself? As we've seen countless times before (look at Istanbul now), widespread civilian unhappiness has a way of bubbling out. Can someone provide some pointers to Chinese sentiment on this issue?

I ask because I know different areas of the world have different values, and things that seem wholly unacceptable in one place may seem more tolerable in another. Look at gun rights in the US, for example. I don't mean to imply that these workers don't care about their working conditions; I just think it's important to stay grounded in the reality that what's best for them is what _they_ want for themselves.

<comment><USER27> > I just think it's important to stay grounded in the reality that what's best > for them is what _they_ want for themselves.

That's a baffling comment.

([https://secure.flickr.com/photos/george-photography- pictures...](https://secure.flickr.com/photos/george-photography- pictures/5727039970/in/photostream/))

(<http://www.indigenouspeople.net/garbage.htm>)

(<http://oliver-vaccaro.com/index.php?/root/pepenadores/>)

People are trapped in this lifestyle, but feel that it's better than the alternative. That doesn't mean they truly want this. They just don't know what else to do.

<comment><USER26> I'm not exactly sure what those photos have to do with anything, but what you say is true: there are situations where people stay in upsetting situations because there are no better alternatives. However, they key point is that they will still be upset. It's the "upset-ness" of these workers that I am trying to gauge.

I say this because when a people are not upset, it is paternalistic and imperialist of another group to come in and say, "no, you're doing it wrong. You don't know it but you're unhappy. Here, do it the way I prefer instead."

I don't mean to insinuate that nobody is upset. Just that it's important to keep it in mind, and to remember to ask.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Jacques have you ever thought of exploiting this situation. I mean It is well known and it has been shown that these kinds of inefficiencies can be exploited.

Why don't you move to Asia and start founding companies? With your superior knowledge and with the hands of the hard working locals you could start building a brave new world. You could pay better wages and get increased worker loyalty in return.

I can easily imagine how a group of entrepreneurs (say 50-100) could change a whole culture, simply by outcompeting the old way.

</comment><comment><USER29> Does anyone have any knowledge of how dangerous Chinese manufacturing jobs are compared to, say, US Manufacturing, or other sectors of the US economy?

I.E. Is american agriculture (farming) more dangerous than chinese manufacturing?

Here is what I was able to find on the US:

[http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0658.p...](http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0658.pdf)

US agriculture is pretty dangerous - 25 deaths per 100,000 employees/year. Anybody able to find stats on Chinese Manufacturing?

[Edit: from <http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/China-Factory-Injuries.htm> \-- "The International Labor Organization has estimated annual deaths from workplace accidents at 11.1 per 100,000 Chinese workers. That compares with the U.S. on-the-job fatality rate of 2.19 per 100,000." - That means, given a choice, you would be safer in a Chinese Manufacturing job than an American Agriculture job.

Also - the death rate in the United States manufacturing in 1970 is pretty close to the death rate in China, 2011 ]

[Edit 2: Note - another way of looking at this - if FoxCon Manufacturing was as safe/dangerous as US manufacturing, there should be about 20 Foxcon work related deaths per year. Does anybody have insight into how many FoxCon deaths a year there are?]

<comment><USER30> Tractors flipping over is probably the big on in US Agriculture, but quite a few people die in the grain silos doing various things. Most big Ag companies are fairly psycho about safety. I remember an elevator supervisor who fired workers who went over the speed limit on the elevators road and being told it was a firing offense to stand on a chair to reach something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Wow, the video is quite terrifying. It shows multiple people accidentally electrocuting themselves by stepping on a live wire while carrying a metal manifold. Holy shit is the only real reaction.

China's quality problems in production are nothing new. Pretty certain the coal mining industry there is reckless compared to the worlds standards. It's like what Bill Maher said about the baby they found in the sewage pipe this week, "He's reportedly O.K. and will be back making iPhones soon."

</comment><comment><USER32> > "In many ways we are complicit, we vote 'cheap' every time > we can (I'm no > exception) and if we can externalize the > problems in such a way that we > can pretend they don't > exist then we all sleep just fine at night."

Correct, but an extra problem is: i doubt that my extra money will go to those workers when i 'vote expensive'. Most of the time the money just goes into profits for the owners or maybe into an expansion of production. Paying more does not make anything better as long as there's no way to change priorities.

<comment><USER33> It's not so much cheap vs. expensive, but cheap vs. certified, humanely produced goods (which will be more expensive).

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Low safety standards may contribute to the low price of goods produced in China, but the main reason is that the Chinese government deliberately keeps the value of the yuan low against the dollar.

<comment><USER35> There must be some long term economic repercussion for trying to manipulate the price of your currency?

<comment><USER36> Not really, if you are a net exporter and most of your countries citizens never travel abroad.

It might present an issue if they wanted to buy a lot of US made weapons for example, but China is big enough that it largely does not need America.

<comment><USER37> How does China "not need America"? The U.S. is China's largest trading partner.

<comment><USER36> It doesn't need to buy stuff from America.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> chestnut-tree I didn't watch the video after reading the description. But this problem of poor worker conditions (and poor compensation) is true of so many goods produced cheaply in China or other countries in Asia. I feel we in the "West" (i.e North America, Western Europe) have an ambivalent attitude towards this issue. We decry the outsourcing of manufacturing to other countries, yet we're only too happy to continue purchasing those goods. We might say we are prepared to pay more for quality and standards, but our endless consumption of all these cheap products suggests otherwise.

What's more, we fawn over some technology companies and take such an uncritical view of their behaviour over the production of their goods (because we love their products) when we should in fact be far more critical.

On a more positive note, there are schemes like Fairtrade that have gained favour with the public. Fairtrade guarantees a fair price to producers of mostly food products. It's not perfect, but a product with a Fairtrade mark provides some re-assurance that the product you buy meets certain ethical standards. Encouragingy, Fairtrade goods are popular with the public too:

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2013/mar/02/fairtrade- taste-...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2013/mar/02/fairtrade-taste- growing-britain)

<comment><USER38> The problem is Fair Trade is that it distorts the price signal in the market (obviously, that's the point). But the reason coffee is so cheap is that there is an oversupply - artificially raising the prices extends the problem, it doesn't solve it (by making some farmers realise they can compete better by switching crops).

If you want to help, buy expensive, high end coffee - most of it will be Fair Trade anyway, so I can't say "instead of Fair Trade". But getting the default, supermarket brand coffee that's 10% more expensive than the non-Fair Trade option damages more than it helps.

Also, I remember reading somewhere that Fair Trade places some irrelevant constraints on suppliers, such as the size of the supplier. I can't find a reference, so it might be wrong, but if it's not, then that suggests that pandering to western, urban romantic fantasies about rural life plays an inappropriate role in the scheme as well.

<comment><USER36> I think fairtrade suppliers are all cooperatives. Though in many cases I've found fairtrade brands not to be significantly more expense (sometimes cheaper even) than mainstream brands of similar quality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> As bad as this is, it gets even worse: a lot of the stuff produced in China and exported overseas is made in forced labor camps (like the infamous Masanjia labor camp) and prisons by people who're simply imprisoned for being dissidents. Those people are not only unpaid, but tortured physically and mentally outside of their grueling work hours.

</comment><comment><USER40> The sensational title of this post is really shameful. This is a new low for HN as far as I've seen.

</comment><comment><USER41> It really is in the power of the consumer to force companies to change. The heads of corporations are required and expected to be seeking out the highest possible returns for their investors. If their competitors use foreign labor with very cheap standards then that company is at a disadvantage in the marketplace. Only when consumers take into account the working conditions of the laborers does the marketplace change and that empowers/forces heads of companies to change so that they can continue to bring maximum returns. Terrible tragedies like this have to be revealed thank you for brining this up.

<comment><USER36> It seems sort of perverse that working conditions in China are dictated by the whims of consumers in the west.

How would one go about convincing the consumer to change? That is the hard question.

There are already various organisations out there who campaign to make people aware of these conditions, so it's unlikely that people are totally ignorant.

Yet these don't seem to have affected widespread change in spending habits, I guess because people in the west have their own struggles and it is hard to say no to cheap. So this makes it easy to dismiss such campaigns as "leftist commie crap".

It also requires options, for example if I wanted to buy a smartphone that was free from bad labour conditions right through the supply change, how would I go about that?

<comment><USER42> It's not a case of saying no to cheap. For most, it's one of buying stuff from China or doing without.

Most middle-class consumers in the USA really have few options. Whether from local stores or online, the majority of all toys, tools, electronics, and household items are made in China. If another option exists, it's frequently available online only from Europe or Japan that's twice the cost.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is a very very sad video and it made feel sorry for the human lifes that were destroyed in this incident. And still, this is not really a problem about work-place safety. I can only assume that this was an honest mistake, of the workers and maybe the employers to do whatever they were trying to do and forget the high power line. We might also ask if these workers even knew how electric power works and why you shouldn't connect a high power line with a metal construction to the ground (or whatever it was here).

Workplace safety in China still is very bad. No joke about that...

</comment><comment><USER43> This was true in the US pre WWII. Who better to walk in to the giant mechanism of knives and gears than small children? Their little arms can reach!

It doesn't happen anymore because the US doesn't manufacture anything anymore. Well, there is _one_ thing the US manufactures - energy. Not directly, but they get all the economic benefit for it.

When you pull a barrel of oil out of the ground, you've created wealth where there was none before. It is not a zero sum game. When you charge dollars for that barrel, you give those dollars value in the global energy market. It does not matter who 'owns' the oil, even another country, as long as it's sold in dollars, the US gets the benefit.

This is why stuff from China is so cheap. The only thing a dollar is good for on the global market is energy, but the dollar has a near monopoly on it. The US doesn't have to do any of the work when they are the ones putting the gas in the gas tank. The rest of the world makes the engine go off of that gas.

<comment><USER44> As a US based manufacturer, I find your comment ignorant. There is a great deal of manufacturing in the US, and it is getting easier to do - not harder.

I have been manufacturing since 2004. It's not that hard. You start with an idea, build a minimally viable prototype, improve it, make a final design, sort out the supply chain and then start building. Design once, sell thousands of times.

Use automation, its cheaper than even Chinese labor. Work on just-in-time manufacturing techniques and you can get your inventory down to a small fraction of annual sales. The multi-axis controls in a 3D printer can be repurposed to do all sorts of motion control in a factory. See <https://www.synthetos.com/project/tinyg/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Is there something wrong with me if even after reading this I'd still rather pay less for things and live in ignorant bliss?

<comment><USER46> I'm curious about a data-point ... how old are you? There may have been a time when I thought that way, but not now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> <http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=bc3_1345975509>

Video without the youtube login requirement.

<comment><USER48> <http://www.youtube.com/v/8GiHE9cItsE>

don't need login from this link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Regardless of where it's from, this is the most horrifying video I have EVER seen. I'm just speechless.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is the most horrifying to me because of the number of ways in which this accident was preventable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> There's worse. Some time ago they showed someone runned over by a truck in a loading bay. They didn't stop the traffic to help the guy or even drag the body.

It just become a speed bump for the other trucks.

About a solution... Why not force legislation to not ignore imports? Or maybe a occupy Walmart movement.

</comment><comment><USER51> I had to google: OHSA -> Occupational Health and Safety Act

didnt know what it was since I am not american

</comment><comment><USER52> Also see [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0rwLxPi1Lg&list=PLE0E8B6...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0rwLxPi1Lg&list=PLE0E8B694D721D40E) for some context on how the economic arrangement is organised.

</comment><comment><USER53> > _Pollution, a total disrespect for the environment in general and for human > lives in particular is what powers the trade that brings cheap goods to the > stores near us._

The Anti-China propaganda has reached HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, that's quite a feat of misunderstanding. And I tried pretty hard to make sure that that exact comment wouldn't be made in order to reject the thing out of hand.

I'm _fine_ with producing goods in the far east, _but_ the fact is that the low prices are in fact powered by more than just a simple difference in value between currencies and standard of living.

The pollution and the work place risks (including death) are a really large factor in those price differences, as corroborated not only by this particular video (which is horrifying) as well as by contact with people that live there or have spent significant time there.

To dismiss this as propaganda is Ostrich politics at its best, we may have to simply realize that we will have to pay more for the goods that we receive unless we want to be explicitly named as accomplices in the situations that we have created.

The fact that some companies have already started programs to track the resources that go into their goods and that some companies have agreed to living wages and anti-pollution measures for their entire supply chain indicates that at least in some boardrooms the message is heard. Profits are important but not _that_ important.

<comment><USER21> It's not misunderstanding. You link to an awful video, draw general conclusions on the account of one event, and your unsaid conclusion is that Chinese people disdain human lives. 100 years ago you'd have added infanticide.

So, no, Chinese people are not heartless zombies workers, they cherish human life and had a full structured ethical system when Europe was Barbary, and they are taking themselves out of survival mode at a pace that is unseen in the history, which require some prioritization.

<comment><USER54> Today the apartment complex I in which I live in Beijing sent some guys out to fix a water leak my landlord reported. There are two: one guy with a big rope attached to a safety harness he is wearing, the other guy holding the rope with one hand. The first guy opens the window, climbs through it onto the 1-foot ledge on the 16th floor (the window only opens about 30 degrees, so this is a little challenging). He caulks a few places, with his companion holding onto the rope with his one hand, right above the (unclipped) harness clip. You can be sure that if the first guy slips, he's a goner, there's no way the second guy is going to catch 150 lbs with his one hand.

So yes, factory conditions on average are probably better than the video, but no, this is not an isolated incident. I'm sure these guys cherish human life, but they've probably been doing this all month (at least) without a problem, why worry? Accidents always happen to the other guy. And there's nowhere to clip onto, so doing it the right way would be very mafan, whereas this way they got it done in 5 minutes. Quick and cheap, probably $10 max. The American way would be safe, take 30 minutes getting the harness set up, 5 minutes caulking, and cost at least $100.

<comment><USER21> That's a good example, I have seen it and many other. It is not about basic first order security, it is more about second order precaution principles.

In fact the precaution principle might be a factor paralyzing European economy right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Free market at its finest.

<comment><USER56> Very true, the fact that unregulated free market will magically increase the well-being of everyone is exemplified in such countries. It could be Russia as well, an African country. Basically any county where there is no _effective_ regulation or control.

Yet I hear often from Ayn Rand loving libertarians about how they hate the FDA for example and how it is better for it not exist etc etc. I always tell them this magical place exists today, jump on the plane to China and enjoy drinking mystery chemicals instead of juice, soda or even tap water.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> So this is a cold and callous sentiment, but perhaps the reason human life is valued so little over there is the same reason anything has value: supply and demand.

<comment><USER19> Supply and demand don't give value, they just set a price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> for people who dont want to login- <http://www.youtube.com/v/8GiHE9cItsE>

</comment><comment><USER58> What I find somewhat disturbing is that americans have to see a video to start to realize that the fact that they want to get cheap stuff means that people have to work in terrible conditions in other parts of the world...

<comment><USER19> Because before we started buying cheap stuff from them, they lived in an hedonistic paradise?

<comment><USER58> What I meant is: everybody in the world knows that the fact that you have access to cheap goods means someone is paying for you, the question is why do people need to see a video to understand this, when the rest of the world can figure it out on their own?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Supply and demand. The system is pricing their labour as if they are fungible, so numerous that they are worthless. Because they are that numerous. But you can't tell people not to breed without taking away their rights. Really, was a "right" to reproduce a good idea? You can't talk about overpopulation without being called an ecofascist.

So I suppose it's good that goods won't be scarce much longer and will all be made with printers, robots, nano-assemblers.

I assume that eventually people's families will be rich enough to sue over employee deaths?

China makes few lines of products that are luxuries. It makes many that are necessities at almost any price. I need them. If people don't have enough money to buy more expensively and carefully made things, it's because governments have let inequality go too far and because the 1% have hoarded it.</comment>


Lunch with the FT: Tim Berners-Lee - k-mcgrady http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/b022ff6c-f673-11e1-9fff-00144feabdc0.html

<comment> k-mcgrady His decision to make the web free and open rather than seeking royalties or other payment for it was vitally important. If he hadn't have done that I can't imagine it ever having taken off and it would be a very different world we live in. Then again, someone might have simply reverse engineered the technology and released their own free and open version.</comment>


JWZ's App Codesign Maze - <AUTHOR> http://jwz.livejournal.com/1227857.html

<comment><USER2> What's newsworthy about this? I'm one vote among thousands but as much as I enjoy reading JWZ, I don't want every one of his blog posts on the front page of HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> A lot of his posts are downright goofy, but this one I can personally relate to, as can anyone who has navigated the Byzantine labyrinth of Apple's codesign process. It is time not spent coding and is a drain on developers.

<comment><USER3> I can relate as well.

Though, everything works fine if you follow the mind-numbing labyrinth of steps (with pictures!) on their website. It's just as soon as you think the tool chain will be reasonably smart or tolerant of doing things out of order that you screw yourself. And, once your machine or project are in a "bad state," good luck to you.

Just because there are shiny chrome elements on the windows doesn't mean it's any more tolerant than an m4 autoheader/autoconf/configure chain :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not to sound insensitive, but who cares about JWZ's code signing problems?

<comment><USER5> Chances are that you are running some of his code right now, so I think he deserves a bit of respect. Besides, he's an interesting read because he doesn't pull punches when discussing issues with software.

That he's having issues getting the build environment working is interesting from the perspective that Apple pretty much requires you to build your code using their tools. Imagine if your kid was trying to do it. Imagine if you had as much trouble trying to get Basic to work back in the day.

<comment><USER6> It's well known that the code signing & cert setup process is troublesome. Apple has a 70+ page PDF of instructions on the matter. That JWZ is having trouble is not really surprising as the error messages are not helpful unless you've built the system, or know it very well.

The problem is that nobody cares about the code signing process itself, we just want to write apps, so we just read enough on code signing to get things working. That's what I've seen and experienced anyway.

(I'm heavily generalizing and obviously there will be exceptions where people have learned about code signing in depth)</comment></comment></comment>


Why there is no recommender system for hacker news? - <AUTHOR> Everybody is obsessed with ML here, but there is still no recommender system for hacker news? <comment><USER2> Ned Jackson Lovely has an interesting talk about just this thing!

[http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O7IezJT9uSI](http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O7IezJT9uSI)

</comment><comment><USER3> Pretty interesting idea. Go build it! It's your time to shine :)</comment>


Maps that explain how America lives, spends, and believes - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/50-maps-that-explain-how-america-lives-spends-and-believes-2019-6 <comment><USER2> Really interesting, sometimes I do wonder if at some point we'll see the coastal regions (or maybe W. Coast and Northeast) split off from the rest of the U.S.</comment>


A Conversation with the Team That Made Bread with Ancient Egyptian Yeast - <AUTHOR> https://www.eater.com/2019/8/8/20792134/interview-seamus-blackley-serena-love-richard-bowman-baked-bread-ancient-egyptian-yeast <comment><USER2> The reporting on this has been utterly dreadful, and Seamus Blackley and his collaborators are jointly responsible for this. Just look at the headline:

 _A Conversation With the Team That Made Bread With Ancient Egyptian Yeast: How a scientist harvested 4,500-year-old yeast and turned it into a loaf of sourdough_

Wow, they did it, right? They absolutely, definitively made sourdough from 4,500-year-old yeast! Oh wait:

 _" And, look, there may not be any ancient yeast in this. This could all be crazy, because we haven't done all the science, and we're going to. But it definitely acted different. It was really exciting."_

What a joke. Blackley isn't a 13 year old at a science fair, and neither are his collaborators. They knew that publishing this as a tweetstorm with the disclaimers at the bottom would be open to misinterpretation, and it was. Here are a couple of lines from his tweets that would make anyone think they did it:

 _This crazy ancient dough fermented and rose beautifully. Here it is in the basket, just before being turned out to bake.

The crumb is light and airy, especially for a 100% ancient grain loaf. The aroma and flavor are incredible._

Yes, I blame all the journalists as well for not doing their fucking jobs and, you know, calling up actual scientists and Egyptologists who've already tried similar things.

<comment><USER3> The twitter thread is full of disclaimers like "Finally, I need to say again, this was just for practice". Yes, there's some uncertainty over whether they've actually got ancient yeast in sufficient uncontaminated quantities. Yes, it's a publicity stunt. No, we shouldn't actually care quite so much.

> calling up actual scientists and Egyptologists who've already tried similar > things.

Like who?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I saw this in my Twitter feed a few days ago. Some hilarious comment included "Return of the yummy".

I've actually been experimenting with sourdough recently. It's very easy to get started with this and even the failures are pretty tasty. All you need is clean water, some decent flour and about 7-10 days to turn that into a stable sourdough starter. After that, you can just keep on growing it and baking bread, pizza, pancakes (oh yes), etc. Dangerously delicious. I could use less carbs in my life, though.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is fascinating.

I do wonder whether sterilizing the flour had any effect on the output. Doing a control with the same flour and modern yeast seems potentially worthwhile.

<comment><USER6> It sounded like he already had experience with that. He said that flour always turns out like a "puck", where this was fluffly. So, not exactly science-grade analysis there, but certainly a strong indicator.

<comment><USER5> The "puck" thing was about the type of grain he used. There was no indication that he'd previously sterilized said grain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really would love buying that yeast eventually to experiment with it, good business opportunity for them if the lab tests they are doing pans out.

<comment><USER8> I would buy.

Sell it as a kit with the right flour.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I happened on a fun radio interview with Seamus Blackley about this while driving this evening: [https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1583944259602](https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1583944259602).

</comment><comment><USER10> Nobody got sick.

<comment><USER11> I've never heard of anyone getting sick from anything that looks and smells like sourdough and doesn't have obvious mold. And people start their own starters all the time under extremely unsanitary conditions.

It turns out that the critters that infect people are usually pretty specialized and have a hard time living in dough.

<comment><USER12> yeah yeast _hates_ salt.

humans are kinda salty.

<comment><USER11> Are you saying that the kind of yeast that ferments bread can't tolerate salt? The salt I add to my dough on a regular basis disagrees.

As I understand it, there are two things going on. First, most (or even all?) pathogens can't tolerate alcohol, and many baking yeasts produce alcohol. (Many sourdoughs produce very little, though.). A lot of pathogens also can't tolerate the acids in sourdough either. Most importantly, baker's yeast and sourdough cultures grow _fast_. The outcompete the nasties in dough. This is why a brand new starter can be funky, but this resolves itself after a few generations.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Syria using 34 Blue Coat servers to spy on Internet users (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://rsf.org/en/news/syria-using-34-blue-coat-servers-spy-internet-users <comment><USER2> Out of curiosity: How could Blue Coat had prevent this? There must surely been a middleman? We should probably not argue they should have a kill-switch in their product?</comment>


When it comes to hiring, I'll take a Github commit log over a resume any day. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/03/careers-2-0-now-does-github/ <comment><USER5> Maybe this is paranoia, but I'm beginning to find a lot of threads like this (and a few yesterday about 'how to hire people') actively coercive: "Contribute to Open Source or Don't Get Hired".

There are a lot of increasingly shrill remarks out there about how everyone should be doing open source projects in their 'spare time', so no-one has any excuse not to have a track record of FOSS contributions... frankly, it's bullshit.

I work in a closed-source shop (for some very good reasons, we can't open) and our devs do sterling work of a sophistication not seen in most projects, open or otherwise, solving a very difficult and rather open-ended algorithmic problem. On a good day, we get a lot of sophisticated work done.

Strangely, at the end of one of these good days, no one wants to go home and write a big fucking pile of code - we have girlfriends/wives/families that haven't seen us for 12 hours and probably aren't going to want to use the remaining hours (and typing time) to write MORE code. Even if that was a good idea - we are paid for full-time work here which means ideally we go home and relax, not flail away on endless side projects.

<comment><USER6> The problem is that I can't believe a word you said. I can't see examples of this awesome super top-secret code because it's all closed-source, as you say, for good reasons.

I also can't trust your references, because you'll only give me ones that will say good things about you, and any digging at your work history will only uncover "yes he worked here" responses.

I want to see open-source contributions because I like being around people who are passionate about solving problems with code, and it is my experience that people who contribute to open-source projects, or start their own, are of that mindset.

I don't think that they are the _only_ people who are passionate, but I want to make a choice so I can get back to solving problems.

If you're making the hiring people work harder, you're going to miss out. Being able to show examples of your work is the best way to do it.

How do you feel about tests? or "write this program that does [x]" spec projects instead?

<comment><USER7> > The problem is that I can't believe a word you said.

It comes down to this: filtering by OSS contributions gives you many false negatives (as the OP has complained) but virtually zero false positives. In hiring, a false negative is a bummer, but a false positive is disastrous. It would be irresponsible of me as an interviewer not to take this into account.

If it someone's pissed because they fall into the false negative bucket, that's rough, but I'm the one calling the shots and taking the risks.

<comment><USER8> Unless the person is a major contributor to widely used project, all the OSS contributions show you is two things:

(1) The person can apparently code when he's allowed to pick what he wants to work on and doesn't have any real pressure, and

(2) He has time to work on open source.

Most companies need people who can code well under pressure and when they have to work on something they don't necessarily want to work on.

By screening by OSS contributions you will indeed eliminate one kind of false positive--they people who can't code at all. Other kinds of false positives, such as people who can't work well except on self-selected projects, will get in.

<comment><USER9> In my personal experience, all people who can code well, can do that under stress too. This must be one of those theoretically valid arguments that is rarely encountered in practice.

And from the developer perspective, just the fact that it helps you avoid idiotic CS101 tests over the phone at every interview is enough to make it worth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This puts developers in companies that commit to open source projects like Chromium to be at a significant advantage to those developing proprietary software. I understand where the author is coming from, but this is unfair for those who work on closed-source projects.

Of course I have my own personal projects, but for most of them, I am not about release their source.

<comment><USER11> Look, I work on a lot of proprietary stuff as well, but even if Github didn't exist, we'd both be subject to the same "unfairness." Here's a job interview, circa 1981:

Candidate 1: "I brought this fanfold printout of the source code for _____ I wrote with me, have a look.

Candidate 2: "I can't show you any of the code, but trust me, it's good."

Github merely drags that conversation forward from 1981 up to 2011. When you and I choose to write code that is locked away in somebody else's vault, we ought to charge extra to compensate for the fact that we might as well have been surfing Oahu.

<comment><USER12> Isn't this part of the reason for references, but more importantly: probation period ?

<comment><USER13> references are useless, companies are very wary to give bad references due to the chance of a lawsuit, and a probation period is a massive cost to the company

<comment><USER14> > a probation period is a massive cost to the company

Perhaps, but it's a lot less than the cost of _not_ having a probationary period and winding up stuck with a poor member of staff indefinitely because you couldn't do the impossible and spot every problem candidate during a momentary interview.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Could someone explain why "being on Github" is synonymous with "contributing to open source" in some circles?

The Github projects are a very small part of the open source universe. You can easily build *BSD or LinuxFromScratch with a substantial userland without ever downloading anything from Github.

<comment><USER16> Speaking frankly, even on our slowest days, the number of open source commits being pushed to GitHub dwarfs other sites [1]. That's not to say OS development isn't happening elsewhere, but there happens to be a lot of it going on in one particular place these days.

To your second point, you're right. I'd love to be able to convince older OS projects to move to GitHub. Some do[2], but it's an uphill battle.

1\. <https://github.com/blog/802-still-committing-like-crazy>

2\. <https://github.com/bagder/curl>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Didnt someone make, and post to hackernews, a resume builder from your github account?

<http://resume.github.com/>

<comment><USER18> The "My Organizations" section just keeps a'spinnin...

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Think of all the good that could be done for the open source world if this led every company to expect open source contributions from their new hires.

Careers 2.0 probably isn't popular enough to change the world that significantly but it does make me want to hunt down someone for a profile invite (though I guess I should save those for people who are actively looking for jobs)

P.S. Careers 2.0 is hosted by Stackoverflow which means hosted on a .Net platform...just sayin'

<comment><USER20> Think of all the good that could be done for open source if the company requiring their hires to contribute would be required to contribute themselves or to facilitate contributing under work time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is an interesting approach but not _all_ talented developers partake in open source projects.

<comment><USER22> This is true and thanks for the feedback. Do you (or anyone else reading) have any ideas for things that all talented developers would want to list on their profiles that we don't have on Careers yet? Thanks again!

<comment><USER23> While filling out my profile it struck me that I'd love a friend finding service: Find me programmers within 50 miles of my stated location who share interests and experiences in some of the many tags I chose for myself. I'd like to meet them and have a beer.

<comment><USER24> We'd need a word like "bromance", but for nerds.

<comment><USER25> Yuck, no.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I agree its better than having nothing to show or talk about, but I wish hiring the right person was that easy. There is a lot of junk in Github and there are lots of smart developers outside the Github community.

<comment><USER6> Yes there's junk on Github. But I can _see_ that and I can say "no, this person is not a good fit" before I hire them. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I frequently fork projects on Github, add features/fix bugs, send a pull request and then delete my fork after my changes have been integrated. I've started to consider keeping my forks around for this reason alone but that strikes me as a waste of Github's disk space...

<comment><USER7> I keep stale forks around mostly to game the language high-score board: <https://github.com/languages/Emacs%20Lisp>

Go elisp! You can do it!

</comment></comment><comment> anon-user-11248 I'm going to chime in here with all the various for/against comments going on and at least TRY to make some sense out of all this - or at the very least, show others how some of us "haters" see it, and explain to other "haters" how it's just the way it is - period.

Using GitHub or other OSS contributions/commits as your actual resume, or the litmus test for, "can I have the job, boss?" has been something I think we've all seen coming down the pipe for a few years now - I know I saw it way back when. Personally, I live in the midwest, not the SF bay area, so "trends" like this are a bit slower to catch on out here, but the last several job interviews I've been at, somebody has always asked me: "Do you have a GitHub account?"

This situation has people on both sides of the argument - for and against. And I'm going on record right now as saying, absolutely, 100%, without question, BOTH sides are right.

The truth is, from an employer's perspective, this just makes sense: prove that you can do the job. A resume doesn't do that - it proves that you can hand a piece of paper, sometimes even written by some one else, and BS your way through an interview.

On the other hand, employers frequently trot out teams of developers - some as many as 15 (that I've seen personally) to pepper a candidate with lots of hard questions during an interview. Inevitably, there's always that one nerd in there with serious penis envy who tries to re-assert his "dominance" by trying to "outsmart" the job candidate to make him or her look bad by throwing some super hard core question that makes said nerd look like a badass at the poor guy doing his best, and then trying to make the interviewee look like an ass when s/he can't answer it. The truth is, these guys have time - days - <USER2> prepare these interview style "litmus tests" for candidates, but when interviewing for the job, you go in blind not knowing what to expect and have to come up with everything from memory. /rant

This makes for a craptastic experience for the candidate, and a very time consuming and costly experience for the employer. Looking at a collection of code related to the job in question is a much faster way for them to get a handle on where the candidate is at, without the need for such involved processes in many cases, saving time and money for them and the candidate, and saving the candidate some serious anxiety.

However, there's another side to this coin. From the perspective of those of us who would rather NOT go home and spend all night 4+ days per week writing MORE code, this puts us in a bad spot.

The way I see it, you have two kinds of developers (basically): those who are SUPER into what they're doing - which is great (really! no sarcasm intended) - and those who enjoy what they do, but recognize that it's work. Good, old- fashioned, hard work. W-O-R-K. Blowing up some asshole in Halo Reach or having sex with your girlfriends (yes, plural) is a hell of a lot more fun than researching "most efficient sorting algorithm". So when we're not at W-O-R-K, earning a living, we need SOME way to kick back and release, or we'll absolutely explode. That's called "common sense".

This presents a problem: those who, for whatever reason, be it inability to get a date, or absolute true "nerdvana" enjoyment of writing code, end up doing ADDITIONAL development work, strictly for work's sake, now have a somewhat (emphasis on somewhat) unfair advantage over those of us who can do the same job, and are willing to work just as hard (for pay - after all, I can't pay rent with hugs and good will), but have other obligations (kids, for example, is a big one) and just plain can't put in another 20+ hours per week required to COMPETE - yes, I said the C word - with others who can.

Some arguments I've seen or heard that I'll comment on:

"But it's not THAT hard!" Nothing easy is really truly WORTH doing. I can write some seriously easy code in under 5 minutes that'll look bad ass from a quantity point of view - until you actually examine it close up and see that it's just bullshit. The stuff that REALLY makes you shine is finding new, interesting, and USEFUL ways to solve hard problems. Nothing else is really as worthwhile. And there's a point that you get to, after doing it for 50+ hours per week, that you just say, "enough!" and have to decompress. Other people see it differently - they still enjoy it and do it in their free time. I truly wish those people well and want to encourage them to keep doing it!

"Well, if you aren't the kind who'll do the OSS commits, you aren't a culture fit anyway." This is 100% Grade-A bullshit. Just because a person doesn't want to spend their free time - that they'll never get paid for - <USER3> additional software, outside the scope of their workplace, essentially doing MORE work simply for work's sake, does NOT mean s/he is a bad culture fit. _It means they have self respect._ If you're going for the super hard core, hipster silicon valley, "my shit doesn't stink" start-up environment, that may be true. But in a nice place I like to call "the real world", those companies cutting the checks GET IT - at the end of the day, you gotta get paid for your work. Even though they understand this, they'll sure as shit take advantage of other people who have no problem with playing the role of "happy little nerd behind the desk that we don't let talk to anyone and just codes all the time". They're perfectly happy to use this kind of job competition to squeeze more out of some one beyond what they're paying them for, and don't give a damn when that poor person eventually has a breakdown because they've been working 80+ hours per week for several months, maybe even years.

My bottom line on this is pretty simple: like it or not, this trend isn't going anywhere because it has advantages for parties who are interested. Unfortunately, I really think that it's going to create an even more hyper- competitive environment for people looking for jobs. We'll get to a point where we'll have maybe 20-35% of applicants who are truly really HARD CORE into what they're doing and truly, with every fiber of their being, enjoy writing code on their own time, but then we'll find a larger segment of people who do it somewhat begrudgingly, seeing it for what it is - work for work's sake. This is going to breed a very strong sense of competition in the engineering and development job market that allows companies to treat developers - especially younger ones, recent college grads, etc. - as what they'll be painting themselves as: subservient nerds who work for peanuts just for the CHANCE to have a job, even being paid in stock options that are totally worthless at Startup #1119128418911818119.2.

There's no way in hell I'm going to work 40+ hours per week doing something that, sure, I enjoy, but get bitched at by some asshole in his Armani suit that "it isn't gettin' done fast enough!", then go home and write more code just for the CHANCE to do it all over again. Fuck that.

And those who will do that? Many will end up submitting crappy OSS contributions that do nothing to move the industry forward, because they're only doing it for the sake of being able to compete in a job market - <USER4> because they truly love what they're doing. And that's really the major thing that irks me about this trend.

But again, it's happening and there's nothing that can be done to change it. That's why personally, I'm looking at changing job functions. Systems administration, or project management maybe. I'd much rather be the asshole in the Armani suit DOING the chew out, making bonuses of over $500k/year that keep going up, with a relatively easy job (especially compared to modern development), than the poor guy he's chewing out, despite that person doing a seriously awesome job under very difficult circumstances, for very low/poor pay that keeps decreasing due to increasing job market competition, who works twice as much and twice as hard, and STILL has to put up with assholes like "Mr. Suit".

Fuck that shit.

<comment><USER28> >can I have the job, boss?

Thats your problem right there - it is a sellers market right now, so if they start making too many demands for stupid things you can get a job elsewhere.

You are a great programmer, good companies know they need to qualify themself to you.

Do you think suit guy got his job with that attitude?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> If you're a company looking for developers, you have to learn to live with developers who are simply good enough. I'm talking about guys and gals who just see programming as a way to pay the bills.

Everybody wants to hire the brightest developers, but there aren't enough to go around. It's a mathematical impossibility.

<comment> wh-uws You can be a great developer and/or leader and build product or company that bright developers will want to work at.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Transitioning from contractor to full-time employee - <AUTHOR>

I'm currently contracting software development for a very small startup, and have agreed to (probably) join them long-term as a full-time employee. My current rate is $50/h for 20 h/week. Could anyone offer some insight on what I can expect in terms of what my salary will be as an employee? I assume I won't be getting the same rate, but I don't know if that's a valid assumption. The company does not offer any perks (too small). Thanks! <comment><USER2> You're obviously worth $50 an hour, if not more. I say that you should expect $50 an hour * 40 hours a week. Don't forget that if you transition to a FTE, you won't be able to claim as many (or any) business tax deductions. You need to ask yourself why they want to hire you as a FTE. It's probably to pay you less than your current hourly rate.

</comment><comment><USER3> They like you so you should get a raise too, say at least $55/hr, you probably won't be getting another one.</comment>


Dollar Shave Club: Our Blades Are F***Ing Great [video] - <AUTHOR> http://laughingsquid.com/dollar-shave-club-our-blades-are-fing-great/

<comment><USER2> Brilliant! And they used Kennedy's kung-fu song. It's so good I wonder if it is actually real.

<comment><USER3> It's definitely real, they've apparently raised $1M:

<http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/06/dollar-shave-club/></comment></comment>