Harvard University is fighting to keep its admissions process under wraps - <AUTHOR> https://www.marketwatch.com/story/harvard-university-is-fighting-to-keep-its-secretive-admissions-process-under-wraps-2018-06-28 <comment><USER2> If the emperor were ever naked, this would be it.

Contrast this "trade secret" to a chat with an Oxford don, and you'll find the don is quite straightforward in admitting they are fallible. Some admits are duds, and some are hits. Decisions are made based on a small amount of information, but only the dons decide what happens. They try hard to let in disadvantaged kids, but it's a crap shoot deciding who has potential and who doesn't. They rarely care about anything other than academics. (I'm not sure how they recruit the rowers.)

It's just laughable that an admissions process is a trade secret, and unless there's a compelling explanation given, I would assume they claim this because they are being sued by Asians about bias, and giving places to legacies, which is just as bad for a place that sells itself on excellence.

<comment><USER3> >They try hard to let in disadvantaged kids, but it's a crap shoot deciding who has potential and who doesn't. They rarely care about anything other than academics. (I'm not sure how they recruit the rowers.)

They don't try that hard.

Being vaguely involved with the Oxbridge undergrad admissions process in CS/Math i can tell you there is very little trying. A fuss is being made about coming from a disadvantaged background but in practice sadly the people running it only care about one thing: how well you can grind out an answer to a math olympiad style question in 15 minutes. Yes, extra-curriculars and well- roundedness don't matter which I think is a good thing because I believe in focusing on being great at one thing.

What it comes down to nonetheless is preparation and school support, e.g. via training for math competitions. Saying the interviews are about 'evaluating the thinking process' of the applicant is a fantasy when most applicants come from schools where they have been trained to do them for years. Oxbridge are not forthcoming about this but ultimately they take people who are already well groomed Math olympiad winners, not raw potential.

It's probably still better than opaquely selecting for race and like-ability and if this means many math undergrads are Asian, why should that be a problem? It's still unfair to disadvantaged children and this sucks, but at least the criteria are clear.

Ps: on your question how they recruit rowers: They let them study land economy, that's the joke at least.

<comment><USER4> The questions in the admissions exam and interviews are fairly straightforward, they are nowhere near any math olympiad level. Math olympiads normally require a host of advanced techniques, each of which is quite accessible but never gets taught in schools. Interview questions just need what gets taught plus some understanding of what a proof is.

<comment><USER3> I am aware, PhD students design and mark these questions, and can interview :)

The point is that if you go to a target school doing Math olympiads throughout your school life, the admissions exam and interview is a walk in the park. The applicants who didn't have any of this preparation can still do well but will fare relatively worse against that group, and I think this is very obvious in the ultimate intake.

<comment><USER5> Are those interviews by PhD students in addition to or replacement for interviews by proper dons?

<comment><USER3> Each applicant receives multiple interviews and I can perform one of these as a PhD student, and have received the same training any faculty member would have.

The interview process is relatively standardized, and if my results were to differ starkly from what more experienced interviewers do they would be disregarded, and the director of studies for that college would simply not invite me back to help.

I would add that asking PhD students to do this is not the worst thing because via supervisions and other teaching efforts, we have a good picture of what undergrads here need to be able to do. An interview is a like a short supervision.

<comment><USER5> Thanks - that actually sounds fairly sensible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Harvard wouldn't be in this mess if they just give up the bullshit myth that it is at all a meritocracy. They should just have a fixed admissions ratios:

\- X% of seats for children of wealthy alumni, to maintain their alumni and donor network.

\- Y% of seats based on academic or artistic merit: to maintain their brand. Sure, throw sports in there if you insist.

\- Z% of seats by pure lottery. This helps Harvard mitigate any population skew introduced by X% and Y%.

They can tell anybody who doesn't like it to go fuck themselves. No more pretending to be fair and all that bullshit.

<comment><USER7> Without the perception of meritocracy, I think the brand does slip significantly and Harvard has created a bigger problem for itself.

As soon as you formally acknowledge that you're letting some people in due to legacy or lottery, the value of the reputation diminishes because any given person may have been accepted on lottery. People know who's legacy and who's not, but the university can't acknowledge it publicly for that reason.

<comment><USER8> Is legacy really a mystery though? I think most people know that is a thing...

<comment><USER7> I'm not saying people don't know who gets in mostly due to legacy. I'm saying the university can't formally confirm.

<comment><USER8> I really think that kinda ruins the idea that it would tarnish their image if folks already know. Nobody would think differently if they said it.

<comment><USER9> Maybe, or maybe it's another case of a "common knowledge" phenomenon. Sure, theoretically everyone knows about legacies, but formally acknowledging it means you can't pretend not to know for specific purposes.

(E.g. "everyone knows" is an invalid argument for court if someone brings up discrimination; "they admitted it in a public statement" is a totally valid argument.)

<comment><USER7> Exactly this (and well-phrased)!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This topic is so endlessly fascinating because it encapsulates debates on meritocracy, privilege, wealth, and recruiting that have a ripple effect across a lifetime.

I attended an Ivy and a lot of the stereotypes are true. The varsity athletes are sharper than you would expect. Because the Ivy League agreed to not give scholarships to athletes (unlike Stanford), teams have a gentleman's agreement with admissions to keep a specific average GPA and SAT/ACT score. So for every gifted athlete that's a dull crayon from Groton you also got a high-achieving student-athlete. I was a TA, and the varsity athletes were the only ones who showed up consistently. They had limited time and needed to be efficient with their schoolwork. The club athletes are the rich parents + boarding school crowd. I briefly played club lacrosse - these kids were a caricature of what you would expect. The network effect is real btw.

A running joke at Stanford is that the athletes go to Stanford Community College.

The briefs in Fisher vs. UT are a great legal primer on the state of university admissions these days. [https://www.oyez.org/cases/2015/14-981](https://www.oyez.org/cases/2015/14-981)

<comment><USER8> Not to say they're not sharp.... but I belive at most of those schools there is a system of automatic scholarships based on income. So while you don't get a sports scholarship, athletes are still not paying either way. Not to knock their academics or anything, but the no sports scholarship is just no 'sports' scholarship.

On another aside, at a lot of schools athlete attendance is recorded by other students and reported to the coaches, at times even a non mandatory attendance class is mandatory as far as the coaches see it so at those schools they show up ;) They might not be as sharp, but they know they have to show up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Based upon my experiences in business, quite a lot of the time when someone says they don't want to share the details of a "soft" process (rather than engineering or scientific methods) its because they don't actually _have_ anything like a documented repeatable process and they are just using "judgement" to make the decision - which for something like recruitment or admissions is likely to be influenced by personal and organisational biases.

</comment><comment><USER11> "The school says releasing the information could put it at a competitive disadvantage"

Likely because people might find their policies unethical, which would stop them from making choices that maximize the perceived value of a Harvard degree?

<comment><USER12> I doubt it would make much of a dent in their reputation. It is already widely perceived (whether true or not) that children of important donors, legacies and other groups get preferential treatment.

<comment><USER13> It may be worse than that. E.g. the claims in the Asian-American applicants' lawsuit may be proven right: [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/us/harvard- asian-admissio...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/us/harvard-asian- admission.html) and there might be other things like that that are generally frowned upon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Legacy applicants, or students with a parent who attended Harvard, were accepted to the school at the rate of about 34%, according to data from six admissions cycles analyzed by an economist hired by the group suing the school. That's compared to an admissions rate of about 6% of non-legacy students, according to an analysis of Harvard data."

<comment><USER15> And I'm sure some of that is because the children of Harvard graduates tend to be more qualified (in terms of other application criteria) than the general population or applicant pool.

If an additional 1000 2.0 students applied to Harvard next year this number would look even worse. But would the change be meaningful?

That's not to say they don't take legacy into account. But, as presented, those numbers can be misleading.

<comment><USER16> If children of graduates are more qualified _naturally_ then why does Harvard _need_ it to be _policy_ that they take legacy status into account? MIT and Caltech seem to do fine with legacy-blind admissions.

<comment><USER17> I would imagine that both MIT and Caltech have a higher acceptance rate for legacy for this reason. However a side effect of them not keeping track is that we will never have the breakout of those rates.

<comment><USER18> That's backwards reasoning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I cannot wait for the legal discovery process commences. It's going to be a bloodbath, because Harvard has discriminated against Asians far more subtly and systematically than they did with Jews.

<comment><USER20> Discrimination against Jews was far more than systematic, it was institutional and not really a secret. Moreover, an overall overrepresentation of Asians are admitted, which us completely a different kind of 'bias' than simply not admitting them at all.

Though I'd disagree with the whole if it, if they went 'strictly SAT' or something, and suppose 50% of every class was Asian-American, whereupon Asian- Americans only make up 5% of the overall population of the US thereby meaning a 10x overrepresentation ... well - that's a problem by any social measure.

So it's far more complicated than simply 'they don't like some people and don't want them there'.

<comment><USER21>
       a problem by any social measure.

Why is this a problem at all?

Elite universities should admit the best students. Science / truth is and should be _epistocratic_ , rather than democratic, fair or equal.

If other ethnies cannot educate their children up to Asian standards, then that's a failure of the other ethnies. Punishing Asians for consistently raising better children is victim blaming. All the more, so since it's very easy to raise successful children: study hard & consistently, value education and do lots of maths.

We should celebrate the Asian focus of intellectual excellence rather than punish them.

<comment><USER19> > consistently raising better children

Most of my extended family is Chinese-born. This cohort (educated, upper middle class and above) definitely raises better test-takers. They are statistically much less likely to divorce and much less likely to be on public assistance. I value these traits enormously myself.

It is not clear to me they are better children. Personal anecdata shows that many of these kids were raised with such obsessive concern with getting into Ivy League colleges that they are not complete adults, and often don't know what to do with their lives when they graduate.

<comment><USER22> That's an interesting perspective, but I wonder if the kids who actually get in based on merits other than test-taking are any better. My anecdata is that they are not.

<comment><USER23> It's particularly relevant to tech because there is the concern that technical interviews, poorly structured, are creating a culture that favors admitting candidates who optimize for passing technical interviews.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why would they keep it secret? To stop others from gaming the system or because the system can't be gamed since its biased from the start?

<comment><USER25> Harvard is being sued for racial discrimination against Asian Americans in there admissions policies.

They created set of personality criteria for admissions. The criteria was entirely subjective, things like 'positive personality', and 'likability'. Then gave Asians consistently low scores on theses subjective criteria. And then weighed the criteria high enough to knock them out of positions which they would have otherwise qualified for if the admissions was based on standard academic criteria.

Bias and racism is predictable when you choose to abandon Meritocracy based on objective measurable criteria.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian- enrollme...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian-enrollment- applicants.html)

<comment><USER26> What sucks is that bias and racism is also baked into many "objective" criteria.

Take test scores - just having the right parents will push your sores up on average.

Having better performance regular ties into wealth and upbringing. No surprise then that the dominant economic group will hold an advantage is such tests.

The damned intertwined nature of all these issues is what makes it hard to set up an actual objective measure. Which then brings us back to subjective decision making.

<comment><USER27> I think this is the kind of mindset that is being challenged here.

You actually can set up objective criteria for entry to a college. That some groups perform better than others in no way means they are not objective.

The _unwillingness to accept_ the possibility that objective criteria might not result in equal outcomes from all groups is the problem. The rabbit hole of "that can't be objective because it challenges my assumption that all groups would perform equally" only ends in bad places.

<comment><USER28> That's not the issue. The issue is that the objective for these schools is to have a diverse student body, not necessarily the "objectively best students based on the things we decide to measure."

<comment><USER27> Perhaps--but that wasn't the claim in the comment I was responding to.

And if that's the case, they should be comfortable saying openly that they're intentionally discriminating against Asian Americans for the good of the diversity of the student body.

<comment><USER26> Iirc the head of one of those schools has already said that they can fill their class up with valedictorians if they do choose.

If they followed the pure merit route it would be exactly like it is today in other countries - people would over prepare for the exams and entrance will depend on who got 0.05% more than another person.

That's the main draw of the American system- these schools long ago saw that there would be a problem because of baked in bias and took steps to equalize it while keeping their own interests constant.

And let's not ignore the raw ability of the people who are aiming for Harvard - if a candidate for Harvard doesn't get in, their safety school is still the first choice of a massive chunk of college applicants.m

Ps: in this sub thread I was not specifically talking about diversity; but it is an argument I do make and it is also a short throw from where my previous comment in this thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Glad that the mention athletics. I used to be surprised that Sports matter so much. I recall interviewing a not so bright Princeton grad. I was surprised, given the high esteem I held the school. When he mentioned playing lacrosse, I asked how much that helped in admissions. He said, "About as much as Football at Ohio State."

At least he was honest!

<comment><USER30> Lacrosse is huge in the Ivy League world. Yes, they have football, but lacrosse is the big hitter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I used to be anti affirmative action. Then, I met a lot of students at a similar tier school who were basically shoved there by their parents. Little original thought or unique qualities, just sent to an expensive private school and drilled on the SAT like monkeys.

So now I am in support of affirmative action, maybe out of disappointment in my traditional upbringing classmates.

<comment><USER32> You could be in favor of more extra-curriculars, or more 'holistic' criteria. But why affirmative action? That is an orthogonal issue.

<comment><USER31> The main change I would make to affirmative action would be considering factors like location, family income, etc that better represent a person's situation. But race, while not perfect, often captures these factors.

They already consider extra curriculars, and those are easily gamed since everyone knows they're important.

<comment><USER33> Since location and family income are perfectly observable variables, shouldn't we use them directly instead of race?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> It's fascinating how many of those who defend Harvard eventually make some comment along the lines of "unimaginative, robotic Asians". Underneath their arguments is a racist belief they simply can't shake.

</comment><comment><USER35> I bet some nastythings would be exposed if their admissions policy were revealed. Like you'd still lose points for being Jewish or a visible minority.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is just such a weird world for me as a Swede. Here, the universities are under the same transparency rules like government agencies, meaning that you can even ask to go through your professor's inbox if you want (if they work on classified stuff, they need to keep that stuff separate).

Also, we have laws mandating how you can portion admission policies: 33% from high school grades, 33% from our version of the SAT and the rest they can negotiate with the government about what they want to use but it has to be transparent. You can also freely check the government's website and see, for every year, on what basis people were admitted for every university program in the country.

<comment><USER37> how are the emails anonymized?

<comment><USER36> A program and year maps to an entry in a database. There you will see how the groups were partitioned, what the lowest GPA was in the group for grades, what the lowest score on the scholastic aptitude test was in the second group and some information about the other third, depending on the program in question. You will also see how many were not immediately accepted but put on the reserve list instead and you can also see the same statistik but for people without a Swedish national identification number and for women or men. It's all available in a simple search engine, here's the link (in Swedish):

[https://statistik.uhr.se/](https://statistik.uhr.se/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> One of the greatest minds of our times, Thomas Sowell, words it this way:

"When Jonas Salk applied to selective Townsend Harris High School in New York, and later to the then-selective City College of New York (CCNY), there might well have been some other student, not quite as academically qualified, who could have been admitted instead, on the basis of having overcome greater handicaps than Jonas Salk had.

But the relevant question is: Would that other student have been equally likely to create a vaccine that would banish the scourge of polio?"

<comment><USER39> >But the relevant question is: Would that other student have been equally likely to create a vaccine that would banish the scourge of polio?"

We'll never know, because that other student was racially profiled and denied an opportunity on that basis.

<comment><USER40> True. The horrible truth is that affirmative action cuts both ways; it can give advantages to under-represented groups, but only at the expense of the majority. Admissions is a zero-sum game. Every student admitted is a spot not available to someone else.

It a horrible system, but so is every other system. What you can say for affirmative action is that it tries to game the system towards those who generally get screwed over otherwise.

<comment><USER41> Education is a zero sum game for the applicants. But it's not a zero sum game in total. The university and society as a whole gain a greater benefit from the student with the higher potential getting the place. All other things being equal the candidate who is smartest when they apply will maximize the resultant graduate.

You could formalize it as y=mx+c where C is the candidates current education level, m is the candidate's innate ability to learn and x is the quality of the course, and y is the final quality of the candidate after getting the degree.

All other things are not equal though, and making a judgement only about the C of each candidate does not maximize y. SATs measure C, affirmative action does a really crappy job of trying to estimate m.

<comment><USER42> I like this way of framing it, although I find it questionable whether SATs, grades, etc measure C exclusively.

Because almost all candidates are the same age when applying, C also carries information about m, in the sense that the same equation applies to their time in K-12, so candidates with a high C did so either because they had a high learning rate (m) or went to a high-quality high school or had a high-quality environment (x), or some combination.

Thus I would say that SAT score measures mx. C at time t = mx + C at t - 1, or dC/dt = mx. Schools are interested in m, which is not easily measurable directly. Affirmative action is a very crude way to look for candidates that have a high m, low x, and moderate to high C at application time.

My conclusion is that if it were possible, colleges would ideally look for candidates that performed substantially better on SATs etc than their peers at each high school, as that would control for x and allow you to estimate m. Affirmative action, on the other hand, is a cruder but partially functional way to do this, as it uses race as a bad proxy for x.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Whatever the issues with trying to admit a diverse class, the fact that American universities still give privileges to legacy students is an outrage.

</comment><comment><USER44> I'd venture to say that this is just the start of the coming race wars. As the American demographic increasingly turns brown, there could be significant social upheaval versus the "status quo."

<comment><USER45> > the coming race wars

Well, that's not something I'm used to hearing, besides from people like Richard Spencer or other white nationalists. Care to elaborate on why you think race wars are imminent? Somehow I don't see them happening over Harvard admissions...

<comment><USER46> Harvard admissions is just the tip of the iceberg. Balkanization of the USA is evident. Which multi ethnic societies in history have done well?

Is this a globalist agenda pushed by elite ruling class? Can they disintegrate our tribal tendencies and replace them with global values?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I support affirmative action but not people lying that they're unbiased.

</comment><comment><USER48> Should trade secrets even apply to an organization that is supposed to be a non-profit? What are they even competing against?

<comment><USER18> Why not? Nonprofit just means no one is a capital shareholder taking profit. It means nothing about the mission, values, or economic rights of the organization. The NFL is a nonprofit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> It's a private institution. So long as it doesn't accept public money or break any discrimination laws, it should be allowed to keep its admission process private. Does anyone honestly think George bush was admitted because of his grades? Let's find something meaningful to be outraged about. We are never going to win this one and it's not worth fighting.

<comment><USER50> Financial aid (FAFSA) is a federal program (meaning public tax dollars are used to keep it running) that channels a lot of money to all schools, including the Ivy League.

I'd argue in a court of law that assistance to their student body should be cut immediately if they don't open up their record and policy books. We can proceed from there.</comment></comment>


Substantial Rise in Catalytic Converter Thefts - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49767195 <comment><USER2> It always surprises me that journalists covering property crime don't expound on the reasons for the crime happening in the first place. Catalytic converters, copper pipes, brass fire fighting fittings - these are stolen to fund the purchase of drugs.

Why isn't there more discussion of legalization so that addicts won't have to steal and cause so much collateral damage to the economy?

<comment><USER3> Why would legalization make addicts not have to steal? Why can't they work (legal) jobs and use that money to buy the (illegal) drugs? Unless the answer is that legalizing the drugs will keep them from being fired for illegal drug use while still being able to work their jobs I don't see a connection between the drugs being legal or not and the method of obtaining the money used to purchase the drugs.

<comment><USER4> Making drugs is cheap. Making alcohol is cheap. Recreational drugs are expensive at the retail level due to the black market price premium. That's why there is the stereotype of the thieving junkie rather than the thieving alcoholic. Both are addicted but only one of them pays black market prices.

For $15 a day a person can spend every hour of it inebriated. $15 a day is barely a down payment on a black market opioid dependency.

<comment><USER5> Interestingly, in the US, legal cannabis prices are usually more than double those on the black market because they're taxed extremely heavily.

Granted, users of cannabis aren't* usually as captive as those on opioids, but the issue remains that legality may not provide the price change desired.

* Edit: corrected typo on mobile.

<comment> o-__-o >users of cannabis are usually as captive as those on opioids

Gonna need a source for that one, chief.

I can sleep off a weed craving, that's telling your mind no more slight dopamine boost. Can't really ignore your body the same way when it's going through opioid withdrawals because all of your chemicals are out of whack.

<comment><USER5> That was a typo, thanks for the catch! That's exactly the point I was trying to make.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I had my cat stolen a few years back in Hammersmith, London.

Made the car a writeoff as it was a cheap one anyway. I got in, turned the key, car sounded like a 2-stroke bike, turns out the exhaust had a wee "hole" in it.

I miss that car. I wouldn't want it back, but it was nice. Mint 2002 Honda Accord. Oh well.

<comment><USER7> The older the car, often the bigger the engine and cat. On some of those old pickups, the cat is worth more than the carcass.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> My friend just had thier cat ripped out of thier Prius in Oakland. It took the thief team all of 7 minutes to accomplish it according to our camera records.

<comment><USER9> California has seen an insane uptick in converter thefts from Priuses.

Doesn't help that prop 47 in California makes thefts under $1,000 a misdemeanor, so if you get caught stealing them you just get a slap on the wrist.

Can't they charge them with some federal crime since they are altering an emissions system?

Something needs to be done about scrap metal buyers and the people who sell to them to weed out the thieves. They will steal anything made from certain metals and the recyclers will happily buy anything including a pickup truck full of brand new air conditioning units.

<comment><USER10> _Doesn 't help that prop 47 in California makes thefts under $1,000 a misdemeanor, so if you get caught stealing them you just get a slap on the wrist. _

Oh please. This old chestnut? If the police won't enforce misdemeanors that's on them, not Prop 47. Misdemeanors can see sentences of up to just under a year which should provide you plenty of time to punish a thief. Do we really need life sentences for stealing catalytic converters?

Meanwhile NAPA lists one cat for a 2013 Prius at about $1000 and the other one at about $500. And those are the cheapie ones that aren't legal to install in California/NY. A pair of legit cats that're CARB certified (likely only available through Toyota proper) is going to be even further into felony territory. To be clear, you may be able to get a legit set installed for less than $1,000 (and you could have your friend's uncle install a used one on the sly for cheap I'm sure), but I wouldn't consider that typical and I doubt the court would bat an eye at charging your typical catcon theft as a felony.

IOW Prop. 47 is not behind the uptick in crime.

<comment><USER11> This is not an "old chestnut" it's true.

Ever since prop 47, certain crimes like shoplifting and porch piracy have increased by 10x (an order of magnitude).

You will not spend any time in jail for these crimes

<comment><USER12> Please don't back up unsubstantiated claims with "it's true". Please read HN commenting rules. [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) This type of conversation is an uninteresting back and forth of opinion unless you provide sources.

<comment><USER11> [https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2018/06/12/proposition-47-cr...](https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2018/06/12/proposition-47-crime- statistics/)

[https://www.ppic.org/press-release/proposition-47-linked- to-...](https://www.ppic.org/press-release/proposition-47-linked-to-increase- in-some-property-crimes-but-not-violent-crime/)

[http://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=9417](http://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=9417)

[https://www.latimes.com/local/crime/la-me- prop47-anniversary...](https://www.latimes.com/local/crime/la-me- prop47-anniversary-20151106-story.html)

<comment><USER10> _The ballot measure led to the lowest arrest rate in state history in 2015 as experts said police frequently ignored crimes that brought minimal punishment._

IOW, the police aren't doing their jobs. That's not the fault of Prop 47.

<comment><USER13> Police don't pursue by _departmental policy_ set well up the chain of command.

<comment><USER11> I backed it up with 4 sources, and I get criticized. Meanwhile, someone who calls the fact that Prop 47 leads to more crime gets honored and venerated here.

If you want to be pro-crime, fine. That's your right. But don't lie about it.

<comment><USER10> _I backed it up with 4 sources, and I get criticized._

You left out the part where your own sources contradict your claims.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> >Place a protective covering over the catalytic converter

sounds like a disaster waiting to happen, given that a catalytic converter is (necessarily) one of the hottest components on a car.

<comment><USER15> They make security devices which is essentially a collar on each side with steel cables between. Makes it virtually impossible to cut it off. It instead requires you to first take off the device then cut off the cat. This problem of cat thefts have been a problem in the us for a long time.

<comment><USER16> > _This problem of cat thefts have been a problem in the us for a long time._

Indeed. I don't know what materials the current generations use, but 20 years ago, at least, the catalytic mesh was platinum.

Unsurprisingly, converter thefts were common enough. (This was back in Finland, fwiw.)

<comment><USER17> Usually it's platinum, palladium, and rhodium along with some other, cheaper metals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Muffler and catalytic converter thefts were one of the reasons the New York City Fleet purchased more EVs:

[https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/dcas/downloads/pdf/fleet/NYC- Fle...](https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/dcas/downloads/pdf/fleet/NYC-Fleet- Newsletter-255-March-8-2019-Reducing-Maintenance-Costs-With-Electric- Vehicles.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER7> > Since hybrid cars have two power sources - electric and petrol or diesel - > the catalytic converter is used less frequently to process pollutants. The > metals are less likely to corrode, meaning they are worth more and thus > attractive to thieves.

Is this true? I thought hybrids needed more surface area in the cat because they don't get hot easily because of the engine running less (frequently).

</comment><comment><USER19> I understand the solution to this is to buy a car with a really small engine and park it next to cars with really big engines or hybrids. They have much more valuable catalytic converters so are likely to get nicked before yours is.

Also if you're in UK and have fully comp cover it should cover replacement cost minus excess if it's in the described location in the policy over night.

</comment><comment><USER20> Had mine stolen off a Toyota Sequoia. Done in the driveway, alarm on, bedroom windows open.

It was so clean, not even dust on the ground. Looked like it had been beamed away.

They hit the whole area in a couple of nights. Four wheel drive vehicles were popular because of easy access.

To get them replaced was a bit over 5k. My understanding is the thives get about 50 a piece.

<comment> o-__-o They werent quiet, you were just sleeping. A hand jig will take one out in 30 seconds or less tho. Good luck waking up to that noise esp if any car is driving down your road

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> With rhodium at £4000/oz and lax enforcement of the Air Weapons Licensing Act 2015, this was the inevitable result.

<comment><USER21> > This is due to the lack of enforcement of the Scrap Metals Dealers Act 2013 > and its complementary legislation in Scotland, The Air Weapons Licensing Act > 2015.

Why is scrap metal recycling controlled under a law that is called "Air Weapons Licensing"?

[http://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2015/10/contents/enacted](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2015/10/contents/enacted)

Okay, so technically it is "and licensing" and the article has a typo, but still why did they put these things together like this?

<comment><USER22> > why did they put these things together like this?

At a glance, it looks to be an act that defines regulations for all matters requiring licensing (weapons, alcohol, taxis, etc.) that are controlled by the devolved administration - I don't see any reason why that wouldn't be in one bill?

<comment><USER23> I agree it makes sense. I think the reason for the strange title is because, technically, air weapons are not licensed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Chicago, IL, USA here. Facebook marketplace is full of catalytic converters right now. Right on the front page.

</comment><comment><USER25> I have several friends who have had their cats stolen in Oakland in the last year. Hondas and Toyotas mostly. One friend had his cat stolen from his Prius three times in one year. He's sold the Prius now.

</comment><comment><USER26> Friend of mine has a Prius and lives in Echo Park in LA. His cat was cut out of his car twice in two weeks. Seemed like every person in the chain benefited from the theft, scrap metal guys, tow truck towing his car to mechanic, mechanic replacing it and also trying to sell him on a cage.

It was almost like the theives were alerted by the mechanic that he had replaced the cat.

Theives only make a couple hundred from the cat, insurance pays the mechanic a couple g's for a new one plus labor.

<comment><USER26> Should add that his insurance company covered everything both times and provided rental car but after second time they won't cover the vehicle anymore being parked in that neighborhood on the street.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Poor cat</comment>


BuzzFeed Deletes Mass Email Accusing Staffer of Harassment - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedailybeast.com/buzzfeed-deletes-mass-email-accusing-staffer-of-sexual-harassment <comment><USER2> I think I side with the Buzzfeed management in this case. To me the situation seems analogous to revenge porn. Whether accurate or not, the content was specifically designed to embarrass and intimidate the employee, so propagating it only serves the desires of the sender at the expense of the target.</comment>


An Amazon programmer's perspective (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://pastebin.com/BjD84BQ3 <comment><USER3> This is what I don't understand. When Tbray left, he said he was doing so in solidarity with the distribution center types, but he held to the line that AWS was great. This despite nightmare stories like this one regularly bubbling up, and I've heard similar from friends.

What is it about tech culture that people within it refuse to admit the level of abuse-by-design that happens at these companies? Is it that they want to believe that they are somehow fundamentally different from the distribution and grocery store workers, and fundamentally similar to Bezos? I can't help but feel it's just this kind of false consciousness that prevents developers from _getting organized_.

Sidenote, payroll tax on Amazon in Seattle trying to get revived. It's a long and winding story. Check out taxamazon.net

<comment><USER4> It's worth pointing out why it needs to be "revived": because the first iteration of the tax would have destroyed grocery stores and was protested by construction unions due to its disastrous policy.

This iteration is targeting the 800 largest employers in Seattle, many of whom aren't currently profitable.

"Tax Amazon" is classic dishonesty — neither bill has been focused on Amazon, both would be a disaster for Seattle, and proponents try to focus on Amazon to keep people from noticing how damaging their out of control spending is.

In 2010, the Seattle budget was 3.8B; in 2020, it's 6.5B. An increase of 2.7B and growth of 71% in a decade. (Per capita, the Seattle budget is 37% more now than in 2010.)

[https://www.geekwire.com/2018/seattle-socialists- constructio...](https://www.geekwire.com/2018/seattle-socialists-construction- workers-clash-amazon-hq-tax-big-business/)

[https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle- news/politics/seattle-c...](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle- news/politics/seattle-city-councilmember-sawant-says-her-tax-on-big- businesses-would-raise-300-million-a-year/)

<comment><USER5> As someone not from Seattle, the drama around that tax was quite ridiculous. The idea of a "head tax" is utterly nonsensical in that it's an incentive to NOT hire people, which is the entire point that companies are pulled into cities. Jobs. Jobs are one of the things cities care most about more than anything. A head tax actively disincentives hiring of new workers. A head tax can maybe make sense if you have permanently low unemployment and companies can't hire enough people, but that's not Seattle's problem.

<comment><USER6> Given how many people are moving to Seattle every year, far faster than new housing can be built, I'd say that an effectively negative unemployment rate has, in fact, been one of Seattle's problems, and that slowing hiring down would, in fact, help things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The loaner thing is so true - having two bosses is THE PITS! That and not sleeping.

My first job out of college I had two bosses. HORRIBLE.

This came up recently, a manager, trying to be helpful, not sure they could manage someone said why don't we both manage them. NO!

The other things - trading sleep and shutting off friends - the first will destroy your quality of life and the second you will regret for a LONG time no matter how critical the day to day was.

I'm not perfect. Setting boundries. I focus on situations in my case - <USER2> situation lead to bad results. Also - you can sometimes trade time for reduced money - which in some of these situations is a NO BRAINER. I'm trying to do that. Society really IS NOT setup to support that.

I go home even if I'm behind. I sleep next to my wife and play with my kid. Covid has made catching back up with friends harder.

I think what folks from the outside don't realize is that folks making big money+ - you put a lot of pressure ON YOURSELF. You are given lots of money, often lots of responsibility, your work impacts lots of people (internally and externally). This is even if Jeff Bezos is not your boss.

<comment><USER8> My favorite example of having two bosses was as an intern. I was getting loaned out to a team that thought I was working full-time when I was really working 20 hours per week. I wasn't aware of this until I started getting super negative feedback from the manager. She basically thought I was the worst developer alive haha - then when I clarified I was a part-time intern and full-time student she totally lost it on my og manager. Of course he then was furious at me for blowing his scheme... not sure exactly how the internal budget/trading hours/money worked, but they were offloading 40 hours of full- time budget for my part-time efforts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I appreciate this being shared, but I have some qualms.

I think talking about the Leadership Principles as a 'typical corporate motto' is unfair. Amazon lives their leadership principles far more than the other companies I've seen. They don't include things they don't actually care about, like most corporate mottos do (you'll notice the lack of 'we care about our employees' or 'do no evil' LPs).

At least in my experience, you only need to pay back Amazon proportional to (2 years minus duration employed) so it really isn't that bad (maybe that wasn't the case when this was written).

Maybe it's changed, but the signing bonuses I saw were essentially increased salary until your stock starts vesting seriously. It gets paid out and vests every paycheck so there isn't anything you need to pay back.

<comment><USER10> > 'we care about our employees' or 'do no evil' LPs).

Customer Obsession is "do no evil".

<comment><USER9> How so? Google is facing employee issues and protests because they sold the 'do no evil' ideal, but the employees don't think some of their projects follow that. I think you would struggle to find an equivalent portion of Amazon employees who think Amazon isn't customer obsessed.

<comment><USER10> I mean in the sense that being customer obsessed should mean you do not evil. We absolutely are still customer obsessed.

<comment><USER9> > I mean in the sense that being customer obsessed should mean you do not evil

I think there is a real tension between customer obsession and 'do no evil'. Serving the individual needs of consumers can come at the expense of the public good. I think example of that are the amount of waste that Amazon packages generate by shipping as fast as possible and the amount of environmental damage AWS can quietly cause via their datacenters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's an old gist, you should flag it as [2015]

<comment><USER12> Yes. Added now. That was really misleading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> When my Uncle found out how much the average entry-level Amazon software developer at Amazon makes, he was completely shocked, because it's higher than his salary as a physician in practice for many years. So all things considered, when it's mentioned how doctors are the only other profession where the employees are on-call 24/7, most FANG devs are making more than the average doctor.

<comment><USER14> Where does your uncle live?

Does he have to pay $3000 for a 2 bedroom rent?

<comment><USER15> $3000 for 1bd in NYC is pretty common, it can extend to >= $4000 for 5-10 minute walking distance to work. Tech salary can seem much less impressive servicing that kind of recurring cost.

<comment><USER14> Yeah definitely.

I was specifically talking about the Seattle market for housing since I also live here.

Comparing base compensation without taking into consideration the city the person lives in is useless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Burn out at work? Amazon? Oh c'mon.

The original OP's write-up misses the main questions and helpful perspective. Doctors (we have several in the extended family), lawyers (worked with some), entrepreneurs (have been one) all put in very long hours. So do grad students, and undergrad's working on tough assignments.

It's not work per se; the issues are larger, and different:

\- do you enjoy what you do? If you're new, out of school you may not know this without experience. This guy got experience. We are aware that plenty of people make career changes inside and outside their industry right? Because of they realized the enjoyment and fulfillment wasn't there, right?

\- do you have friends, hobbies, a social life, a wife (husband) and family? Do you do anything with them? If not, why not? Why does one work all the time?

\- do you have self awareness of your red lines? If no, why not? If yes, why were they repeatedly crossed? Individuals have choice, agency if they are relatively self-aware.

\- Why would a team put up with so many bugs, and so many late calls? There are a zillion developer teams ... we all have support issues/challenges, and part of the job is reducing outages which feeds into software engineering, quality, management, cross functional management with business people providing requirements, corporate culture, and many other facets.

I didn't find this article helpful. I do not cherish or dismiss the trauma reported herein, but something bad X happened at company Y is neither new, insightful, or explanative in any ultimate way that counts.

</comment><comment><USER17> > Remember when I mentioned Amazon's moving and signing bonus? Little caveat > on that, if you leave or are fired within 2 years, you have to pay it back.

Paying back a signing bonus if _they_ fire _you_ seems super rough. Is this common elsewhere? 2 years also seems high - the time I got a signing bonus, it was "pay back if you leave voluntarily in 1 year" which was much nicer than the described.

Unfortunately, much of this seems pretty common, especially months-of-crunch- time. Being able to figure out projects to _avoid_ (if you're at a big corp like this where such things are possible), and being able to avoid them is a very good career skill to cultivate.

On-call can work quite well if the team has sufficient ownership to improve the underlying issues, not just keep the lights on. I've done this with good success. I'm often disappointed by how many managers and companies I've seen who don't get that aspect.

Believing too much in mantras like "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later" can be dangerous, too, though. How well it works depends on the manager and the person scoping and planning the work. Another critical skill to develop to escape being the person doing the grunt work.

<comment><USER18> I fear OP may have misunderstood how the signing bonus works and it seems to have caused him undue stress.

I've interviewed at Amazon and had a lot of conversations about compensation. I don't know about the terms of the relocation bonus, but for the signing bonus, you don't pay it back if you are fired and even if you leave voluntarily, you only pay back a pro-rated amount. For example if your signing bonus is $20k, and you leave at the 6 months mark, you owe $10k back but you get to keep the other $10k.

<comment><USER19> I'm surprised at how many people in this thread are misunderstanding this. Every tech company I've seen has had a stipulation saying you have to pay back signing bonus or relocation if you leave within 1 year.

<comment><USER18> Yea, that's something else I forgot to mention. I chalk it up to OP possibly being inexperienced/naive (I think this was his first job out of college), but I have worked with a lot of companies and _all_ of them require you to pay back at least part of your signing bonus if you quit within a year.

When I graduated college, all of my friend group discussed it and we all took out a small chunk of the bonus to go on a small group vacation, but the rest of the bonus got put into an investment account and not touched for at least a year. That way if we did decide to leave, the money was easily accessible to be paid back. I know not everyone has that flexibility, but it's probably the best way to approach signing bonuses if you're not 100% sure you will be at the company long term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Kinda unrelated to topic at hand but I always wanted to ask this to other programmers:

Author mentions that he traded sleep for code, and I hear this from so many people but I really cannot understand how well they manage to pull this off. I simply cannot code productively if I get less than 7 hours of sleep or code for more than 8 hours straight, and caffeine doesn't help me. So how do you people manage to pull this off? I'm really envious that people can code all day long but does it really provide good code? Doesn't that increase the bug count of the code?

<comment><USER21> Easy, most of the code we write is pretty mindless. Boilerplate tying together of various internal libraries to make it play nice that you've done too many times to count. Following someone else's wiki page instructions on how to implement some "best practice" that needs to be done for a production system. Writing CRUD operations and such. Writing unit tests for all these things. Sure mistakes happen when you're exhausted but the stuff is hard from mentally demanding given the bar that they're supposedly hiring for.

I don't say that disparagingly, this is 90% of my day to day life as a mid- level engineer at a FAANG. The other 10% I might get to do something "neat" that I can justify somehow. It depends on the team of course, but I find the Author's experience believable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Lots of IT jobs that deal with critical infrastructure have on-call duties.

Try working for some IT firm that supports healthcare, utility, defense, or what not, and I can assure you that there's rotation duty where you need to be on-call within xx minutes, 24/7.

During college I was interning for IT firm that provided networking for local hospitals, and they had the same rotation. My friend who got me the gig, worked there FT, and he basically had to forego social activities every 3 or 4 week, because he'd be on call 24/7.

<comment><USER23> Yeah, I also thought the on-call/pager thing was a little overblown. It immediately raised a red flag about how wet behind the ears OP is.

Not to say that there aren't toxic on-call rotations and such, only that it's a lot more common than you'd think, and is not limited to just doctors _eyeroll_

Any time a business unit needs to be accountable to another party after-hours, some sort of call schedule is created.

<comment><USER24> > During the hiring process, on-call is not mentioned in any way other than > the usual salaried catch-all "are you willing to work nights and/or > weekends."

It should be very clear what the actual expectation is, though, instead of a nebulous "we may need you to work extra sometimes." It's a guarantee that you will work extra at a fixed interval, and that extra work happens to be psychologically draining.

I ask for quite the premium in salary if I know I'm going to be on call.

<comment><USER9> I found that weird. On-call is so central to the technical identity of Amazon that I'm surprised you could get through the hiring process without knowing that you'd be on-call.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > After being on the team for a couple of months, I was put on the on-call > rotation

I don't work at Amazon but the situation is very similar to my job. On-call can be brutal, even if there are no incidents during your week (which is rare.)

Just the fact that you have to be 24/7 _ready_ during a whole week sucks, especially when you have a family. During my on-call week, I can't go get groceries, I can't take my kid to her hockey practice, we can't go out for lunch over the weekend, etc.

It takes a toll, for sure.

<comment><USER26> The 1st time I worked at a company with "on call" we had this concern while trying to define the policy/rotation/etc. It was always "well, yeah I can be on call sure, but this specific Tuesday at 7pm I have this thing". We solved it in 5 minutes: just have a primary and a secondary that gets the page after 10 minutes. Solved. Go get your groceries, if it's bad luck and the page happens during the 45 minutes where you're out, your buddy will get it.

<comment><USER27> Yep. This was the solution for us. The secondary is the next-in-line for primary. Secondary is also first in line for helping out during incidents. This means communication with other teams, a second incident popping up (rare, but has happened), etc.

I've found that just having _someone else_ to commiserate with at midnight, if needed, really helps the mental state of on-call.

<comment><USER26> Absolutely. We had the same policy. If primary wasn't sure what to do, they could ping secondary to regroup. We even had a third "last line of defense" which was basically always the same 3 people, pinged if nothing was acked in the first 30mn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A 5 year old gist from 1 employee (out of the current ~70k SWE's employed at the company + all that have come and gone in the last 5 years) just to shit on the quality of Amazon engineering? And folks wonder why I have depression -it's not because i'm burnt out, it's because the HN crowd thinks I'm some sort of cognitive defective for working at Amazon.

<comment><USER28> Fellow happy Amazon SDE - hopefully you're not being literal saying you have depression from HN type crowds displaying their typical amount of empathy. just in case you are, take this as a friendly reminder that you're not the only person with that experience and it's easy to just stop reading the nonsense

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I know. But even when talking to friends at top companies it's like a stream of microaggressions when I've worked just as hard as they have to be where I am.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I used to be like that and then one day I realized it's just a CS job, I'm not doing open heart surgery so I shouldn't stress about it. Since then my life has been much better.

</comment><comment><USER30> I can chime in that a lot of this rings true for me. I was also an SDE-II ( started as one ). I also was loaned out to other teams. I also suffered the idiocy of being locked into 2 years of work or get saddled with a huge amount of money to pay back.

Also, I consider that my child is dead because of what happened.

See [https://amazonandmykid.com](https://amazonandmykid.com) for the full story.

<comment><USER28> I'm not sure if you're legally bound not to say certain things by the terms of the NDA you signed, or if you've simply chosen not to share some details. But I read that entire page, and who is in the wrong in that story hinges entirely on the exact events of the day you requested to go home, and exactly what you said that was considered a death threat. The extreme vagueness around those details leaves me with no ability to form an opinion on whether your manager is a whip-cracking sociopath, if you have serious anger management issues and are blaming the consequences of them on anyone but yourself, or somewhere in the middle.

Are you willing to give more details?

<comment><USER30> I wrote a long response to this. Hacker news then presented me with a message "Your comment was too long".

Short version: Think what you will. My story serves as a warning to anyone who thinks you can survive the Amazon hell. I may have issues of various sorts, but no one should have to tolerate the "Amazon way" or be subjected to their insanity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Amazon's 401k plan is terrible when compared to competing companies. I cancelled my Amazon interview the second I saw the terms of it. I had to find the details for myself because the info packet the recruiter sent me, conveniently left out any details except that there was a 401k plan and some matching.

Only 50% match, and the maximum match they will pay is 2% of salary. (Competitors match 1:1, high or no limit).

Three years vesting on the match. (Immediate vesting elsewhere, e.g. Google).

No match on catch-up contributions. (WTF? Naked age discrimination as policy?)

Source: [https://www.amazon.jobs/en/landing_pages/benefitsoverview- us](https://www.amazon.jobs/en/landing_pages/benefitsoverview-us)

<comment><USER32> This might be helpful to you [http://perks.guide/](http://perks.guide/)

<comment><USER33> Is this accurate? I definitely do a mega backdoor roth and I'm at Amazon.

<comment><USER28> It was accurate until this year - Amazon switched 401k providers from Vanguard to Fidelity. I don't remember all the details but after tax contributions (which are required for doing a mega backdoor) are possible now, but weren't before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> A former colleague of mine suspects that Amazon is going to eventually run out of developers to hire because of how rapidly they burn through them.

Yet to know anyone who lasted more than a year or two there. Obviously some do, but they go through an enormous number of people.

<comment><USER35> No, they won't run out of people to hire but the cost to hire them will go up. At a certain point, they may have to pay more and offer more perks to attract the level of talent they want. The culture will mellow once the payroll expense starts climbing.

<comment><USER36> Yeah, I'd probably go back if they started paying more than G/FB/N.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> > I mention on-call duty because it is "peculiar" in that the only other > profession requiring this kind of responsiveness is doctors

Uh, not even close. I used to get up at 4am EST to trade European markets for a hedge fund. I was on call 24/7/365\. I had my laptop and Bloomberg fingerprint scanner with me on any trip I took.

And this is just my experience. I have had many friends in engineering, management consulting, fin tech, etc who have similar demands made of them.

I'm not saying it's right, but it is part of the rules of the game that we all sign up to. There's a reason all of the aforementioned jobs pay so well.

<comment><USER38> In the military, we had a 2 hour recall for a large chunk of our battalion, about 200 people for a few months at a time. If you got a call, you were expected to be ready to go in less than 2 hours. Social norms meant the expectation was closer to 45 minutes than 2 hours.

I think oncall is a common requirement for anything involving large sums of money, treatment of high risk injuries, or geopolitical power struggles.

<comment><USER37> One I hadn't even considered (typical stereotype here: no friends who are in the armed forces). But yeah I imagine loads of others (military, EMT, police) are in a similar situation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I've never understood how their Apple TV apps (Amazon Prime Video, Twitch, etc.) are _so_ bad.

If the Prime TV app was better I'd honestly probably cancel Netflix. But as-is I avoid using it completely.

Then I interviewed for a mobile position at Amazon. Now I understand. A Facebook iOS recruiter _laughed_ at my experience.

<comment><USER40> Is Facebook iOS engineering supposed to be impressive for laughing you off? I don't understand how they let slip crashing any app that used their iOS SDK: [https://github.com/facebook/facebook-ios- sdk/issues/1374](https://github.com/facebook/facebook-ios-sdk/issues/1374).

<comment><USER27> I think the parent means that in a Facebook interview they shared a laugh at how terrible the Amazon interview was.

<comment><USER41> Makes sense. They probably meant to say "...laughed at my story".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> > I mention on-call duty because it is "peculiar" in that the only other > profession requiring this kind of responsiveness is doctors, literal > lifesavers. When you go on-call for the first time, it's terrifying and > tells you "holy crap, this is serious."

A key difference is that the oncall engineer is usually able to directly influence the quality and robustness of the systems being watched. Sort of like preventative medicine, but much more direct.

Crappy teams make crappy software that pages often (or not at all if their ops fails to write any meaningful alerts)

<comment><USER43> I don't trust an engineer that can't troubleshoot their own software running in production. I think the "you write it, you own it" adage is really smart and raises all tides when engineers are empowered to root cause each issue.

<comment><USER44> I think the second part is super important though, but it's often forgotten.

If you work on a buggy-enough system, and don't do the root causing, then you will have incredibly bad on-call experiences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> The on call stuff sounds outright dystopian to me, it's not even legal in my country. More places should think about adopting something akin to France's El Khomri law's ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_disconnect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_disconnect)) and ensure that every citizen has enough time to recuperate from work and isn't pestered by their employer 24/7.

<comment><USER46> What was stated seems pretty typical on small teams who manage critical systems. How are critical systems managed otherwise without having to 3x your team (assuming you want 24hr coverage with a 8hr workday)?

<comment><USER45> >How are critical systems managed otherwise without having to 3x your team (assuming you want 24hr coverage with a 8hr workday)?

They typically aren't, you need to hire more people then. In anything defined as critical I would suggest that being well rested is also a requirement rather than having a team of people who are so overworked they develop mental illness.

<comment><USER26> Doesn't make sense financially. You're gonna triple the size of your team, just to make sure that this one time of the week someone will restart the DB?

I would much rather bite the bullet, be on call a week a month or so and use the budget for something else.

<comment><USER47> You don't need to keep the primary development team as primary oncall 24/7\. "Hire people to keep an eye on things off-hours, follow playbooks when necessary, and escalate to the right people if they can't resolve" is a reasonable pattern that folks have done for decades the world over. You get less incentive alignment perhaps, but it really isn't hard to come up with ways to make creating work for another team unappealing.

<comment><USER48> That is an anti-pattern and leads to burnout for ops teams.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> > I mention on-call duty because it is "peculiar" in that the only other > profession requiring this kind of responsiveness is doctors

My only advice to this person is:

\- talk to someone who does customer-facing tech support in your own company

\- never take a job in customer-facing tech support

<comment><USER50> I'm not sure where they got the notion that emergency services are the only other field where people go on-call. Plenty of industries operate 24/7.

I worked in high volume manufacturing where process engineers could be on-call 24/7-365 unless you explicitly asked a backup to cover you during a vacation or weekend. Depending on the part of the process you owned, that might mean a middle-of-the-night call a couple times a month or several times a week. No human lives on the line, just lots of money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> A part of me feels bad sometimes cause I doubt I'm good enough for some FAANG company...then I read stuff like this and I think, yah, ability or no, I don't think I'm type of person who would want to partake in this culture.

</comment><comment><USER12> We changed the url from [https://gist.github.com/bricker/cb811b3b86d767124801](https://gist.github.com/bricker/cb811b3b86d767124801) to the original source it points to, which also lists its date instead of obscuring it.

</comment><comment><USER52> I was a contractor at a company that announced that developers would have to work through the nights and on weekends at times, and they couldn't take any extra work days off. So, if you had to do an upgrade to production and it took all night, you were still expected to work all day too. Oh, and you didn't get paid any extra for the overtime either. One person asked about work-life balance, and the response from that manager was that when you chose a career as a developer, you signed up for this. This is what happens when this kind of abuse becomes rampant. The managers then declare it comes with the job. Such BS! BTW, that guy quit along with anyone else reasonably competent.

<comment><USER41> That blows. Seems like the company was wholly incompetent and rotten with comments like that. And as a contractor, you should always bill overtime so your unavailable time isn't abused.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> > On-call wasn't (and isn't) too terrible for my team. At first we averaged 1 > page every 2 weeks; now we're up to about 1 a week.

Wow, I wish I had once a week. This is way better than my previous employer/role. I was on-call for months straight, and would get paged multiple times a night, every day, even at 2am, 4am. I had to carry my laptop to dinners, date nights, game nights, etc.

I got burned out and moved careers into a role that never has on-call. I don't get to code much anymore, but I've found other things to enjoy

<comment><USER54> Yeah On-call can vary greatly by company, although how On-call issues are handled can have a huge impact on your perception of a job.

At one previous employer, you were on a 2-week rotation for on-call.

But Every time you were on call, it was the same set of problems, always at the same inconvenient times (Mid sunday afternoon, random weekdays but always between 3-5AM, etc.) Admittedly often they were NOPs (Oh, alert came in, but when you check the system it's fine.)

But we didn't fix the false alarms. And we didn't fix the recurring real problems either; the Org's view was that was the entire purpose of the On-call person; that middle child you send to pay the loan shark not-quite enough because you don't care what happens to them.

At later employer, I actually had to deal with -more- on call issues, both in severity and frequency. And yet, I hate being on-call less, because at the very least when we find problems on-call the org puts a focus on fixing them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Dunno, I read through half of the post and have not figured what actually the problem there? If 15 minutes you have not responded while on "pager duty" your manager get notified? Phew. I mean if you are infrastructure worker, you kinda need to go and fix the infrastructure that is expected by everyone to be efficient and up 24/7\. Imagine, your internet goes down once a month, you will be among first to complain how sh... I mean bad, your internet provider is and threaten to switch to other option. Internet goes down often, and there is a person or a group that goes to the affected location and fixes the issue during day/night/rain/snow. Now think about people who's livelihoods depend on AWS to be up, or customers being able to purchase products on amazon.com... business owner, track driver, manufacturing worker, and bunch of people who have work and income because those workers do. If programmer's job was so easy, everyone would be able to do it. Problem with today's society is that we see people's success and desire a piece of it, we do not see work and sweat that was put into achieving that success. Programming not for everyone, if you not used to stare at the screen 16 hours/day, maybe there is different career for u somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER56> >\- Near-Instant Gratification

>There is something great about having code you wrote be actually executed by thousands of people every day. So few people get to show their friends and family a site they visit often and say "I did that thing there." Maybe it will wear off eventually, but it's still my favorite.

It has never worn off for me! I've worked in automotive for over 20 years, and it feels great every time I see something I worked on drive by.

</comment><comment><USER57> > Revisit your bonus/relocation payback strategy ... if that's what you need > to keep employees, that's fucked.

The reason for it isn't employee retention. It's to stop people from accepting a job from Amazon just so someone will pay for their move to Seattle and give them a free bonus.

Would people do this? Yes. I've seen them try. It also discourages people who aren't serious about the job.

</comment><comment><USER58> I don't want to minimize what this guy went through - anything that takes you to the edge is too much - but I can't help but interpret this story as a story of professional & personal growth rather than an example of why Amazon sucks (Sidenote: I happen to agree they suck, just not for this particular reason).

How many people in other professions have had similar experiences from the perspective of intensity/amount of work? I-banking is _built_ around this level of intensity for years, and I've heard similar stories from people at other tech companies, plus VC, PE, consulting, medical residencies...

My big takeaway here is much less that Amazon sucks than that in a high pressure job, it's critical to know your limits: "I can go so far and no further." The author seems to acknowledge this; why are so many comments implying Amazon is uniquely terrible?

<comment><USER59> amznymous here

You are absolutely right.

As other have pointed out, it's probably 1000x worse to be a doctor saddled with med school debt who is literally operating on people. I will not argue that, ever.

But that's also not me and so I told the story I could; mine.

I really want this to be more about how vital professional and personal boundaries are.

While also highlighting how certain company behaviors make it challenging (on/call, etc.)

Before Amazon I had worked at a company that (due to the nature of the work) necessitated a strict 9-5. You literally couldn't work a minute more.

Before that, I was in college and had hourly jobs.

So you could say this was my first big-boy job with salary-hours, as well as _real_ responsibilities (rent, car, wife, life)

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I have had a different experience with working at AWS. I've heard really terrible things working in retail, but AWS has been a pretty good place to work, with normal 9-5 hours. I can go more into detail about how my experience has been different from the article if people want.

<comment><USER61> I'm a software engineer at Amazon in Retail. (This is just my opinion, I don't speak for Amazon in any official capacity, etc.)

Different software products have different severity levels. For my team, the oncall burden is not so bad. We have an internally facing tool. When we do get paged, it's usually requires acknowledging a ticket, a few minutes to validate something, sending an email out, and that's it. For teams with more externally visible products, a particular page can be stressful, but my understanding is they also spend a lot of time in ensuring system robustness in order to limit the number of pages. The "15 minute" response time the post referred to is generally to acknowledgement - the expected time to resolution can be quite variable.

The working hours are generally pretty good as well. The general expectation is that you're not working crazy hours.

I've ran into "project crunch time" at Amazon, but the experience at Amazon was like everywhere else I've worked. This also will vary by team: teams that need to make changes to support Black Friday obviously have a pretty hard deadline. Or if your team is getting ready for a re:invent announcement, there's no way to work around that. But from what I've heard, teams that have such a hard deadline also have a corresponding quiet period in December or January.

Most people I know within Amazon that get burned out on one team and feel like there's no resolution within that team (or just feel like they've had enough with one area) solve that by switching teams. This is generally pretty easy, since most teams are hiring at any time, and they would rather take an internal transfer than an outside hire.

Amazon has a pretty good system around having a senior individual contributor track (I haven't worked for any of the other big tech companies, my understanding is that they're similar). Part of the benefit of this system is that SDE1's/SDE2's have someone to reach out to for helping navigate management. Anyone at Amazon who reads this who is experiencing something similar to the OP should feel free to reach out to one of the senior engineers for help.

Overall, I don't doubt that the post in the original article is that person's experience, but it has not been my experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I enjoyed reading this.

'Encourage employees to be critical not just of ideas, but also of expectations.'

From my experience as a developer; I've never really been involved in the process of setting expectations. Something I find incredibly frustrating at times. It's like sure you can give your opinion but it's too late to make any difference. I think it comes back to the main point in the article about open communication.

I think open communication needs to be inclusive. However, that's rarely the case at least in terms of setting business expectations. It's only natural to want to be involved in shaping some objective or some expectation that impacts you and for which you may be one of the more qualified to discuss.

<comment><USER63> >I've never really been involved in the process of setting expectations

Nobody will ask you. You have to be upfront about it from the start.

Request time estimations and fully fledged requirement definitions from the start. Review them before accepting a project, push back against overly ambitious plans and propose changes that allow you to deliver value quickly and iteratively. It's easier to react to surprises if you are able to test the ideas as you go.

Stick to the plan as much as you can. Push back against changes to the requirements if they're not vital. Let others know about blockers clearly, as soon as you run into them. If you get behind schedule, communicate it properly. Stuff happens, unfortunately, and deadlines not being met is a part of life. You just get better at estimating with experience.

There's no way the upper echelons will adapt if they don't receive input timely and loudly enough. If your boss is any kind of decent, they will listen to you and trust your input. If they don't listen, then you should reconsider your current job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> This is why you don't let upper management walk all over you.

I would personally love to tell Bezos to "fuck off" if the ask was unreasonable. Worst case scenario, I have to find a new job (which I usually have a few companies/recruiters in my back pocket), or best case scenario I get "respected" and the deadline is pushed to a more reasonable date. Typically massive corporations like this put you on a "performance improvement plan" which can give you few weeks to a few months to find a new job (or "improve").

Also learn to make friends with your teammates in the trenches. Presenting a push back to management in a unified front is much more compelling than a 1:1.

</comment><comment><USER65> Amazon seems to be an annoying company to work for, even overseas.

1-datapoint (@India): Their interviewers have uniformly managed to be both obnoxious, and somehow simultaneously also quite insipid.

</comment><comment><USER66> _" If paged, you have 15 minutes to get online and respond to the page. If you don't, your manager is paged. You do NOT want this to happen."_

I want it to happen. I'd like a word.

<comment><USER67> > _I want it to happen. I 'd like a word._

You could be shown the door in no-time. Amazon has forced attrition and the manager decides who gets the cull. They may make a mountain out of a mole to further their objectives.

<comment><USER68> As someone who came from a similar environment (MSFT during the stack ranking days), the forced attrition and manager's arbitrarily blackballing employees are the ingredients of the toxic stew. If a manager hates your guts, there's really nothing you can do, even if you are great at your job.

<comment><USER69> Does your manager love your guts? Are you good at your job? Hopefully that paycheck can bleach the guilt of your colleagues losing their jobs because you are good at yours. That toxicity could _also_ be because they are either selecting or creating people who are okay with this.

<comment><USER68> Yes, yes, and thankfully I left that environment. Now I work in the public sector, I guess you could say. Mostly because of the gas-lighting of reviews and performance "feedback." I've been on both sides of it, and seeing that I'm the same person, it really made it obvious how arbitrary it is.

I feel like it's common wisdom now that forced culling is not a great strategy and has lots of perverse incentives, but still not universal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> GitHub and Gists seems to alot of people's go to place for writing these days. I'll take it over Medium but still seems a bit odd.

<comment><USER71> > GitHub and Gists seems to alot of people's go to place for writing these > days. I'll take it over Medium but still seems a bit odd.

IMO it's the lowest effort blogging platform (for people who already know how to use git). You don't have to go to a webpage - just write some text in the editor of your choice.

You don't even need to use something like Hugo since Github will render markdown files properly.

<comment><USER70> If you're just writing some throwaway content then sure, I guess the low effort is worth it. But if you want to write more than a single post it's probably better to spin up either your own blog or somewhere else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Ex Amazon here.

> SDE II basically means a software developer with at least 2–3 years of > industry experience

If this is true, the hiring bar has been lowered incredibly.

<comment><USER73> Most of the campus hires that I know or have seen in the last 5 years became SDE2 is 1.5/2 years.

<comment><USER72> It's quite shocking compared to how it was 10 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> >I mention on-call duty because it is "peculiar" in that the only other profession requiring this kind of responsiveness is doctors, literal lifesavers. When you go on-call for the first time, it's terrifying and tells you "holy crap, this is serious."

... or literally thousands of people in the military right now, oil rig work, countless other IT help desk jobs, etc.

</comment><comment><USER75> > During the hiring process, on-call is not mentioned in any way

Then next:

> are you willing to work nights and/or weekends

To be fair I'd say this is mention enough.

If someone is willing to (or has to) look the other way at the time of hiring when something like this was explicitly said, then even a "hey, we have on- call here, you fine with that?" would be okay.

<comment><USER76> I think it goes both ways (in fact, most of this post seems to go both ways in that Amazon sounds brutal but OP could have taken actions to mitigate it). If your team is going to be requiring on-call, you should say that during the interview process. "Are you willing to work nights and/or weekends" is indicative, but is still too vague. Some might interpret that as just "sometimes you might have to work late if you are on a tight deadline", not as an on-call situation.

However on the interviewee's side, if you see something in a job description that asks if you're willing to work nights and weekends, that should be an immediate indicator to you that you should ask why you possibly would have to work nights/weekends and in what capacity. It's the interviewee's responsibility to ask questions like this even if the employer isn't immediately forthcoming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> >Be upfront and as precise as possible with what a position entails. "Working alongside smart and passionate people" is lazy hiring.

I understand that this person was coming straight out of school, but the onus is on the applicant to figure out more about the job during the interview process.

<comment><USER78> Interviewers, if they're coached properly by the organization, will lie. "Sell the candidate on the company" is a thing. Human beings aren't conditioned to have their skepticism alarms ramped up to 100% constantly in every interaction. At some point a certain level of trust to be honest with one another is required for society to have any cohesion. In my view businesses, especially software/tech companies, are quite poor at this on a good day and frequently work in ways that undermine it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> Based on my experience with the various AWS SDK libraries, I don't think Amazon has very good developers, or perhaps they have good developers but a poor development culture. The architecture is convoluted, heavily OOP and just generally reminds me of Java in the early 2000s.

<comment><USER80> The SDK? Those are all auto-generated

<comment><USER81> That would explain why it reads like a UML diagram

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> Palantir Technologies also beats the fuck out of their coders. Be warned. Same traps.

</comment><comment><USER83> Anyone working over their contracted hours needs to realise they're being exploited by their employer. _Sometimes_ this is justified: we pay more than the going rate because we expect you to step up occasionally. Maybe it's kind of expected with Amazon in particular.

But when it descends into perma death march and your manager flings you "a few" days holiday in recompense... does that make up for it? If it doesn't, to whom has the profit gone?

<comment><USER84> These employees do not have employment contracts and do not have hours that are set by a contract.

<comment><USER83> Wait, you're saying Amazon SDEs don't have a contract?

<comment><USER85> They have a contract, but the contract will specify them as "exempt salaried" employees. That's pretty standard across the board in the tech world (as well as many other professional roles).

Exempt salaried employees aren't paid by the hour, and don't have a set number of hours they are expected to work. There is no overtime, but there's also no (contractual) penalty for working fewer than 40 hours in a week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> Really glad I got a chance to work on a team that values personal time. Overtime is basically non existent for me.

</comment><comment><USER87> As a bit of background upfront, I'm a 6+ year AWS employee who went from an intern to full-time SDEI after graduation to relatively recently an SDEIII. All of the below also specifically applies to white-collar tech employees.

There are two big issues with a lot of employees at AWS, not knowing their worth and not having backbone.

It is not a privilege to work for Amazon. It is a privilege for Amazon that you work for them. In this particular case, this person says that he was an SDE II. That's great. You should be able to pretty easily go get a job at any of the other large tech companies. You're not locked into Amazon. You likely have a CS degree. You've got a couple years of industry experience in a field where most companies can't hire fast enough.

That said, don't leave Amazon. Leave your team. Internal transfers are easy and no longer gated on you being on a team for a certain amount of time. Start talking to other people from other teams and find a good fit. Most internal transfers are about culture fit and you likely won't be asked any coding questions.

You are not obligated by anything to stay on your team. End of. Amazon is one of the largest companies in the world. Don't feel some sort of personal responsibility to stay on one team. That's just not reasonable. They'll find a way to make do without you and if they can't why do you really care? At some local mom and pop shop, sure you may not want to leaving the owner hanging but Amazon ain't that.

Yes, there are rare occurrences where an org may try to block you from leaving. In which case, again, you are a tech employee of Amazon. You should be able to transfer to another large tech company.

As far as the loaner situation goes, have backbone. I've been asked to help out another team before. I did some research and decided I didn't want to. I told my manager and that was that. If he really pressed, again, see the prior options.

Don't be afraid to escalate. Don't care about politics. Your manager may hate you for trying to escalate on them but what the effect of that in the long run? You only get a 1% pay increase on your 150K annual salary instead of a 5%? You have to go work for Microsoft for 150K instead of Amazon?

Rough oncall? Change teams.

Oncall but want to go places? Do it anyways. All teams should offer a hot spot. Yes, this probably means you can't go hiking but it doesn't mean you can't go other places. Being oncall doesn't really ever change my habits other than having to bring my laptop with me. Sure, if you're on a team getting paged regularly, that won't work but I'm not sure why you want to be on a team that gets paged regularly after hours.

Come on people. If you work for a FAANG company, you are a very highly paid employee in one of, if not the, hottest career field in the world. You are very likely in the top 10% of world wide salaries. (118K+ year according to numbers from US Social Security Admin)

</comment><comment><USER88> on-call is standard industry practice, there's nothing especially egregious about this. the difference is that some places like google pay extra for it.

<comment><USER14> Maybe we shouldn't allow companies to require on call without extra compensation?

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Hi there.

So, I wrote this. I'm the original author. I'm amznymous (still proud of that username)

It's wild to see this pop-up at the top of HackerNews 5 years later, but I'd be more than happy to answer any questions anyone has.

I'm still at Amazon and have been on a couple of different teams since then, but this was definitely written at my lowest time at Amazon. I've had low times since then and high ones as well.

I'm still an SDE II but on-track to become SDE III soon.

I've interviewed elsewhere but was either unimpressed with the company (Facebook) or the company was not impressed enough with me and asked to try again later (Google). Facebook interviewers all looked absolutely exhausted and stressed and lifeless. They zoned out in the interview and just in general left a bad taste.

One low point was when I found out (years after 2015) that the whole project that I had brutalized myself over was shutdown. Deleted. Scrapped. All of it.

It was devastating and cathartic. I've become a bit more balanced, jaded, and care-free since then. Not totally, but just a bit.

It's all just code. It's all just business and sometimes the business fails and everything you did doesn't matter anyway.

I'm still glad I wrote the paste, if it helped one person out there. Based on reddit responses, I wasn't the only one going through this.

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>=====

Since then things that help:

0\. Get that "Fuck You Money" I pinched pennies and followed Dave Ramsey's approach to get 100% debt free and thriving to ensure I never was locked in as I felt I was.

1\. Being absolute about my sleep schedule.

2\. Finding a good team. When you find a good team/manager, stick with it. Manager matters 10x more than the company

3\. Therapy. duh

4\. "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor E. Frankl

5\. "The Depression Cure" by Ilardi. This is _NOT A SUBSTITUTE_ for therapy or medication. ONLY use it as a supplement . The tl;dr is take care of your body or your mind will pay the price.

6\. Soft skills: developing skills on how to provide estimates, pushing back on deadlines, and finding compromises between what business wants and what's feasible. It sounds obvious, but sometimes it really is just as easy as saying "that will take 2 weeks, what can be cut?"

(Obvs, my opinions are my own and not my employer's)

<comment><USER89> Was your original team in retail or AWS? Also how do you figure out what team is good/bad when trying to switch teams?

<comment><USER59> I never worked in AWS

Really just gossip is what you have to go off of initially.

After you've been at the company for a bit, when you're interested in a new team, you can usually get some meet-and-greet meeting with current members on the team.

That's the time to ask really tough questions, even potentially awkward questions: how many times do you get paged? What's the worst project you've worked on? What's the average tenure of team members? When people leave the team, do they leave Amazon? (If they leave Amazon, then the team is less to blame, otherwise, beware).

<comment><USER89> I would have guessed AWS from your post since it's the more notorious one about bad WLB. As a new grad SDE1, things are bit horrifying especially since I've onboarded remotely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> I would read a book by this guy.

<comment><USER59> amznymous here

Thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> sample size</comment>


Show HN: Hordes – A WebGL based 3D mmorpg in the browser - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CMTdK61Vxo <comment><USER2> This looks cool! I'm curious: Do you intend for this to be a full-fledged MMORPG with single/multiplayer quests and character leveling/progression?

I also tried to dig a bit to find out more about you, the developer, but I couldn't find anything obvious. Regardless, excellent work, OP!</comment>


Choice. The Problem Is Choice - <AUTHOR> http://www.bsidesdc.org/history/geer.html <comment><AUTHOR> Video of Dan Geer's keynote: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbDEbfijxNY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbDEbfijxNY)</comment>


"Alister Maclin" can break Bitcoin on command - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/i-broke-bitcoin <comment><USER2> Somewhat unrelated - for those who don't know Alistair MacLean[1] was a novelist, mostly war thrillers, adventures. My grandpa - a voracious reader and a retired judge spent most of his retirement reading and walking, he turned me on to Alistair MacLean by describing his experience of reading _Ice Station Zebra_ (based on the north pole) as if "you feel the chill in your bones as you read it". So I read that, and ever sing book Alistair MacLean has authored. These were the first novels I read in English. After going through entire works of Alistair MacLean, I went through pretty much any other book I can get my hands on. And the _best_ part was finishing something, going downstairs to grandpa's room and telling him, his response was almost always - "oh yes, I read that in 19XX, love the character X doing something with Y".

Reading the title of the post was a pang of nostalgia, I can still remember him telling me about Ice Station Zebra, Night Without End, Where Eagles Dare, Guns of Navarone, Force 10 from Navarone. I miss him.

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

</comment><comment><USER3> I've never seen a more FUD headline than that. Got to love the journalistic sensationalism at play here.

To clear this up: the technique in the article is literally what we use in unit tests to check that our TX-based event code won't break under malleability. It's something that Bitcoin developers have been writing code around forever (and warning about just as long.) So truly: if there's anyone out there still writing code that assumes static TXIDs they really do deserve what's coming to them.

As I see it: the attack reaches critical mayhem in a similar way to accepting zero-conf transactions in that what you have is a consensus problem. The specific fix for TX malleability is to watch transactions based on their meaning, not their TXID (in this case "meaning" is looking at the inputs, outputs, version, timelock, etc to produce equivalent transactions.) And of course: don't accept zero-confirmation transactions.

Here's some of my ultra-1337 Python code for producing the "attack" just for laughs:

def mutate_tx(tx_hex):

        """
        Mutates a raw transaction using TX malleability in the scriptSig (specifically, the OP codes.) This function shouldn't be used beyond testing as it uses an ugly eval() hack.

        https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_Malleability
        """
        tx = CTransaction.deserialize(binascii.unhexlify(tx_hex))
        script_sig = repr(tx.vin[0].scriptSig)[9:]
        script_sig = eval("CScript([OP_1, OP_DROP, " + script_sig)
        tx.vin[0].scriptSig = script_sig
        return b2x(tx.serialize())

As you can see, there's nothing to it. Just a clueless attention whore claiming to an even more clueless journalist that he can break Bitcoin.

<comment><USER4> I think the article is confusing two different issues, the malleability attacks and the dust attacks. Amaclin seems to be behind the dust attack, which is a cheap way to DoS the blockchain by causing blocks to reach the maximum number of SIGOPS with dust transactions, preventing real transactions from going through.

More details here: [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1166928.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1166928.0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm interested to hear more about his claims that bitcoin uses more energy than other forms of currency. Can anyone speak to that?

<comment><USER6> The proof-of-waste system means that, at market equilibrium, the cost of burning electricity to mine one block and get the 25 bitcoin reward should be equal to the cost of buying it on the open market.

Currently this works out as about $7 of electricity per transaction. [https://blockchain.info/charts/cost-per- transaction](https://blockchain.info/charts/cost-per-transaction)

<comment><USER7> That is per block yes? And each block has upto 01Mb of transactions?

<comment><USER6> As fryguy says, that's $7 _per transaction_ , $12,000 per block.

Amusingly as bitcoin gets more successful and the price rises, the system gets less efficient to compensate.

<comment><USER8> That is not how it works. The system gets more efficient as transaction volume increases. The only reason the cost of running the network relative to the number of transactions currently comes out to $7 per tx is that much of the revenue miners earn is from the block subsidy of 25 BTC per 10 minutes. The subsidy is a constant, and therefore as tx volume increases, the total cost of running the network relative to the number of txs decreases.

<comment><USER9> No, _that 's_ not how it works.

Transaction volume doesn't increase with efficiency. Blocksize is capped at 1MB, and any new efficiency goes into the hashing algorithms, not the size. The Bitcoin network has always only been able to handle 1 MB of transactions every 10 minutes (~7 tx/s) and always will at this rate.

<comment><USER8> No, it is not. Efficiency increases with transaction volume. That transaction volume is currently capped at 1 MB is a separate issue from whether efficiency improves with transaction volume.

It's possible there is a misunderstanding here with me interpreting "gets more successful" as seeing its transaction volume increase, and you interpreting it to mean something else.

<comment><USER9> You can't fit more transactions into 1,048,576 bytes with more efficiency. It's pretty clear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is there source code for the attack script anywhere? It would be interesting to see if a decentralized currency can stand up to a decentralized attack.

</comment><comment><USER11> Seems like a pretty easy attack, so I expect to see it executed by others for profit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is there much profit to be made? To me the recent "stress tests" look very like disgruntled hodlers messing around for shits and giggles, and demonstrating that it costs only a few thousand dollars in bitcoins to break transaction processing.

(Love the crackier theories that /r/buttcoin are banker shills. If only banks could get hold of a few thousand dollars somewhere ...)

<comment><USER12> surely if you have a large short position on bitcoin, you may profit as people lose confidence?

<comment><USER6> It's not as easy to take out a short position as it sounds.

<comment><USER13> With all the bitcoin fanatics who are convinced bitcoins are inherently rare and thus destined to increase in value, there are certainly opportunities for short options.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>