Project idea to reduce student fees and increase teacher's income - <AUTHOR> A week ago I submitted a post for garnering comments from HN community. Unfortunately that post was buried deep into the barrage of all other posts on Wednesday. I am posting the message again so that I get some valuable feedback from this forum.
I am at present ideating on a platform to help reduce student fees and increase teaching and non-teaching staff income. The details are on GitLab here: https://gitlab.com/bsldld/s/blob/master/README.md
Any comments, suggestions, critic, guidance, help and participation is most welcome.
Thank you! <comment><USER2> Why not just raise taxes and provide free college education and job training programs?

Do trust fund students never need to pay because they never take a job?

If a student dies (suppose 20 people in the class of 2024 die in a bus accident), do the teachers make nothing extra?

This gives a strong monetary inventive to only teach children with a high chance of making money. Who will want to teach poor students?

What about the teachers of special needs children? Some of the more severely disabled are unlikely to ever have a job which pays much money, if at all? Doesn't this scheme punish those teachers?

"will make better income in the long-term for their lifetime"

That's not how the funding works. Teachers decide based on overall compensation, and the system can re-balance to compensate. Staff and schools will get money from this system, so the school board will reduce other funding.

Here's some related examples:

When I was young, Florida introduced the state lottery and justified it by saying the profits would go to education. And some voted for it because of that.

So if the lottery regularly brings in $50 million to state education, the state reduces the state funding by $50 million.

Or, a company which says "we offer free food for lunch, so you don't need as high a salary because you don't need to buy or bring your own lunch."

<comment><AUTHOR> > Why not just raise taxes and provide free college education and job training > programs?

With the present system there is no correlation or synchronisation between funding, teaching, outcome and requirement of the society. Raising taxes will not help for this reason. The platform I am proposing removes this disconnect.

> Do trust fund students never need to pay because they never take a job?

The proposed platform diminishes the need for trust funds or any form of funding for students. The whole point of the platform is to make education accessible to students from monetary perspective.

> If a student dies (suppose 20 people in the class of 2024 die in a bus > accident), do the teachers make nothing extra?

In the present system too, if a student dies then that stops future "income" from that student to the school. It may not immediately affect the staff, but it does have impact due to loss of income to the school. In the proposed platform, the teachers will not get income from the student who has died but still get income from other students. That normalises things, infact the teacher is better off with the proposed I am proposing.

> This gives a strong monetary inventive to only teach children with a high > chance of making money. Who will want to teach poor students?

How can one say with certainty that students who are not good academically will not do better in life. There are many examples where "poor" students have done better than "outstanding" students.

> What about the teachers of special needs children? Some of the more severely > disabled are unlikely to ever have a job which pays much money, if at all? > Doesn't this scheme punish those teachers?

Yes, that is one area that needs to look into. With the burden of funding reduced from the government and institutions such as trust funds, these entities can then divert their funds to special needs teachers. But I agree that more will need to be done from the proposed platform as well.

> That's not how the funding works. Teachers decide based on overall > compensation, and the system can re-balance to compensate.

In the proposed platform there won't be a need to re-balance anything. In fact teachers(infact everyone in the education sector) get cummulatively increasing pay every year.

> Staff and schools will get money from this system, so the school board will > reduce other funding.

Again, in the proposed platform the school board does not have to reduce anything. Actually, the whole point of the platform is to tie real outcome to compensation. This will help increase the quality of education as well.

<comment><USER3> Will this require government approval?

<comment><AUTHOR> No. But it will certainly reduce financial burden and management from the point of view of government. So I hope governments join the platform as it will help them make better plans for education sector.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Invincible Apple: 10 Lessons From the Coolest Company Anywhere - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/node/1659056/print

<comment><USER2> <http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1904.html></comment>


Ask HN: How did your software team scale up or scale down? - <AUTHOR> What was the team size / makeup at the beginning, and at the end? How long did it take? <comment><USER2> I've done both.

Fastest I've scaled a large team was from 6 to over 130 in just about 1 year. Fastest I've had to down size was ~14 to 2 in 2 weeks.

I've scaled many other teams between those ranges and timeframes over the years. Like going from 1 to 20 in just over a month, that was crazy. Adding 20 people when you are already 200 people isn't nearly as hard as adding 20 when you are starting at 1.

Really depends on type of people and job functions you are hiring IMO. My large team scaling was ~98% engineers, which in general is far harder to do quickly than many others I have done. Knowledge workers are harder to find, recruit and retain than others just because in general they are independent thinkers and so mission is just as important as getting paid & benefits (at least it has been, but I see some changes lately). When hiring retail, manufacturing, factory type labor it is almost always pay/benefits which act as the major hurdle, but in general that is easier to overcome than selling many people on the company, goals and mission.

Downsizing is "easy" to do overall, but hard to do quickly & correctly.</comment>


Ask HN: What about a platform for hiring teams instead of individuals? - <AUTHOR> We see a lot of startups that use existing platforms for individual hiring to team up freelancers. However building teams on in individual hires take too much time and effort, with no knowledge about compatibility or assurance regarding the resulting efficiency of the team.
Startups need more than an group of people, they need an efficient team to move fast. As Aristotle said "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts".
What do you think of a platform where recruiters can search and hire teams based on their portfolio and soft skills, while still having access to each individual technical expertise? <comment><USER3> I've almost hired full teams for my clients a few times as a recruiter.

There tend to be a couple issues with this model. For one, what if the hiring company interviews the team and wants 7 of the 10? The team has to make a decision to either look for work where they can all be on the team, or abandon members.

The other issue is timing. The team members need to all be available at (or around) the same time, and they typically will have conflicting interests related to other offers or ventures they are considering.

I've had situations where a startup closed and the team wanted to stay together, and they'd ask me to approach companies on their behalf - <USER2> like an acquihire without the company. You would think a company might pay each member a bit more for a team experienced in working together, as in theory they should be more productive more quickly.

From a platform perspective I think it would be pretty difficult to build just based on how to categorize teams and/or individuals. Any given search of the platform seems like it would yield very similar results.

<comment><USER4> > There tend to be a couple issues with this model. For one, what if the > hiring company interviews the team and wants 7 of the 10? The team has to > make a decision to either look for work where they can all be on the team, > or abandon members.

Exactly. We've been approached a few times by intact teams all wanting to join. My approach has always been that I love talking to people in this situation, but that our contracts, interviews, and offers are all between the company and the individual and that while we may have an initial project in mind where they'd all work together, that that was not guaranteed to hold true over time.

I'll also ask them individually if a case like the 7/10 above happens, would they prefer to get 7 offers or 0 offers? (I don't want to be the source of telling Alex, Becky, and Charlie that I didn't think Dave was strong enough to join the company if they don't want to hear that.)

<comment><USER5> If Alex, Becky, and Charlie have been working with Dave for some time and think he's just fine, you might consider that your short interview appraisal of him might be flawed.

<comment><USER4> That's possible (and we'd take that into account in interviewing, as would any sensible company).

It's also possible that he's a "really nice guy" and close friend of theirs and they're blind to his weakness.

It's also possible that he's a very strong contributor in a domain and skillset that the hiring company simply doesn't need.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hiring a team is often the basis for buying and selling consulting services. The premium that consultants charge is often based on the value of having assembled a team with specific expertise. The other way teams are bought and sold is via the outright purchase of companies.

It is hard to see why and how a functioning and talented team would be assembled outside those circumstances. I mean a team built to sell suggests that the members are not ideally busy solving technical problems.

<comment><USER7> I've been studying this whole Team as a Service approach to offering consulting services for my software consulting company. It's interesting, and something I'm going to explore as I like the idea of a customer hiring a subset of my team as they're already optimised working with one another.

As you quite rightly point out this is a long way away from OPs original vision.

<comment><USER8> This is the way the big guys (Accenture, TCS, etc) went a few years back. Keep that in mind as you try this -- the further you go down this route, the more the market pressures will force you into an offshore sweatshop model. A lot of product design shops have gone to more of an agency model, which makes sense here too.

It actually works pretty well as long as you realize that the "accounting" works differently offshore -- for every good developer you get, you're paying to have someone's dead weight cousin on the project as well. In the end, it's still cheaper than on-shore, just don't expect everyone to pull equal weight.

<comment><USER7> I totally see the upside of taking an Accenture et al approach but I can't stomach the offshore sweatshop model. In the early days I tried offshore and the quality simply isn't there. I can't sacrifice the quality of what we put out just to make more £££'s.

<comment><USER8> It's gotten a lot better as everyone figured out the model, tooling and process. As long as you have someone onshore responsible for quality who doesn't let offshore get away with sloppy work, the model can produce high- quality products. The key is having stable teams offshore, and building skills in those teams in the same ways you would build them in an on-shore team.

It's all about learning what work to do on-shore (anything involving client contact / communication, like requirements gathering) and how to package and hand off requirements to offshore.

The big consulting firms will have an advantage over small ones in this model though, because hiring/training developers becomes an operational task that you're doing _all the time_. If you can grapple with the training and skills development you end up needing to do offshore, the model does work very well.

It _will_ distance you from the technology side of the business, however... and soon enough you'll find that you're working in professional services rather than software development. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Stripe does this with BYOT: [https://stripe.com/blog/bring-your-own- team](https://stripe.com/blog/bring-your-own-team)

I've also worked at multiple organizations now where a great trick is to hire one "influencer" and then slowly hire everyone they know.

<comment><USER10> I don't think I've ever seriously considered packing up and moving before -- but this would. I would move to work at Stripe with a great team.

I even have some team members in mind ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> One significant problem is that teams have much more negotiating power than individuals. Which is why teams that stay together are consulting agencies.

To put it simply: The software development department of a company might bring the company $10 mil value. A consulting agency with great sales would bill them $9 mil to do the work. Individually hired developers might be paid a total of $1 mil.

If the company hires an entire team, eventually the team figures out that they bring $10 mil value and can easily negotiate their pay up to that because they coordinate together. Individual developers almost never coordinate like this.

</comment><comment><USER12> You can't validate an idea by posting on HN and decide what to do by reading the (overwhelmingly negative) comments alone. You would get the same negative responses if you were Travis Kalanick ("hey guys what do you think of starting a ride share app") or Brian Chesky.

You have to "get out of the building" (Steve Blank) and talk to your potential customers.

<comment><USER13> While you may not get validation, you will get a critical analysis of your idea from multiple perspectives. I've already seen some responses with amazing insights that would've taken an inordinate amount of time to gather.

<comment><USER6> The shortcoming of that analysis (and I've commented here) is that my comment is based on what I imagine the service to entail rather than what the OP imagines it to entail. Part of that is that the description is thin and could probably use more work at least in the form of diagrams showing the mechanism. But most of my imagining is a bias when I see the word 'platform' toward assuming the premise is "If I build it, they will come" without talking to "they".

I mean, the odds that I would use the service are less than the odds that I will be hiring a team in the near future and the odds that I will hire a team in the near future are approximately zero. So yeah I've got a thoughtful analysis but not from the point of view of a potential user.

Or to put it another way, an inordinate amount of time talking to possible users is much more productive than a few minutes talking to non-potential users or several months building a proto-type. It is also much much harder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Please checkout our startup: [https://www.superteam.io/](https://www.superteam.io/)

We're currently accepting closed beta testers. We're a platform designed to create teams with freelancers. Our mission is to make freelancing easy as possible, through team collaboration and specialization.

<comment><USER15> * Why do I have to download an __8MB __payload on load, most of which consists of 1MB+ PNGs, which aren 't even visible until I scroll?

* Why are you doing some unintuitive scroll-jacking?

* Why are you using React for literally a single scrollable page?

* Why are you putting the scroll position into the URL instead of somewhere like local storage? It's annoying that I can't even leave the page without pressing back multiple times.

ugh

<comment><USER14> Thank you for the awesome feedback. :-) I am sorry if it frustrated you.

Sorry about the mega payload. I was still in process of optimizing it when this thread came out 5am this morning (I saw it during my morning jog). I knew we had to get this out there ASAP.

Scroll-jacking is annoying, I know. I'm in the process of fixing it. I think we need to optimize our designs first.

I'm using React with next.js, which makes deployment + development super simple.

The point of scroll position was for URL shortcuts, sorry about that! I'll disable the history and maybe that will make things better.

<comment><USER15> Lol now I feel bad for perhaps coming off a bit too harsh. I appreciate you taking my feedback into consideration. Best of luck with your company!

<comment><USER14> You had strong valid points :)

Thank you for the feedback! Look forward to hear from us again. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A company called Elevator is trying to do that. From [https://goelevator.com/](https://goelevator.com/) :

> The world's first team hiring platform. > Assemble your best colleagues > today and start receiving full-time or freelance team jobs.

<comment><USER17> Thanks for pointing out that we're already doing this at Elevator. I'm the CEO - AMA.

<comment><USER18> Where are most of your roles located?

<comment><USER17> We have teams from all over and try to find the best for them. Our current focus is in San Francisco and Seattle, and are helping a handful of teams and companies throughout the U.S. and neighbors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I haven't been involved with outsourcing for a long time, but back when the company I was working for was outsourcing some work to Indian developers, we outsourced to a team rather than individuals. This was the standard practice at the firm we worked with. Essentially, the team consisted of one guaranteed long-term member who was our primary contact, a small group of senior developers we got to know (and train) who were usually dedicated to our project, and a larger group of junior developers who rotated around projects as needed. We generally didn't know who the junior devs were; the seniors and the manager were responsible for verifying and guaranteeing the quality of their work. My understanding is that we paid a monthly rate based on the amount of work the overall team would do. If the seniors could do the work themselves they got paid more, and if they had to share the work with juniors they got paid less. Basically, they sub-contracted to the juniors.

This arrangement might've worked well for us if the seniors and manager could've kept the quality consistent, but they couldn't. A couple of them were really good, but most were not and problems caused by the juniors kept leaking through to us. At one point I even had to entirely scrap a project their team had worked on, and redo it all myself. (That's one case where I have evidence of being a 10x developer, at least on that project and relative to that team.)

This isn't a great argument for teams vs individuals though, because a lot of the issues we had were more to do with the cultural and logistical difficulties of outsourcing from US to India and the company we were working with, rather than the consulting model.

</comment><comment><USER20> Some thoughts.

This kind of service might be much more valuable to huge corporations rather than startups. BigCo, Inc. is more likely to have enough cash lying around to hire an extended team all at once. Also, BigCo, Inc. is more likely to suddenly need X, Y, and Z skills to build upon recently acquired product ABC, where hiring a team with said specialty makes sense.

My uncle has been working on the same team for roughly two decades. They've migrated between companies together countless times. I think the main reason they've been able to keep the gang together is because they have a very niche specialty (within the domain of DSP hardware). This kind of service may be more valuable for finding those kinds of niche teams, rather than general BFF web devs.

</comment><comment><USER21> Isn't a consulting firm the obvious rational economic conclusion of this? Surely a firm specializing in one area would earn more than a collective group of individuals.

</comment><comment><USER22> Hiring teams will also mean they would be leaving together. If that is unplanned then your project(s) could really be in a pickle. Cheaper to have backup for individuals as opposed to teams.

<comment><USER23> But that's the originating company's problem, not that of the individuals in a team. If anything, if a company endures an overnight exodus of talent it should probably review how it's paying and treating its existing employees.

<comment><USER4> I think neebz's comment was more along the lines of the company angle. Company B is hiring a team from company A. Maybe company A screwed up somehow.

The hiring manager at company B has to be thinking, "OK, what happens when company C comes along 18 months from now; am I at higher risk of losing this new team all at once?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I was on a team that tired this - we Formed, Stormed, Normed and Performed at $big_company then all wanted to leave at once after a change in management. We touted ourselves around as a ready-made team and nearly got hired by a couple of places but it didn't happen. A platform where we could have marketed ourselves to a much larger range of companies would have been great.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm not sure how effective it would be for all the same reasons that have been listed below. But I can say that a friend of mine and I just asked for this to be done for us. We work well together and wanted to stay on the same team, at least initially. With that in mind I think the platform would have some interest but I'm not sure how much or the difficulty in creating such a platform.

We told the recruiters to think of us as 'The Bipod' and that we would only go to a new job if we both were hired for the same team, at least initially.

They claimed they had done it one other time so I know it must be asked for occasionally. Long story short, my friend and I are leaving our current employer for the new employer next week. So it can be done. And I think it is nice to have some consistency in a new place of employment. It should make the transition easier for both of us.

</comment><comment><USER26> I did have two acquaintances from long ago when I was a humanities major at school who did this. They were roommates in college, both worked for the same lab, then worked at the same tech company after college.

They later moved to California, continued living together and working on the same teams at work. Eventually, they got separate houses but still work together as a high functioning mini-team in their own shared office at a huge SV company last I heard. It probably raised eyebrows at interviews saying they wanted to work together, but they excelled technically and in the long run it seems to have been a significant career advantage that raised their productivity and possibly even rate of learning.

The impression I get is that the situation is something almost no manager would ask for or have any desire to disrupt.

<comment><USER27> Startup coming soon...ahem ahem

<comment><USER26> I can't imagine either of them putting up with things like doing sales, handling operations or not having a steady paycheck, but anything is possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> d--b > However building teams on in individual hires take too much time and effort, > with no knowledge about compatibility or assurance regarding the resulting > efficiency of the team

Yes, but the cost of integrating too different cultures is also pretty steep. A group of people will tend to resist change stronger than an individual person. When you hire new people, they tend to bring what they know, arguing with things like "trust me, we used to do it that way in my previous company and it was great", now if the 10 people you hire think the same, you will have some serious cultural problems.

That said, I've seen a team (6 people) hire happen once, and it actually went well. The hired team was composed of super nice guys though and integrated very well with the existing team.

<comment><USER28> I can't understand why that's a problem. I am a great believer in "strong opinions, weakly held".

Now, I do agree that "trust me it's cool" is not a very good explanation, but if a good one is provided, and if it's better than what you currently have, you should listen up and change your ways.

Otherwise that new hire will go on HN ranting about you saying "trust me, we're doing it that way for a while and it's great."

Do you hire for skill or obedience?

<comment> d--b Well, in fact you do need a certain obedience from your new hires.

It's a bit optimistic to believe that every choice a team makes is 100% rational. Choice of a certain technology, coding language, coding style, management methodology, all these things are fairly cultural in the sense that people tend to push for things they're more confortable with.

My point is that integrating 2 teams of people where each group has a strong culture is a hard thing to do. It's really natural to form camps.

For instance, you're the cto of your company, and one of your principle is to limit your dependency on third party components. And you hire a team, where their culture is to build quickly on a lot of 3rd party libraries.

Nobody's fundamentally right or wrong, but the new hires will think that "we've joined this super controlling company that ties our hands and we can't do shit". And the cto will think: "crap we've hired this team of cowboys who will add a lot of operational risk to our processes".

And in a meeting where you try to explain your principles, it's way harder to impose your culture when you're fighting 10 people than if you fight 1 person.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> A "team" means more than one human, and coordination of >1 humans requires a contract.

A group of humans negotiating a contract for employment is "collective bargaining", which is a no-go for business, because divide and conquer is cheaper.

<comment><USER30> In civilised countries collective bargaining is protected by law.

<comment><USER29> I thought we were talking about the United States? :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm on the demand side of this question. When I hear "hire a team" I think "that will cost more".

With early stage business/startup capital is scarce.

We're hiring one off, using contractors for focused products that ship. Modules of the whole.

100% of the solicitors of team things all have the same juggling and sorting I have to do with individuals. But the cost is more. And the work expectation is more. We'll build your whole app!!

Great! Now I've spent a bunch of time and money to build expertise in my problem domain yet nobody is on MY team.

<comment><USER32> > Great! Now I've spent a bunch of time and money to build expertise in my > problem domain yet nobody is on MY team.

How's it different hiring individual contractors?

<comment><USER31> It is faster and costs less to evaluate one person on one narrow task than to evaluate a team on a large task.

The resulting work can be incorporated into the main by the existing staff faster.

And a startup has this pattern more often than the large project pattern that needs a team.

Once you grow, it's a different game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I've worked at a couple of places where they've hired one key "influencer" manager who then proceeded to recruit half of their old team. It can be good or bad depending on the quality of the team. When its bad, its particularly toxic. Favoritism and cliqueness run rampant. Unqualified people are promoted ahead of qualified people. Eventually, it leads to heavy employee churn.

Its risky. Perhaps if it was a whole team, who didn't need to integrate any existing employees, it could work.

</comment><comment><USER34> Wouldn't that typically be a digital agency?

<comment><USER35> Permanently and exclusively?

<comment><USER36> Hire the agency to provide a team. Request that the team work onsite. After a while, offer people to jump ship to your company. If there is a clause in the contract preventing poaching, consider that financial penalty a commission.

Happened to an agency I once worked at. We sent 6 people (4 were full time, 2 were contract) to a client to work on their project. After a year, none of the 6 people were still with the agency. The contractors were let go after the contract expiration, 3 of the 4 full timers took jobs with the client, and I left for another company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Seven years ago I had the chance to work on the development of a set of products for "team building", all interconnected as part of a "portal". So instead of looking at the market and hiring a new team, the purpose of the products were to constantly assess the current population of an organization and define possible group arrangements. You have to imagine Myers&Briggs combined with other similar assessments to score individuals according to their: analytical skills, logic, decision making style, proactiveness, care to others etc. This is something useful for large organizations having to reallocate people, form new teams for geographical expansion, for ad-hoc work, for projects, even for downsizing. One of the product managers at the time was trying to sell it to Universities, proposing that academic coordination could be building student cohorts with specific characteristics: high performers, collaborative, innovative/visionary, and even low performers, who'd be managed via a different pedagogical approach and faculty support.

The "portal" company ended up being acquired by an American Educational group and used by a couple of brands for some time until it was finally frozen 3 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER38> > a platform where recruiters can search and hire teams...

If your team is any good -- you're likely on Talent Acquisition's radar screen already. Relative to an actual platform to enable these deals, it would seem that the enthusiasm for "Aquihires" has piqued > > [https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/acquihire/](https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/acquihire/)

<comment><USER39> Do you mean peaked or piqued?

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> If there's a team of demonstrably awesome people, we already have a word for incorporating them wholesale into a company - acquisition.

If a team is truly great they are indeed more valuable than the sum of their parts so they would be selling themselves short not to shoot for a more lucrative acquisition.

Ultimate I would expect a platform such as this to either turn into an acquisition tool or be filled with mediocre teams while the good teams are acquired elsewhere.

<comment><USER41> It's surprisingly hard to find the acqui-hire candidates. Teams strive to present a healthy face until they're dead.

Maybe we need an anonymous matchmaking platform, no reputational risk to the team for signaling 'pivoting' to getting aquihired before they run out of runway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> This is an anti-capitalistic proposition. The companies don't want strong bond between employees. The simple idea that employees could have stronger bonds between themselves than for their benevolent company is utter anti- capitalistic.

Everyone is responsible just for themselves in a rat race competition. We are just individuals. Unions are bad. Organization is bad. Agglomerations are bad.

Move on.

<comment><USER43> I read a lot of anti-capitalism jibberish on HN & Reddit but I think this one takes the cake.

Then again, I DO recall when my CEO gave speeches about "fostering less teamwork" and that other time he flipped the table at the company happy hour when he overheard an engineer invite a sales guy over to his apartment. OH and not to mention my company's strict policy on NO employee referrals for hiring... Hmm maybe you're onto something!

<comment><USER42> This is supposed to be sarcastic

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Wait, isn't HN a platform where one could find teams?

Let's try it...

If you are a team good at the things in my profile or on my LinkedIn, and would be interested to become full time employees in exchange for a guaranteed global scale "customer" problem to solve for one of 5 largest global banks – I will hire you.

If this works, we'll report back here that HN can be a match maker between companies and entire dev teams.

<comment><USER44> Doesn't work like that. OP is talking about a company that would assemble a team that matches those requirements, not one that finds teams that already exist somewhere.

<comment><USER41> I've seen HN work like both.

Also, not really interested in "assembling a team", that's not rocket science. I'm interested in a team that already hums, that's rocket fuel.

PS. It may have _already_ worked, I've been contacted about a team. And thank you to anyone reaching out, we've got appetite.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> It would need to be somehow unique from both an acqui-hire and contracting with a professional service company.

You really don't want to go to the step of individual interviews. The point you're making is that each member contributes in ways that have been demonstrated to have sufficient value from the team's perspective. The evidence is your portfolio of successful projects in the past. Each member's strength may not come through in interviews.

Also, part of the value to your clients is that all the recruiting, hiring and onboarding work has already been done. Saves them time & money.

You're still going to need contracts, accountability, communication overhead, and those aspects are difficult to administer if each member has their own contract. Moreover, you'll need to determine how the payments are going to be divided and how to handle payment terms, collections, etc.

It seems most reflective of a law firm... So at first glance, I'd consider setting the team up as an LLP.

</comment><comment><USER46> > Hiring teams instead of individuals

Sounds like you want the team to start a contracting business. Build your platform for _that_ instead.

</comment><comment><USER47> Pinging 'tptacek or 'lvh in the hopes they'll comment on how they do this with Latacora :)

In my experience "hiring a team" is closer to consulting (maybe long-term contracting) than it is to literally taking on a team of W2 contributors. It's not that it can't happen, it's just how I see it manifest itself the most often.

A group of employees being hired as a team need to 1) work well together (so that bandwidth is more than the sum of its parts), 2) complement each others' skillsets to reduce skill gaps and 3) all be more or less looking for work at the same time.

Number 3 is what's really important, but number 1 is also important because a team being hired all at once is (presumably) a team where each member is more or less equal in productivity, but not necessarily redundant. In my experience, that typically defines something closer to a consulting team than an organizational team.

<comment><USER48> We _run_ teams, consisting mostly of our 6 principals, but we _hire_ individuals. Sorry, we haven't figured out how to hire a whole team at once either. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> So the concept is that this solution would make it:

* easier to hire multiple individuals

* worry less about their "team-building" struggles

While I haven't been in the freelance hiring scene for a while, I think this could be useful. That being said, you should really sell me on abstracting me away from the parts and selling me the whole.

I should be reaching out to a "team" with a project and a price. Once accepted, I expect that they'll manage all of their own resources accordingly. If my project means two of their team members are useless the onus is on them to handle their dead weight. If I pay the team I am paying an individual entity - they handle their own payroll. And so on.

At no point should I feel like I am just hiring some freelancers who just so happen to be buddies. I should feel like I am hiring a gestalt of parallelized human effort.

</comment><comment><USER50> I've thought about this myself, since I have a couple of friends who have traveled alongside me through several new ventures. Ultimately, though, I think it's impractical. We talk about building software "modularly"; talent should probably be modular too.

</comment><comment><USER51> So similar but I think there could be a platform that is approximately, "Kickstarter for teams". As a real example, a few months ago I was trying to build an app. My background is more infrastructure engineering and while I can code up a 'functional' if fugly POC I really needed someone awesome at frontend engineering to get the POC to a state where someone might want to use it.

There is some opportunity to 'disrupt' the founder model a bit where instead of a 'technical' and 'business' founder you could start with 4-5 more specialized individuals with more diverse backgrounds and probably get a lot more done.

</comment><comment><USER52> I don't see hiring a team full-time like you would hire an individual being practical, just because different people have different needs and no group of people is going to keep exactly the same members for very long. People will come and go as make sense for the individuals and the team.

The situation you're talking about sounds like one where it could make sense to contract out work to a team, outsourcing rather than hiring a team that will likely change soon after you hire them.

</comment><comment><USER53> To add to what others have said so far, I think the real case where this comes in useful is when a startup is failing and going down. A lot of times startups have good engineering teams but are shutting down for various reasons (most likely failure to get product market fit, etc.). If you already have a good network, it's not hard to land somewhere in an acqu-hire thing, but that's not the case for everyone. Such a platform could help in these cases.

</comment><comment><USER54> I am part of a startup with founding team of 12 previous coworkers. One of our selling points during the seed round was that we're starting off with an aligned team. It was really attractive to some investors.

In principle the same should go for hiring, but in practice I think it's game theoretically more complicated. I've hired swaths of cohered tech teams before, but it was one by one, to allow for more individualized assessment and negotiation.

</comment><comment><USER55> I have tried to do this on a couple of occasions. On both the occasions there were startups on the verge of shutdown and we were trying to onboard complete teams. The challenge is fitment of each and every member of the team. It is easier to decide on individuals, but very hard for whole teams unless teams are very homogenous, which they are generally not. In both the occasions we ended up making offers to only few of the members.

</comment><comment><USER56> This is basically contracting a company or a small company if you want to talk about small teams. I don't get the difference between this and your proposal.

</comment><comment><USER57> At this point, you essentially have a boutique consultancy.

</comment><comment><USER58> Sounds like a union hiring hall. Members can choose which fellow members they prefer to be placed with, as has often been the norm in other industries. The union certifies competence to do certain kinds of work, facilitates the training ("professional development") employers largely shirk responsibility for. Developers could bargain more effectively with investors and managers ("founders").

</comment><comment><USER59> Isn't this what system integrators do though? Like if you call Sapient. Or even a Digital agency like BlastRadius then you basically hire a team.

</comment><comment><USER60> This is exactly what Questers do. [https://www.questers.com/](https://www.questers.com/)

</comment><comment><USER44> Here's a company [1] that recruits whole teams instead of individuals. I got a job offer from them, but ended up taking a different contract with another company. However, they're pretty solid and professional.

[1] [https://www.linkedin.com/company- beta/10243022/](https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/10243022/)

<comment><USER44> Just for the sake of clarity: This company recruits individuals with certain skills that match requirements from a hiring company. It doesn't find already assembled teams, but builds them and makes sure they can work together.

I think there's a lot of misinterpretation about what the OP meant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I think the traditional form of this is the acquihire - though beware that this is much more expensive than hiring individuals.

IMO rightly so - the price paid in acquihires per-employee is reflective of the fact that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts - and a team that has proven itself capable of working well and shipping is worth a _lot_.

</comment><comment><USER62> As a Startup you need an efficient team to go-to-market quickly. You can't waste 4-6 months building a team. At www.swipeguide.com we hired a full stack development team on www.squads.com to help us build our first product. Once you prove to have product-market fit, you can then start growing your own team. Works well for us :)

</comment><comment><USER63> On a side question slightly related to this thread: how do you currently hire freelancers? (for startups in the U.S., hiring worldwide — not referring to the 'finding' part, but rather, the actual ops).

We're using W8BEN + custom contract + TransferWise but it's a real pain to do each time and keep track of…

</comment><comment><USER64> I have always had my eyes on teams more than individuals. Once I hired too. It works out well when you are starting out a project but not so well in on going efforts. The new teams usually become team within your team. It makes things difficult. So I realized its best when starting out.

</comment><comment><USER65> Exitround ([https://exitround.com](https://exitround.com)) facilitates some of what you are talking about. The primary purpose of the site is to sell an entire company, but it can also be used as a tool for acquihiring.

</comment><comment><USER66> Personally, I love the idea. I have a couple of friends from school who I work especially well with. We will all be applying to jobs come the end of the next school year, and this could greatly increase our job satisfaction and productivity.

</comment><comment><USER67> We've been seeing good results with the experiments we're doing on Squads.com. I think hiring teams is much smarter than hiring individuals. Evolving the teams and keeping those teams together is far from trivial however.

</comment><comment><USER68> This thread may be interesting to you: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11567135](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11567135) (Stripe - BYOT: Bring your own team)

</comment><comment><USER69> It seems to me at the point you decide to hire an entire team you are entering the contracting model instead of building a team per say. Just outsource; it's more flexible with fewer issues than integrating a new team.

</comment><comment><USER70> What you are describing as teams here would seem to me better served by forming a company and selling their services as a bespoke development house.

I'm not sure exactly how you bootstrap such a thing, but would love to know....

</comment><comment><USER71> My first thought is that this already exists in the form of consulting firms. My next thought is that a platform that made consulting firm discovery easier could possibly be a great thing.

</comment><comment><USER72> There is Digital Knights who offer exactly that [http://digitalknights.co/](http://digitalknights.co/)

</comment><comment><USER73> I'm starting to think that most of the companies shared within this thread which does 'exactly that', are built after this discussion..

</comment><comment><USER74> This resonates with a side project I have been working on with a group for about a year. If you would like to talk deeper about this - I would love to.

Best, TPS

</comment><comment><USER75> the issue with this is that the fundamental unit of hiring is an individual person. You can hire by hour or hire by unit of work but this is typically called contracting, outsourcing or, quite simply, supply chain. Platforms already exist for those things and, just like in typical hiring platforms, the unit on those platforms is a small undividable amount.

</comment><comment><USER76> we this, for startups. [https://partnerhero.com/](https://partnerhero.com/)

</comment><comment><USER77> Thats what we are doing at our company however, its not a platform but a service company: VNGRS www.vngrs.com

</comment><comment><USER78> Isn't this basically the consulting firm model? (Thoughtworks, Happiest Minds, Digital Foundry, etc...)

</comment><comment><USER77> Thats what we are doing at our fompany but its not a platform but a service company: VNGRS www.vngrs.com

</comment><comment><USER79> Isn't this something that largish consultancies already provide?

</comment><comment><USER8> This is literally the entire value proposition of consulting.

</comment><comment><USER80> I think each team needs to be niche specific.

</comment><comment><USER81> We built goelevator.com to do just this.

</comment><comment><USER82> Because startups don't like business savvy people. Especially organised groups. They want cheap programmers who will make them rich for peanuts.

</comment><comment><USER83> It is called Acqui-hiring

</comment><comment><USER84> The easy way to go about this is start a software development or consulting firm and sell services rather than attempting to move a whole team.

</comment><comment><USER85> I think cost is going to be a problem. If you want a team of good people, it will cost $100,000+ per individual. That's before benefits. With benefits, it will be well over $200,000 per person. For a team of five people, this will run you over one million dollars per year.

Now, if you have a lucrative opportunity, and you hire this team, then either the team will figure out they can take the opportunity without you, or the opportunity is only worth slightly more than $1 million per year, so it isn't worth their time to cut you loose (since you, in effect, will be getting a "finder's fee" for finding the opportunity for the team).

<comment><USER41> Some problems the team could not tackle on their own. The opportunity may be the value of the problem space the company brings to the table.

For instance, if your team is interested in fixing global banking, you might want to get hired together at a global bank where you can own the problem and outcome.

I'm in the market for hiring teams.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Why would you go this route instead of hiring, say, an agency or something to do the initial work for you?

</comment><comment><USER86> Hiring freelancers is itself almost a scam; hiring teams means scam, squared. Easiest way to fail your startup. Hire only locally, people you know. Don't use any online platform for that, you are going to get ripped.

<comment><USER87> What "scam"?

I'm working as a freelancer for a startup that's doing great, thanks.

<comment><USER86> The market for custom software developers is built in a way that tricksters inevitably outcompete honest people. I.e. any sufficiently attractively looking profile on a freelance developer on any freelance site is likely someone to actually, avoid. They know what they are doing very well, that is their bread, they do it whole their lives, and there is absolutely no chance an outsider can beat them i that game.

<comment><USER88> I see your point: people who market themselves better do better, regardless of their skillset to back up their claims.

Which happens a lot everywhere, not just with programmers.

But it should be relatively easy to beat the scammers, learn how to market yourself properly, get testimonials to back up your claims, build your marketing message to answer questions and problems that your potential customers have. In other words: build your authority as a freelancer.

<comment><USER89> Yes, but then you are in the game. And soon you spend more energy and time in building your marketing instead of the things which made you a good developer... It is the market logic which drives us to solutions which aren't really one (but we think we are forced to).

<comment><USER87> I'd say to people though, if you're not interested in playing the business game, probably best to be an employee instead. You even make more in the short/medium term.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Recyclers disagree on impact of glued-in Retina MacBook Pro batteries - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/07/recyclers-disagree-on-impact-of-glued-in-retina-macbook-pro-batteries/

<comment><USER2> Is the exact glue material known?</comment>


Download an entire movie in one second - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/samsung-announces-super-fast-wireless-tech-that-will-make-lte-seem-slow-2013-5

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it's amazing that Samsung has achieved this kind of technology, but anybody else concerned about the health implications from this kind of feat? Such a high concentration of data going through our bodies doesn't sound very safe...</comment>


In Anti-Theft Effort, Officials Seize 9 Domain Names - <AUTHOR> http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/30/in-anti-theft-effort-officials-seize-9-domain-names/

<comment><USER2> How, exactly, do you seize a domain name? Take away it's DNS entries?

<comment><USER3> I would assume you go to the registrars with a proper legal writ and have them Do The Right Thing.

I'm not quite sure what that would be in the long term.</comment></comment>


Musk says Tesla will be out of money in 10 months without 'hardcore' changes - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/17/18629166/elon-musk-tesla-money-changes-cfo-employee-expenses <comment><USER2> I'm kind of getting tired of his proclamations. He's done incredible things, but a major major reason their q1 was such a disaster was they had a bunch of cars on ships and they didn't get delivered in time to have enough sales to cover the costs of producing and shipping them. That was just stupid.

Use your 'genius' and ability to push through changes at your companies to get to a continuous delivery, production and sales company.</comment>


Any promising mobile apps detection tools? - <AUTHOR> Is there a tool that allows to early find promising apps based on App store data and outside growth factors (e.g. media mentions, social media users feedback)? <comment><USER2> Are there any promising mobile apps?

It sounds like a snarky comment but "install our mobile app" is the 2010 version of "I am from the government and I am here to help you".

To answer your question you need a definition of what "promising" is.</comment>


Growth in VC funding to Bitcoin startups slowed substantially last quarter - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-26/the-bitcoin-startup-boom-comes-back-down-to-earth <comment><USER2> Anyone could've predicted that, really.

I mean think about it, the entire bitcoin market cap (to the extent one can use that term) over the past quarter averaged $3.7 billion. And roughly $1b has been invested VC invested into bitcoin companies.

Of course it has to slow down. The companies have money to burn now, VCs need to see some traction over the next few years before, it just makes no sense to invest more than a billion in a small market. Or rather, there just aren't any new companies that can get any traction that aren't already funded (e.g. competing with Coinbase) because the market is already saturated with decent, well funded startups. Developing countries are the exception.

Bitcoin has its ups and downs. It doesn't report for example that the price is up by 33% from 7 days ago.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm curious to see if many of those that did invest in non-exchange startups have seen much return to date. A lot of the ideas seem (at least to "regular" folks) to be a bit... strange...

In the post they mentioned Dunvegan Space Systems, which as far as I can tell is trying to sell computing power where the server is physically located in space. They can broadcast radio, and in theory the signal should be harder to shut down, but that's the sole useful purpose - broadcasting something that someone may want to shut down - a problem for which we already have terrestrial solutions (eg pirate bay).

The blockchain has a lot of promise, but it seems like much of that is theoretical and far-future.

It's not surprising that VCs are waiting for a bit of a return (or indication that their capital's going to result in return at some point) first.

<comment><USER2> > A lot of the ideas seem (at least to "regular" folks) to be a bit... > strange...

I've got the opposite impression really, a lot of the companies are recreating a lot of the old, boring, payments infrastructure and services, but using bitcoin and digital currency rather than building it on old technology like SWIFT, ACH or plastic cards with passwords to money vaults written on them (credit cards) that doesn't really work great in a digital age.

Things like processing payments online for merchants, things like offering a wallet/vault/bank to store money for consumers, remittances for migrant workers, exchanges to trade different currencies for investors and locking in your price (i.e. if you buy $100 of bitcoin and the price of bitcoin changes, you'll always keep $100 of bitcoin because you locked it in. Another boring hedging feature that makes digital currency look more familiar to users because it's denominated in their own fiat currency they're familiar with even though it's built on bitcoin). None of these things are new, many are hundreds of years old, and they're the big focus for bitcoin companies and investors. (e.g. Coinbase, Bitpay, Circle, Bitstamp or Kraken Blockchain.info, all have received (tens) of millions in funding, one even topping $100m and they cover the above areas). The idea of using digital currency may be a bit scary to some, but the underlying products and services from the big companies are quite boring at the moment. For example I've ordered pizza a few times with bitcoin, did a bit of trading, donated to charity, bought two games and a bracelet. Ordinary stuff really.

Then there's indeed Dunvegan Space Systems, but it's not a bitcoin company. It's a space communications network company by way of satellite, and one of their usecases can be bitcoin, but it can also be SpaceX or wikileaks. The company only has $100k of funding afaik, most of it from the founder itself who paused the project for now. The bitcoin-related product they offer isn't a consumer product, it's really for companies or even the industry to invest in. How it works is, short and simplified, that bitcoin is decentralised, it works on the basis of many different nodes that all share blockchain data. The issue is that if all nodes, somehow, would be able to get compromised and send out fake data (say because a government controls the internet), that the bitcoin system falls apart. But this is only the case if all nodes are compromised. So as long as even just a single one has honest data, bitcoin can keep working (because you can't fake your way around evidence of POW!) That's why the notion of having a node in space, in a satellite that broadcasts to everyone and that everyone can pick up on for free, is interesting. It's not essential because the chance that all nodes all over the world are compromised at the same time is extremely unlikely, but putting a few nodes in space would make everything that much more secure. The cost per satellite launch is just $1m, so for an industry that's worth tens of billions at some point, it makes sense to launch a small fleet for global coverage at all times. That's one of the products his company offers, but it's really a bitcoin agnostic, satellite communications company. It's a really tiny player in the space and mostly a (very cool) pet project by Garzik that'll probably become reality if bitcoin is still kicking in like 2020, it's not an essential project because most governments look to bitcoin quite favourably, there's no real other pressure that can knock out all thousands of different nodes running different software on different hardware behind different routers in different countries. Still it'd be cool to see happen someday.

Anyway, return? No, don't count on it. But VCs didn't expect that going in, either. Facebook had 5 years of losses before it turned a profit and that's a ridiculously successful company. Bitcoin is barely 5 years old, let alone its companies. But some probably do have a decent return already. Take Bitstamp for example, averaged volume of about $150m a month, its fees structure starts at a base of 0.25% which applies to both sides (seller/buyer) of the trade, so on any trade it's 0.5%. That puts it at an annual revenue of around $10m. They've traditionally had a small team of less than 10 core people, with probably an equal amount of lower paid in support staff. And they're based in Slovenia where a software engineer on $60k is quite above average and support staff are probably around $15k a year. I wouldn't be surprised if they've got a team of around 20 people that cost on average say $50k each, or about $1m. Add your office (Slovenia), your servers, outsourcing some work (like pentesting, legal support etc), all kinds of employee benefits etc etc, you can easily imagine they're making a few million in profit every year and it's not like they had much to invest in. In fact I'd be surprised if they haven't been profitable since day one back in 2011 when they were basically a 2 or 3 man team, they probably were somewhere nearly that small back in 2013 when they had times where they were doing $750m of volume in a month, and that's when their base fee was 0.5%, or 1% as it applies to both sides of the trade. $7.5m in revenue in a month and I bet they could count the number of team members on the fingers of their two hands, or maybe even one, for what is purely a software company with a bit of SEPA handling every now and then.

Anyway you can run the numbers for various bitcoin companies but most have chosen growth over revenues. Coinbase for example has a massive team, topping 100 people it looks like, all based in SF, they're probably burning $15m a year easily on costs, they waive a lot of their merchant's fees and have a $75 referral programme if you sign up friends who buy a fraction of a coin. They may not be generating a return (although they do look to have decent revenues), but with $100m in funding and revenues easily topping $10m a year, it makes sense to burn a few million every year to grow. If Coinbase played it careful they'd have a few million in profit per year, it's peanuts for $100m VC investment, they can get triple that in a normal investment portfolio. VCs demand rapid growth and are willing to burn money to get it. But with $1b invested, I doubt we'll see much more money flow in this year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Investors are now more interested in bitcoin's underlying technology, called > the blockchain.

No stats on blockchain-based startups which I imagine would be attracting much more attention than those limiting themselves strictly to Bitcoin.

</comment><comment><USER5> Good riddance. Bitcoin is rubbish. It takes more resources to create a coin than it's worth and the market has pretty much fallen out.

I'm sick of all these libertarian, "It's better money" idiots. Money is horrible. It's a bad measure of value, it's debt based and designed to keep things in a closed controllable system. We don't need better money. We need an end to resource scarcity so we no longer need money at all.

<comment><USER6> I am not sure if you are trolling or if you are serious. I'll humor you...

Of course ending resource scarcity would be nice, but chances are there would still be scarcity, since some resources would still be difficult to copy and thus scarce.

Money is not a measure of value, it is used as a store of value and a way of transmitting value, but it has no intrinsic value.

<comment><USER7> >Money is not a measure of value, it is used as a store of value and a way of transmitting value, but it has no intrinsic value.

This seems self contradictory. How can a piece of paper be used to "store value" but have no intrinsic value at the same time? That would mean it is a measure of value.

<comment><USER6> Money can be counted and comes in standard unit sizes, so when money is used as a store of value and traded for something else, you can count the amount of money necessary to make the exchange.

You are not measuring anything, just finding an equivalence. There is nothing "rulerlike" about money.

The idea of measurement as my comment's parent used it, is at best a very sloppy way of thinking of what is going on. This may make sense in a colloquial sense, but it does not reveal anything about the mechanism that gives money value.

To give you an example, notes from a failed currency are worth only whatever the paper is worth, and do not (like silver coins) have alternate purpose as dental fillings which gives them intrinsic value.

<comment><USER7> >Money can be counted and comes in standard unit sizes

>There is nothing "rulerlike" about money.

rulers have standard unit sizes which can be counted</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


J.J. Abrams' Mystery Box talk at TED - <AUTHOR> http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/205

<comment><USER2> he says "sometimes, mystery is greater than knowledge..."

\- such in conflict with our information age. -- maybe I'll start watching Lost, now, if only because the man is a compelling speaker</comment>


Did Stack Exchange staff members assist in the apprehension of Ross Ulbricht? - <AUTHOR> http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/199353/did-the-stack-exchange-staff-members-assist-in-the-apprehension-of-ross-ulbricht <comment><USER3> Can we please not get distracted by police investigating criminal activity acting within the bounds of individualize specific suspicion of a crime and keep things concentrated on warrantless wiretapping and wholesale surveillance?

<comment><USER4> The question (probably unanswerable) that fascinates me is: Did the authorities find DPR by analyzing Tor network traffic, or by some other means? The Tor network being ineffective has wide-reaching ramifications.

I know the evidence has presented to make us think they found him via a series of mistakes, but the existence of parallel construction makes me question everything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This just in: absolutely no strangers (save statistically insignificant outliers like Nacchio) will go to jail to protect your data during a police investigation - nor should they.

Plan accordingly.

<comment><USER6> So on one hand, we have the execution of a warrant or subpoena that is narrowly written, specific and reasonable, based on probable cause, and signed by a judge.

On the other hand, we have recently seen much greater evidence about the wholesale surveillance of society under secret law and apparently not accountable in any practical sense to oversight.

The first is normal and appropriate and well within the bounds of civil liberties guaranteed by Fourth Amendment. The second is highly problematic - but one doesn't necessarily lead to the other. Our civil liberties and civil rights have always been subject to appropriate exceptions. The problem is when those exceptions become so broad as to render the freedoms ineffective, not that they exist at all.

<comment><USER7> Unfortunately the Dunning-Krugerrand crowd seem determined to try to conflate what seems to be a fairly legitimate piece of police work[1] with the Orwellian surveillance state.

[1] Well, obviously one can disagree about the criminalisation of recreational drugs, but they are, so the cops are working within their brief.

<comment><USER5> While that remains a particularly amazing insult, perhaps it is in fact you who have conflated libertarians with minarchists?

Not all of us, gold/bitcoin stash or no, accept that police are a necessary part of society.

Given that one part of society (the state) has historically demonstrated that it will expand to fill any and all available opportunities to exert destructive power over others, it doesn't make much sense to grant them a monopoly on the opportunity to use violence to uphold the law.

Laws, we need. Cops, we don't. The NSA has nothing to do with it.

TL;DR: Fuck the police.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Some press on this case implies that the FBI found this person from his activity our site. I can 't disprove that, but it is much more likely that they found him through other means, and then tracked his activity on various sites to build enough evidence for an arrest, indictment, etc._

Anyone care to speculate how they found him?

<comment><USER9> The NSA et al. know everything. It's just a matter of whether they can figure it out again using legal investigative techniques. I imagine it like the solutions in the back of a math textbook. I'm given the answer but I won't get credit for answering them correctly unless I can actually list every step in deriving the solution. See the recent news stories on NSA-DEA parallel reconstruction.

Specifically to your question, I'd guess they run a large number of Tor exit nodes and from there it was fairly simple to see exactly who was doing what.

Also it's come out recently in the Guardian, the NSA can backdoor machines through special servers running man-in-the-middle attacks.

Basically, the Internet (and planet Earth too) is not secure, so trying to pull off a large-scale crime is kind of foolish.

<comment><USER10> >The NSA et al. know everything.

Parallel construction doesn't actually imply that the NSA is omniscient and that the entire rest of the American justice system is a charade meant to mask its power from the muggles. The NSA doesn't know everything. They don't see everything. They don't whisper words of power into the ears of every prosecutor, and a dark man smoking a cigarette doesn't appear from out of the shadows with fabricated evidence for the Department of Justice and a dossier from ten minutes into the future every time a hacker opens their browser.

It gets mentioned every time a post comes up involving court case or arrest, and it's quite honestly as useless a form of speculation as suggesting divine intervention as a first cause in science. Assuming too much power on the part of the NSA (and by extension, that _no other methods_ used by any other bureau or department are effective except as a smokescreen) is as dangerous as dismissing them entirely.

<comment><USER9> My 'know everything' comment was a slight exaggeration for effect. I didn't say they fabricate evidence (you said that) or that they divulge their secrets to every prosecutor (those are your words, portrayed as mine).

You have a good point though that maybe my comment is not constructive. I don't wish for this to become a cliche response on HN that it 'must have been the NSA' but we must acknowledge that they posses powers of surveillance the world has never before seen (except if you believe in God... however, we actually have architecture diagrams and proof of the NSA technology... not just 'The Book of Edward').

But yeah, it's dangerous to dismiss the NSA entirely and dangerous to make it a given they're more powerful than they are. However, given their secrecy, that's all a fairly expected situation for us.

<comment><USER10> Fair enough, I admit I was extrapolating from a number of comments i've seen, and I shouldn't have implied things in your comment that, you're right, weren't there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _This happens very, very rarely. I have more than enough fingers to count the times this has occurred since I started working here a year and a half ago. I wouldn 't need a single toe, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't need both hands._

I'm not sure that I would call multiple times a year "very, very rarely".

<comment><USER12> For a site that large and well-visited, with almost entirely user-generated content, all of which are on technical problems many of which could involve illegal activity?

I'd agree that that's very, very rarely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's interesting to note from page 30 of the criminal complaint, StackOverflow was able to record "Ulbricht [changing] his registration email [...] to 'firstname.lastname@example.com'".

Why do sites like StackOverflow keep audit logs of your account information?

<comment><USER14> More likely historical database backups

<comment><USER15> Actually, it's almost certainly as the other person stated - <USER2> administrative moderation purposes. There is no other purpose to maintaining historical backups of this sort of data. Especially not when that costs money.

When I built a site that existed for a very long time, was very popular, and involved monetary transactions, I had to track nearly everything. IP addresses, address changes, email changes. Everything I could think of. This was then utilized when I suspected someone of fraudulent behavior. I could pull up an administrative screen that compared data in an archive copy (where I dumped the older information for just this purpose and to specifically keep it inaccessible to the outside world for user security purposes). With that, I could see whether several users were actually the SAME user. I even tracked things like user-agent string and detected screen resolution.

A lot of pieces of data can come together to provide more than circumstantial evidence that someone is shilling, trying to feedback-bomb another user, and so on. Enough correlated points of data can confirm suspicions like this. You'd be surprised how many people use an email address for one account, change that address, then create a second account with the email address they used to have on the first account and then use the second address to drive up the value of their stuff by shill-bidding against another user on their own item.

<comment><USER16> Don't forget user support. It's not all that uncommon for someone to forget their account, lose a password, or an email address. Circumstantial evidence can support ownership of the account, and let us fix things for them.

There are also errors on our end like account merge bugs, moderation mistakes, dropped/flagged/whatever recovery emails, and so on. Keeping additional historical data can help us recover in those cases.

If you're smart about what you track it's not that much data; we record most changes to user records into a history table (likewise, and for the same reasons on post records). Keeping traffic logs around and queryable forever _would_ be really, really expensive though. We keep some around, but only really recent stuff is easy to query (about 2 days) since that tends to be what's needed when reproducing bugs. I don't even think we have _all_ traffic history, and old stuff would require digging a tape out (if we even move those to tape like we do with DB backups, I honestly don't know; it's never come up).

Moderation is a good reason to keep lots of data around, you're right, but it's not the only one.

Disclaimer: Stack Exchange, Inc. employee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "This happens very, very rarely. I have more than enough fingers to count the times this has occurred since I started working here a year and a half ago. I wouldn't need a single toe, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't need both hands."

Pfft, he's counting in ternary.

</comment><comment><USER18> Almost as contrived as the crap all over Quora.

<comment><USER9> Not sure I agree or get your point. Seems like he's doing the best he can to explain what happened without being taken to a secret prison.

My guess is they've gotten one request from the NSA ('give us all your data for everyone... otherwise we will just tap into your fiber lines at ISPs') and one from the FBI ('we are doing some parallel re-construction and it says here we have a warrant for a user by the name of Frosty').

I'm just surprised an admin on the site didn't close the Q&A as non- constructive and speculative :)

<comment><USER19> > Seems like he's doing the best he can to explain what happened without being > taken to a secret prison.

National security letters are only supposed to be used for national security, not random drug busts. If they used an NSL it was unlawful.

If this was just a sealed request it should be open now that the indictment has been handed down. If it was reasonable and lawful they should be asking for it to be unsealed and the request should be granted.</comment></comment></comment>


Five risks of solo programming - <AUTHOR> http://agilesoftwaredevelopment.com/blog/artem/five-risks-of-solo-programming <comment><USER2> "but it is just too risky to assume that a single person can prevent the creation of as many bugs as a pair can."

Bug creation is not inevitable, it is a product of the developers. I can just as easily say, two people are twice as likely to make bugs and extol the virtues of solo programming...

Writing code is about forming a generative model of the computer in your head so that you can imagine what the code will do before you write it. This allows you to build a good model of your problem and solve it. Depending on how fast the programmers are, they may have to slow down significantly due to a second person.

What are the odds that two advanced, experienced, intelligent programmers able to put themselves into a state of flow independently will produce twice as much code working together as they would separately? I expect that if there is an advantage here, it is less than 30%.

I think this article is a clear example of reasoning to a conclusion.

</comment><comment><USER3> The ability to not adhere to accepted practices can sometimes be a big advantage. Sometimes there is a better way to do something, and working alone can give you the freedom to find it.</comment>


Tesla Motors Sets IPO For Week Of June 28  - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100615-709209.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines

<comment><USER2> This seems insane - these guys have sold, what, 2000 models at the most? And they would be even worse off the instant all of their government subsidies dry up.

Their innovation may be remarkable, but the fact is that they make a product which isn't economically feasible without a lot of help from taxpayers doesn't bode well for the long-term health of the company.

<comment><USER3> maybe oil companies should invest in Tesla. they have billions to spare, it would give them green cred, and act as a hedge for the case where demand shifts from gas to electric powered vehicles.

<comment><USER2> I don't think demand is going to shift to electric until it becomes more economical than combustion. Path of least resistance still rules the economy. Telsa's current state of affairs indicates that electric has a long way to go before it can viably compete in the mass market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How does one take part in an IPO? Can I use my E-Trade brokerage account?

I'm just getting into investing, I know its risky times and a risky company, but I think battery tech is the future and Tesla obviously knows a few things here.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you're interested in participating in an IPO and you have ETrade, I would use this page as a jump off: <https://us.etrade.com/e/t/estation/pricing?id=1301050000>

<comment><USER4> Awesome, I found Tesla in the upcoming IPOs section.

<comment><USER5> But there is nothing under current offerings, any idea when it becomes available for participation?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For the full article, click the first link here:

<http://www.google.com/search?q=wsj+tesla+178+Million>

</comment><comment><USER7> Do you guys think it's a good idea to buy TSLA on day one?

<comment><USER8> I would say no. The strongest analogy between Tesla and a recent IPO I see is Clearwire - similar circumstances, large capital intensive business with some hype behind the technology but no real revenues to back it up.

Getting into an IPO on day one is usually not a good idea unless the company has reliable revenue and there is a reason to expect 20-30+% growth near term (Google, First Solar,etc). Many ipos will look like Clearwire (and for example, American Apparel, Isilon, and to some extent Rackspace etc.), a IPO price which stays steady then a significant drop.

Tesla won't have a reliable revenue increase until 2012 as far as I can tell, which is a long time of stagnation which the market will not take kindly too, IMO.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not familiar with Clearwire, but perhaps another useful analogy would be the stock of Vonage, which IPO'd in 2007 at $13ish I believe. Vonage wasn't profitable up until last year and their stock is at $2.47 as of today's close.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if a liquidation event like this is going to make it hard to keep key employees around. The company is hardly at a place where it can afford to lose people and "hold the line".

</comment><comment><USER10> I really hope these guys succeed, I know the founder has been having money troubles and it has made me worry about Tesla's future. This is an industry that can use a jolt of innovation.

<comment><USER11> According to the article, Musk owns at least 28.8% of Tesla, which is about to go public. He's not having money troubles; he's having divorce troubles. Surely his claims of the former are to help him with the latter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Tesla's main competition right now is Nissan with the LEAF. They need to scale up and drive down the price of the Model S and 3rd model rapidly, or they'll get buried by the big players.

What they've done is great from a technological standpoint, but they need economies of scale to keep going.

<comment><USER13> You think a $50,000 luxury sedan with a 200-mile range, more interior room than an SUV, and a < 6s 0-60 time competes with a $25,000 econobox with a 100-mile range and a top speed of < 90mph?

<comment><USER12> I said the companies are competing, not those specific models.

Nissan's future plans no doubt include putting its electric drivetrains in cars like the Infinity G37/Altima Coupe, its mid-size Sedans, Murano crossover, etc, and they'll have a lot more production capacity (ergo economies of scale) and bigger R&D budgets than Tesla, so they'll definitely end up competing against each other. Nissan also has the benefit of being an established company with a good reputation; it will take a bigger leap of faith for the mainstream public to buy a Tesla, even if their 3rd model costs 30k.

Tesla started at the top of the market and Nissan near the bottom, but they'll no doubt meet in the middle and compete for the most lucrative segments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm waiting for the (also Musk-led) SpaceX IPO. I hope there is one soon.

</comment><comment><USER3> interesting that Tesla suddenly announces IPO a few days after the big news splash about the big lithium deposit find in Afghanistan. I'd expect a big lithium find to push down battery prices in the future and a Tesla car is battery intensive. Even if Tesla ends up not using lithium not every investor will know that.

<comment><USER15> The announcement was not "sudden", but the date has been in discussion publicly for over 6 months. In fact Toyota agreed to invest 50M in Tesla only if it IPOed before the end of the year.</comment></comment>


Japan to close schools nationwide to control spread of virus - <AUTHOR> https://apnews.com/c92ca9ae1c59079557e98275ff814c06 <comment><USER2> It's worth pointing out that the Japanese school system's schedule is rotated more towards the beginning of the year from where the US schedule is. They're about to go on their long break, which we usually have in summer they have in spring. So for many students they would be on break starting next week and wouldn't be back in school until April. This just moves that schedule up a bit. The big question that's being asked is, "Will this clear up by April, and if it doesn't?"

Source: My wife works for a non-profit high-school & university level Japanese study abroad program.

<comment><USER3> Japanese fiscal and school year ends/starts 31st March/starts April 1st rather than 31 Aug/1 Sep. In a three semester school year, 1st semester is from Apr- Aug, 2nd from Sep-Dec, 3rd from Jan-Mar. This will cut short 1/3 of the third.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Active discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22432233](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22432233)

</comment><comment><USER3> Obvious response to this rn in the country is "but parents has jobs, especially healthcare workers, the fuck are you thinking"

<comment><USER5> Pretty spot on, a hospital in Hokkaido has to stop taking in new patients due to nurses having to take leave to care for their children.

Source (jap): [https://www3.nhk.or.jp/sapporo- news/20200227/7000018387.html](https://www3.nhk.or.jp/sapporo- news/20200227/7000018387.html)

<comment><USER6> It says they even closed a whole section of the building, and there are cases of patients being asked to accept postponed hospitalization dates.

But there is a bit more to the story: that hospital is also the only one in the region designated for handling infectious disease outbreaks, and so in the face of the staff shortage, they are also planning to have the capacity to respond to cases of the virus.</comment></comment></comment>


Rm -rf nearly killed Toy Story 2 - <AUTHOR> http://mentalfloss.com/uk/entertainment/27204/how-one-line-of-text-nearly-killed-toy-story-2 <comment><USER2> Great story--I wonder if any type of computer forensics were used to try and recover the deleted files.</comment>


Show HN: Nodify, build tool system for node - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/shrynx/nodify <comment><AUTHOR> Nodify is a build tool system for Node.js, allowing you to write next- generation Node.js applications with zero configuration. Built with rollup, babel and nodemon.</comment>