Searching For Beasts In Silicon Valley's 'War For Talent' - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/16/bring-out-the-beast/ <comment><USER2> What a bunch of crap. It's _great_ that young engineers are making so much money right now, because that's just money that the VCs would otherwise be making. And what can I say, I'm a partisan--I think that's a perfectly fine thing. Indeed, it's worthwhile to take a page out the the VC playbook here. Clearly, the VCs have figured out that you don't need to keep young, ambitious people "hungry" for them to work their asses off. Look at who the VCs hire-- people exiting from bulge bracket NYC banks. Look at what they pay these people. Every time I hear complaints about skyrocketing SV engineer salaries, I go over to WSO and remind myself: nope, still not ridiculous yet: [http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/salary/venture-capital- compen...](http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/salary/venture-capital-compensation) (note that VP is not a particularly senior person in most financial firms-- usually 6-8 years out of college assuming the person didn't go back for an MBA).

<comment><USER3> That's a relative viewpoint, which still doesn't explain away the effect of money on the individual developers, who essentially no longer have to strive to create something of value in order to maintain their lifestyle. I think the article's right: that's a problem, and it's very difficult to pin down, much less solve.

<comment><USER2> Sure it's a comparison between two industries, but I don't see why the observations don't translate. The young associates working for VCs don't rest on their laurels just because they have fat paychecks coming in. Indeed, they work incredibly hard to keep the gravy train from stopping. Why should it be different in engineering? Just because an engineer makes a lot doesn't mean he doesn't have tremendous incentive to create something of value, because ultimately if he doesn't those paychecks stop coming. Indeed, big paychecks and golden handcuffs are actually an incredibly effective way to get smart people to put in tremendous effort. It's a model that the Valley fully believes in and buys into, because that's the model VC firms use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Every once in a while you read something and shake your head thinking, "I always _felt_ this but was never able to verbalize it like this." This is one such post: one of the best things I've discovered in 6 years of Hacker News.

As someone who has always built and shipped, I've been troubled by a subtle shift in thinking in our industry the last few years. Why so much hostility and failure to learn from others? Why so much attitude?

This brilliant post finally explains it: because so many of us who at one time would have been building products, services, and value are now building anything but: resumes, reputations, portfolios, and (Heaven forbid) "personal brands".

Thank you, Glenn Kelman, for one of the best arguments I've seen in a long time for builders to just shut up, find a customer, and satisfy them.

Just a few gems that really resonated with me:

 _But one crucial difference between this boom and the last is that the folks in the last boom had to ship or starve._

Amazing what you can do when you _have to_.

 _But how many engineers hired from Stanford or Berkeley in the past year will ever feel the savage need to make something happen, to bust out of the matrix, to push the limits of their abilities?_

Is "bust out of the matrix" the new "think outside the box"?

 _The problem is that the young engineers earning that much become well-fed farm animals at the very moment in their lives when they should be running like wild horses._

What a great metaphor!

 _The result for many engineers and product managers is often a case of arrested development, as they drift from one startup to the next, dabbling in several side-projects, without the ballast of having solved some really hard problems or contributed to a lasting business._

Sometimes, _not_ having an alternative is the best motivator to finish something.

 _After all, the only way to get much better at your craft is to be challenged in ways that make you uncomfortable. Yet not many people in high technology are uncomfortable these days._

I had no idea.

 _Startups, like professional football, are best done by the most desperate people on the planet._

Great observation!

<comment><USER5> I just noticed the football comment and now I'm wondering how bad I just got trolled. (Surely a $2M salary makes you desperate indeed.)

<comment><USER6> Pro football players have to earn a life's salary in a few years before they get worn out. $2 million over 50+ years isn't really that much.

<comment><USER7> You mean it is impossible for them to work a regular job after retiring from the NFL? Keep in mind that NFL recruits from College, and (if you ignore the cases of cheating the system) most colleges have academic eligibility requirements. Therefore pretty much all pro football players also have a college degree (except the ones that get drafted before graduating -- I don't know what that statistic is).

Heck, if I could have gotten a couple million dollar head start in life by working on my hobby once a week, I'd take that even if I had to delay a regular career by a few years.

<comment><USER8> Except that you'd be betting that you're the exception:

"According to Sports Illustrated, 78% of NFL players are divorced, unemployed, or bankrupt two years after leaving the game, and MSNBC reports that one in four NFL players live paycheck to paycheck" [1].

Most athletes do not invest wisely, and often lack the experience to handle large sums of money [2]. Are you so sure that you'd be the exception?

[1] Slideshow warning: [http://www.complex.com/sports/2012/04/six-reasons-why- pro-at...](http://www.complex.com/sports/2012/04/six-reasons-why-pro-athletes- going-broke-shouldnt-be-a-surprise/lottery-winner-syndrome)

[2] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/don-mcnay/like-lottery- winners...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/don-mcnay/like-lottery-winners- pro_b_294275.html)

<comment><USER7> I understand the statistics, I was just responding to "they have to earn a lifetimes salary". I was under the assumption that the reason for College sports eligibility requirements was so that athletes can have the ability to support themselves after their sports career is over. In fact, I've often run across people in various professions (such as the guy at the car dealership) who were former professional athletes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Pardon me if I'm being too cynical or if I'm missing the point, but all I see is a CEO saying that young employees should work more for lower wages, with some naturalistic, late XIX century imagery of bravery — fighting in a war, the most desperate people, bringing out the beast, horses running wild.

<comment><USER10> He's also saying startup CEOs have it too cushy. He's saying they can just cruise from startup to startup, and while they may not get OMG rich, they can live a pretty well-off lifestyle.

Which he's arguing, not entirely unreasonably, reduces the chances they'll swing for the fences. They can take less risk and still get a fairly guaranteed reward of a good level of comfort.

<comment><USER11> Think about who benefits from the CEO living an ascetic lifestyle and that then being a "cap" on everyone below them. I read this whole thing as an appeal to young founders to screw themselves over.

<comment><USER12> In the old days of Unions, people willing to work for no money would get beat up, because fools like that ruin life for everyone else.

The types of people willing to destroy their health and have no family, no significant others, no interests outside of work should be thrown in jail because all they do is drive down the quality of life of everyone else.

The more that these kinds of myths spread, the worse our lives will be. As software people, it's essential that we counteract this romanticization of economic exploitation, or we will be dragged down with all the clueless fools who buy it into.

<comment><USER11> I can't get behind beating people up or putting them in jail. Maybe a scolding and/or a sternly worded letter. Or, if people are taken in by the hype, maybe even on a place like hacker news, raise awareness of your objections in the form of a comment.

<comment><USER12> Putting people that harm society in jail is one of the few ways to actually deal with these kinds of social issues.

Your kind of gutlessness is pretty much exactly why the world has been gifted to neoliberal extremists. Normal liberals lack the courage of their convictions. They're afraid to do anything beyond sending a stern letter.

Your pathetic sternly worded letters go straight to the paper shredder. The corporate state doesn't care. Capitalism doesn't care.

The only truth that capitalism recognizes is power. The only way to stop neofeudalism is through strength and power.

Putting people in jail as I said is really not an effective policy. There are far better policies. But I'm not actually making a specific policy recommendation, I'm arguing that normal modes of individual behavior that are condoned by American capitalist democracy are not effective at solving these issues. To solve these issues the only choice is to do things that your neoliberal masters would consider immoral. The point is that what they call a sin is actually virtue, and vice versa.

Using your muscles/strength/laws/guns/brains to ensure economic safety for everyone is a virtue

<comment><USER13> You should take a look at this: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5383976>

<comment><USER12> Wow, I DO NOT envy that Sisyphean task you have undertaken!

Still, bravo!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> One one hand, I totally agree with what Kelman has to say. Perks are poisonous and can seriously undermine our culture. On the other hand, what about the power-law-driven disparity between what the CEO stands to gain if the company becomes successful vs. employee #5? Or #100?

These perks reflect the fact that employee #5s are beginning to understand their real worth, just as players have in professional sports world. I guess even employee #1s are wanting perks as well, feeling the gap between themselves and their wise and well-moneyed investors.

We can decry the loss of innocence -- or the loss of some kind of better work ethic from yesteryear -- all we want, but it won't bring the good times back. Let's just move the industry forward and make the best of our latest batch of talented brats.

</comment><comment><USER15> _Maybe some of these examples sound preposterous to you, but they're what the rest of America does every day. Looking for candidates who have visited that hard place in themselves at one point in their life isn't some Marxist fantasy of mine. It's how capitalism works best._

I'm pretty much spewing morsels at my screen now, screaming for the sheer irony of this statement.

MARXIST FANTASY!? Bull ever-loving mother-fucking shit! Yes, this is capitalism, but not "how capitalism works best", this is Capitalism, Red in Tooth and Claw, _solely because the author values the bloodshed and tears more than the actual creation of wealth in today's startups_.

I could take a criticism of the frivolity of some of today's businesses, or some other attempt to persuade that the boom cycle is reaching its end and the "fake" businesses that don't really produce enough value to justify their own existence will have to die.

But this is just blood-fetish! He says in his own words: engineers' salaries are worth every penny in value created!

 _Startups, like professional football, are best done by the most desperate people on the planet._

Then get out of Silicon Valley and take this _Fight Club_ crap to Gaza Strip, one of the most desperate regions on the planet.

Or just shove your head in this instead: [http://www.culturecongress.eu/english/theme/theme_cyberiad/b...](http://www.culturecongress.eu/english/theme/theme_cyberiad/barbrook_davos_parallax)

<comment><USER12> Oh, eli, you never disappoint.

This guy has Protestant work ethic brain damage. He enjoys the aesthetic of self-flagellation, the pain and suffering.

He's sado-masochistic and loves pain, both his own pain and the pain of others.

People who talk like this are the worst people in the world because they always end up taking out their bloodlust on others. They advocate for low wages, for harsher punishments, for more terror at every opportunity. It is the most blatant expression of thanatos and the fact that people like this hold significant positions of power pretty much sums up why the majority of the world's population has their head held underwater by a tiny, brutal elite.

The elites are sadists. They morally justify their sadism with their own masochism--"I love to suffer, so you should too!"

Horrific.

<comment><USER15> _Oh, eli, you never disappoint._

Ok, apparently I really do need to shut up.

 _This guy has Protestant work ethic brain damage._

The thing being that the Protestant work-ethic comes off as _completely ridiculous_ to anyone who's _not_ a Calvinist or a secular raised on Calvinist values.

I mean, I pulled some truly long working hours just last week-and-a-half. Project had to get done, and I had realized I needed to rebuild it shortly before it was due in. So it _got done_ , and more than just that got done too.

Doesn't mean I liked it, for Heaven's sake, nor that I would recommend continual 12-hour workdays and all-nighters as the Right Way. It's entirely unsustainable over the long term, and, as I deserved, I crashed _hard_ on the weekend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I immediately was reminded of jwz's response to Michael Arrington about two years ago:

[http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to- se...](http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to-sell-a-con/)

<comment><USER17> Same here. That jwz piece really left an impression on me, so whenever I run into an article, like the TC one here, with some founder/VC/"serial entrepreneur" talking about culture or work ethic or some crap like that, I really have no choice but to assume that this guy is just some scrub trying to lure me under a desk.

<comment><USER16> The old adage "follow the money", or the even older, "cui bono"[1] really should be brought into play here.

jwz made out all right, he got the startup lotto. But most people won't. And I'm not keen on seeing underpay and overwork glorified in some song and dance by a CEO/VC/$etc. Cui bono.

Of course, if someone wants to pour blood, sweat, tears, health, and their life into a company, that is of course their choice. But I think they should own both that risk and that reward for that risk. I think that if an employee is asked to go without, then the employee should also own the reward as well. It is a basic principle of investing: higher risk carries higher rewards (otherwise you don't invest).

If the employee with a family who works 80 hours a week and sleeps under his desk wants to write a paen of glory to their lifestyle, that I will respect. They will know of what they write.

I think I would rather be underpaid in graduate school, personally.

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cui_bono>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I challenge the idea that a startup is the best place for an aspiring new engineer to learn. If you don't have an adequate number of high caliber technical folks on your team it's simply impossible to effectively absorb and train new engineers.

Just because someone is smart and has raw talent does not mean they are wise. In order to build that technical wisdom you need to be a part of an engineering organization that has it already. Some startups do, but universally characterizing all startups as being the best learning environment is incomplete advice at best and dangerous, self-serving advice at worst.

When new grads approach me about wanting to do a startup I tell them to work at a Facebook or google for a year to learn the ropes, then make the jump.

<comment><USER12> Like you said, it's just complete bullshit. Rapidly assembling CRUD apps to discover a market is somehow gaining technical skills?

If you want to develop technical skills, the way to do it is by reading and then trying to solve the challenging perennial problems. This generally is not profitable activity which is why it is funded by research grants.

This guy is confusing technical skills with something else, something that sounds like a hypermasculine myth about the value of self-flagellation. It is Protestant work ethic bullshit, the kind of bullshit that, when it permeates a society, makes that society utterly anti-pleasure and impossible for any sane person to enjoy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > _Now, of course, you can cash out as soon as the startup has made any > significant progress. ... How many startups would be doing better now if all > their early people still had to work there for a big payday?_

You can also look at it from the other direction: if only a small proportion of people are great at founding startups, then doesn't it make more sense for them to leave early to found other startups? As long as the people left at the first one have the ability to continue the trajectory, I don't see the problem -- and presumably, the people allowing them to cash out don't see the problem either. It's just a more efficient allocation of scarce resources.

> _The broader trend of generally increasing pay, ... Before most computer > science graduates ever walk across a stage to get their diplomas, they're > set for life._

Why shouldn't they be? If doctors and lawyers are set for life (depending on how you look at it), why shouldn't highly capable engineers be too?

> _The result for many engineers and product managers is often a case of > arrested development, as they drift from one startup to the next, dabbling > in several side-projects, without the ballast of having solved some really > hard problems or contributed to a lasting business._

I don't get what's so bad about this. A lot of businesses don't last, period. Side projects are great.

This whole article comes across almost as a lament for where the Real Men Engineers all went -- the ones who would slave away for little money, solving the hardest problems, out of some kind of macho competition, romantically proving their mettle.

But that's ridiculous. As long as engineers play a valuable role in the economy, they should be compensated in accordance.

This whole article seems to be rooted in some kind of anti-change nostalgia. It almost all boils down to the author being annoyed that 24-year-olds are "collecting expensive scotch". If that's what really bothers you, then the problem is with you judging other people's tastes, not with them.

Maybe there's a valuable point somewhere in the article, but it's hard for me to see it with the author's terribly patronizing, the-trouble-with-kids-these- days attitude.

</comment><comment><USER20> > _"Before most computer science graduates ever walk across a stage to get > their diplomas, they're set for life."_

Be careful, the market can and _will_ sort this out. Blacksmiths used to be set for life; so did lawyers more recently, now they struggle to find jobs. Smart people are what will always be in demand, not a specific skill.

Good article. My expectations are low with TechCrunch nowadays.

<comment><USER21> My experience in third world countries are that blacksmiths and, more commonly, ferriers are set for life (though not set greatly); this is because of the ability to customize things to specific needs. I guess in the US this would be the equivalent of a machining shop?

<comment><USER22> Skilled trades are doing pretty well these days even in the US. Much better than a lot of college graduates. The going rate for a decent plumber/electrician/welder isn't cheap.

<comment><USER21> Agreed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "The problem is that the young engineers earning that much become well-fed farm animals at the very moment in their lives when they should be running like wild horses."

Thats probably the most rational thing to do since the chances of making it big with a startup are minimal while the chance to ruin your health/life are huge.

<comment><USER15> Well yeah, but don't you see, workers and founders behaving rationally _ruins the romantic hero-story investors tell themselves to justify their place in the world!_

Someone shove these people into a _Davos Parallax_ VR already....

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Silicon Valley has a weird relationship to capitalism. They sometimes like to pretend to themselves that work isn't about money, and the laws of supply and demand shouldn't apply to labor.

You should work for us because, it's, like, really great! You should want to work 55 hours a week because you really want to! The fact that you're creating stockholder wealth is merely incidental.

Every company in the valley seems to pay "market wages" and then complain that there's simply not enough talent out there. It shouldn't be about the money for them. They should want to work here, because it's so great!

People should be paid what's "fair" and should want to work as much as is practical. Some kid out of college should be paid what's fair for them as a person - it's like a moral issue - not according to the value they create for the company, which can be enormous even if it's just a kid of school. And we need rock stars, not warm bodies, even if the gain to the company from hiring each non-rock star is still enormous.

I am familiar with several SV firms that would make like $400,000 per year per new hire, but insist on paying "market wages" based on experience, and then complain it's impossible to find enough people to hire. You think if we were on wall street a firm would hesitate to double someone's salary if the firm thought they could make double that by hiring them? No one in SV wants to compete on pay. Everyone wants to convince themselves that they've created the greatest place on earth to work, and that everyone should work there because it's so great. The fact that they create wealth for the stockholders is a benign coincidence.

If SV ran the retail industry, everyone with the same job titles would make pretty much the same amount of money working at either Saks Fifth Avenue or Old Navy. What if Saks wanted to hire someone away from Old Navy? They would try to convince them that Saks is really great!! Not because Saks could see that it could gain more from the person working for them than at Old Navy than Old Navy would and can therefore pay them more. That's economic efficiency. But it seems kind of crass, doesn't it? You should want to work for us! Because it's so great, and we'll give you a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of the equity.

What if I went around telling employers I wanted a strict 40 hour work week? How suddenly would they forget about that hiring shortage? Wanting to work less shows you don't _care_. You should want to work here. Not because by you working here it creates more wealth for us than we're going to pay you. You think that multiple still doesn't apply if someone is working 13% less hours!? But someone who wants to work less doesn't _care_ , and you should want to work and want to work here as much as possible.

I get six dozen recruiter emails a week. All of them sound exactly the same - you should work here because it's so great! None of them want to compete on fundamentals - pay me more and give me more vacation time. How distasteful! As a result I am completely indifferent between all of them. Everyone likes to pretend it's not about money and there is no price curve for labor. It's weird.

<comment><USER2> > Silicon Valley has a weird relationship to capitalism. They sometimes like > to pretend to themselves that work isn't about money, and the laws of supply > and demand shouldn't apply to labor.

What's amusing is that SV is also a place bankrolled by VC, and the VC firms don't buy into that stuff at all. They have no problem paying huge bonuses to lure people away Morgan Stanley, Goldman, etc. But you'll rarely hear them espouse for engineers the mantras they believe for financial professionals: you gotta pay those big bonuses if you want to get the "top talent."

<comment><USER15> It's perhaps difficult to quantify the marginal contribution of your latest hire. However, almost all companies are keeping track of their revenue-per- employee, and it's fairly common around here to remark that your company is not yet doing well until that number hits about $200,000/man-year. Apple and Google and the like have about double that.

At that level of revenue, yes, there are taxes and capital costs to pay, but you can also afford damn fine salaries, too.

<comment><USER12> You're my favorite HN poster and I've read all your comments going back tens of pages.

Marry me?

<comment><USER15> I'm already engaged to someone, and sorry, but I really do feel pretty uncomfortable with open fanboyism. I guess for a better response I might paraphrase Marx: the development of _you_ is the basis for the free development of _us_.

<comment><USER12> Sorry for the fawning adoration.

But you see I've been reading HN since the beginning and the endless neoliberal bullshit has made me despair for hacker culture--to the point where I'm now embarrassed to tell educated people that I work in the software startup scene. I'm ashamed to call myself a hacker because of the people the word is associated with.

The smartest people I know see only bad things coming from Silicon Valley. I try to convince them that there are a few good hackers out there who can make positive contributions to civilization...

But even the hero Aaron Swartz has a blighted track record because he created reddit--a shitheap that is destroying culture and causing a resurgence in "White Nationalism" aka Nazism.

If you recognize that memes don't matter, reddit's most notable cultural achievement is that it has become the biggest white pride recruiting site on the planet. And this is the legacy of our BEST hacker activist... this is pg's big hack of society.

So your existence on HN has been meaningful. There are other hackers with similar thoughts, but they rarely speak up publicly. The ones that I know have learned to keep quiet or use pseudonyms so they can get by without conflict.

Anyway don't take my fanboyism too seriously.

<comment><USER15> Funny thing, Reddit mostly doesn't have an _indigenous_ white-nationalism community. What you see is, mostly, a raid from Stormfront that turned into a permanent infestation owing to Redditors' bizarre notion that the First Amendment guarantees them a right to say anything they want on Reddit without censure or moderation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> _the typical founder of a company that hasn't yet released its first product earns, according to private salary surveys, nearly $200,000 per year._

Whoa! So, let me get this straight, if you get funded in the valley (let's say even if you go through YC) then as a CEO you decide to pay yourself $100k+?

<comment><USER26> Assuming your funding round is high enough (a few million dollars), then yes. You raise money then pay yourself.

If you're smart, you keep the money to grow the company and _don't_ pay yourself $250k/year. Under $150k is safe. You don't want to be worrying about your own expenses while running a company, but you shouldn't be out buying new Audis or Teslas as a baby founder CEO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> If you're 25 years old and have no college debt and no responsibilities of any kind, $50K may be enough to live on in SF or in the Valley. (Although probably not without parental assistance, or some sweet group housing deal.)

If you're 35 or 45, $100K or even $200K is not going to pay the mortgage and support a family.

We clearly have seen some egregious examples of CEOs cashing out before their company succeeded. But the suggestion that paying yourself $150K is out of line - displays a lack of familiarity with the cost of living in the Bay Area today.

<comment><USER10> Now $200k isn't enough to pay a mortgage and support a family?

This story is getting ridiculous.

I know people in SV who are supporting entire families on incomes less than $100k. It's not uncommon.

It's simply exaggeration, bordering on lying, to say otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I feel like this article is one big false equivalence. I'm not really sure what the takeaway point is either. Is this representing the P.O.V of the employers, or is this someone who wishes the best talent would break-out and build spectacular products on their own? Because, I suspect it's the former. There's a big draw for young talented engineers to start their own thing, be their own boss -- that's why there are perks for settling at a bigger corporation. For a young, brilliant, mathematician who in school dreamt of winning awards for solving the unsolvable... well, they're probably not gonna be too excited about selling coupons, ads, or whatever else it is your company does. That's why there are perks. /rant.

</comment><comment><USER29> _Build something good_ is no longer an acceptable USP for a startup. Any tech of value can be copied fast.

The tech innovator has been replaced at the head of the table by the hustler. Someone who can network, cut deals, bring in the $ is more valuable to a startup this cycle. It's no longer value being traded, it's expected value.

This is what the 07-13 spin of the wheel is all about.

Hustle or die.

<comment><USER30> This has been my experience. "Hustle" and "Hack" make up the ying-yang of tech startups. Hustle skills are more valued nowadays in SV than hacking skills. Silicon Valley these days is full of hustle and hype, but with no hack to back it up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Perks such as massage, car wash, or yoga classes are peanuts. How much it costs to wash a car? 10 dollars a month? It is like saying company provides chair and free toilet paper in a bathroom.

</comment><comment><USER32> From the article: "After all, when evaluating a Redfin job applicant one of the big questions I'm trying to answer is "when did she do something hard?"

It could be something you put yourself through for fun like running a marathon or far more serious like fighting in a war. It could be the grinding repetition of preparing for a piano recital or the grit required to dig ditches or paint houses for a living. It could be raising a child all by yourself."

\</comment><comment>---

I completely agree with this part. I have hired a 100+ people and the most impressive ones in the long run are usually people who have achieved something notable - published in a poetry book, achieved something in a competitive sport, etc. - it doesn't seem to matter what it is, as long as they have done something hard, and that they know they achieved something. It seems to give them the confidence to get through more challenging problems in the workplace. Even a person who has run a small 2 person business has achieved something that most of the population never will, and they tend to have more 'grit' or whatever you wish to call it.

</comment><comment><USER33> Is there any other industry where people in high demand like to talk and read so much about how they're actually overpaid?

</comment><comment><USER34> Few points in defense of perks:

1) A lot of it is about efficient use of engineering (or sales, or product) time. Yes, one can skip catered/cooked meals, gyms, and onsite dentists, but what's the tradeoff? The team will go out for lunch, which, depending on location, might waste up to two hours of employees' time. In a busy location like SoMa or FiDi it's just deciding on the place and then waiting to be seated, in a remote location, like Google's or Facebook's campuses, it would be the time it takes everybody to get in the car and drive.

2) Tax savings also come into play if the company is profitable or on the verge of achieving profitability. Catered lunch to every employee of the company is a business expense, transferring the same amount of money to an employee in the form of higher salary or bonus is taxed at both company and employee levels.

3) Some of the perks cost very little to establish. Car washes, onsite dentists, haircuts are something that employees usually have to pay for, and it's just the matter of providing some space to the vendor who's willing to provide this service to the employees.

</comment><comment><USER35> I see this as part of a bigger problem, which is a lack of gusto in Sillicon Valley. People aren't striving to solve problems deeply meaningful to themselves, they are looking for the next big buck in social/local/corny. Others are just as much going after whatever seems to have money in it rather than some problem domain they could be passionate about. Then, of course, if you haven't some problem that truly bugs your existence, you're gonna cash out and live like a fat cow as soon as you can. I could never understand people aiming for exits. Exit? I want to change the world! Or a tiny bit of it. But MY tiny bit.

Passion, people! I know the term gets thrown around a lot and it often doesn't mean as much as people make it, but I'd say a minimum of passionate involvement with your problem domain would be nice to find in SV more often. I know I can never rest on my laurels until I've brought down at least one big corporation by doing what they do in an open source, anarchic, power to the people way. Hell, I want to bring down the www, have it lose mindshare to a fully peer-to-peer network, but bluetooth doesn't cut it. I hate these walled gardens, I fear for our future which they can undermine, and I wouldn't want to contribute to more of these gardens, pretty on the inside with unicorns and flowers, until you reach a wall and see surveillance equipment and people shot down trying to escape.

But what do VCs know? They're in for a buck, and so are most companies who get big enough to lose it's founder's initial vision. Some companies are founded on a great vision, to solve a passion imbued problem, to give true value to society. O'Reilly has been discussed here recently and it rekindled a lot of my beliefs. I don't want to be at the helm of some billion-dollar ex-startup if I'm just gonna be a puppet to a board of investors. I'd rather stay lean, hungry and foolish, make a true crowd business out of my problem domain, where my software is open source and lots of third-parties have a go at profit. I'm just one of them, thriving on an open ecosystem. That sounds better. I like what App.net is doing. More people should follow the lead.

</comment><comment><USER36> Every era has its pyramids; this is far from the first or worst severe misallocation of human effort and resources.

It absolutely is happening, however. So if some tiny fraction of this current era's chosen realize their good fortune and power, they could truly change the world.

</comment><comment><USER37> However much sense it contains, it really is best to avoid writing an article along the lines of "Arrh, now, back when I were a lad..."

</comment><comment><USER38> I agree with what he says, but his bio at the bottom feels a little at odds with it. Sequoia backed... Sequoia backed...

</comment><comment><USER39> Good article, but I wish one of these days I can visit a tech site without having to disable JavaScript.

</comment><comment><USER40> Great. Here comes the next interview question. "Tell me about a time when you did something hard?"

</comment><comment><USER41> Entrepreneurship is a game for the highly motivated.

The nature of that motivation can vary from person to person.

</comment><comment><USER42> I don't buy in to this "excellence requires discomfort" mythology, at least as used to justify bad work conditions and low compensation in startups. Truly excellent people have intrinsic ambition that wouldn't go away just because they had stable, high salaries. In fact, they're going to have more freedom and do better stuff.

What causes wealth to ruin many people isn't comfort, but the social pressures that are often required if one wants to stay wealthy and in access to high- status people, most of whom turn out to be a defective or, at best, a mediocre crowd. Giving people enough money that they have the autonomy to run their lives and some comfort isn't going to have that effect.

<comment><USER43> There are real ways in which certain types of discomfort are useful, but many organizations have completely perverted this into "all discomfort builds character."

-To improve rapidly at a skill, you have to practice at the edge of your abilities. If you're a decent writer you're not going to improve by mindlessly writing what you already know for hours on end. Only the time you spend challenging yourself really counts.

-There's a decent amount of evidence that being surrounded by wealth triggers laziness. That is, if your office has opulent wooden desks, high-end art, etc., that sends signals along the lines of "conserve the resources we already have." While if your surroundings are a little messy it triggers an instinct to work hard and gain more resources. _The Talent Code_ goes into detail on this. Note that all that matters here is appearance-this doesn't mean that you'll get more performance by giving your employees crappy computers, it means you'll be better off if your office _looks_ spartan.

As long as a company only promotes "discomfort" in these two elements, that can actually be a good thing. But when you get to the point of physical discomfort, that's almost certainly a negative.

<comment><USER42> That's really interesting. You're absolutely right on the first point. The issue is more of one where a corporate environment with prevailing discomfort discourages the high-end deliberate practice, because people don't want any more risk or pain. As for the second, this is the first time I've heard about it, but it makes a lot of sense.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Treys – Like solitaire, but fun - <AUTHOR> http://playtreys.com/#hn <comment><USER2> Why does it need access to my Wi-Fi information?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ads and analytics. We're considering adding a paid ad free version that won't need access to the internet. Also, the current version will just skip the ads if you don't have a connection.

By the way, are you on Android? It lists the permission in such a way that it makes it sound like we're looking at all of the local wifi network names (which we absolutely aren't!). I wish the permissions were more granular.</comment></comment>


Is GRSec is vital to Linux security? - <AUTHOR> http://lkml.org/lkml/2019/1/23/655 <comment><USER2> wtf is his problem?

> you know... I would expect the things that Linus said about GRSecurity from > a white woman... I would expect that. Knowing nothing, spouting bullshit, > destroying lives. That's their _thing_.

incel much?

EDIT: And we wonder why we need diversity & codes of conduct to be shoved down our throats. I don't know who this person is or what is background is, but this kind of language makes me sad and angry. I don't mind some harsh discussion as we often see in the linux kernel list, but this is bs</comment>


How To Make Your Open Source Project Really Awesome - <AUTHOR> http://blog.clojurewerkz.org/blog/2013/04/20/how-to-make-your-open-source-project-really-awesome/ <comment><USER2> I've started treating the README's to my open source projects almost like landing pages for products. So I now do a couple things I might do for a product page: lead with pain and testimonials.

I'll open with something that describes the pain someone might be going through to catch their interest with the project. And I'll also make sure to include a testimonial or two from folks using the project. Here are a couple examples:

<https://github.com/n8/multi_fetch_fragments>

<https://github.com/n8/cohort_me>

I don't have enough data to scientifically judge the results. But since I've started doing this I do know my most recent three open source projects have gotten a lot more traction than previous projects.

<comment><USER3> Concerning the opening quote on your Multi-fetch Fragments project: <https://www.biglittlepond.com/> currently gives an SSL error. While obviously completely un-related to you, your project seemingly 'promoting' an website that can't do SSL certificates properly does have some negative connotations ;).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I agree really strongly with 99% of this. I make a fairly niche command-line application, and I'm convinced that it would have exactly zero users if I didn't put as much time into documenting it as I do.

I think the GitHub stats make this point fairly well:

        Pushed 79 commits to h2s/ppl Apr 14 - Apr 20
        Pushed 34 commits to h2s/ppladdressbook.org Apr 14 - Apr 20

That's almost a documentation commit for every other commit to the application itself. It's a lot of work, but seriously, what's the fucking point otherwise?

I also agree about abandonware. I keep encountering this, and it's pretty tiresome. Somebody built some well-received little tool a year or five ago, and for a time they loved it. Now they're bored of it, and they make just enough of a token effort to sustain the project to temporarily fool you into using it. I even have a different project of my own that's starting to creep into this territory. Hopefully I will not make a hypocrite of myself when the time comes.

The only thing I don't agree with particularly is this.

        > Make sure the title starts with ANN or [ANN] to
        > indicate that it is an announcement, e.g.
        >    ANN Welle 1.5.0 is released

This seems an oddly specific recommendation to be making. We're doing Hungarian Notation for project blog post titles now?

Anyways, that minor thing aside, I think this is an absolutely excellent primer for anybody considering starting an open source project. If, while reading this, you find yourself thinking "How silly, ain't nobody got time fo' dat", then you're probably starting out your project with quite a low ceiling on its potential usefulness.

<comment><USER5> It appears to be a Usenet / mailing list / email abbreviation [1]. I could see myself appreciating it when skimming mailing lists or large documents, but then again I could just use Ctrl-f or the like. [1]: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Announcement_(computing)>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> @ Document Your Project

here's a good talk about it <http://pyvideo.org/video/1795/write-the-docs>

_> bitbucket is a good service, no doubt. But people who choose it for public code are just being difficult (according to me)_

this argument is a pile of horseshit (according to me).

<comment><USER7> Actually if you consider open source as proxy for the communication of ideas, writing docs might be seen as the _primary_ goal of any project.

Without docs expressing what code is supposed to do, a random git repo is just another worthless, opaque pile of buggy spaghetti to any random bystander. With docs, said bystander is empowered with the original intent, and might even extend your idea far beyond what you ever envisioned (aka "the power of open source").

A side point is that many people (myself included) will look for docs first, as some measurable proxy of code quality. Shitty docs often means shitty code or shitty idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is mostly obvious. I documented the hell out of my Google Voice app for dumb phones <https://code.google.com/p/gv4me/> , but no one else ever contributed to it. That's the only project I've built that I've ever had much luck with people using. I've put together various useful things here <https://github.com/csmatt> that I haven't had even had 'user traction' with. I'm starting to think that open source/side projects need the same level of marketing as commercial products. Am I doing it wrong?

</comment><comment><USER9> The dependency thing is a big deal. So much wasted time tracking down dependencies for my Ruby projects...

I recently discovered RVM autolibs. Wow - what a great idea.

Is there a way to make 'autolibs' work with bundler, or rbenv?

</comment><comment><USER10> "State What License You Use"

I would go further and say "state what licenses apply to code you didn't write". It's dangerous to see people cull code from the internets without properly understanding who holds the copyrights.

As explained in coding horror: "Experienced developers won't touch unlicensed code because they have no legal right to use it."

[http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/04/pick-a-license- any-...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/04/pick-a-license-any- license.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> One thing I've found when documenting any of my projects -- if it is too hard to explain clearly, then something is probably wrong with the interface. So what I end up doing is writing a document that makes sense, then I go back and re-write parts of the app in order to fit the documentation. Then, before tagging a release and announcing it, get a few other people to look it over first, just to make sure that everything matches. Oh, and having an automated test suite that at least checks all common cases and various edge cases will make sure that you don't have to hurry up and push a .01 followed by a .02, .03, etc. release.

Now, that being, said, what is the best way to get a good group of pre-release testers? So far I haven't had too many people bite.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's exactly like I thought from the title: The author lives with good and bad documentation every day so he can say clearly the requirements of a good documentation and what he's missing. The problem is that the topic says "this is a how to do it better" and that is not done by saying the requirements.

Of course it's hard to say how to do it better, which is exactly the reason why most people don't do it better: the good people often can't say why they are doing it better, just that they are doing it better. So what the author wants to teach here is something the author needs to learn first himself.

I feel a little disappointed for not getting that how to but wish good luck to the author, because he seems to be on the right path.

</comment><comment><USER13> Does anyone know a good format/toolset for writing docs, wherein I can embed tests of claims made in the documentation, so that the team (maybe just me, maybe me and others, maybe just others later) is forced to notice when the code and docs drift apart?

<comment><USER14> Sphinx (<http://sphinx-doc.org/>), my tool of choice for writing documentation, includes an extension that does this: <http://sphinx- doc.org/ext/doctest.html>.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> add to this, a demo page (when applicable). I find it very helpful, as people will have a direct view on the project while seeing it in action, and saves them the time to clone, compile/run the project and test it.</comment>


Show HN: I took 2 weeks off from work to build a new web app all by myself. - <AUTHOR> http://www.trailmyx.com

<comment><USER2> You should consider making this into a subscription service

<comment><AUTHOR> Good Idea. I hadn't considered that... I'm also thinking we might eventually allow you to order some as a gift (and send it gift wrapped)...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think the gift part is necessary. Otherwise, why am I buying this for myself? I can go to Trader Joe's and get some hazelnuts, apricots, sweetened cranberries, and mix them together myself, and it doesn't even take any time.

What is your value add?

<comment><USER4> _I think the gift part is necessary._

Agreed. I don't agree with _"it doesn't even take any time"_ as clearly ( _"...go to Trader Joe's and get some..."_ ) it does - far more than it takes me to click a mouse button, but still, the gift suggestion would seem a must...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How are you handling actually creating the mix? Is it automated or manual?

<comment><AUTHOR> Manual for now, but I have some plans... I'm sort of taking the lean approach: Do the minimum, see if there is interest, do a little more... etc...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm loving the ghetto trailmix photos at the bottom.

<comment><AUTHOR> Most of the mix pics on the front page are generated by the mixer. We plan to replace those with real photos soon.

<comment><USER7> The combination photos are fun, how did you generate those? Why would I use this rather than going to my local supermarket, and just building my own there?

<comment><AUTHOR> I took photos of individual ingredients and then I composite them together on the sever according the ratio's you specify. That was really the core idea that made me want to do this site. There are other custom trail mix sites, but none of them let you SEE the mixes you create until it arrives in the mail...

<comment><USER4> _"That was really the core idea that made me want to do this site"_

It's always more fun when you find your inspiration - even if it's not specifically _selling_ nuts in your particular case :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Samsung wins bid to sell Nexus in court - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/news/samsung-loses-bid-stay-u-201220889.html

<comment><USER2> I don't think they'll sell too many in a court but good for them ...

<comment><USER3> Perhaps it's okay as long as that's where the online store servers are located; but I don't see anything about shipping in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That is a very confusing article. I can't tell whether they are saying it is a good thing or not. When they say "on Friday" in the first paragraph, do they mean today or last week? Towards the end of the article, it says that sales were banned earlier this week.

<comment><USER5> "I can't tell whether they are saying it is a good thing or not."

The whole point of the media is not to take sides. Generally it's not really a great result for either side -- Apple had the tablet injunction upheld and Samsung got a reprieve on the Galaxy Nexus injunction.

<comment><USER6> I think from the perspective of a patent hater like myself it's a good thing (edit to be clear: a good thing on balance). The tablet injunction was based on a very narrow criteria in a design patent (basically that the Galaxy Tab looked just like an iPad). The "search from multiple sources" patent was absolute nonsense, and hugely dangerous to a functioning market.

<comment><USER5> I think you've simultaneously missed and proved my point. You don't care for the tablet injunction so upholding the tablet can't have been the good thing you claim. It's a mixed result.

Neither here nor there... I have more sympathy for software patent defendants then design. If Samsung wants to gamble with their billion dollar product lines to see how close to Apple's shit the courts will allow them to get that's their prerogative. They knew exactly what they were doing just as Motorola and others knew exactly what they were doing by differentiating their products more clearly - protecting themselves from costly lawsuits for one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's confusing because it's a temporary stay of a temporary injunction, but other news reports suggest that Google will be selling again next week.

(See Update 3 below)

[http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/3/3136336/galaxy-nexus-no- lon...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/3/3136336/galaxy-nexus-no-longer- available-to-purchase-from-google-play-website/in/2900691)

<comment><USER8> I suspect that they plan to remove the infringing features indefinitely, so they can sell while the appeal goes on no matter what the courts may decide. They can then re-add the features later, if the GNex is found to have not been infringing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well that headline is completely stupid.

So basically Samsung can sell Nexus for one more week. Big deal. Any longer will depend on if the Federal Court decides they can continue to sell during the appeal or not.

This article gives the impression that Samsung won the appeal.

<comment><USER10> The headline merely states that Samsung won the bid to sell Nexus phones inside the courtroom.

<comment><USER11> A pyrrhic victory. Not very many customers in there.</comment></comment></comment>


I didn't make it, will someone else take me? - <AUTHOR>

Sadly, I didn't get an invitation to the Work at a Startup. I shall not give my hopes there though. I've worked to give myself a name and by gosh, I didn't do it for no reason. I've been jobless for a year, getting ready to get out into the real world after my schooling. Now I'm left stressed because I'm not a "qualified" developer, engineerer, or whatever for jobs I send a resume to.
If anyone is willing to give me a chance, I promise, I won't let you down. It is my passion and dedication to give you the best of my abilities, while trying the hardest I can.
Anyone willing to give me that chance?
EDIT I wasn't really informative, sorry. I am a PHP developer, though I've also been working with Ruby on Rails for the past 5 months or so. I find a great deal in security and take it into consideration respectfully for everything I work on. Even services I use, I am intended to test it's security and find problems. If location is of concern, I am currently located in Louisiana. <comment><USER2> This is going to sound harsh, but ...

With no contact details in your profile, and no links to anything you've done, you're not showing much initiative. have you read all the items here on HN about showing passion and initiative? About getting jobs? About networking?

About showing, not telling?

You've told use you're passionate, and you've told us you've worked hard. How about showing us the results?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey RiderOfGiraffes, it's not much and I'm not really impressed by it, but my biggest "accomplishment" gained media attention. I believe it was irresponsible. I've grown past it and have decided to put my strive in finding vulnerabilities and coding scripts to replicate certain methods to something more productive. What was less recognized, yet what I put the most work into was a complete remake of Twitter with extra features such as the ability to snap an image from a webcam, including recording a video straight from the browser as Youtube has now.

After the attention, I took down everything. Slowly backed away from the scene for a little while, my mistake. It's been a hard time trying to find way to do something I want without the money or support.

I have ideas where I wanted to create a profiling website, called Whothey.be, where a community of members input information for other members or people. With no way of supporting the hosting and what not, I've never been able to try and create such a thing.

Also a website I had up since around last Nov. till March, called MyTrueColor. It was focused around members posting anonymously or public revealing their secrets.

I have many other ideas, but I either I have no means of supporting it or I'm just not really hopeful about it.

<comment><USER3> I suggest you move. If you're a decent PHP and RoR developer there wont be a shortage of work for you in Metro areas (at least NYC).

New Orleans (if you are lucky enough to even be there) unfortunately just doesn't have a great tech scene.

Also put those sites back up. You can afford $20/month on a Linode on your credit card for the value they add to your resume, trust me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Your name is one of a black hat script kiddie. That doesn't buy you much in most employer's books. You're lucky you're not in prison.

If you want to have a legitimate job in the future you should probably avoid the black hat world entirely.

</comment><comment><USER5> I hope you've really grown past it. Having a bad reputation for being an unethical hacker is a liability. I think for most employers, trustworthiness is one the most important factors. In the meanwhile, you probably want to do some freelancing work.</comment>


Tom Holland Confirms Back to the Future Remake Talks Have Happened - <AUTHOR> https://screenrant.com/back-future-movie-remake-reboot-tom-holland-talks/ <comment><USER2> I'd love to see them use the Tesla CyberTruck. Of course Nike will want to provide props as well, since their fashion prediction was visually rather close.</comment>


Fortnite and the Metaverse - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2020/04/17/fortnite-metaverse-new-internet/ <comment><USER3> Ugh, this all seems like so much Silicon Valley nonsense.

First of all, this _exact_ article could have been written in the early 00s (indeed, many articles like this _were_ written back then) about Second Life. I remember well all the Second Life hype, about how we would all be somehow living our lives in this game/non-game most of the time. The hype eventually died.

I'm not arguing against things like MMORPGs or FortNite or Minecraft in particular. These are great games that people get a lot of enjoyment from, and a lot of that enjoyment is from building stuff and showing it off to other people. I just bristle at this whole "metaverse" nonsense and the hyping it up beyond what it really is.

<comment><USER4> I feel your cynicism. Some of us have seen this a few times.

But you know what? I think some people, particularly younger people are really enthused and inspired by this framing. People are energized when they think they are creating something heady thing of 'matrix-like' proportions.

I view it as a false kind of Koolaid, that derives real value out of its very existence. The Koolaid has value if it works!

But we need to be realistic as well.

Since 'blockchain' is losing its luster, and 'AI' isn't quite as shiny, we need a fancy new word to get the animal spirits flowing!

So watch out for a host of new 'metaverse' startups!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Personally, I feel like WeChat or other superapps are closer to a metaverse than Fortnight. You can build mini-apps, you can spend money, it's independent from the underlying hardware -- i.e., you can run them anywhere and they provide a deep social network. Throw in AR glasses and you can enter that metaverse whenever you want, as a sensory experience or simply to browse/use apps via the more traditional phone interface.

<comment><USER6> The issue is that there's no spatial component to WeChat. For whatever reason, it feels different when you have an avatar in a world with some freedom to move around. Another thing is that WeChat doesn't provide you much of an activity itself, unlike the ones attached to games.

<comment><USER7> > The issue is that there's no spatial component to WeChat. For whatever > reason, it feels different when you have an avatar in a world with some > freedom to move around.

I completely agree. My experience in Online Town was vastly different from my experience in Zoom.

<comment><USER5> WOAH! Online Town... Never heard of it, but that's so cool. Thanks for mentioning it. I'm going to reach out to the founders because I love this... THANKS AGAIN!!

<comment><USER7> Sure thing! I had a blast when it hit the HN front page and it still sticks with me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm pretty sure I read this exact same article around the height of popularity of Second Life - even more so than with Fortnite, since people actually ran their businesses inside Second Life, sold property, held concerts and performances.....and yet we didn't all shift into "cyberspace". I think as successful as Fortnite is, it will eventually fade away like everything else.

<comment><USER9> Maybe we'll keep seeing this article over and over again, but one year the technology will have reached a critical threshold where "cyberspace" is appealing enough to be a real thing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> My favorite part of the article was this:

> "Everybody is looking at the Metaverse as something to experiment with and > be in, but they never talk about the creation," said Descamps, the former > general manager for Zynga, the company best known for its viral Facebook hit > game, FarmVille. "Even in [the film] 'Ready, Player, One,' who actually made > the Metaverse there? ..."

Unless I'm misunderstanding the quote, did Descamps miss the entire premise for the movie?? That would be so deliciously poetic in context of the film _and_ the article that it deserves an emphatic chef's kiss.

I digress... more on topic to the point at hand, one of my children spends quite a bit of time playing Fortnite and I realized several months back that much of that was in the game's "Creative" mode (largely with school friends) participating in things that might best described as "schoolyard-like"? Say, akin to four square or (loosely-organized) soccer. There's a fair amount of good-natured ribbing (which has escalated to unhealthy levels on a couple occasions with actual friends, not unlike what may occur during those aforementioned IRL examples), camaraderie-building teamwork/competition, and most of the other social dynamics that are exercised among young adolescents. Of course this is all minus such aspects as actual exercise or body language.

And that was long before the whole coronavirus situation disconnected them physically. Now it's effectively the de facto substitute casual social gathering for his circle of friends, for better or worse (plenty of both, best I can assess at this stage.)

However, all that said, there's absolutely nothing that suggests to me that Fortnite is—or ever could become—the (a?) metaverse. My view for now is that it is, frankly, very much a fad.

That isn't to say it won't leave lasting cultural effects. Just look at AOL: their reign of dominance was deep, wide, and surprisingly (if ultimately anticlimactically) long-tailed. They _were_ The Internet to a vast number of Americans. But now? And I only pose that with the slightest dash of cynicism on top of a heaping serving of bland "time will tell"...

edit(s): minor grammar/clarity

<comment><USER11> Snide, half thought out response. I don't think there's any malice here, if there is, it's not intended.

No fortnight players picked up a piece of rebar to practice their sword fighting. Close analogs are fun. No hate there. I really want the 1:1 mapping from snow crash.

I suppose the metaverse means different things to different people. Me, I want the direct mapping.

<comment><USER12> In snow crash Hiro specifically says there is not a 1:1 mapping and sword play in the metaverse is nothing like sword play in real life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can you open up a command prompt in-game and run arbitrary code to control your character? No? Then it's not the Metaverse. The Palace had that in the 90s (and used a version of Forth). If anything, the Metaverse is a continuously regressing "could-have-been", where content creation has been replaced with buying skins and premade, pre-approved aesthetics.

<comment><USER14> You can do that in Second Life, and do. I wrote a whole non-player character system for Second Life. There's a 64K memory limit on how complex a program you can write, because server resources are limited, but you can have multiple programs and pass messages between them. You can make HTTP requests of external servers, and it's common to call out to servers that keep databases for game state and such.

It's not all pre-made skins, either; you can go into Blender or Maya and make whatever you want. (What Fortnite calls "creating skins", from a supply of pre-made parts, Second Life users call "getting dressed".)

The downside is that you have to be good enough at 3D artwork creation and the tools for it to make something good. Anybody can create in Minecraft or The Sims. There's a high bar to entry in the systems that allow full creation capability. This is a real problem when attracting new users.

Nobody else seems to have both "big, persistent shared world" and "fully general user based creation". Most systems limit one or the other. There's also a big problem with Second Life viewers choking on excessively complex geometry, which brings down the frame rate. Second Life badly needs better automated level of detail generation.

(Automated level of detail generation is supposedly a solved problem. The trouble is, the usual algorithms don't work on clothing as separate items. Second Life mesh clothing is not part of the body. It's like real-world clothing, a 3D object with an inside and an outside. Sometimes designers omit the inside, if you can't see it, but usually it's present. Mesh reduction algorithms in common use have a terrible time with thin objects like cloth. If the original has a wrinkle or pleat that affects both sides, which are separate meshes, it's hard to flatten that out during mesh reduction while maintaining the thickness. Nice R&D problem for somebody.)

<comment><USER15> "Ready Player One" came to my mind. I have never been in/played "Second Life" or "Sims". I bought a PS4 in the hope that "No Man's Sky" would become something like that. It had a disappointing start, and I just ran out of patience (and then time) to see what it has become nowadays.

I would very much enjoy a "Ready Player One" universe with the entrance/lobby of "Wreck it Ralph" where you can jump around (imagine pacman with a fully equipped "Half Life" character ;)

The "buying objects" is the thing that will annoy me, people staying hungry to buy 0s and 1s still doesn't make sense. I understand buying Software, but software is a tool that we use to build something to add value. On a game I don't understand why we need to spend £€¥$100 to "buy" a weapon that does 100 damage instead of 1. (don't tell me demand --> offer, I know what:)

<comment><USER16> Stories like Ready Player One fall into a Yu-gi-oh kind of trap. They're just playing a game in a world where their game is somehow the center of attention.

It's more like a filter bubble, where the whole world looks like it conforms to your dreams, and is paying attention to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm very skeptical of this. I feel like I've been hearing this sort of idea for my entire life and it's never come to fruition. In this case specifically a closed, centralized, anti-cheat protected ecosystem like Fortnite seems like the least likely place for it to crop up. Minecraft would have been more likely, the operation of Minecraft servers is very decentralized and it has a lot of modding.

But really it seems like this mostly boils down to adding a spatial component to things computers can already do. Watching a movie trailer premiere with your avatar standing in front of a big screen in Fortnite vs. with YouTube's premiere feature, browsing a virtual item store by walking through the shelves vs. searching listings with filters/keywords, etc. And I'm not sure how much that really adds. In the video premiere example you've made something that's many times harder to run both for the host and the viewers (as it now involves 3D rendering and physics) and it's a worse experience too. The screen is displayed in a subsection of your real screen, your character's head is in the way, games tend to command full control of your mouse so it's harder to multitask, etc. I don't think the flatness of the modern web is a limitation but a strength that enables more powerful interactions than 3D space (a good filter/category system beats spatial shelves for shopping any time) and preserves portability.

VR could perhaps change this but even VR hasn't really embraced it. I'm yet to play a VR game where the main menu isn't a series of flat panels hovering in front of you which you interact with by means of a laser pointer.

</comment><comment><USER18> On this topic, I have recently been quite enjoying and impressed by the game Rec Room ([https://youtu.be/6kl9gqv9t_I](https://youtu.be/6kl9gqv9t_I)). It's already well on its way to being an actual metaverse (it can be played both in VR and on a computer, for free, and has a far more flexible system for player creation). I kind of hope it ultimately prevails over the likes of Facebook or Tencent.

</comment><comment><USER19> Really great related read: [https://m3-org.github.io/research/sweeney.html](https://m3-org.github.io/research/sweeney.html)

\--- Originally shared by alanfalcon(HNer) ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22050891](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22050891))

</comment><comment><USER20> This is just a wrapper around "an essay by venture capitalist and former Amazon executive Matthew Ball": [https://www.matthewball.vc/all/themetaverse](https://www.matthewball.vc/all/themetaverse)

<comment><USER14> Right. I read that months ago.

I'd like to see the "metaverse" happen. So would many others. There's work going on in multiple directions. We're getting there technically. As a business, not so much.

There's Second Life, still plugging away. Content looks great, runs slow because the system is not parallel enough internally. Those guys need about a dozen really good C++ programmers and some people who know how to make distributed stuff that isn't web go fast. The original devs are long gone and the current ones are overwhelmed by the legacy code. Usage is up 5% or so since everybody had to shelter in place. About 55,000 concurrent users on a good day, comparable to GTA V Online. All in one persistent world built mostly by the users. Second Life is profitable but Linden Lab blew a lot of money on the CEO's pet project, Sansar, which flopped. A quick overview of SL by a user: [0]

There's a crowd of "blockchain" worlds - Decentraland, Sominum Space, Sandbox. They're about 80% land speculation and 20% virtual world. Mostly, I suspect, so that their internal currency is considered a "utility token" by the SEC, rather than an unregistered public offering.

Tim Sweeney, Epic's CEO, has been making "metaverse" noises since 2017. But, over the last three years, his vision has shrunk. Early plans read like Ready Player One. By this spring, it's only being able to teleport you and your friends from Minecraft to Fortnite as a group. He used to talk about an open metaverse where anyone could build. If someone did that, the margins would be like those of a hosting service.

The whole Improbable/Spatial OS thing seems to have gone bust. They built a back end for big virtual worlds with about $500M of VC money. (Softbank, who else? [1]) They were supposedly valued around $2BN at peak. It sort of works, but the terms are awful - you have to run on Google's cloud, under Google's thumb, at high pay per use rates. No major game company has taken that deal, and the three minor companies that did games for it went bust. 2019 revenue, $1.5M.

There were the "game level loaders" \- you log in, you pick a game map, you play in a prebuilt virtual world. High Fidelity (went bust), Sansar (sold to somebody in Marin who buys distressed companies), and SineSpace (limping along, user count in 2 digits). All could be very pretty, but were not that compelling. You can't do much in there.

Headset VR, as John Carmack says, isn't going anywhere until the headgear gets down to swim goggle size. Even then, a sizable fraction of the population can't stand an immersive VR world where your sense of motion and the motion you're seeing are very different. There's a reason that the most successful VR game is Beat Saber, where the real and virtual worlds stay locked together while you slash at approaching objects. This is a big problem with getting to a Metaverse.

Facebook did Facebook Spaces, which flopped. Its replacement, Facebook Horizons, was supposed to have launched by now, but hasn't been mentioned in months.

Ball, the VC, claims Disney should be the power player in this, with games as extensions of the movie franchises. You can read his article series as to why. Movie franchise games have been successful, but they're usually tied closely to a canned story line, which is not the Metaverse.

So right now we don't quite have the technology and don't have a killer app, but what's out there is interesting and useful.

[0] [https://youtu.be/H3Z49MOG_xU](https://youtu.be/H3Z49MOG_xU)

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-09/softbank-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-09/softbank- backed-effort-to-revolutionize-gaming-industry-is-struggling)

<comment><USER21> That's an awesome summary, thanks for writing it.

Second Life is funny - I commented to a friend the other day that the place seemed to get overrun by genitals (not my exact wording.... ROFL) and casinos. I actually worked for a company that got a bit into Second Life back in the day (we made an official port of Tringo to a TV set-top-box games service).

I got the sense that Second Life couldn't outgrow prims. They were great when bandwidth was low, but game graphics just overtook Second Life and kept going. Content creation was really fun though, especially the collaborative aspect.

I haven't checked it out in a few years actually. Impressive to hear it's still going, though it's a shame they couldn't really jump into VR when the Oculus Rift came out. I vaguely remember something about a VR client, but can't even recall if it was officially supported. I always remember wondering where they were and why they didn't seem more prominent. It seemed like VR was what something like Second Life was waiting for, yet they never came to the party. I got Linden's other experimental thing on Steam (Patterns) and then it disappeared before I got around to really trying it.

I'd add AltspaceVR, Bigscreen, VRChat and Rec Room to your list of what's currently happening in 'metaverse-like' things. As a user I find AltspaceVR frustrating as I'm never quite sure when events are on in my local time-zone. Stuff ends up being on at odd hours and I never seem to catch it. Or something seems promising but then you realise most of the people there are kids and it's off-putting. As for Bigscreen, it's great for hanging out with friends occasionally. Never really got into VRChat much, but it seems very much 'Second Life' in a lot of ways. I haven't tried 'Rec Room' myself but have heard complaints that it's been overrun by kids.

The hardest thing though is finding friends that have VR headsets and that are willing to install any of these apps and go to the trouble of setting up accounts. In this sense I think Facebook Horizon will have an advantage over the others when it does finally become available (it's not the only one that lets you use an existing account; I remember being able to use my Oculus account for one of the others but can't remember which one off the top of my head).

I also still find that I feel an inertia to entering VR, despite owning an Oculus Quest and being really enthusiastic about it. It's just easier to pick up my phone and play something on a whim. VR still requires more effort and I think it's just the isolation from everything that makes it feel like that. Especially when you're in a place with other people. It feels weird isolating yourself around everyone else, at least for me.

<comment><USER14> Second Life has serious performance problems. VR requires 90FPS or better, and SL has trouble holding 30. Or 20. Arbitrarily complex mesh content, a terrible level of detail generator, and single-threaded servers and viewers combine to hold performance down. The basic architecture is 15 years old, from back when servers had one CPU. Performance is totally unacceptable to the Fortnite generation.

The system can't handle crowds. Second Life is divided into regions 256 meters on a side, and starts to slow down when more than about 40 users are in one region. Regions are usually capped somewhere below 60 users to keep performance acceptable. This is a big, big problem. Anything really good that draws a crowd slows down to an unusable level. On top of that, there's a huge transient when a new user enters a region, and all their asset info is copied into that region's server. For historical reasons, the region servers do a lot of bookkeeping that ought to be handled by per-user server processes, and so, as users move around, they carry with them excess baggage which must be pulled out of the state of one region, sent across the network in the data center, and inserted into the state of the new region.

Sometimes transfers from region to region fail, and, as a result, traveling around in a vehicle results in a region crossing failure that disconnects the user. Typical failure rate is about 1-2 times per hour for a traveler. Much worse with multiple users in one vehicle, which kills travel as a social activity. There's a serious architecture problem in this area - <USER2> crossings need to be an atomic operation to work right, yet you can't lock up both regions involved for the time required. It's a difficult distributed transaction problem. So there are race conditions and failures. This alone gets the system laughed at in gamer reviews.

All this is quite fixable, but needs more staff resources than are currently available.

As for "the place seemed to get overrun by genitals", that's not really a problem in practice. That sort of nonsense mostly appears in a few social hubs operated by Linden Lab. Those are default destinations. If you don't have a home location set, you go to one of those on login. Only new users and the jerks who harass them go there. About the only time an experienced user goes there is if the region they're in goes down, which results in being teleported to a random social hub. Everybody else is on private property, their own, their friends, or that of some business, and the owner can eject and ban users from their property. Property rights make Second Life go, in a very real sense.

There's not much need for "moderators". Second Life does have a "governance" group. And what comes up as governance issues? Property problems. Users putting up giant billboards. Users with stuff sticking off their parcels onto public roads. (If it intrudes on a neighbors' parcel the neighbor can remove it, but that's not automatic. Having a tree branch or other landscaping hang over is usually OK. Like real life.) Obstacles to boats and aircraft. Pirated copies of in-world goods resulting in DMCA issues. User harassment sometimes comes up, but not that often, because the property rights system lets you prevent someone from entering your property, communicating with you, or even being seen by you.

If you want to do consensual sex on private property, it's not an issue for Linden Lab. Nor is it much of an issue for users. There's not much controversy in the user community over it.

The perception that Second Life is all about sex is a business problem. Google is anti-sex; you could not host SL on Google Cloud. Twitch.tv, which is owned by Facebook, does not allow video from Second Life. That's a big marketing issue.

SL's somewhat casual attitude on sex is alien to the current state of the web. The system has been running for sixteen years. Today we have a division between the sex-free world and the porno world, and that division has hardened considerably in the last few years. SL doesn't have that division, and that bothers some people. This may reflect SL being run out of San Francisco.

<comment><USER15> > The system can't handle crowds. Second Life is divided into regions 256 > meters on a side, and starts to slow down when more than about 40 users are > in one region.

Can't remember which one episode it was, but "Rick and Morty" have definitely played out this scenario when Rick was kidnapped by aliens and they tried to trick him into disclosing some recipe for instant travel/teleportation fuel. It was a mixture of "Inception" and what you wrote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The entire concept of a Metaverse seems closer to existential horror than SciFi to me. An entire subset of your reality taken up by consumerist regurgitation of pop culture. Living your life as the Homonculus inside some Anime avatar. I hope a solar flare wipes out all electronics before we even come close to it.

</comment><comment><USER16> I thought VRChat was the metaverse already? :)</comment>


JQuery Tools 1.2 with new form builder - <AUTHOR> http://flowplayer.org/tools/release-notes/index.html <comment><USER2> To quote the license clause:

 _NO COPYRIGHTS OR LICENSES. DO WHAT YOU LIKE. This is the new jQuery Tools license.

Copyrights and patents are evil. They block the natural progress of development. We all know it: if people start sharing instead of owning the world would be a better place. Today money is king. This results in closed systems and poor quality and in many cases people are even seriously exploited. For businessmen nothing is enough._

That's a pretty strong statement.

<comment><USER3> Releasing with this so-called license is a risky move. They should explicitly release the work into the public domain, using the words "public domain". Otherwise it's not clear (from the perspective of software licensing, which will eventually come up in the life of every project) what they mean by 'No copyrights or licenses'.

<comment><USER4> Surely it means they don't care.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks pretty amazing ... in Firefox. I tried Chrome, but no luck. Is that because Chrome doesn't support HTML5 as completely as Firefox?

<comment><USER2> It worked pretty much most of the time in Chrome for me. There were a couple of demos that didn't work.

But this thing looks really nice. I love the website design, as well.

<comment><USER5> Interesting. Are you using Chrome for Windows, perhaps? I'm using Chrome for Mac (5.0.375.29), and all that happens when I click "See it in action" is that the page is scrolled to the top.

<comment><USER6> Doesn't work for me (Chrome nightly build on the Mac). Didn't work in the Chrome mac production build either.

For anything web related, no matter how slick it is, if it doesn't work on a few browsers, it won't get adoption unless you run a website that only caters to specific browsers on a specific platform (like a website that can only be accessed on an iPad device).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks like this will be awesome once the compatibility issues are fixed. Right now it's a no-go on iPad. Works well on Mac Safari and Mac FF latest versions.

I wonder if it has dependencies on mouse-overs that are killing it for iPad right now?

</comment><comment><USER8> Disappointing to see that these don't work (seemingly at all, for me) on the iPad.

<comment><USER6> Doesn't work in Chrome either. The interesting thing is that they claim that it works everywhere: "The form works on all major browsers even in IE6"

Note to developers: If you're going to make a claim that it works everywhere, something that works with IE6 won't necessarily work on newer browsers. I think web developers will often check to make sure it works in their current browser, then check IE6. And if it works in both browsers, make the claim that it works everywhere.

<comment><USER9> Works fine for me in Chrome on Windows, 220.127.116.114. Mac might be on an older release or have a platform-specific issue.

<comment><USER6> I'm guessing platform specific... because the chromium builds don't work either and the nightly builds are built off of the chrome trunk. But since it doesn't work on any of the mobile browsers, I'm guessing the code might have other issues too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Disappointed that the "date input for humans" did not include typing a date.</comment>


Ask HN: Do YC Startups Lack Spine? - <AUTHOR>

By that I mean the kind of business instincts that are needed to really make a killing in the marketplace.
There seems to be an abundance of admirable nobility in the aims of YCers but not a lot of ruthlessness.
Maybe this is a function of the relative youth and inexperience of most of the groups that apply.
Would YC be more profitable if they were more open to older entrepreneurs that are ready to rumble? <comment><USER2> Textually this is a classic troll. But at least it's not an account newly created for the purpose, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and play along.

Let's start by clarifying your question. Did Larry & Sergey, when they started, have these business instincts about making a killing in the marketplace that you're referring to? Because if they did they seem to have been well hidden. And if they didn't, these qualities don't seem to be worth much.

Also, can you tell me more about the youth and inexperience of the people who apply to YC? No one, as far as we know, sees the applications except us.

Your last question I can at least answer with certainty: no. It takes 4-5 years for a startup to achieve liquidity. No YC-funded startup is that old; the median is only about 18 months old. Our profitability now is therefore noise, which means no change in the applicants would have affected it significantly.

<comment><AUTHOR> I appreciate you treating the question in the good faith in which it was intended. While the topic may be provocative, I felt it was relevant, based on my observations of YC. However, because I can only provide anecdote as evidence of my case, I asked the question to discover whether my observations about YC are shared or whether I am suffering from a delusion. Textually this may seem like trollish behavior but some of the responses to the question seem to belie this suggestion.

As for your point about Google, some ideas are so powerful that they fall outside the conventional expectations of business practice. The fact that Google's founders have, until lately anyway, been unassertive in the manner of Microsoft, does not indicate that Bill Gates' approach "is not worth much". Absent some ground-shaking idea like Google's, I would argue the assertive approach of Microsoft is the norm for a successful company and a key ingredient missing in the YC environment.

<comment><USER3> How "assertive" was Microsoft at first? It seems like they spent their first decade toiling along at standardizing programming across the many different OEMs and computer types of the day. It was probably another decade until they did anything that anyone would consider "ruthless".

They started off trying to build something people want (Basic for the Altair) just like any YC company. I wouldn't say that most YC startups display any less ambition than building a Basic interpreter.

<comment><USER4> Mircosoft was VERY assertive at first. Without laying out a detailed history, very early on gates had a keen business sense and was quite ruthless. They may have been 'building something people want', but the seeds of what microsoft would later become were without a doubt being planted. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists>

<comment><USER3> I don't think asking people to pay for your product is ruthless.

<comment><USER4> Not ruthless but certainly assertive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This question doesn't make any sense. YC is open to older entrepreneurs. Who knows whether they're ruthless, or ruthless enough? And why accept your premise that what's needed to win is ruthlessness?

</comment><comment><USER3> This really doesn't make any sense at all.

</comment><comment><USER6> What is the optimum amount of ruthlessness for a startup to have?

I think this depends entirely on what industry sector a startup is targeting. For example, a startup in the drug dealing, extortion, pimping or organised crime sectors should probably be very ruthless and very "ready to rumble".

But for a website -- the sort of business most HN readers are more likely to be in -- ruthlessness is much less likely to be effective. The thing you're most likely to achieve with it is getting people to think you're an arsehole.

</comment><comment><USER7> The kind of killing that Hewlett and Packard made in the marketplace was predicated on fair dealing and a commitment to their employees and their community. What entrepreneurs would you like to see HN readers emulate?

</comment><comment><USER8> I can't say for sure, but I'm pretty certain no one's been turned down because they've been too "ready to rumble".

</comment><comment><USER9> I doubt it pays to be ruthless when you have nothing to back it up. If you can't dominate, you have to cooperate.

<comment><USER10> >I doubt it pays to be ruthless when you have nothing to back it up.

Did the market cap of Microsoft suddenly drop while I wasn't looking or something?

<comment><USER9> Did Microsoft become an early-stage YC startup when I wasn't looking or something?

<comment><USER10> Microsoft was ruthless when they were early stage; that is how they got to where they are.

<comment><USER9> Not when they were two guys writing Altair Basic. They survived off sales to hobbyists. Being ruthless wouldn't have go them very far.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Check back in a few years. We're only three years into observing the YC experiment. The average exit in the valley takes seven years. Over the next five years, we'll have pretty solid data about whether the YC model, and its companies, can "really make a killing in the marketplace".

</comment><comment><USER12> i believe the yc startups follow the "if you build it they will come" type of philosophy, as opposed to the "shove it down your throats" or "cut costs to make a bigger margin" vibe i'm getting from the OP.

<comment><USER13> Or the "screw your best friend over by stealing an idea he's been working on, implement it behind his back and launch it before he even has a chance to register the domain name he told you about over lunch". Google it.

<comment><USER14> Your googlebait is not effective, can you at least share the domain name with us?

<comment><USER15> Might be thinkcomp whining about how Zuckerberg stole Facebook from him... Only guy on here who seems to actively bring up his grudge.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=328235>

<comment><USER16> Sorry, but if you're implying that I was impersonating someone else (in this case, the person whose username is madoff, who I don't know) just to revisit this topic, you'd be incorrect. (You'd also be kind of rude.) I bring up what happened with Facebook when it has some contextual relevance. There's a lot people here who could learn from that series of events, and I think I'm entitled to discuss it just like anyone else. As you'll note, however, I didn't even mention it until you did--and I only noticed that due to a traffic spike.

And for the record, I agree. By and large, YC startups do lack spines.

<comment><USER15> _you'd be incorrect. (You'd also be kind of rude.)_

Sounds like someone needs a spine ;)

On that note, though, I apologize for accusing you of something you did not do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> <http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html>

<comment><USER18> Can we think for ourselves for once? I don't know if you've noticed but a lot more companies succeed from not listening to pg's advice than vice versa.

<comment><USER19> _a lot more companies succeed from not listening to pg's advice than vice versa_

Got any hard data to support your claims?

<comment><USER18> The S&P 500

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What business instincts are you talking about? Is this from the Brazen Careerist or something? It just seems like you're making generalizations driven by anecdotes.

If you're more specific and backup your claims with data (or even concrete examples) I think you'll get better answers.

</comment><comment><USER21> In what way(s) do you think YC isn't open to older entrepreneurs?

If anything, I suspect older entrepreneurs aren't as open to YC than the other way around. In my own case, if I wanted $20K in expenses for a startup, I'd login to e*trade and transfer it, or I'd write a check for it. Doesn't seem worth giving up 6% for the cash, though if I were intent on striking out on my own, I'd almost certainly talk to YC, to see if a "3% for $1 and advice/contacts" deal could be worked out.

</comment><comment><USER22> Where he draws the conclusion from?

</comment><comment><USER23> I'd say most here want to build awesome products that people use! Most are not businessman first, but our journey lead us to be such....

Ruthless ... can anyone name a well known inventor who started off ruthless? Tough for me to even write that word as I want to create good in the world and profit from it. Being ruthless... blech!

<comment><USER18> Bill Gates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This would be a much more interesting question if you were to give specific examples of how specific YC startups are "spineless", and perhaps how they could be less "spineless". Without that, I'd simple respond: "They're not."

</comment><comment><USER25> What exactly do you mean by ready to rumble?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm talking about assertively competitive business practices.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let's_get_ready_to_rumble>!

<comment><USER26> Sounds like the Bill Gates school of IT. The YC startup community has a different set of social mores which emphasize usefulness of the product, a certain trendiness with respect to what else is happening in the current web 2.0 world. We are not really the budding monopolist types. Yes, there is a certain timidness in the YC community about the dark art of business. But that's mainly because most of us have never worked :)

<comment><USER27> Well, I've worked in the business world. But I have no interest in "assertively competitive business practices". Most of the managers I worked for who were comfortable with that type of approach were exactly the reason I wanted to escape into the startup world and never look back at corporate life again. So, if you want to call that 'timid', go ahead. I'd rather do my own thing, make a good product and try avoid "doing evil" as much as I can. This probably sounds cliched or like I'm trying to win some brownie points but it's actually how I think. It's not worth it for me to live in that kind of "assertively competitive" way that I see my father and his colleagues living - or working, I should say. That feels like the old way of doing things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Evidence?</comment>


In depth look at Google's increased lobbying efforts under a GOP dominated DC - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/googles-dominance-in-washington-faces-a-reckoning-1509379625 <comment><USER2> Original title: _Google's Dominance in Washington Faces a Reckoning_

Techmeme summary: _Wall Street Journal: Source: Google, Facebook, and other tech companies met to discuss congressional concerns ahead of this week 's hearings amid populist turn against Silicon Valley_</comment>


Homograph Goes Phishing – An Old New Way for Perfect Email Phishing Attacks - <AUTHOR> https://www.offensity.com/en/newsroom/sophisticated-spear-phishing-campaigns-using-homograph-attacks/ <comment><USER2> great writeup, keep it up!</comment>