You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html <comment><USER2> So I'm a manager in a large engineering org (~600 devs) and I've managed from 2 (and was therefore an IC) to ~40 people. I can definitely relate to this blog post and if the author's intent is to say that working in small groups is easier and more natural than working in large ones, then I agree wholeheartedly, but I think there are a few other things to keep in mind.

> One is that companies will inevitably slow down as they grow larger, no > matter how hard they try to keep their startup mojo.

He goes on to say that this is a consequence of the tree structure, which may be technically correct, but I think this is actually a consequence of the natural conservatism that develops at a large company making lots of money and paying lots of salaries. This doesn't change the validity of his message, but I think it's worth pointing out the motivations of a large company.

> The restrictiveness of big company jobs is particularly hard on programmers, > because the essence of programming is to build new things.

So this is also, on it's face, completely valid. The only exception I take with it is that "new things" is ill-defined. If he means to say, "building entirely new systems from scratch is nearly impossible at a large company," then yes. That is 100% true. If in that he includes, "building critical new functionality into an existing system that will make hundreds, thousands or maybe millions of users insanely happy," then, as you can probably read from my phrasing, I think he's wrong.

I personally prefer doing the second than the first. I think it's a harder challenge to work within legacy systems and make them adapt than to be a full- time greenfield engineer. (sidebar: If any of my colleagues are reading this they may be rolling their eyes given a project we have in motion at the moment because it's perceived as greenfield--come see me I'll do my best to convince you it's not :D)

> But a programmer deciding between a regular job at a big company and their > own startup is probably going to learn more doing the startup.

Implicit in my previous comment is that, because it's harder making things move in Big Corp one tends to learn more, both as an engineer and as a human. Finding the right technical path through a heavily used, critical system is an interesting challenge, and evolving legacy systems, or spawning new work in a large org requires lots of communication, as well.

All that said, I do fully agree that working in such a large corp generates a different sort of stress than working in a small company (I've worked in many). In a small company you're worried, fundamentally, about the company's viability and therefore your paycheck. In a large company I think the major stress is knowing whether you still have a voice that carries any weight.

Anyway, it was a great post and I thank the sharer of it :).

<comment><USER3> I wonder how one would structure a big company to keep it more agile. Some thoughts:

\- Salaries would be lower, so that people coming for the money wouldn't. There's be more variable pay. This will eliminate the "who cares if the product fails? I get a big paycheque anyway" attitude I've seen in a big company.

\- When a product fails, each individual on that team will have something to lose: skin in the game. Maybe he won't get a bonus. Or will get paid less next year. Or gets demoted one level. Or something.

\- Each VP would have the flexibility to pay his team the way he wants. The only thing he'll be held accountable for is the results. No salary band for each level, etc.

\- He'll also be able to hire people he thinks are better. Maybe people who've been a founder or early employee of a startup more than people who've worked at other big bureaucratic companies.

\- Engineering practices won't be centrally enforced, as they're in some big companies. If a team believes that unit testing every class, or code reviews that drag on for weeks, or <insert other practice here> have a low ROI, they'll be able to choose different practices. Maybe each (S)VP would get to define his team's practices.

These are just ideas. Maybe you can come up with better ones.

What would you to do to make a big company more like a startup?

<comment><USER4> \- Seriously, having lower salary does not make people care more. There are plenty of lazy people who don't care who are not paid maximum possible.

\- You will have people unwilling to work on risky projects. Good engineers assigned to troubled projects will be resentful more then normally and leave faster.

<comment><USER5> What if employees were offered a substantial degree of choice in which projects they're assigned to. At that point, risky projects would need to have commensurate rewards attached. Does this solve the problem?

Valve, for example, seems to take this sort of approach, and while it's not without criticism, it seems to work okay for some people.

<comment><USER4> That will attract gamblers and repulse systematic workers who care more about craft itself and less about estimating, choosing and negotiating projects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> GuB-42 We aren't meant to have a boss.

We also aren't meant to use computers, let alone build them. Big and complex organizations are required in order to build big and complex things. And it turns out that it works best by having bosses.

Now, I work most of the time for large companies and what I notice is that you have much more freedom than you might think. But you have to work for it. You may not get to choose a framework, you may have to follow a process, but you still need to make decisions, even if they are on a small scale. You may be handed over procedures and recipes, don't follow them blindly, try to understand them and maybe improve on them.

No matter where you are working, you are not a robot. You are the human, the problem solver, the decision maker, the repetitive tasks are for the computer. As a programmer, there is always a way to make a boring job more interesting in a way that benefits the company. And if your boss is competent, he will appreciate it.

As for what a boss is, I always see my boss as a partner, not a "superior". My boss works for me, he looks at the big picture, meets with customers, and feeds me work. I work for my boss by doing the work he wants me to do.

<comment><USER6> I generally agree with you. I would opine with we aren't meant to have a single boss. If you own a business your customers are effectively your collective boss with a much more diverse set of satisfaction criteria. In my opinion this is a better way to love and plays into many of the points you raised.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> People have always read way too much into this essay instead of looking at it for what it is: marketing material for Y Combinator.

It doesn't speak to you? Ok. That's fine. You aren't the target audience. Obviously there have always been millions upon millions of people who live perfectly happy, productive, successful lives working for large organizations. However, some subset of people have always felt dissatisfied in this arrangement. For some of those, this essay might be the spark they need to look around and find something that suits them better (and maybe Y Combinator can fund them.)

I'm feeling old that the average HN reader anymore doesn't seem to know who Paul Graham is.

<comment><USER8> Yeah pretty obviously pandering to the desired audience:

> There may be a similar problem with the way we work: a normal job may be as > bad for us intellectually as white flour or sugar is for us physically.

Could almost hear all the heads nodding in agreement.

If only he'd mentioned intermittent fasting or the fact that the hiring process for developers is broken...

<comment><USER9> FYI, this was written in 2008, before IF became a thing.

<comment><USER8> Back then we just called it anorexia. Really shows what marketing can do.

<comment><USER10> It's deeply unfair to compare a wilful, meaningful calorie intake reduction with a pathological anxiety over _any_ sort of consumption of food.

If you didn't know the difference "back then", it was due to ignorance, not a marketing image.

<comment><USER8> I am quite stupid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > groups of 8 work well; by 20 they're getting hard to manage; and a group of > 50 is really unwieldy

I made more money at my web agency when I had 10 employees than when I had 20. I kept growing the business through inertia and the thought that bigger was better. I decided to sell with 20 employees rather than drop back down to 10, but by 20 it was unweildy for me to manage on my own.

The overhead described in the article from growing beyond a group of 10 I felt everyday. If I had to do it over I'd stay at 10 or less for as long as possible and prioritize connection and profits over revenue and headcount.

<comment><USER12> Or add another layer of Management?

<comment><USER11> That's what I did when I grew to 20 and part of what increased our revenue but decreased our profitability.

The article talks about the challenges of managing managers and my experience lines up with what the author describes.

<comment><USER13> Companies also have economies of scale. The 10-to-30 transition is so hard _because_ it has to pass through 20, the moment when overhead as a fraction of total turnover is at a maximum. After that things get better again. But getting through that is a really hard thing to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Once I had a great job, I managed myself most of the time and was trusted to just 'get on with it'.

Then the company got busier and started hiring more people who were less able to manage themselves. As a consequence, I acquired a manager who wasn't quite sure what he was supposed to be doing. This led to situations where he would need to do things that justified his existence, like phoning me every hour to ask 'how it was going', 'where was I, and so on...

Needless to say, I started enjoying my job much less...

Then, when it became obvious my new manager wasn't coping so well, they gave him an assistant. You can probably guess how that panned out?

<comment><USER15> > This led to situations where he would need to do things that justified his > existence, like phoning me every hour to ask 'how it was going', 'where was > I, and so on...

You missed a great opportunity to manage upwards. Surely you have some meaningless menial tasks in your job that you hate to perform? Excellent delegation material!

You know what they say, many hands make for lighter work. They hired him an assistant? Looks like you just acquired a whole department!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you work on/for a startup and that startup succeeds, it will more often than not have to grow. If you're unlike Paul Graham who sold his startup and then invested in countless others and made lots of money but did not keep working on the thing he'd built - meaning, if you're what he likes to call _maker_ as opposed to primarily a _money-maker_ \- you will want to keep working on the thing you built. And this desire to keep working on that thing is what will prompt you to adapt your views on group size and how people thrive and lions and sugary food. And when you'll see what a hundred people can make out of what was started by ten, it will be very rewarding.

<comment><USER17> > you will want to keep working on the thing you built. And this desire to > keep working on that thing is what will prompt you to adapt your views on > group size and how people thrive and lions and sugary food.

I've grown attached to projects in small companies and large ones, sure. What you've written can be read as an explanation for why people continue to work at companies even as they grow larger and get worse, rather than any contradiction of what Graham said.

> And when you'll see what a hundred people can make out of what was started > by ten, it will be very rewarding.

Really? I don't think I've experienced anything rewarding/inspiring being made by more than ten people; even in large companies, the most rewarding/inspiring projects I've worked on have been those that were worked on by a small, relatively isolated team. Scaling up may be necessary and/or lucrative, but I doubt it could ever be as rewarding as making the thing, and AIUI the economics research backs that up - productivity is concentrated in small companies, successful companies grow until they get too bloated to be successful rather than stable (because if you're successful, growing is the default path) rather than improving through growth.

<comment><USER16> A group of 100 is 10 groups of 10. Does the autonomy of the group of 10 shrink as predicted by Paul Graham's "virtual person" argument? It might or it might not - and it's certainly not obvious that the constraints imposed on a 10-people company by their relationships with the external world are any better or worse, from any given angle, than the constraints imposed on a 10-people team by their relationships with the company employing the team.

Why do people contribute to projects like Linux or LLVM _without getting paid for it_? (Of course lots of them get paid to do this, but many are not.) It's not exactly easy calories for a caged lion, the way Graham describes a corporate job taken by recent college grads. Instead, people choose to work in these large groups because they want to make an impact. You can instead contribute to TinyCC or MenuetOS - smaller team, less impact. Are Linux or LLVM uninspiring? Were they only inspiring when they were too small for most of their current practical uses?

If productivity is concentrated in small companies - or companies of size X - why aren't companies of this size drive the other companies out of business? I think that market realities point in the direction of there being economies of scale and diseconomies of scale, without a single one-size-fits-all procedure for determining the optimal firm size for any particular endeavor.

<comment><USER18> It's interesting that YC's moneymaking model is to take small companies and turn them into big companies (by growth or acquisition) that pg claims are bad. Is YC a knnowing scam to soak dumb money, killing the supposedly wonderful small-team products in the process, or is the post misguided or disingenuous?

<comment><USER17> The claim is that big companies are uninspiring drudgery for the people who work there, not that scaling up isn't an effective way to make money (though VC as a category is known for poor overall returns). There's no contradiction - indeed in [http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html) pg argues that a lot of moneymaking opportunities are overlooked because of the drudgery involved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> My fundamental issue with this viewpoint is that it takes away the inherent entrepreneurship that exists in an employee/employer business relationship. Whether I'm on a team of 10 in an organization of a 100 or a team of 100 in an organization of 10,000, the reality is I still have much work to do to be valuable. I'd argue that if you are truly ambitious and hardworking, making your way up a corporate ladder can be just as challenging, risky and rewarding as being a startup founder. It requires time, dedication, sacrifice, risk- taking and developing skills that most people who chose programming as a career seem to forget about. People who program shouldn't box themselves into being code monkeys. I still need to pitch ideas at my corporate job to ensure they are valuable. I still need to use other people's code as any person building a shiny web app will do with open source projects and frameworks. I still need to manage finances, ask for raises, manage budgets. I still need to deal with HR, accounting, sales, product management, project management, marketing etc. At the end of the day a truly valuable "employee" is one who's really figured out the system and learned to sell themselves within it. As a startup founder you are still beholden to many people much in the same way as an employee who's working up the ranks. As a founder you will still deal with unproductive slow people. You will deal with aggressive investors, finicky customers etc. I think a corporate job is what you make of it. It's safer in some cases sure, although since we work in an at-will employment world, your never fully safe. But if you really want to grow, you need to take risks and try things and learn all the same skills an entrepreneur would need to.

</comment><comment><USER20> I've been trying to escape having a corporate day job for 8 years now precisely because it doesn't feel natural; I constantly get the urge to escape and I change companies often.

I hope that this kind of article doesn't promote the mindset that if you're not financially successful by the time you turn 30, then you're either lazy or unskilled (I.e. thinking that leaders are fundamentally different than employees). There are a lot of business leaders today who harbor significant contempt towards their own employees; you can see it by how they talk about their employees and how they interact with them.

It might seem like some employees aren't ambitious, don't take initiative and don't want to step outside of their comfort zone but that's rarely true; most employees do want to take control of their lives and they devise plans to make it happen; but dumb luck is just a much more powerful force. You can't beat dumb luck.

<comment><USER19> Why not start by becoming a consultant? I think that's always a good question to ask yourself. Consulting has many of the challenges you'd face running your own business, except the product you're selling is yourself.

<comment><USER20> I did do contracting in the past and I do consulting from time to time related to an open source project that I created but it's not enough to turn into a full time business yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> From 2015: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9751767](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9751767)

From 2011: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2760732](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2760732)

And twice from 2008:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=143735](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=143735)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=141898](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=141898)

</comment><comment><USER22> I agree with this article, as I have experienced what is working for myself and working for others.

On the other hand, people need other personalities to complement their personalities. Organizing this environment is not simple for most people, as it requires a complete different set of skills than most technical work.

People will have to enter a company to get this environment, as it is already created for you. Usually not well created, but something is better than nothing.

IMHO Paul Graham acquired these skills from his now wife, thanks to that they created YC and you have all this environment of mutual support, the "family", the "Church".

It always surprising when you go to the US, how isolated most people is from each other.

This makes PG advice extremely damaging for most people in the US. The technical people that will listen to it are already not very social. Without social support, you will perish. No matter how good you are, people are social creatures.

</comment><comment><USER23> So completely torn on this.

In the corporate world I completely agree. I feel like a vegetable. I am numb and stare out a window. I enjoy taking long walks and picking fruit on my corporate neighbor's property.

In addition to working for a Fortune 50 company I am also an officer in the army. In the army this idea about bosses is and large organizations is mostly (not completely though) upside down. In the military this can really work for you if you are engaged and your primary leader isn't a criminal.

This is perhaps the biggest difference between these worlds, and I cannot put it into words in a way that could possibly relate until you have shared a similar experience yourself. Seeing and living this difference shapes your world perspective more than any other objective quality (there are catastrophic subjective qualities that will shape anybody's world).

<comment><USER24> > I cannot put it into words in a way that could possibly relate until you > have shared a similar experience yourself

Could you try? This is really interesting!

<comment><USER23> Bear with me on this...

In the corporate space many of the younger people I have worked with feel, to me, extraordinarily fragile. We all have fear and we all make mistakes. Sometimes I would rather shoot myself in the face than point out a minor shortcoming. Sometimes the result is a long series of excuses and justifications (deliberately not listening and having a one way conversation with themselves to you) and on rare occasions the response is immediate hostility. I don't know everything, but I have been in this line of work for 20 years and I do feel justified in thinking I might be able to offer advice or technical guidance to somebody who has been doing it for 6 months or less.

Older developers I have worked with in the corporate world tend to be a bit rigid and stuck in their ways, which is completely expected. Although this is not a surprise it does prove a bit frustrating when it comes to exploring newer technologies or open-mindedness to new approaches.

In the military you often don't get a vote upon the technology, the environment, the people you work with, or really anything. You realize you are an adult. You suck it up and try to make the best of it. As crappy as that may at first sound it is a forcing function with some really positive results. You have to be flexible. You have to embrace new things. You have to work with all kinds of people.

Confrontation is common in the military. There really is a such thing as positive confrontations. Positive confrontations are necessary to develop people. This exists in the corporate world as well, but its generally hidden behind directors and senior managers where tiny contributors like me don't see it.

Ownership of work is vital to motivation. The military has figured this out. Some of the corporate world has figured this out, but usually not. People have to be allowed to fail in order to feel the pressure to grow. Let's not forget corporate employees are adults and they need mentorship not helicopter parents.

As an example tell a JavaScript developer they can't use their favorite framework. Tell them they actually have to write original code and solve problems. Oh, the crying...

<comment><USER24> Thanks. You said

> In the army this idea about bosses is and large organizations is mostly (not > completely though) upside down. In the military this can really work for you > if you are engaged and your primary leader isn't a criminal.

Does that means that in the military people lower in the ranks are much more self-motivated and self-directed?

<comment><USER23> Yes, when the proper leadership is in place. If you are given a large amount time with no responsibility and no structure it comes down to an individual's personality like anywhere else.

The minimal expectation is that low ranking service members have the proper pieces in place to make good decisions. When they make bad decisions it is them plus their boss (and sometimes the boss's boss) that gets destroyed. This puts pressure on the boss to ensure their people are well informed. In the corporate world if a contributor fails horribly you simply fire them and wash your hands of it. It is highly unlikely the boss will receive legal prosecution for the contributor's failures even those failures result from a lack of governance or proper policy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I love this quote: "Which means it's doubly important to hire the best people. Mediocre hires hurt you twice: they get less done, but they also make you big, because you need more of them to solve a given problem."

</comment><comment><USER26> Perhaps controversial to say, and I'm a huge fan of Paul Graham and his thinking, but this article has not aged well. Or perhaps my understanding of organizations has simply matured. I think the biggest problem, for which this article was a lagging indicator, with working for large companies pre-2008 was that they hadn't really figured out how to work with technology yet. Disclaimer, I've never worked for a truly huge firm, but I get the sense folks are getting closer and closer to figuring it out. We've learned to build and support disruptive units inside of larger ones, managers are more often technically skilled and able to properly support their employees, and we've adopted more agile ways of writing software. Or maybe I'm just lucky to work where I do!

<comment><USER27> > Perhaps controversial to say, and I'm a huge fan of Paul Graham and his > thinking

Does Paul Graham have cooties? What happened?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This article again.

 _sigh_

What grates me about Paul's writing is the sheer pomposity of it all, coupled with a tone that deals only in absolutes. There is no space for doubt, for hesitancy, for understatement. It is grandiosity dialed up to 11 in a way I've seen precious few "essayists" do. Even that word grates me. Oh, no sir! Paul is above mere 'blogging'. He is an "essayist" because his blogposts feature more than 2500 words. Look at what he claims:

> And founders and early employees of startups, meanwhile, are like the > Birkenstock-wearing weirdos of Berkeley: though a tiny minority of the > population, they're the ones living as humans are meant to. In an artificial > world, only extremists live naturally.

> It will always suck to work for large organizations, and the larger the > organization, the more it will suck.

My god! One must have a super limited and convenient worldview to inflict such idiotic statements onto the world with such a wanton disregard of anything approaching sensitivity. Here's Jeff Atwoods take on it: [https://blog.codinghorror.com/paul-grahams-participatory- nar...](https://blog.codinghorror.com/paul-grahams-participatory-narcissism/)

It's an opinion I sympathise with a lot more than PG's.

I work for a big company (CERN). Group of thousands upon thousands. It's _wonderful_ here. I wouldn't trade it for the next "Uber of...". My 'boss' is just someone who has worked on my topic for a lot longer than me, and is therefore a veritable treasure chest of knowledge. I LOVE working for him because I learn a shitload on a weekly basis, and the projects that he is responsible for align with my interests. I LOVE working in my 'group of hundreds', because that group of hundreds can accomplish a lot more than a full-stack developer straight out of Stanford thinking he can disrupt everything just by ignoring zoning laws. I also imagine there are a significant portion of people working for places like NASA/ESA etc who share my view. Where does this jive with Mr Graham's World Of Absolutes?

Further, even if we limit ourselves to the corporate world, 'groups of hundreds' can afford to do more than one guy. A large group can, for example, dedicate resources to lowering the environmental impact of the product chain, in a way that a three person startup couldn't. They can have customer service that a small startup just cannot match. Is all of that worthless?

And if it isn't, just what is Graham getting at in this article? Is it limited to young graduates? Then why the far reaching claims and the excessive overreach? And if not, is he genuinely so delusional as to think he can speak for everyone?

I will give another example, at the risk of outing myself, just because this article is _still_ fucking grinding my gears. My mum is working on the Polio program. In a couple of years, they will have rid the world of this killer disease. Millions of lives saved. It's not necessarily the glorious work environment that gives Paul Graham a hardon. Doesn't mean it 'sucks'. Just means that most of the people working there are capable of understanding that there are some necessary evils involved in taking on such an enormous challenge. You need to talk to Politicians the world over. You need to coordinate the door to door vaccine distribution. You need to balance the books for millions and millions of dollars in funding. You need to set up secure enclaves for staff that are going into dangerous zones and risking their lives for the project. I would like to see some fucking bossless Ycombinator graduate try their hand at that.

<comment><USER29> CERN is not what he is talking about. Of course being employed in Europe by a _publicly funded institution_ is great.

The people in Europe who actually work are suppressed and exploited.

<comment><USER28> Otherwise known in the industry as 'weaseling'.

He _doesn 't_ explicitly exclude publicly funded institutions. He says working for big organizations will _always_ suck. I quoted him verbatim. And this highlights my problem with him: absolutes.

Also, does your final sentence insinuate that people at CERN aren't actually working?!

<comment><USER30> Like most public institutions, CERN is overstaffed and has produced comparatively little.

Publicly funded people in Europe act and feel like royalty and build themselves Veblen goods. In several German cities, the only buildings that are in good shape are government buildings and universities.

Normal people do not have money to paint their houses (if they have one, that's another thing only civil servants can afford).

<comment><USER31> Yeah, no. There is probably quite some inefficiency at CERN like at all large institutions, but none of the rest is true according to my observations. Even in Berlin, which is a relatively poor German city, there are plenty of well maintained private buildings of all kinds. I've also seen somewhat rundown looking government offices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Assuming what that article says is correct, that it isn't natural - what's the solution to this? Surely, everyone can't be a startup founder.

Just curious how the world should work for that article to not exist.

<comment><USER33> Maybe cooperatives? The book "Developer Hegemony" talk about that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Two thoughts: pg says we are designed but then in the notes he says "by evolution." Since evolution is changing to fit and survive your environment, perhaps humans working in groups is better for their survival.

Also, specialization of labor has created this concept. Humans used to provide their own food, shelter and transportation that's all they needed to do. But when one person specializes in transportation, one in farming or hunting, and one in building shelters things start to change.

And we end up with companies that only build pipe fittings.

</comment><comment><USER35> There are some interesting books regarding organisational structure, that also reflect some of what's in the blog post.

Reinventing Organisations by Frederic Laloux is one that especially struck my interest.

</comment><comment><USER36> In the really big companies I worked at we were in small teams of about 10, and communication outside that team was infrequent. It's the medium sized companies that were the drainers.

</comment><comment><USER37> > I've noticed a definite difference between programmers working on their own > startups and those working for large organizations. I wouldn't say founders > seem happier, necessarily; starting a startup can be very stressful. Maybe > the best way to put it is to say that they're happier in the sense that your > body is happier during a long run than sitting on a sofa eating doughnuts.

I this this is a good analogy but I don't draw the same conclusion Paul does. I trained for a marathon last summer, and it sucked. Long distance running and racing has been associated with diminished lifespans [0], organ damage [1], weakened immune system [2], and lowered sex drive [3]. This research isn't conclusive by any means, but it's a lot easier to explain if you believe in an upside-down U-shaped relationship between exercise and well-being than a monotonic relationship. (I personally found that my sweet spot was under 100 km/week, any more than that and I got sick and tired and felt beat-down.)

Same with being a CEO. It's great to be your own boss. It's generally hard on your body, soul, and relationships to work 100 hours a week. If your ambition is to have a 5k/month side project and live on that, that's probably good for your health. If it's to make and sell a billion dollar company, that's probably not.

That's not to say that _working_ at a startup isn't great. I just wouldn't want to start one. And unless you do, you're probably going to have a boss.

[0] [https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/%20S0025-6196(...](https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/%20S0025-6196\(15\)00621-7/fulltext)

[1] [https://www.ajkd.org/article/S0272-6386(17)30536-X/fulltext](https://www.ajkd.org/article/S0272-6386\(17\)30536-X/fulltext)

[2] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17465622](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17465622)

[3] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-libido-men- workout...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-libido-men- workouts/years-of-intense-exercise-tied-to-dip-in-male-libido-idUSKBN16O1Y8)

</comment><comment><USER38> I am not sure if it is because I am getting old, but have found Paul's old writing more resonating than ever.

<comment><USER5> Likewise. His more programming-centric writing, in particular, is a breath of fresh air relative to the current "teams, tests, and tickets" dogma. Personal favourite: [http://paulgraham.com/head.html](http://paulgraham.com/head.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> The legacy code but resonates, I'm often stuck doing things in an ugly way or constrained because I have to work around the continual tire fire I inherited.

On the flip side I'm one of those weirdos who likes working on legacy code _as long as I have the freedom to improve it_.

</comment><comment><USER40> There is a big difference between management and leadership. Regardless of the size of the team there will be managers. There will be a structure. whether it is a team of two or megacorp, what consistently lacks is genuine leadership.

</comment><comment><USER41> Brings me memories about stories at PARC, there were often manager-free path between groups. This led to unleashed creativity: want something ? ask the dude that know about something, done.

</comment><comment><USER42> You weren't, but here's the reason you do:

In an organization where everyone is equal, adding a new person to the org doesn't benefit the people who are already in it. Let's say you have a coop bagel shop- is there any particular reason to want to cut your own paychecks until you have saved up enough to open another one? Or let's say you live in an egalitarian, peaceful country. Is there any reason to want to invade your neighbors and annex territory? No.

But, if you put one person in charge, then suddenly you have a person in a position of authority with a vested interest in expanding the franchise, since he gets to skim off the labor of everyone underneath him. In a stroke, you've invented empire, war, and capitalism. Come back in a hundred years and the organizations that expanded the most are also the most heirarchical.

I don't think this is a good thing, by the way, just a historical factor to be aware of.

<comment><USER43> Huh? If the additional person can bring more value to the cooperative than they consume (which you would generally hope to be true for most hires), then it will be to your benefit. Yes, more slices need to be cut, but the cake is bigger. For example, a marketing expert that can increase customers for the single bagel shop by 10%, but their salary only costs 1%.

<comment><USER42> Sure- that's true. But heirarchical organizations seek to expand even when the benefit to each existing member is zero- or indeed, negative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "For individuals the upshot is the same: aim small. It will always suck to work for large organizations, and the larger the organization, the more it will suck."

do you agree?

<comment><USER44> Definitly not! Few years ago I worked as developer at a startup. 4 devs, 2 sales, 1 marketing and 1 CEO.

It was a mess, sales made horrible promisses to customers, and letting us build demo after demo. The CEO was going round every day pushing people to work harder. And everytime the guy read some tech news we had to drop everything and switch technology to be 'more innovative'.

Right now I'm working in a large company (> 1000 employees)

I have a steady budget for my team. There are targets offcourse, but overall a lot of freedom to do with my team we think is best. Management doesn't get involved in any tech descisions. Wouldn't wanne go back to my startup years...

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> TL;DR; Successful guy visits Africa, sees animals in the wild instead of Zoo's, creates clickbait article to imply capitalism is a zoo and people do not belong in zoo's. The premise of this argument is that people do not belong in large groups. Ironically that is what we all try to do. Over time, people organize so they can accomplish greater things as a whole rather than individuals. The end of the article goes on to say, "Founders arriving at Y Combinator often have the downtrodden air of refugees. Three months later they're transformed: they have so much more confidence that they seem as if they've grown several inches taller." I can't decide if this article attempting to be advice or a sales pitch for Y Combinator.

</comment><comment> gamma-male Perfect blogpost as I'm joining a large corp soon...

<comment><USER46> "In an artificial world, only extremists live naturally."

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I'm going to agree with other folks saying PG really took the L on this piece. That "Don't talk to corp dev" piece is a far more quality piece than this one, which is really a stretch. As it turns out, if you're at the right company, even if you prefer small firms, you'll probably find a lot to learn and a good reason to stay at a larger company. And if you're at a small firm, you can really be gambling on your entire career. PG, of course, never mentions this in his piece, or the consideration that so many startups fail. How many bush tailed young engineers have gone to work at a startup somewhere early in their career and had it go pear shaped? Was this kind of inspiration porn to blame?

Of course, it's 10 years on from this piece, and we're seeing lots of correction to this. The youth aren't quite so naive these days. They don't buy this kind of drivel. They want a real job with real benefits, room to grow, mentorship, a healthy org, userbase growth, an interesting roadmap -- they want a career. They're not going to settle for a huckster selling them a get rich quick scheme. PG gets dangerously close to that in several articles.

EDIT: I'm realizing this sounds a little bit more bitter and polemical than I'd like. Let me submit for reference that this view is very, very much colored by my own experiences -- right out of college, I had several early stage startups I worked at and/or co-founded go sideways in manners that I had zero preparation for or help extricating myself from. I found myself wishing at that stage that I had worked at either more established companies, whether they be post series A startups or BigCos. I went on to do just that, but had already burned through 3 years of a spotty resumé, low salary, emotional burnout and having to develop an unnecessarily thick hide to weather all that than I wished. I'm seeing colleagues of mine who took this route out of college, and they seem so much further ahead and well-balanced than I was at their age. It makes me think that in hindsight, it all seems so unnecessary -- had I worked at more stable companies in that period, wouldn't I be three years ahead? Would I have been a more polished and developed professional just as they are now? It's easy to discount the necessity of good mentorship early in your career, but it's so crucial. That mentorship is what gives you the tools to learn how to learn and how to peacefully co-exist with others -- if you don't get that the right way, there's a lot of painful and wasteful unlearning and relearning that must be done. I certainly found myself doing more of that than I would have liked.

For all intents and purposes, there's no guarantee (just a high probability financially) that I would've been further ahead if I started my career off at a big co. But life doesn't work like that. I would have certainly been more risk-averse, and a lot less capable of, erm, smashing through my problems (when I need to) as I am today. I guess that even so, I would still trade some of that off for a more stable early career that let me get to a place of security and learning right out of college.

<comment><USER48> The idea that working for a small company that fails is damaging to one's career is a durable bit of propaganda. It probably originated as a way for big companies to discourage their people from shopping around. You can picture IBM execs, after the company singalong, telling ghost stories about the Man Who Joined a Startup, with themes from Icarus or fairy tales where someone strays from the village and is eaten by wolves.

Being part of a small company that fails sucks while it's going down, but quickly turns into a new adventure for people that are open to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> > to have each group actually be independent, and to work together the way > components of a market economy do.

If you look at truly revolutionary making environments like Xerox Parc, they are like this, no bosses and small groups.

However, what you didn't see in Xerox Parc is a market economy. Why? Because competition destroys invention.

Humans are not meant to compete with each other. Markets are another artificial environment, but of course, Paul doesn't see that because he is the fish in the fishbowl.

</comment><comment><USER50> This post parallels Ted Kaczynski's "Industrial society and its future"

</comment><comment><USER51> So.... Basically the same as [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation)

</comment><comment><USER13> There is a huge contradiction in this essay. If everybody were to follow the mantra and 'fire their boss' then who will those scrappy starter-uppers hire?

Some people will have a boss, some people won't and that's all dependent on personal risk evaluation. The 'gig' economy is where really nobody has a boss, the libertarian wet dream where everybody sells their body as a service to be discarded on a moments notice. Having a boss translates into access to social security, welfare, healthcare and other safety nets in many places in the world, and entrepreneurs usually pay in to such schemes but will not be in a position to apply for help if it should come to that.

<comment><USER52> I think the essay doesn't make the case for everyone to 'fire their boss' rather than to limit organisation size to about 8 people and to eliminate hierarchies.

<comment><USER13> How is that working out for Stripe, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Dropbox, Uber and Apple?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> The ability to organize into large groups is one of the greatest social innovations in history, and is a fundamental aspect of civil society.

I worked at a company that had an 'individual' service, and a 'business' service.In Spain, Italy and Greece and S. America - our customers were 'individuals'. In Germany, France and UK, they were 'business' accounts. Those economies with more 'business' accounts have somewhat more advanced industrial basis than those with 'individual' accounts.

There are many things that can only be developed at scale, and certain kinds of specialization that only become available at scale.

Only a company with X people can start to invest in Y kinds of things, which is a huge part of their competitive advantage.

Yes, big cos are seemingly more inefficient at the individual level, but their scale actually might imply greater efficiency.

Put another way - someone at only 50% individual efficiency at a big corp, may be 'creating more value' than otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER54> Except that white flour or sugar are not bad for you physically.

[https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/gary-taubes-and-the-case- ag...](https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/gary-taubes-and-the-case-against- sugar/)</comment>


Ask HN: The best back end for mobile apps? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I've got a co-worker who's quite impressed with Firebase. [https://www.firebase.com/](https://www.firebase.com/)

Also, I saw a really cool presentation on the Azure platform. It supports push notifications, and even has a multiplatform template generator. [https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/app- service/mobil...](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/app- service/mobile/)

Both platforms feature a database and authentication.

</comment><comment><USER3> The one that you know best, in which you are the most productive. It's all just Web Services at that point. Nothing special about it being in support of a mobile app.

</comment><comment><USER4> What I do is not look for the "best", but keep scaling 10x. So start with targeting 1,000 users, then 10,000, then 100,000 and so on.

Parse is awesome to start with at that 10,000 user mark. Parse seems to scale its costs poorly though.

Past the smaller scale you have a lot of choices. Azure. AWS. Firebase. IBM's thing. All have their pros and cons.

</comment><comment><USER5> What features do you need?

You might want to look at this:

[http://www.kinvey.com/blog/3652/the-evolving-enterprise- back...](http://www.kinvey.com/blog/3652/the-evolving-enterprise-backend-as-a- service-ecosystem)

(the infographic on the blog)

If you need to spin-up notifications support quickly, Parse is pretty good. You can roll your own, but Parse is free until you get big.</comment>


Eric Schmidt's Home Page - <AUTHOR> http://ericschmidt.com/

<comment><USER2> The Wayback Machine has some interesting things:

* 2001: A big photo that looks like it was taken during a "Networld+Interop"/Novell presentation

* 2001: email@example.com :)

* 2002: email@example.com

* 2005: firstname.lastname@example.com

* 2014: twitter button

It hasn't changed much since 2001 :)

[http://web.archive.org/web/20010422003224/http://ericschmidt...](http://web.archive.org/web/20010422003224/http://ericschmidt.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Internet needs more home pages like this. Fast to load, fast to read. There's contact information and couple links to get some more information.

EDIT: at least I prefer pages like this over say LinkedIn profile.

<comment><USER4> >Internet needs more home pages like this.

If you're talking solely about its looks and contents, then I won't argue. But if you look at the HTML behind it... it's pretty bad: the internet doesn't need more pages this poorly written. :P Try and validate it: [https://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fericschmidt....](https://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fericschmidt.com%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0)

Half as many errors as there are lines of HTML, and that's HTML 4 transitional.

Oh well, it doesn't matter too much, but I'm a web developer so I still have to care to a degree. ;)

<comment><USER5> Around 2012 there was an edit but the first two lines were accidently removed - both the <HTML> and <HEAD> tags are now missing but later closed.

This can be confirmed with internet archive. [1] vs [2]

[1] [http://web.archive.org/web/20111220220928/http://ericschmidt...](http://web.archive.org/web/20111220220928/http://ericschmidt.com/)

[2] [http://web.archive.org/web/20131030012224/http://ericschmidt...](http://web.archive.org/web/20131030012224/http://ericschmidt.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting... I may decide to downplay my own page... I've been trying to find a combination of time and motivation to move my blog and homepage into something more cohesive, though I don't think I'd go quite this basic... it looks so much like something from 1994 to be honest.

As to another's comment on the speed... interestingly enough the image and twitter button don't actually load that fast... they pop in.... for what it is, having the images inline may be a better choice (for raw speed). As would simplifying the broken markup.

</comment><comment><USER7> Sergey's page is also pretty cool, [http://infolab.stanford.edu/~sergey/](http://infolab.stanford.edu/~sergey/)

</comment><comment><USER8> That picture is from the 1000 USD banknote...

</comment><comment><USER9> I like the image. It's apparently from Wall Street Journal - "Pencil Drawing - Eric Schmidt.png".

</comment><comment><USER10> His html skills are from the late 90s, clearly.. Thank goodness we don't judge him for that :)

<comment><USER11> No, this is the way to do it. Haven't you seen a CS / engineering professor's page? Those with knowledge don't need to be flashy, that's for salesmen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Would he answer if I called?

<comment><USER13> Not likely, since that phone number is for the Google Customer Support. You would likely not even get a human :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> He could learn a little of SEO :)

<comment><USER15> the question is do he need SEO?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's missing the opening <HEAD> tag. Is that a thing?

</comment><comment><USER17> It is not from 90's. Look at that twitter button!</comment>


Ask HN: Where can I download a sample mailbox archive? - <AUTHOR> I'm developing some email related software and I need access to a mailbox archive of thousands or even tens of thousands of emails between a small group of people. Does anyone know if such an archive is available anywhere? My Google Fu is failing me <comment><USER2> [https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~enron/](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~enron/)

This was still the industry standard dataset for the electronic discovery industry last time I looked. If you can say 'works with the EDRM corpus' many people will be familiar with that benchmark.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is perfect. Thank you!</comment></comment>


Identifying Entrepreneurs During Job Interviews - <AUTHOR> http://www.infochachkie.com/entrepreneurial-interviewing/ How to avoid hiring a "wantrepreneur" at your startup. <comment><USER2> The personal questions proposed in this post are not in any way relevant to job performance and put you at risk of an anti-discrimination lawsuit in California. The relevance to entrepreneurship is never explained in the post, you might as well ask "what is your favorite color" as it's as useful as these questions.

It's also interesting that all of the "homework" tasks are marketing or business development related. To help the average hacker understand what's being asked here, pretend that you were given a programming assignment and asked to bring the code in on a USB key so that it could be "reviewed" as a part of the interview. This is different from being asked to sketch out an approach during an interview, he wants real work for free.

The downturn may embolden certain hiring managers to abuse candidates, please don't become one of them.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Free Consulting

Before you conclude the interview, assuming you are interested in the candidate, give them some meaningful homework. For instance, you might ask them to research a potential new market, analyze a competitor or assess a new distribution channel. Preferably select a task that will add value to your team's efforts – not a make-work project.

There are several potential positive outcomes from this approach: (i) you get free consulting, (ii) the candidate becomes engaged in your business and thus can hit the ground running if they are hired, and most importantly, (iii) it gives you an effective window into their soul and true motivations, as well as an assessment of their skills and abilities._

Free consulting? Strikes me as a little sleazy.

<comment><USER2> I agree, if an in depth technical interview is not sufficient, then pay for a small assignment so it's clear that you own the code. This method can easily give way to fraud and I think is already over the line into misrepresentation with the mention of "(i) you get free consulting."</comment></comment>


WPA Password cracker - upload your network capture - <AUTHOR> http://www.wpacracker.com/index.html

<comment><USER2> amazing, the ability and affordability to do such things will at least finally reiterate the need for better security !</comment>


Nature-Inspired Programming Recipes (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://cleveralgorithms.com/nature-inspired/index.html <comment><USER2> Author, here. thanks for the interest guys!

If you like my style, I also have material on machine learning (the statistical sort) over at [http://machinelearningmastery.com/](http://machinelearningmastery.com/)

<comment><USER3> Hi Jason! I read your "Clever Algorithms" book a couple of years ago, and I loved it. I never had a chance to thank you, but since you're here, thank you so much for writing such a fun and interesting book. I just loved it, and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in cool algorithms.

<comment><USER2> Thank you so much, you really made my day!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For people like me that are used to only reading the comments: You can read the book online, code is in ruby, example: tabu search for the traveling salesman problem.

I should suggest updating the code by using the python ecosystem: numpy, pandas, scikit-learn and enhacing the value book with a little of ML

</comment><comment><USER5> Oh my god, it's just a massive list of cool algorithms. I have the biggest nerd-boner.

</comment><comment><USER6> This looks super interesting. Would love a print version, though.

<comment><USER3> [http://www.amazon.com/Clever-Algorithms-Nature-Inspired- Prog...](http://www.amazon.com/Clever-Algorithms-Nature-Inspired-Programming- Recipes/dp/1446785068)</comment></comment>


Tesla/Solar City retrofitts an entire island to run purely off of solar power - <AUTHOR> http://www.thinkerspost.com/2016/11/teslasolar-city-has-retrofitted-entire.html <comment><USER2> _Home to 600 residents, the $8 project has ensured that they will not be screwed by lack of fuel shipments._

Is that really correct? $8?</comment>


Ask HN: How did the USA become the Technology Capital of the world? - <AUTHOR> I have read that in the sixties and seventies Europe and Japan were also as technologically advanced as the USA.
But what has happened in the latter decades, that has now made the USA the technology capital of the world.
Now all major Software and technology firms (barring a few) are based in the USA. E.g. Apple, Google, FB, Microsoft, etc..
PS : This is an open ended question and I am looking forward to many interesting answers. <comment><USER2> If you remove Facebook from that list you will find the US is leading in cloud, OS and hardware providers. If you look closer things get more complicated. Samsung and Foxconn? Arm? If you look at the history thing get more complicated too. Oracle swallowed Sun and got its hands on OpenOffice (originally a German, commercial product) and MySQL (originally a Swedish product). Those American companies are a lot more international then you think. Also, if you look at Spotify, Elasticsearch and so on you will find a lot of European companies. If you look at Linux and Python you will find a lot European programmers. If you look at Ruby you will find a lot of Japanese programmers. Here in Europe (Germany in my case) software looks more local too. We use DATEV and SAP, European products that are huge here.

The US has a foot hold in a couple of markets and that is right because there is such a thing as a natural monopoly or duopoly. We can't deal with an infinite amount operating systems and hardware platforms so now we have Windows and Unix (the Macintosh's utility for a lot of us programmers is that it is a Unix).

What you should consider is ANDROID. The hardware it mainly runs on is ARM (British), the Linux Kernel was produced by a Finish guy and by a lot of international people, including Canadians, Mexicans, Brazilians, Europeans, Japanese and so on. If you look at the Google IO you should notice Sundar Pichai is an Indian (well, naturalized American) and he isn't the only one at Google. To just hijack all the work done by people who aren't American and rubber stamping something as American because the company behind it was incorporated there does a big disservice to the complexity of modern technology.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think maybe, you should look at this Wikipedia article, as a quick bit of Googling easily debunks your initial supposition:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_informatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_information_technology_companies)

</comment><comment><USER4> In my experience there are many aspects of the US that seem surprisingly backward as regards technology, and in which other countries seem far ahead:

-I see endless threads complaining about broadband speeds and monopolistic behaviour of cable companies in the US

-Public transport is poorly developed in comparison to Europe, with very little high speed rail for example

-Mobile phone coverage poor outside populated areas

-American cars still seem to be built to inferior standards of quality compared to European/Japanese manufacturers, and the overall stock of cars is generally woefully inefficient in comparison to elsewhere

-The latest medical technology is out of the reach of many due to exorbitant cost

-Crumbling transport infrastructure

Don't get me wrong, I love the US, but the perception that it's some kind of technological utopia is not based in reality.

</comment><comment><USER5> What have lead you to the conclusion that the USA is the technology capital of the world?</comment>


Siftr – An Intelligent Photo Discovery Platform - <AUTHOR> http://siftr.co <comment><USER2> Hi. I really like your service. It's a great idea! Will I be able to search based on the social activity of my photos too, or do you just import the photos alone?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

Siftr imports only the photos and their title/descriptions, and doesn't fetch social activity like comments.

We'll love to hear from you how your experience goes with Siftr, and if you have any suggestions.</comment></comment>


Who's behind Facebook clickjacking scams? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kotowicz.net/2011/03/whos-behind-facebook-clickjacking-scams.html

<comment><USER2> Whats the point of this scam ? Does this guy gain money from this or he is just glad to piss off lots of people ?</comment>


How To: Apple MacBook Pro RAID 0 Array with 2 Intel X25-M SSDs - <AUTHOR> http://paulstamatiou.com/how-to-apple-macbook-pro-raid-0-array-with-2-intel-x25-m-ssds

<comment><USER2> The article somewhat implies that running TRIM from Windows 7 on a dual-boot (with OS X) system is useful - wouldn't that not be the case though since Windows 7 is not going to know what blocks are in use on the HFS+ partitions?

<comment><USER3> It's true that Windows can't trim HFS+, but the free space created by Windows will make the SSD faster even when you boot back into OS X.

If you really really feel the need for speed in OS X, I recommend the host protected area trick since it's a one-time optimization.

<comment><USER2> Can you elaborate on what the "host protected area trick" is?

<comment><USER3> <http://email@example.com/msg82811.html>

Setting the HPA (immediately after secure erase) ensures that some LBAs always remain unallocated and should give the GC more candidate erase blocks to work with, increasing random write performance. Or at least that's how I understand it.

<comment><USER4> However, there already is a certain amount of free space allocated for this task. On the Intel drives, it's the difference between 80GiB and 80GB; the latter is the maximum addressable by the OS, the former is the actual capacity of the flash chips. Flash chips always have a power-of-2 capacity, and there are 5, 10 or 20 chips in the various intel drives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why not RAID-1? RAID-0 on a technology that is known to die relatively faster than HDD's seems risky. Plus, you should get a read speed boost from it too.

<comment><USER6> Why RAID-anything in a laptop? A single Intel SSD is pretty darn fast, and the second bay is more useful as a large-capacity spinning hard drive (unless you need the optical drive, of course). I have my MBP set up this way and I've been very pleased with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> For me at least: the single SSD got boring after a while and I wanted to get better speeds. As for storage I have a 2TB (RAID 0 as well) HTPC ( [http://paulstamatiou.com/how-to-build-microsoft- windows-7-in...](http://paulstamatiou.com/how-to-build-microsoft- windows-7-intel-core-i7-pc) ) that keeps most of my media and usenet junk, then an external for other stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What's sad is that the chipset in the MacBook Pro he has can do hardware RAID, Apple just doesn't support it in EFI.

It's Nvidia's MCP79 (of the nForce 790 SLI)

<comment><USER8> Apple already has a RAID implementation. It's software based but the performance is just as good as the hostRAID. It also has the benefit of being swappable to any other Mac system unlike hostRAID which is chipset dependent.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Present code and animate in changes line-by-line - <AUTHOR> https://slides.com/news/auto-animate-code/ <comment><USER2> Holy moly. You have slides.com domain. That in itself should be worth a fortune.

Loved the demo. Although I kinda wanted to see how easy it is to put together something.

Like May he show snippets of existing codebases. May be like how git works under the hood with its merkle tree.

Or how a SAAS app works with frontend, database etc and the relevant snippets. Little useful examples like that that are valuable on its own but really showcase the technology.</comment>


Spotting a million dollars in your AWS account - <AUTHOR> https://segment.com/blog/spotting-a-million-dollars-in-your-aws-account/?hn=true <comment><USER2> Great write up. Working with the DBR can be painful when trying to track down funky costs like EMR and bandwidth consumed by EMR jobs. My company investigated at extending terraform to do some kind of tag check when applying however we decided it would be difficult to maintain this plugin and integrate with future versions of terraform. Now I have about 5 different lambda(* x accounts) jobs that tags things & leveraging cloud custodian for event based tag management.

As I've been looking for a vendor that could take over tag management for me and roll this out to new taggable features(lambda), I'm fnding no one in the industry has extensive tag automation. When I talk to vendors, they think I'm using tagging for organization, while it's really for cost management/reporting. Very strange. I wish AWS had a better tagging tool set than what they currently offer.

</comment><comment><USER3> I do wonder if businesses like this should start thinking about moving to a hybrid public/private cloud. I wonder at what point do you reach a break-even point by running your own hardware?</comment>


Intel-Inside Backdoor? - <AUTHOR> https://i2.wp.com/phibetaiota.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Intel-Inside.jpg <comment><USER2> Sure, this is what we all suspect, but I don't consider this particular account to add one iota of evidence.</comment>


The Holmes 1-Touch Heater - <AUTHOR> http://toastytech.com/guis/heater.html <comment><USER2> > The single button makes the unit appear simple to operate, but having > operated one myself and as I watched a number of other people attempt to use > them it was apparent that it was not so simple.

That sounds awfully similar to my experience with both Apple's home-button, and their one-button mouse.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you like that article, you might also like Donald Normans The Design of Everyday Things, [https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised- Expand...](https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised- Expanded/dp/0465050654). It has a lot more examples for these kind of bad designs, and it also explains why these designs are bad and what makes a good design. I can't recommend it enough, everyone that ever might design a product or a GUI should have read it.

</comment><comment><USER4> My personal "favourite" are refridgerators with a dial for setting 1 - 5. Is that Celsius? [no it's not] Is "1" a low or high temperature? Usually "5" is the lowest temperature (presumably for "5 = most cooling power").

</comment><comment><USER5> I really like 2d approaches on knobs: turn to adjust heat, and press it to turn it on/off. My car stereo does this for volume and it's quite graceful to use. Analog controls with continuous domains really go well together

</comment><comment><USER6> As a sysadmin I consider this a UI improvement. Please make space heaters unusable. Your other equipment will last that much longer.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'd prefer about 60°F (which causes a lot of complaining in many places so I don't express my preference) but I hope the author is joking about using a heater in the summer.

<comment><USER8> I have tragically been in an office where someone was so uncomfortable with the consensus aircon setting that they had their own heater under their desk.

Open-plan offices are hard.

<comment><USER9> Closed-plan offices are also hard in most buildings. The HVAC vents are set in fixed overhead positions, and then the tenant has to subdivide it into offices, meeting rooms, break rooms, etc. Those never seem to line up properly with the vents, and the temperature sensors are in different spots, so some rooms end up freezing and others too hot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> (2005) with 2000-era web design :)

<comment><USER4> You mean, it doesn't require Javascript to render the page? That's a feature, not a bug.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> A brutal-designed web site about bad design! I thought I stumbled upon a time- capsule web site. Neat.

I recommend the /r/crappydesign for more of these design gems

<comment><USER4> Did you have an actual problem accessing the web site?

<comment><USER3> It really is bad designed though. Tiny and too wide text especially, and it also has a totally confusing site hierarchy that is not reflected in the navigation menu to the left, that seems to have no link with the navigation at the top.</comment></comment></comment>


VFEmail.net: We have suffered catastrophic destruction at the hands of a hacker - <AUTHOR> https://www.vfemail.net/ <comment><AUTHOR> [https://twitter.com/VFEmail/status/1095021927972909056](https://twitter.com/VFEmail/status/1095021927972909056)

[https://twitter.com/VFEmail/status/1095038701665746945](https://twitter.com/VFEmail/status/1095038701665746945)</comment>


Why I use Vim - <AUTHOR> http://pascalprecht.github.io/2014/03/18/why-i-use-vim/ I had a lot of discussions with my colleagues recently because they can't believe I use Vim for almost everything. This post is about why I do so. <comment><USER2> Actually... The image at the end reads "One does not simply... reimplement vim"

FWIW evil-mode for emacs has done just that, and IMHO, in most cases, actually is a better vim that vim itself. Its not just a shallow subset of a few vim keyboard shortcuts, but pretty much a complete reimplementation of vim, in elisp.

It rocks

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey! Very interesting! I haven't used emacs yet, so I didn't know about that evil-mode. :)

I'll check it out but I doubt that it's a complete reimplementation.

However, glad you like emacs though :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have trouble imagining a person who would care what text editor you use and would then be surprised to hear that you use Vim or Emacs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well it's actually more about that their suprised i'm using a text editor instead of an IDE at all.</comment></comment>


A real time JavaScript webm encoder based on a canvas hack - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/antimatter15/whammy

<comment><USER2> Only works in webkit browsers. Only I frame.</comment>


Zyppos - <AUTHOR>

Zyppos, a crowdsourcing platform for flight search.
They let flight hackers and expert researchers find you the very best flights and lowest fares so you don't have to search on every website/airline.
The website, www.zyppos.com just went through a massive re-design, from the ground up. <comment><USER2> Tried it but the site lost my registration and never sent an email. Cool concept but has bugs.</comment>


Node.js sandbox - executes untrusted JavaScript for embedded scripting - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gf3/sandbox

<comment><USER2> This is highly recommended according to the docs([http://nodejs.org/docs/v0.4.12/api/vm.html#vm.runInNewContex...](http://nodejs.org/docs/v0.4.12/api/vm.html#vm.runInNewContext)): "Note that running untrusted code is a tricky business requiring great care. To prevent accidental global variable leakage, script.runInNewContext is quite useful, but safely running untrusted code requires a separate process."

So IMHO, it's a good start but is not quite there yet, I'm not an expert in security but I don't think just because you are using V8 and a separate process model doesn't mean you will achieve the same level of sandboxing that Chromium provides. In fact, Chromium relies a lot in several security mechanism of the OS:

Windows: <http://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/sandbox>

Linux: <http://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/LinuxSandboxing>

OSX: [http://www.chromium.org/developers/design- documents/sandbox/...](http://www.chromium.org/developers/design- documents/sandbox/osx-sandboxing-design)

So if you just want to keep your globals clean, running the code in a separate V8 Context is more than enough, I did it once for a javascript library that was corrupting one of my global types(<https://github.com/firebaseco/safe_datejs>).

We are in a Cloud era, if you really need to run untrusted code on the server side you should be using Virtual Machines instead of a processes, or even better, create a web hook for your web app. I like the initiative but I'm having a hard time trying to find a use case for this.

</comment><comment><USER3> Excuse my ignorance, but how frequently do developers find an application for such a system? I haven't written many external-facing web projects (I can generally trust each of the couple dozen users of my internal applications) so I don't have much experience in this field, but still I can't imagine an application I might want to write someday that would consume user submitted code (save for a product like CodePad but I figure there are plenty of those already :).)

<comment><USER4> Take an eCommerce system for instance, you want to open up complex shipping or discount calculations to your end users. A great way to to do this is to allow them to write a function that takes in known objects and returns a result. Say it takes in a cart/line_items and returns back a calculated amount. Obviously its a bit more complex then that, but it is a great way to expose some functionality without exposing the entire system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't see the point of using this when there is the vm core package.

<comment><USER6> I took a quick look and here's what I've gathered.

This thing gives the impression that user code is pre-emptible (it really just forks the process under the hood), whereas using vm naively risks blocking your process (infinite loop in user code will gimp the server).

There's also some pseudo-console.log hack to allow communication from user code to the outside world.

Even so, I don't see the point of this either. vm + forked child process will do the same thing, it's much more versatile, and if you're working a use-case where running untrusted code is necessary, you're probably good enough with Node to cook up this kind of solution in no more than a few minutes.</comment></comment>


Microsoft retiring Docs.com - <AUTHOR> https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Important-information-about-Docs-com-end-of-service-3b0d4877-1643-457c-9756-8caf28b94da4?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US <comment><USER2> They want people to move to SlideShare.

SlideShares UI is really bad, I dont like it. Docs.com had better UI.</comment>


What Students in Europe Learn That Americans Don't - <AUTHOR> http://www.vice.com/read/what-students-in-europe-learn-that-americans-dont <comment><USER2> How does "Schools in countries like Finland, for example, have effectively given up on the repetitive learning style" fit with "as children, Finns are expected to not only memorize all the world countries, but also their capitals, any major cities, rivers, mountain ranges, deserts, and other important geographical features"?

Locating "100 obscure rivers on a map in front of the whole class" sounds very much like the result of a repetitive learning style.

The article argues that 'European countries put greater premium on rigor, focus, and coherence in their instructional systems' while 'Curricula in the United States, by contrast, "run a mile wide but only an inch deep."'

But this is by design. The US follows the liberal art tradition that a broad education is more important than one which is a mile deep but only an inch wide. Hence why in US high school, students only interested in math students must still take some history classes, some practical arts, etc. In one of my first visits to the UK, at a research site with grad students from across Europe, I was surprised that my knowledge of general European history was better than theirs. My high school offered a very good European history class. The Europeans specialized in science starting in high school, so had mostly learned their national history but not broader European history.

The article states 'In the US, there is no national requirement for students to learn a second language.'. This is absolutely true. Such a requirement would be unconstitutional under our federal system. This is why NCLB and others are based on bribes, I mean, the power of the purse. Which makes the Vice observation irrelevant. It should have said that most states, but not all, require some foreign language education in order to graduate.

"many kids play club sports in their local towns—outside of school"

I completely and totally want that to also be true in the US.</comment>


Bone marrow was kept in a Stone Age meat locker - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/09/science/marrow-israel-cave.html <comment><USER2> The vague nutrition language in the Times article, led me to the study [1], which has more specifics:

"Marrow composition was mostly unsaturated FA (78%), especially monounsaturated (74%), and only 22% comprised saturated fats (table S1). Oleic (C18:1n-9) was the most abundant FA in marrow (36% in week 0), with a significant decrease per week (−0.7 ± 0.14%; P < 0.001). Other FA, like palmitoleic (C16:1n-7), palmitic (C16:0), and vaccenic (C18:1), had lower percentages (10 to 16%) and remained constant over time.

The energy value of marrow obtained from metapodial bones ranged from 123 kcal (bone from week 2 in the outdoor autumn scenario) to 2.7 kcal (bone from week 6 in the outdoor spring scenario). The energy contained in one bone in good conservation conditions (i.e., up to 9 weeks in the outdoor autumn scenario or the first few weeks in the outdoor spring scenario) could be comparable to the crude energy content of 25 g of fresh meat."

1\. [https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/10/eaav9822](https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/10/eaav9822)

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't understand how meat stored in ambient conditions and quite warm temperatures (main article seems to say ~20C) doesn't go off.

<comment><USER4> Oxygen - or lack of. Think about it - marrow is sealed inside the bone. They had to use stone chisels to free it so it could be consumed :)

<comment><USER3> Christ I'm an idiot - for some reason I thought they'd opened the bones up before storing them :( Of course not. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Bone marrow, still in the bone and with Fleur de Sel, is one of my favorite dishes!

How do Americans think about bone marrow as a dish?

<comment><USER6> Crickets is what you'll get from Americans on this topic. Chances are they haven't seen it in a restaurant or anywhere else.

<comment><USER7> I can't speak for all Americans, but it's fantastic and sadly inaccessible. Grocery stores either don't have them, want to charge an unreasonable premium as if it's exotic, or ideally will give them away. However that's a perk the butcher gets for friends, family, and loyal customers. Unfortunately, I don't have such a relationship with a butcher, so it's a rare treat. Those who do have access are very much into it.

<comment><USER8> I don't know if "exotic" is the right word, but they are scarce; there aren't many good marrow bones compared to the amount of meat on a cow. I have good relationships with a couple Chicago butchers (I was an investor) and I'd have to ask far ahead for the marrow bones. Since there's so little of it to sell, they're more likely to make a product that stretches them, like marrow butter or bone marrow burgers, than to simply sell the bones.

<comment><USER9> I was reliably able to get them at Paulina Meat Market without advanced notice a couple years ago when I lived nearby. The only caveat is they don't like to saw them when it's busy or close to closing time. So if you don't have a bandsaw, go off hours</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Alisa Shevchenko one of sanctioned Russian DNC hackers is looking for journalist - <AUTHOR> https://imgur.com/gallery/mtQnL <comment><AUTHOR> [https://imgur.com/gallery/mtQnL](https://imgur.com/gallery/mtQnL)

[https://twitter.com/badd1e/status/821414873858850816](https://twitter.com/badd1e/status/821414873858850816)

Alisa Shevchenko is founder of Zorsecurity (a.k.a. Esage Lab). She is one of "Russian DNC hackers" that have been sanctioned by Obamas administration. She was accused that she _provided the GRU with technical research and development_ which is according to her absolutely not true.

> Most plausible scenario is that my company was framed: either to cover up > APT28, or to introduce a target for any "Russian Hacking" blame.

theguardian.com article [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/06/russian- hacker...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/06/russian-hacker-putin- election-alisa-shevchenko?CMP=share_btn_tw)

forbes.com article [http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2016/12/30/alisa-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2016/12/30/alisa- esage-shevchenko-us-election-hack-russia-sanctions)

The White House December 29, 2016 FACT SHEET: Actions in Response to Russian Malicious Cyber Activity and Harassment [https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press- office/2016/12/29/fact-...](https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press- office/2016/12/29/fact-sheet-actions-response-russian-malicious-cyber- activity-and)</comment>


Test if any website is blocked in Singapore in real time - <AUTHOR> http://www.blockedinsingapore.com <comment><USER2> Latest results for youporn.com ... OK! This site is not blocked in Singapore.

Does not seem to work correctly...</comment>


Powerful Alternative to ELK Stack (Elastic, Logstash and Kibana) - <AUTHOR> http://www.motadata.com/elk-stack-alternative/ <comment><USER2> Some bold claims there. What does this "powerfulness" consist of?

> Motadata serves as a best ELK-Stack alternative that gives your team > operational insights in seconds.

How is it "best"?

And since it's not open source, how is it any better than Splunk, Papertrail, or Loggly?</comment>