Ask HN: How do you handle your mental lows? - <AUTHOR> I've been working on a project of mine. I even have a small number of users that care about the product. Yet from time to time I fall into the feeling that everything I'm doing is worthless, extreme self-doubt and feeling that while others are moving ahead with their lives I'm just stuck and useless.
It usually lasts 1-3 days making me unable to be productive. It used to be worse and last week(s). What I learned is to remember how these lows feel. Nowadays I know that "It's just another one of those, it shall pass".
I also try to get very analytical when it hits and find out why do I feel like that.
I have a few questions.
(1) Is this normal? If I take a look at, let's say famous, entrepreneurs on Twitter, for example, most of them seem to know what to do and seem to be very pragmatic. Whereas I just often feel completely lost and I feel like I'm throwing my life away and not being good enough. But the things is I love this! I love the whole process of creating new things and figuring them out. I can't imagine myself doing anything else. It's just these lows that I don't know how to handle.
(2) If you experience similar feelings do you have any tips on how to handle them? <comment><USER2> 1\. That is normal, ask a doctor if you think you have problems and STOP FUSSYING AROUND ABOUT FAMOUS PEOPLE. You are doing fine, they just had more luck in life than you. I'm in the absolute 0.01%(or 99.9%?) of a normal distribution of my peers in terms of success and I'm nowhere near Elon Musk. You can be very successful, and yet, it won't be enough for you to be remembered or noticed. Why is that so important? I find this kind of questioning quite immature to be honest. Just focus on YOUR goals and YOUR strenghts/weaknesses.

2\. Rest and look for people that can help you out, or solutions. Life is tedious and hard, we must fight everyday. If people respect that in order to grow your muscle, you must relax and chill when you have fatigue, why shouldn't you when you have mental fatigue?

</comment><comment><USER3> I love posts like this because it makes me feel like we're all robots that came off the same factory line. Other people have given good advice, but I'll throw a random one out there:

I noticed I feel like you do basically every December through March, so much so that my git commits and activity even look to be seasonal. If this is some seasonal thing by chance, then get outside for at least 30min a day and/or get one of those lamps. Don't work in dark places or rooms either.

<comment><USER4> Could indeed be seasonal, there have been studies and it's a registered disorder[0] called SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder), usually it lasts up until spring/summer. Light therapy might work as a non-drug cure.

[0][https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/seasonal-affective- di...](https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/seasonal-affective- disorder/index.shtml)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _If I take a look at, let 's say famous, entrepreneurs on Twitter, for example, most of them seem to know what to do and seem to be very pragmatic._

A quick thought experiment - when the people you admire aren't tweeting do you assume that's because they're busy being successful and getting things right, or because they're also feeling like they're worthless and getting it wrong as you do? If it's the former, why are you assuming that?

When all you see is the successes it's very easy to assume it's like that all the time, but for pretty much all the entrepreneurs (and just people in general) that's not the case. Everyone has periods of low productivity and depression to some extent. A lot of people on social media tend not to share the bad times. That's all.

The solution for me was to realise that there's no rush. If I'm not productive for a while that's OK. I'm better off when I don't stress over how productive I am, and taking the pressure off is actually good for me mentally. Of course, that's not always possible, especially in a start up without a huge amount of capital. I don't have the answer if that's the case.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's not mentioned in the post, but if you have suicidal ideation, consult a doctor.

Otherwise, it's probably normal (and to be fair since something like 20% of the US population will have depression at some point, even long and/or severe episodes seem to be fairly normal).

People on Twitter are lying. Sometimes, only by omission. But often, straight- up lying. Second-guess your media a little more.

I find the lows more creative personally. The art type of creative. It's a better mood for seeing the world as it really is, which is a prerequisite to rendering it. Take up an art like painting or writing and get in the habit of truly looking at things. It will help you see these times as unique.

Some people find journaling helpful. I've never been able to stick to it but if you're a list-making, organized type journaling may help. If you do it large scale enough you can look back and notice that you did achieve things over a long enough period.

</comment><comment> a-saleh Similar thing happens to me from time to time.

I have a semi-systematic way to deal with this:

1) check I drink enough water, I eat enough, I had enough sleep. I.e. me and my wife have managed to avoid few really depressing evening conversations by looking at each other and saying "We are too tired to talk!", drinking few cups of water, taking a shower and going to bed early. Next day is then so much better :-)

2) I try to remember, when I was outside last time for an hour-long walk? When was the last time I have seem my friends? If the answer is "long ago", I make plans to change this.

3) so far these instances were far-apart enough, but I started to keep a journal, and review it whether it is time to go find a therapist :-)

W.r.t. enterpreneurs on Twitter, I follow @sehurlburt and she is quite open with her going to therapy and sometimes even shares some of her workbooks :)

I am not self-employed, which means that I have one more option you probably don't really have when feeling unproductive, and that is claiming I am stuck on a problem to colleagues and asking for help. It can sound weird, but pair- programming can help me with this, despite me being stuck is not fueled by technical problem, but mental state :)

</comment><comment><USER7> 1\. Search for "CEO suicide" and you'll get a less rosy picture. People won't Tweet about all the problems they have, everybody has problems.

2\. Sleep more. Consult a psychologist if that doesn't help.

</comment><comment><USER8> It helps the realization and be mindful of your emotional state. I have felt the same and I just say to myself "It is Ok. Just keep doing it" I remember something from someone saying "Don't compare yourself to others, just make sure the one you are today is a little bit better than the one you were yesterday" and the process is incremental.

I take a break whenever I feel stuck or that my work is useless. It may be useless (for other people and for myself sometimes) but at the end of the day is that I enjoy the process what really matters.

</comment><comment><USER9> The Twitter thing you bring up is interesting. Tweeting (or posting wherever) about your work is interesting in that it forces you to at least pretend you're getting something done.

I find that most hacks for consistency are external in nature. When you're a lone wolf you can slack off for days and nobody will notice. Say, personally, I'll often miss my own hard deadlines, but I'd never miss an appointment with somebody.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think you are putting too much value on your work and you maybe be trying to substitute work with worth.

I mean work is just a small facet of life.. when you put too much emphasis on it and start spending disproportionate amount of time on it while ignoring things that actually make you happy like playing with your kids, spending time with SO, watching tv / sports, etc you may start equating life with your work performance which can make you feel this way.

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't know if it's normal, but I experience pretty much the same cycle (and have for the past 5-6 years) -- for me, what's helped is:

\- being able to anticipate it

\- using that time period to do more introspective stuff like journalling (instead of trying to be as productive as I usually am)

\- trying to get outside/working out

\- and sometimes drinking tea for the l-theanine + caffeine boost (which tends to snap me out of it for a duration of time)

</comment><comment><USER12> It's because you don't know what you want and you are trying to fill the hole inside you with a manhole cover.

Deep inside you are unhappy even tho you are doing fine.

You want things at bigger scale, you yearn for the popularity which other famous founders have. You crave for their lifestyle.

</comment><comment><USER13> comparing yourself to others is usually a good way to end up disappointed with as interconnected as the world has become. Compare yourself to your previous self. Are you getting better by what you measure success as? Don't worry about tailored messages famous people write. Are you better now that you were last year? The year before? Maybe you are better in some ways and not in others. Celebrate small successes. Also, get vitamin D and do some exercise. Socialize with people in the real world.

</comment><comment><USER14> Lifting heavy weights works better than anything else for me. If I skip too many days in a row I start to feel like that.

</comment><comment><USER15> Turns out outdoor sport gives boost in morale

<comment><USER8> This is true for me as well. Sometimes when I feel down. I workout until exhaustion and then everything is Ok, not perfect, just fine. It helps to keep going. It helps, quite a lot!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Yeah it can be fairly normally.

a) maybe try meditation b) surround yourself with positive supportive people</comment>


Why the Girl Scouts Are Learning to Pick Locks and Hack Computers - <AUTHOR> https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/security/a21986403/girl-scouts-pick-locks-hacking/ <comment><AUTHOR> This really makes me happy.

When I was in Girl Scouts in the 1960s, we were taught to cook. I guess that was how they prepared us for our then-expected roles in life.

Even when I went to Girl Scout Camp (as I did from age 7 to 12), the outdoor skills we were encouraged to learn were watered-down versions of what boys learned. I canoed across lakes, where my husband canoed in wilderness areas on 10-day trips.

<comment><USER2> Well, despite this being HN, I'd still argue that for most people, knowing how to cook is a more valuable skill to have than knowing how to pick a lock.

<comment><USER3> I think being a locksmith earns more than most cooks (although certainly less than high end chefs). Opening locks without keys is a big part of locksmithing.

<comment><USER4> I think they meant cooking as a life skill. Over a lifetime you'll save more money on eating out, if you know how to cook, than you would on locksmith services, if you know how to pick locks. Unless you're ridiculously careless with your keys and get locked out every week, I guess. Knowing how to cook will also keep you healthier and the value of good health is immeasurable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Applaud the Girl Scouts for helping girls build skills for the 21st century!

<comment><USER6> What "skills" exactly? Burglary and cyber crime?

<comment><USER7> This is part of a larger ethos of curiosity about how things work and building, modifying and demystifying tools used everyday; e.g hacker culture. I don't think it is particularly fair to reduce skills like this, or frankly _exploration_ of skills like this on private property, to one negative and narrow usecase.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Probably people have to check their cookie boxes for listening devices now...

</comment><comment><USER9> Much, much better turn for the free-labor cookie-selling machine the Girl Scouts has become over the past decade ($0.60/box back to the troop, and available year round...).

<comment><USER10> So happy to see someone else flag this horrible abuse.

I would rather donate the cost of a case of cookies to the Guides than support the free labour, but of course the policy forbids such donations. I would think many other people would be happy to offer a 5$ donation direct to the Guides rather than line the pockets of a corporate parasite.

<comment><USER11> At least here in the US, it's quite easy to donate directly to a local chapter (as well as higher levels of the organization). I've done it.

Is that not the case where you are? Or is the problem that you're trying to support a specific troop or want to support a specific individual, and that's forbidden?

Do you have a link to something documenting the prohibition you've encountered?

<comment><USER10> When the girls are doing their rounds, I don't believe you are able to donate directly as an "instead of" option. That is, instead of cookies, a donation box, which would clearly state _all_ proceeds would be going to support the local troop.

It is also quite shameful that the distribution of funds isn't clearly indicated when the girls are funding. I suspect more people would donate directly instead of the cookies if they saw the distribution ratios.

Here, I believe the Guides take 3.00$ of the 5.00$, with a mere 1.00$ going to the girl in question. I would prefer to simply give 100% of the 5.00$ to the local troop that the girl is supporting, and in turn support five girls in her troop for the same donation amount.

<comment><USER11> > I don't believe you are able to donate directly as an "instead of" option.

I'm pretty sure that's not the case, at least here, as I've been personally present when a friend did exactly that.

Again, I question that what you're describing is a matter of any explicit prohibition due to policy, rather than your conclusion based on observed behavior (which, itself, can be explained by optimizing for maximum overall revenue, rather than maximum revenue to any particular participant).

To me, the split between the individual girl and the scouting organization (at troop, regional, national, or whatever level) is immaterial, because, at least here [1], the scouting organizations have routinely been in the news for their inclusive policies, even of otherwise politically marginalized girls, including putting their _money_ behind such policies.

[1] Again, the US. Other countries may well be different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> And because it's cool? Not a girl, but I was a scout and if we were seriously learning lock picking then the number of people going would have skyrocketed.

</comment><comment><USER13> If they learn to make poison and stealth, then I can finally roll a rogue class.

<comment><USER14> Start small: assassin merit badge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Because there's a large gender skew in prison population?

</comment><comment><USER16> Awesome.

<comment><USER16> Well, seeing as how that was not taken well...

Growing up, I had an uncle teach me lock picking. Each one opened came with a story, and some new thing he would share.

Those girls will likely see the world a bit differently, and yes. Awesome.</comment></comment>


DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review - <AUTHOR> https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20160801#ubuntuphone <comment><USER2> I got the BQ Aquarius 5 a few months ago, after my Moto G2 SIM card stopped working. So when comparing two budget-but-capable-phones, I can say that the hardware on the Ubuntu phone is not the problem.

The software they have is great, and I haven't seen any half-backed features. The updates are consistent and always bring something interesting. The idea of lenses and scopes are great as an alternative to the lack of common apps. I didn't miss not having a weather app or yelp, or youtube or whatever.

The one thing that is lacking on Ubuntu Touch are the things that are core to mobile use cases. For example:

\- I understand that I won't get a decent Google Maps app, but there is no real alternative. Here Maps comes installed, but I could not find a way to get public transportation data. uNav seems to do the turn-by-turn navigation, but they don't have voice, which is useless when I am on a bike.

\- There is no decent story for messaging/VoIP: You can have Telegram, but also is just a webview wrapper. Messenger, Whatsapp? Nothing. And if at least they had half-decent XMPP/SIP clients, I could try to drop the closed services and _try_ to switch my friends and family with me. But what good is a smartphone that I can't use to talk or chat?

Because of these things, I was basically forced to always be walking around with two phones: the Ubuntu one for connectivity and basic media and as a hotspot for my broken Android, which I would then use when I needed to look into maps or call/message someone. The hassle was enough for me to find a replacement board for the SIM card and go back to use only Android for everything. The Ubuntu phone now is in a drawer, waiting for me to get some time to play with application development for Ubuntu Touch.

All-in-all, my feeling is that Canonical is close to get its break and make Ubuntu a compelling alternative. It is just not there yet. I also hope that this Moto G was my last Android phone.

<comment><USER3> I can't speak for this OS but I use OsmAnd ([http://osmand.net](http://osmand.net)) in place of google maps on cyanogenmod and it does do a reasonable job of voice navigation (using the same OpenStreetMap data as uNav). It's open source so it should be able to work in principle.

<comment><USER4> I agree there are good applications available, but OSMAnd is an Android app, you'd need some sort of compatibility layer for it to run on stock Linux. I think there is work going on for that happen, but it's not there yet. The project I can recall is Shashlik, there are one or two others as well.

I think Android app compatibility is necessary for a Linux phone. You won't be able to use Play Services, but a lot of apps do not require that. Android compatibility would for instance give you WhatsApp. It also gives you access to hardware like activity monitors (Garmin and Withings apps don't require play services), which otherwise is very unlikely to be supported. And also sophisticated public transport apps like Moovit.

<comment><USER5> Hopefully Google will open source the container based approach they use for enabling Android apps on Chrome OS

[http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2016/05/chrome-os- android-a...](http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2016/05/chrome-os-android-apps- play-store-details/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Over the past year and a half I have become accustomed to the idea that I > get to run free applications on my phone in exchange for being shown semi- > frequent ads. This tended not to bother me most of the time, except when > Android apps would suddenly show me full screen videos at high volume.

Really? I installed AdAway [1] on my Android phone and since then I have seen no ads. Zero.

The only issue is that some legitimate apps don't work, because they pull content from sits which are blacklisted (mostly stock ticker apps). I feel that's a small price to pay for not having battery and data sucking ads during my phone experience.

Yes, it requires root to install the hosts file. That's basically a one time event (I rarely update the list and still never see ads) and the battery impact is none because the ad blocking works at DNS level (as opposed to say, a system-wide proxy)

[1] [https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=Adaway&fdid=...](https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=Adaway&fdid=org.adaway)

<comment><USER7> Huh. I've just never installed any ad-based applications. If there's a no-ad paid version for a buck or two I'll buy it, otherwise, I just don't use it.

<comment><USER8> How did you know which apps have ads? Until recently it was not shown anywhere I think?

<comment><USER9> The latest version of the play store identifies apps that show ads or have in- app purchases.

[https://files.derf.us/Screenshot_20160801-105001.png](https://files.derf.us/Screenshot_20160801-105001.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > About 1GB of memory is required to run the phone with its default scopes and > settings, leaving us about 2GB of space for applications and other features.

I did not see this coming. I was under the impression that moving away from a JVM would have lowered the memory requirements.

A comparison of the two versions of Meizu Pro 5, Android and Ubuntu, would have been useful too. I am curious if the move away from the Android architecture has changed the responsiveness of apps, or affected battery life.

<comment><USER11> As of Android 5, there is only ART, which is no different than using Go, D, or any other AOT compiled language with a GC enabled runtime.

Also many Scopes are actually written in either JavaScript, or QML with C++ and Go as possible code-behind languages.

[https://developer.ubuntu.com/en/phone/scopes/](https://developer.ubuntu.com/en/phone/scopes/)

So overall the runtime requirements aren't much different, unless you are writing a pure Qt/C++ scope (without QML).

<comment><USER10> Ah well, I guess I'll stay with Android for the time being then. I hope they meant to introduce Scopes as a stopgap measure to bridge the app divide to Android and iOS. I don't like this trend of newer (Android) apps needing 20-50MB downloads, and being so bloated for what they actually do.

<comment><USER11> > I don't like this trend of newer (Android) apps needing 20-50MB downloads, > and being so bloated for what they actually do.

Most of those apps are actually written in Qt, PhoneGap, Xamarin, or whatever portable flavour of the month.

Applications written in Java just with the Android Frameworks, are hardly above 10MB in application code, usually the rest are image/audio resources or a collection of the "Java framework of the month" for Android.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I bought a OnePlus 3 for the reason that it will be a well supported Ubuntu Touch phone [0]. It allows me dip the toe into the water with Ubuntu Touch while keeping Android as a backup. The 6 GB RAM of the OnePlus3 may well prove to be useful after all ;)

[0] [http://techpp.com/2016/06/17/oneplus-3-ubuntu-touch- os/](http://techpp.com/2016/06/17/oneplus-3-ubuntu-touch-os/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Surprised at how good this phone sounds!

Though I am not sure I have the courage to move from Android, it does sound like Ubuntu Phone could be a decent 4th player in the market now that FFOS is DOA.

I imagine you have a lot more flexibility for the software you write? Like, could I easily use Python + Tkinter to set up a quick "app" for my phone?

Basically, is this phone more of a small computer with Ubuntu, or a different beast?

<comment><USER14> I keep hearing it's supposed to be pretty much stock ubuntu with a slick front-end and phone drivers. I haven't been able to try it yet though. I hope it is, because I've been _dying_ to get an actual linux phone for a long time. Unfortunately this review was a little skimpy on what went on underneath the hood.

<comment><USER4> It's not quite stock Ubuntu in the sense that the core system is read only, in order to allow for OTA updates. So at present you can only apt-get by going into a dev mode which means you can't get the OTA's.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I hope the ubuntu phone fulfills the promise that FirefoxOS had. FFOS was killed due to a spiral of very low spec hardware and no real third-party development.

Being able to hack on the phone using scripts at a moment's notice is not something any phone currently provides.

<comment><USER13> I wonder if we could put FFOS on this phone. I still think the FF model of "everything is a web page" would lead to a pretty magical end goal, first set out by Smalltalk VMs. But I am not using a phone with a laggy keyboard.

<comment><USER11> Smalltalk used "everything is native".

As someone that used Smalltalk, HTML/CSS with JavaScript glue surely isn't what Smalltalk had for its GUI.

<comment><USER13> Oh, did it? I thought it was in its own universe. Maybe I'm thinking of some other system (Scratch??).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I do miss my Nokia n900 running Maemo, this might be as close to a replacement as it'll get. Just need a phone with a good built in keyboard.

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://pyra-handheld.com/](https://pyra-handheld.com/)

<comment><USER17> Not really like a phone though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > When I first started using the phone I noticed the Today scope showed > temperatures in the weather forecast in Fahrenheit rather than Celsius. This > can be adjusted by changing our selected language in the device's settings > panel _and restarting the phone_.

Really? You have to restart to change the temperature units? What a joke.

<comment><USER19> The real issue is "You have to change your language to change the temperature units". There's no correlation between those. That is one broken scope/widget if the author is correct.

<comment><USER20> While I agree, that it should be changeable independently, there is a very strong correlation between language and temperature units.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I run Ubuntu Touch on a Nexus 4, and have done for about 6 months now. It is slow and the mail client often crashes. And it doesn't have Snapchat. And the camera app is rubbish.

Apart from that, it is a lot less stressful to use than Android. I got fed up with it being slow at one point and reinstalled Android, and it had so many nag screens about reporting data to Google, and so many privacy options that I had to be sure to configure correctly, that I put Ubuntu back on it the same day.

I carry a second phone to run Snapchat and take photos.

EDIT: They do make you sign up for an account before you can download apps from the store, which completely boggles my mind. Their singular advantage over Android is that they don't hassle you for information, yet they almost throw that away by making you sign up to download apps. I just used a fake account, but I wish they didn't make you sign up.

</comment><comment><USER22> Distrowatch is definitely looking dated nowadays. Could do with a re-design at some point or another.

<comment><USER23> They rank distros by popularity based on how many clicks they get, so I always viewed it as a kind of parody/entertainment website.

<comment><USER24> It is web 1.0 clicking game for linux enthusiasts. Linux Mint users have been most avid clickers for a while now it seems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I would like this phone because, I assume, I can inspect and change the kernel and all other OSS software on it. What I don't get is, with their focus on emerging markets, why it needs to be so expensive. If they would focus more on performance they could have one for $100. I recently bought some iPhone clone in China, and besides the software, it's a fine phone; most people who see me with it immediately want one. It was $65 and works fine for most things I use smartphones for, even, to my surprise, taking great pictures. Battery life is around 8 hours/day with quite heavy use, the GPS performance is total crap (I think this is a software issue), but for $65 this is a nice device (it feels great as it's a 6s+ ripoff casing wise). But proprietary software in as much that I can't swap out the kernel and the rip off iOS on-top-of-Android is quite painful. If someone would just equip these phones with something fully OSS (minus a few drivers possibly) I don't think I would buy anything else.

</comment><comment><USER26> I own the Meizu Pro 5 Ubuntu smartphone. And I like it.

This is actually my first smartphone, so my perspective may be somewhat different from that of the reviews of it out there. I am a software engineer, and I greatly value the freedom to do whatever I want with computing devices I own, and to be able to tweak things and contribute any enhancements back to the community.

If something irks me and I can fix it, I will submit a patch (i.e., as a drive-by contributor), otherwise I will file a bug report and help reproduce the issue. Nothing major, no huge time-sink; just being able to help shape the software that surrounds us, and having a feeling of contributing to something bigger than a single corporation. So naturally I use a flavour of GNU/Linux on my computer.

I already use Ubuntu on my desktop and laptop computers (both professionally and private), so the Ubuntu smartphone seems like a good shot at getting something that can potentially near the freedom I have on desktop Linux, and thus far I am not disappointed.

A smartphone for me is a way to get information on-the-go. For things like public transport itineraries, weather forecasts, and navigation Ubuntu Touch already suffices.

The big 'issue' of course is apps. Ubuntu Touch has its own store with a growing number of free software apps, and some proprietary stuff. Most of the basic apps I expect are there, mostly pre-installed. Big name apps are missing though — there is no WhatsApp for instance. Now for my opinion on this topic, which may very well be an unpopular minority view:

To me, this lack of big name proprietary apps is just fine and exactly what I want. The term 'app' is ambiguous at best and I feel that it is a threat to software freedom. To illustrate: A simple stand-alone off-line calculator is called an 'app', but so i a web-service accessible exclusively with proprietary software like WhatsApp. That is, an 'app' in common parlance is not just the piece of software you install on your device, it is also the infrastructure backing it. In the case of the extremely popular WhatsApp, you need their software to be able to access their service. It appears to be illegal to create a free software client that can talk to their service, unlike, say, email (SMTP, IMAP, etc.). That's fine, its their service, their rules, I prefer to make due without.

I don't want a computing device filled with a bunch of proprietary clients for day-to-day tasks. If you offer a great service, offer a great web-app to use it with (I already have a capable browser installed), or (re)use or create an open protocol anyone can use. Otherwise, I'll just do without. If your business model depends on me installing a piece of proprietary software, I am not interested.

Other than that, there is still plenty of rough edges. It is not trivial (though possible) to install the normal software packages from Ubuntu's repositories, but on the other hand, I have not had the need yet. I do sorely miss Firefox with uBlock Origin though! Ads on websites seem even more intrusive than on the desktop.

If I had to summarize the threats to Ubuntu Touch's future I would say that it sometimes feels as if there are not enough core developers working on the product, but that may be just the impression I got from the issues I have reported.

Canonical seems to bet on being able to get Ubuntu Touch entrenched in developing countries, but I doubt that that strategy will pay off (although I am not knowledgeable enough on that topic to make a firm statement about this). If they can manage to make Ubuntu Touch synonymous with _the easy to use and obtain free operating system for smartphones_ (the way Ubuntu is for desktop computers) they may have a good chance at winning the hearts of software developers with a preference for free software — that is the niche I would bet on.

The lack of apps in the way of Android and IOS is of course problematic in the current app-economy driven smartphone world, and will prevent major adoption of Ubuntu Touch for some time to come, but it may be that I am not alone in my dismissal of this reliance on proprietary apps.

<comment><USER27> > I do sorely miss Firefox with uBlock Origin though! Ads on websites seem > even more intrusive than on the desktop.

You could edit the hosts-file to block ads...

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Specs and pics of the hardware, if anyone else is curious: [http://www.gsmarena.com/meizu_pro_5-7573.php](http://www.gsmarena.com/meizu_pro_5-7573.php)

</comment><comment><USER29> How does distrowatch gets the "page hits" for all the distros's websites? or are those "page hits" initiated from within distrowatch?

(surprised to see Mint at the top)

<comment><USER30> They are counting "one hit per IP address per day" on distribution subpages. Here is explained "DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking": [https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity](https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity)

<comment> angry-hacker Therefor it depends how well specific distro page of theirs rank in Google? If linux mint ranks 5th and Ubuntu 30th, because ubuntu is so popular, of course it gets more hits. And maybe some little known distro ranks 1st because it has no competition.

I think their popularity table is flawed, but I still love their website. You can browse distros that are based on specific distros etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> It seems kind of mad to think Ubuntu could succeed where Microsoft failed. I just can't see any way they will convince third party developers to write apps for it.

<comment><USER27> Well, a few things which might help:

\- There's going to be developers who will develop for Ubuntu Touch in their free time, just because they want the platform to succeed, similar to desktop Linux. And essentially no one will do that for Windows Phone, meaning that Windows Phone depends much more on developers to be able to make a profit off of it, and therefore much more on having market share to begin with.

\- Ubuntu Touch appeals more to developers than Windows Phone does. And if a developer already uses a platform, it's much more likely that they write an app for it in their free time.

\- Because Ubuntu Touch is open-source, it can be ported to existing phones. You can for example dual-boot it on a few of the Nexus devices already, which again, makes it easier to develop for. Also means there's another way for people to try it out.

<comment><USER22> > And essentially no one will do that for Windows Phone, meaning that Windows > Phone depends much more on developers to be able to make a profit off of it, > and therefore much more on having market share to begin with.

Totally incorrect. There's loads of developers making Windows Phone apps that are compatible with services that don't have an decent official app yet (See, for example, Rudy Huyn).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> See [http://ubports.com/](http://ubports.com/) for ports to some Android devices

</comment><comment><USER33> If you're willing to leave vanilla Android or Apple and experiment with a new OS project, you should check out the security focused Android fork of Copperhead. [https://copperhead.co/android/](https://copperhead.co/android/) Why go through all of the grief of switching without a security focused purpose?</comment>


Firefox 41 can screenshot a single DOM element - <AUTHOR> https://hacks.mozilla.org/2015/09/trainspotting-firefox-41/ <comment><USER2> This is an awesome feature, I love how browser dev tools have been continuously improving in recent years. Taking screenshots of DOM elements has been something I've dedicated a lot of time to recently. Most of the extensions available for doing this rely on taking a screenshot of the available viewport so in order to capture larger DOM elements they need to scroll around taking repeated screenshots (which can be kind of frustrating if it takes a long time).

We just launched a browser extension [0] for taking screenshots of Facebook posts and we were basically tasked with accomplishing the same thing. We approached it by fetching all of the external resources and inlining them as data URIs, wrapping the HTML in an SVG element, drawing the SVG to a canvas, and finally extracting the data URI for the canvas. It works really well and eliminates the jitter/delay associated with scrolling around to capture multiple screenshots.

Good thing we also automate the anonymization of private information or this announcement might have obsoleted us on Firefox :-).

[0] [http://threadshots.com](http://threadshots.com)

<comment><USER3> > I love how browser dev tools have been continuously improving in recent > years.

Meanwhile Firefox still displays all JavaScript sources as a single list in the debugger without any sort of folder nesting, making it unusable as a development tool for non-tiny JavaScript apps.

<comment><USER4> And sometimes doesn't stop on debugger statements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Taking screenshots of the full page or individual elements was also possible before via Tools -> Web Developer -> Developer Toolbar (Shift + F2)... and then using the `screenshot --selector ...` command.

You also have access to part of this functionality via the non-standard drawWindow method:

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/CanvasRende...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/CanvasRenderingContext2D/drawWindow)

</comment><comment><USER6> Screenshotting DOM elements is almost perfect, except for one thing. Once you take a screenshot, a file save prompt is opened, so unless I missed something, you can't save it in the clipboard.

Which is a shame, it would be a killer thing if you could screenshot a DOM element, save in clipboard, and copy&paste in gmail or slack. I don't want to keep littering my desktop (or wherever) with tons of jpgs :(

<comment> andrey-p I save them in `/tmp` and I don't need to worry about them ever again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How does this work with elements with a semi-transparent background? Will the resulting screenshots also be semi-transparent, or will they contain portions of the element beneath?

<comment><USER8> (I work for Mozilla) It captures the page cropped to the bounding box of the element, so any background content would also be captured. The results would not contain transparency.

<comment><USER9> So in other words it doesn't work if the element has children that are transformed (tested that). Still useful though

<comment><USER10> And if there are non-child elements positioned to overlap with this one, presumably they get captured too?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My clipboard often has private stuff in it, unrelated to the site I'm visiting.

I don't like the idea that clicking on a button (like "add comment" on HN) would gives a site potential access to what's in my clipboard, _without any indication or affirmation that that 's ok_.

It feels like something that will be exploited, if only by the curious.

<comment><USER12> The clipboard api only includes 'cut' and 'copy' commands. There is no way (except via extensions) to access the clipboard.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the correction!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Someone in the comments says "I was doing this on a normal 1600×900 monitory and was still having issues with the right edge being cut off a little." I have the exact same problem on a 1600×900 ThinkPad W530, running Windows 8.1 at 100% DPI. Screenshots have their right edge missing.

<comment><USER14> Are they also missing the bottom edge? I ask, because I can kind of imagine a reason for such behavior. Half-open ranges let you just paste everything back together to get the original. I seem to recall the CSS box model just sort of arbitrarily cuts diagonally across overlapping borders...

This is total speculation. I could be way off-base here.

<comment><USER13> No, just the right edge. It also ignores the page zoom setting and screenshots the element at 100%. (User styles set by Stylish do apply, though.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Related: The Print Edit add-on for Firefox, which has been doing something similar for over 5 years, and which I think also acts on DOM elements:

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/print- edit/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/print-edit/)

It allows you to edit the elements in a page before printing or saving (as PDF, JPG, etc.). You can remove them, alter them, reformat them, inspect them, print a single element (like FF 41 will do) and do much more. It's an amazingly sophisticated add-on that I'm underselling; I encourage you to read the link or simply try it. It's a wonder to use and the most impressive add-on I've seen.

</comment><comment><USER16> Clicked on it hoping that this is a new browser feature that I can access from the web page via JavaScript... but this is just a dev tool. I hope that this feature will eventually appear, currently taking snapshots from the client side is a major pain point.

<comment><USER17> <div id="mydiv"><iframe src=facebook.com...

screenshot("#mydiv"), send to my server

would need some security handling, at least.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I thought we finally got a JS api to take a screenshot of the dom. Damn!

<comment><USER19> That sounds like it'd be very easily abused for browser fingerprinting and DRM-ish things (do you have font X installed? Are you using custom CSS? Any extra things added by particular extensions?)

<comment><USER19> Another one that comes to mind is "Are you blocking ads?", although I should probably stop before I give them any more ideas...

<comment><USER20> Sites already appear to be able to detect that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wish it weren't hidden away in the inspector menu... I'd love to point non- devs at it! Maybe a(n off by default) screenshot toolbar button that let you point at the page / element you wanted, rather like the Command-Shift-4 window selector in OS X.

</comment><comment><USER22> Hasn't the developer command line supported this since...well at least two years? I've used it hundreds of times. Super handy. I guess I'm glad it's in the UI now.

</comment><comment><USER23> _navigator.onLine_ feels like it should not have been camelcased

<comment><USER24> Ah, but back in the days of IE4 (when this property was introduced), "online" wasn't a word yet.

<comment><USER25> I feel like I'm missing the punchline here.

<comment><USER24> "online" is accepted as a word now, but the navigator.onLine property was added in IE4 (released in 1997) back when "on line" was the conventional spelling.

<comment><USER26> As far as I'm aware (from personal experience), "online" has been the common form when talking about computers since at least the 1980s, if not before.

But maybe whoever added that particular property to IE4 wasn't familar with common (in computer circles) usage...

Here's what google ngram says: [https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=online%2Con+li...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=online%2Con+line&year_start=1958&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Conline%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Con%20line%3B%2Cc0)

<comment><USER24> I stand corrected! Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I am not even a webdev, but this feature makes me so giddy with joy.

</comment><comment><USER28> I wrote a Chrome extension to do this awhile back [https://github.com/tlrobinson/element- capture](https://github.com/tlrobinson/element-capture) but newer versions of Chrome broke it at some point. I'll try to get it updated.

</comment><comment><USER29> The screenshot api has been in Firefox since v4 I think. I've been using this addon ([https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/firecaptor/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/firecaptor/)) to capture element of a page. It works like the inspector tool when selecting an element.

</comment><comment><USER30> Amongst the other features - Being able to download the HAR file is quite useful.

Chrome already supports it.

I had to use the Firebug FF extension for downloading them previously. Now it is easier.

</comment><comment><USER31> I was shocked for a second that the product I've been working on for the last year [0] has become obsolete over night... But luckily its not the case, phew :D

We are creating screenshots of websites directly in the browser to enable users to give easy feedback to their web agencies - and we also implemented a cropper to make this easier for the people.

Does anybody know if there are plans to offer access to the screenshot library via a JS API somewhere soon in the future?

[0] [http://insite-feedback.com](http://insite-feedback.com)

<comment><USER32> > Does anybody know if there are plans to offer access to the screenshot > library via a JS API somewhere soon in the future?

It's almost certainly not going to happen, due to security concerns. There previously had been attempts to toss a DOM screenshot into a WebGL texture but that was also found to be vulnerable to timing attacks that could reveal private data.

<comment><USER31> Well, it could ask for permission - like the Fullscreen API, or the HTML5 Notifications, or...

<comment><USER33> It's a hard permission to give safely, because once the application has permission to take screenshots there are tons of ways for it to get third- party content into the viewport and capture it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Is this cool or what? I just uninstalled the "Screengrab!" extension I've been using for years.

</comment><comment><USER35> I am sad it saves raster PNG files rather than something scalable like SVG or PDF. SVG seems like an easy win.

<comment><USER36> Creating a raster image can just use the normal painting codepath, since that's what a browser has to do anyway to get pixels up on the screen.

Encoding stuff in SVG, on the other hand, requires adding a lot more plumbing (and some parts of it, like element() backgrounds it's not immediately clear how you'd do without rasterizing things).

<comment><USER35> Perhaps I am wrong in assuming, but I thought it was effectively converting to something like a <canvas> behind the scenes anyway, simply for scalability/zoom purposes, in which case it just needs to have a node-focused clipping area, even if the all other elements remain rendered outside of the clipping area (though most could be discarded, as they are off-screen). Even if untrue, simply substitute Postscript for SVG in my comment... Firefox can clearly print an <html>-rooted DOM node. Even if they just had a "print DOM node" item, the result could be passed to the normal printing path to get something close to a .PS. Users often have Print-to-PDF software already.

Printing a specific node is a major use-case, and for that text needs to still be as scalable fonts.

<comment><USER36> Leaving the fonts scalable while rasterizing everything else would be fairy doable, yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Shameless plug: If you're interested in this functionality, but want it in all browsers without needing any plugins, check out my start up BugMuncher - [https://www.bugmuncher.com](https://www.bugmuncher.com)

<comment><USER33> Fetching the current page over the network from a similar browser is not exactly the same as taking a screenshot from the user's actual browser instance...

<comment><USER37> You are correct sir, but until this new firefox screenshot function is available as a JavaScript API in all browsers, it's the closest anyone can get. And there will always be stragglers with older browsers to account for.

It's also worth mentioning that because BugMuncher uses a big farm of Selenium servers, it's pretty rare that it can't take the screenshot in the exact same Browser / OS as the user. And in those scenarios, BugMuncher uses a scoring algorithm to find the closest match available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This is cool though. Hope it can screenshot a pdf image.

</comment><comment><USER39> This is s small, but awesome feature.

</comment><comment><USER40> That'll save me from typing ⌘+^+⇧+4 and having to manually align the box.

<comment><USER41> Isn't it just ⌘+⇧+4?

<comment><USER42> Adding Control puts it in the clipboard instead of a file on the desktop

<comment><USER40> Yep. Then I can paste it into Imgur, the GIMP or Twitter.

<comment><USER43> I have this script bound to cmd-shift-6: [https://github.com/jomo/imgur- screenshot](https://github.com/jomo/imgur-screenshot)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> next thing you know, they will say that it belong into an extension... but Firefox is still my favorite

</comment><comment><USER42> Wait, so Firefox _just_ added clipboard copy support one day ago, and everyone in the other thread about clipboard.js was already calling Safari "the new IE" for this reason?

<comment><USER5> Safari 9 has the lowest score on HTML5test and the ES6 compat table. To make matters worse, Safari 9 isn't even out yet.

<comment> X-Istence Safari 9 was released yesterday (September 30) alongside OS X El Capitan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> That's fantastic guys. I mean, think about it. Screenshot a . single . DOM . element. Upvote this. Oh my god I think I should just get some sleep.</comment>


BYOT: Bring your own team - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/blog/bring-your-own-team <comment><USER2> There are already groups that function this way, they are called consultants. If you are a high functioning team and want to keep working together, then form a consultancy together. You will probably get paid more over time.

The idea that all will be hired or none will be hired is kinda odd as well. You are ceeding your career to bunch of other people in a non-entrepreneurial way. You are doing more work, giving more to Stripe than you are getting back. You are lowering their risk and not being compensated for that. Neither as a team nor as individuals.

It'd be interesting if you could collaborate and bid for your salaries as a group and/or make sure everyone got at least a minimum. It would be a failure if everyone in the group got the same amount.

The collective bargaining that would go on would be force multiplied in either direction. Either people wouldn't negotiate and companies like Stripe would get a great bargain of a team that already works together or they would get reamed as the team realizes that together they are more valuable than what they could bargain for individually.

Lastly, it's probably a risky move in that if a group leaves one company together successfully, they are more likely to move on from the second company together as well. If they are all working on the same project, you could have a disastrous and instantaneous brain-drain.

It's like building in a massive artificial bus factor into your company.

If people took an adversarial or merely valued their small in-group more than the company, they could get hired as a group, build an important system for Stripe and then en-masse, quit to create a consultancy and have Stripe as their first (reluctant) customer because they have knowledge of an important subsystem. In fact, this would be an excellent way to launch a consultancy.

Stripe, you may have opened a can of worms with this move. Teams hopping from startup to startup like individual employees do now would make startups even more chaotic.

Maybe they are banking on the downturn and think they can get high quality teams on the cheap. Seems like a way to open the business to alot of risk.

<comment><USER3> It's like you've never heard of an acquihire before.

Companies do this all the time.

<comment><USER4> It's not really the same thing as an acquihire. In an acquihire a company acquires another company and then chooses which employees to give job offers to. In many cases only a handful of top employees are actually hired, the rest are fired. Stripe is saying that it wants to try to hire whole teams.

<comment><USER5> Acquihires of companies that only have 2-5 members usually involve the entire team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is an amazing idea. Kudos to the Stripe team for putting it into action!

Personally I can feel this "flow", and I have some favorite pair programming friends; it's hard to beat the feeling of having someone else that completes your sentences or writes down in code the idea that you were thinking out after just saying a couple of words or exchanging a single glance. The probability of this happening on a new workplace with people that you don't know doesn't seem so high to me, so this idea really makes sense.

Has any other company thought of this before?

<comment><USER7> There is a startup that specialises in recruiting teams rather than individuals. [https://goelevator.com/](https://goelevator.com/)

I can't see many downsides - except for the poor companies that have whole teams disappear on them.

<comment><USER8> Isn't that, uh.. a pretty big downside?

<comment><USER9> If a team is even considering going somewhere else, and are willing to do though the effort of interviewing like this, chances are you are already losing any and all members of the team that you wanted to keep.

I've actually seen entire teams quit a few times in my career, but instead of them all quitting the same day, they quit within month or so, and it's the one that have the highest market value that go first.

If a company is afraid that an ENTIRE TEAM is going to quit on them, they have to make sure they are paid market rate, and happy with what they are doing, and who is managing them: There's no magic. Happy teams don't spend their time interviewing for new jobs.

So the minute you are worried one of your teams will submit a job application to Stripe, this means you know they are unhappy, and you aren't doing anything about it: Don't worry about third parties and fix it!

<comment><USER10> I've seen this too. It is important to remember that these people are very likely good friends outside of work, talk frequently and openly about work issues, job prospects, etc., and have been through hell together and back.

If things are getting to the point where one person in the group has soured on the company, you can bet they have all been griping about it for months over beers. This in turn sours the rest of the group and then they inevitably start dropping like flies once the first one leaves.

In the instance I saw that occur, I think they had their valid reasons, and it wasn't anything horrible about the company they were at--just found something better. But I started placing mental bets with myself on how soon it would be until the rest of the group left--turns out I was more or less right, except for one of them.

That said, the impact was definitely felt as they were all super talented people I'd love to work with in the future. So for companies afraid of hiring groups or several close referrals from a single person (which are essentially the same thing), the best thing you can do outside of providing an awesome and competitively compensated place to work is ensure there is solid documentation for things, and when possible ensuring that critical business knowledge won't be lost if someone leaves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting. Seems like a cheaper alternative to acquihiring. :-)

Long term I'd love to see stats on this. My intuition is you'd wind up more successful, similar to how referrals make better employees. There does seem like some risk though - the team will likely succeed or fail as a group.

<comment><USER12> _Seems like a cheaper alternative to acquihiring_

I was thinking exactly the same thing: This is like acquihiring except that it skips the "spend a year on a proof-of-talent product which gets thrown away after the acquisition".

Of course, the downside is that the team interview process isn't likely to be anywhere near as effective a filtering tool as spending a year building a product.

<comment><USER13> It also skips the part where the team being hired gets a large signing bonus.

<comment><USER14> I'd imagine any smart working team would negotiate this heavily. This setup appeals heavily to someone like me (with 2 other people specifically), but I would also be personally be asking for $300k+ salaries for each person + signing bonus + RSUs. It would be a happy medium between a lengthy and pricey acquihire and getting 3 developers/PM people who you know already will work well together.

I'd recommend that anyone doing this that they negotiate their salaries very heavily.

<comment><USER15> What experience are you drawing on for that recommendation? Big companies don't typically negotiate wildly on salary, as it's tied to a leveling system that breaks too many things if your numbers don't fit. They would have to negotiate on levels and make everyone VPs to meet your salary demands, which would cause other problems. So, this might not be the best advice. Acquihirees get a few knobs to turn, but salary is the least turnable.

<comment><USER14> > * What experience are you drawing on for that recommendation?*

I work on tech M&A.

<comment><USER15> Is your experience different from mine then? You _do_ see companies negotiating on salary?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't know, to me it just sounds like a gimmicky way to get more people to apply. That's what recruiters do. They try to get as many people to apply as possible, and then filter the hell out of them. So just because a recruiter "reached out" to you via linkedin or something, it doesn't mean they think highly of you. Actually, you should assume that they don't care at all about what you've achieved. You're just one of many fish they're trying to pass through their funnel.

That's why I am genuinely curious what they plan to do once they hire teams. Let's say you hire a team of a designer and a developer. It's not like they will be always working together and with no one else in the company. Chances are you won't be working as the tag team forever. That would be stupid both for the company and for these people because you are being too closed minded and won't learn much by only interacting with the other person when there are so many other talented people in the company. I presume that isn't what they plan to do. Then that leaves us with the option of just hiring them "as a team" but once they're in, there's no guarantee that they will work as the same team, just like how most acquisitions work--when they acquire a company they say stuff like "Company A's expertise will be helpful in us developing our such and such core features", but after the acquisition they all disperse and get assigned to different teams after a while.

So... what's the point? Well that's why I think it's a gimmicky way to attract attention and get more people to apply. Any counter argument?

<comment><USER17> there is really little downside. Imagine a team of 3 applies and one guy is just brilliant and the other two are just average. First of all, average people are worth it if you can get 1 brilliant guy or girl. Secondly, you can always let the average people go few months later and keep the brilliant person, if you so choose

<comment><USER18> Which would almost certainly impact the brilliant guy's work. People aren't robots - if you hire them as a team (presumably because they liked working together) and then fire half the team within a few months, the ones left will start looking for something else.

<comment><USER17> well, you would only fire half the team if that half was for some reason performing really poorly. in which case, the brilliant guy would probably not be too upset.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm a recruiter (yeah, yeah, recruiters know nothing) and I'm going to call this as a fail. It's INCREDIBLY hard to get even one person employed. The bar is so high at most employers that almost every applicant gets rejected.

So the likelihood of all members of a given set of X people being employed is almost zero.

What happens to the team dynamic when the employer wants to employ Jenny and Steve but not Bill, Mike and Vivek?

This might sound good but it aint going to work.

<comment><USER20> That argument assumes the probability of Bill, Mike, and Vivek being hired is independent of them applying with Jenny and Steve. Bill might do better in an interview if Jenny is present. Or if Steve gets to vouch for him during the process. And the quality of the people who apply as a team may be higher than those who apply individually.

This is basically just acqui-hiring without the acquisition. And acqui-hires are common enough -- not as common as straight up hiring, but enough to be interesting.

<comment><USER21> As far as I know acqui-hires hire the whole team. Here they may pick only some team members.

<comment><USER22> from the article:

 _If we make an offer, we'll make it to all of you, at the same time; you'd all be free to accept or decline individually, but of course we'd hope you'd all accept — and if you do, we'd work with all of you to find a place at Stripe where you can all start off working together._

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> d--b I have very big concerns about culture.

When you bring new people to a company, they tend to work the way they use to in their previous occupation. More often than not, a new employee will start his sentences with "What we used to do in this situation" or "that's why we did it that way at X", trying to both build up on his past experience, and to find an anchor of familiarity in an unfamiliar environment.

This is normal phase and usually wears off after a few weeks/months. But for as long as it lasts, this behavior can be annoying for your current employees as they have built up their own thing, and they don't necessarily want to be reminded that there were other options that they didn't follow.

The risk that you take when bringing a team of 3 to 5 people is that they go in their own corner, dismiss all the tools that already exist, recreate the work environment they are used to, don't mix well at all with other employees, etc.

And what you get from people being used to work together, you loose in management pain. I think the usual way of hiring one person, who then can refer to the good guys in his previous team is a much sounder approach, as it lets time for the culture to adapt.

</comment><comment><USER23> Great in theory, unworkable in practice.

The downside to this will be the negotiated rate, and that is the upside for Stripe.... along with the lower risk hiring outcome they also receive.

When time is not on your side your negotiating ability is severely hampered.

There will always be an imperative for someone in a team to "hurry the paperwork" along faster than someone else because they need the financial security of a job etc etc. So unless the "team" is happy to delegate the entire negotiating process to one person with complete authority this situation will be unavoidable. And let's face it, not many people will blindly put their faith in someone else to negotiate every aspect of their next full time permanent position, including whether or not to accept it and give notice at their current employer.

Money isn't everything of course, but this is a sure-fire approach to limiting your income, thus don't think there will be many takers.

As someone else said in the comments here, the more practical alternative that actually does work is called consulting.

<comment><USER24> Not to mention: If you believe you have the skills necessary to pass an interview at Stripe individually, there's only down-side risk to doing a team interview. Therefore only people who do not believe they are lock-ins individually will choose this option. End result: Only teams of mediocre or less-confident employees will use it.

<comment><USER25> Not necessarily true. If you're part of a team you really like, being able to guarantee that you can work with people you like at a new job is a pretty big upside. And if you're really good and are confident in your interviewing skills, then you can afford for the team interview to not work out, because you can probably find just as good a job somewhere else (or reapply as an individual).

<comment><USER23> That's fine, money isn't everything. But this is definitely not the strategy to employ if money is high on your priority list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> We had to do this the old fashioned way with my current team: One person gets in the door at the new company, talks up the abilities of the old team members and how they would slot in nicely with new company's needs and gets another person in, then another until the old team is fully reunited in the new company. We've been a very effective unit once we removed the road blocks in the new company!

<comment><USER27> I call this "getting the band back together," and is a thing that does not always endear you to your coworkers.

<comment><USER26> Yeah, we slowly "outlasted" the coworkers and now it's just us over here. Management is happy, we're happy, old coworkers have jobs elsewhere. Side note: we only brought the good parts of the "gang" over, left the deadweight behind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Great idea ! But if they are going to be interviewing all team members separately through the normal process, it seems unlikely that a team as a whole would pass their bar.

<comment><USER11> I think they'd judge the team as a whole, rather than individuals. So it would be "Does the whole team average X?" as opposed to "Does the weakest individual hit bar X?"

<comment><USER28> That's not what I understood from the post.

<comment><USER11> Rereading, I think you're right.

 _If we make an offer, we'll make it to all of you, at the same time; you'd all be free to accept or decline individually, but of course we'd hope you'd all accept_

This implies individual hiring criteria. It's interesting that they let the group try and solve a problem as a team.

I wonder how this will impact compensation and offer acceptances.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Damn. I just talked with our CEO about that exact concept as our new innovative hiring method. Now I look like a copycat. -_-

<comment><USER30> well if he accuses you of being a copycat, you can bring your team to stripe.

<comment><USER29> Lol he doesn't, we just hired our second team and I just formalized the process.

<comment><USER30> hype, good job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm a bit confused as to how this works in an employment scenario where the contractual terms aren't fixed.

How is salary negotiated? What happens over time - do you just become discrete employees? What about internal promotion - does it just not happen?

I would find it incredibly difficult to get together with friends and decide 'right, i guess we're all worth X each then, let's go for that'.

<comment><USER32> __

<comment><USER33> What if some members of the team are more senior than others? What if members specialize in areas with differing market rates? It just feels somewhat clumsy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This idea sounds excellent and definitely some outside of the box thinking! However, if I had a team that I really work great with and trust, I'd probably do a startup instead with said team. That's just me though.

I think this concept might attract fresh grads more and could be integrated into a BYOT internship program.

<comment><USER35> Not all engineers want to be entrepreneurs ;)

<comment><USER36> I for one am a big fan of getting paid. "Doing a startup" is no trivial task. Just getting the funding in place to provide enough money to pay everyones bills is more than almost any "startup" ever achieves.

This might be an interesting way to ensure that I work with people I'm inspired by. I dig what they're doing.

<comment><USER37> You can "do a startup" while working at an existing company. People do it all the time working nights and weekends on a project.

<comment><USER38> Not so easy once you have a family, I barely have time to mess with new tools in my home lab, working a second job just sounds taxing (the only reason I even have an LLC is legal shielding for the odd repair / small business IT job I have on the side).

<comment><USER37> People with families create things all the time. Not an excuse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Be very, very careful with this. I was once brought to a company where my boss and her boss came from the same company essentially at the same time. My boss was considered overly aggressive with wanting to make (good) changes and "spoke too fast" (seriously, grown ass people made that complaint) this, but her boss was pretty much universally hated. That attitude reflected extensively downwards onto me and her. I couldn't handle it and had to leave after four months.

<comment><USER39> Yeah. I think you've hit on another danger: group culture clashes.

It seems like an entire team would be more difficult to beat into submission, I mean, acculturate, than just one single person.

<comment><USER8> The HR person at that same place told me that they often hired people knowing that they'd quit sometime into their employment and hinted they were there for only for political weight. So yeah, acculturation often runs deep and sharp.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Pros for Stipe: hire a lot of people at once, hire a bunch of people who are probably working well together.

Cons for stripe: risk of the team bringing not only their previous company culture, but also their group micro culture. Risk of all of them leaving Stripe all at once (they did it once).

Pros for the new team: I can't think of any, I've never been in a group where I thought everybody was great (and beside I see meeting new people as a perk of changing job).

</comment><comment><USER41> But then how do you prevent your fate as an individual in the company from being tied to the others? Do you get put on the same team? Do you get promoted together?

<comment><USER42> The devil you know is better than the one you don't. You'll be joining a team either way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> We started a company for exactly this purpose. It's called goElevator.com and it allows you to make multiple teams of people you'd love to work with—we present dozens of interesting companies with anonymized profiles and let you know the potential opportunities before you ever have to interact with a recruiter or hiring manager.

</comment><comment><USER44> Such a great Idea. I feel thers a lot of programmers out there who like to work with certain people and personalities in any capacity, whether that means at a startup or on side projects. Its rare to find programmers that you can get in a pair programming "zone" with, once you do, you're reluctant to lose them.

</comment><comment><USER45> This definitely happens all the time formally and informally in SV. Sometimes a manager is poached and brings a bunch of old employees along...sometimes a small acquihire happens. Or after an acquisition event some portion of the company decides they would rather be elsewhere and talk to execs at a larger company.

</comment><comment><USER46> This is cool, but to really make this game changing they'd revamp their interview process to interview all members together (or in pairs of 2-3) some people just perform better with their partner and the interview process itself should account for it (if they're assuming that's true).

<comment><USER47> Didn't they already cover that in the article?

      "... we'll make sure you hit the same stages of interviews at
       the same time, bring you all to the office on the same day..."

Or are you saying even the initial interview should be as a team rather than starting with individual ones?

<comment><USER46> It would be awesome if they could interview as a team instead of individually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> An interesting idea. I'd like to see some numbers on how many teams does Stripe get applying for jobs this way. (I'd love to also see measures on how well the teams hired this way perform, and how well are employees retained, but that seems hard to measure.)

I am somewhat skeptical that this will be a great success. Just because a team performed well in one environment, it doesn't mean it will continue to do well in new circumstances (unless they are hired as external or independent consultants, as others have suggested in this thread).

As an individual looking for a job, I would also want to know if applying as a team lowers or increases my chances of getting an offer.

</comment><comment><USER49> To whomever at Stripe: is this only for on-site teams, or are you open to remote teams?

<comment><USER50> We're open to remote or distributed teams within the US and Canada. All else being equal, we'd prefer to hire people in SF, but for a sufficiently great team, being elsewhere wouldn't be a showstopper. We're conscious of not wanting to miss out on the diverse, talented set of people that happen to be outside of the bay area.

(I may be biased here: I work for Stripe from a small community off the Canadian coast).

<comment><USER51> I have a mostly US based team that might be interested but we have one employee in Mexico. Would that be a disqualifier? We'd be willing to transfer the infrastructure for that (foreign subsidiary and payroll and all that which is already in place.)

<comment><USER52> You should apply anyway and describe your situation! Supporting additional countries is challenging from several angles (payroll, international tax structure, compliance, etc), but we can talk through your particular situation individually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Totally fascinated to see how this plays out.

Been thinking about "crew hiring" as I've roughly termed it, cohorts of flexible, ad-hoc, a-gamers who like to move around, groove on idea and commit when it feels solid, interesting and a great fit for them.

Taking this further, we see companies becoming an "atelier/studio methodology of multiple "teams" working within a collective space for a unified aim..

We can all easily see how this could degenerate as well as succeed.

It's a super fascinating idea, and I am genuinely fascinated to see what plays out. I have yet to bet against Stripe.

<comment><USER54> Also known as consultants, who get hired full time if the company likes them and viceversa.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I wonder how much litigation risk is involved with this. If you poach one key employee, the original company is likely to be a bit grumpy but probably won't do anything. If you poach an entire team, litigation may be worthwhile - especially if that team is their entire development staff (I've seen this happen in the UK insurance industry, cases go on for months and potentially involve millions of pounds).

</comment><comment><USER56> Kudos for trying something outside the box.

</comment><comment><USER57> I swear I read a blog post about a year ago where someone detailed their experience applying somewhere as a team.

</comment><comment><USER58> That's a pretty creative way to get rid of referral bonuses. I suppose you could refer a whole team though.

<comment><USER59> Stripe doesn't have referral bonuses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Sounds nice.

There are probably many people who want to work with their friends, especially when they did OSS stuff together.

On the other hand, I have different opinions than other people about when to leave a company, so I'm mostly on my own, even if I have worked with many good people who I'd love to take with me, haha.

</comment><comment><USER61> Even if they all get hired together any organization of size would have problems keeping them together. I have seen many team acquihires that immediately get broken up and they at least get a huge premium relative to this offer.

</comment><comment><USER62> Nice to see this idea starting to start up: I've founded a slack group of all my Devops folks uber exactly this philosophy...

We are starting SVOPs (Silicon Valley ops) - we have built some shit... But mostly we just wanted to start a consortium. Join us if you'd like...

SVOPs.slack.com - we are all actively looking for people or help - or even jokes or learning or what not...

Silicon Valley needs much more community (not in the Facebook kind, but in the "hey lets play DnD and drink and talk shit and be like OMG I heard about ___that_ __and dos you know also.... ") kind...

We have a culture - it's not evenly distributed but it's here and it drives a lot of shit...

Come join. Where you are physically located doesn't matter: firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER28> BTW, are there any London based companies reading this, who'd be interested in a BYOT ? I might be interested in applying together with another developer.

</comment><comment><USER63> Id love to do this with each person working 2.5 days and splitting the salary. That way I could work part time and the company gets full time work.

<comment><USER42> BobTom, I had a long discussion with you on Monday about exactly how we could solve this problem affecting our production systems. Now it's Thursday and you're telling me you have no idea what we decided three days ago? You're fired.

<comment><USER63> I imagine they share an email account. And have some overlap in their schedules to debrief.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Yes, finally, a company that realizes that bringing a team is much better than bringing one employee at a time.

</comment><comment><USER65> If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them....maybe you can hire The A-Team.

</comment><comment><USER66> Can we bring our own CTO & CEO :)?

<comment><USER52> They can certainly apply as part of your team! Though you should give some thought ahead of time as to what their roles would be at Stripe. We're not currently hiring for the roles of CEO or CTO ;).

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> reminds me of the dual interview in Stepbrothers [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1DAJxwWv2E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1DAJxwWv2E)

</comment><comment><USER68> Cool idea.

It's basically trying to cheaply scale the concept behind acquihires.

</comment><comment><USER69> meta. Interesting idea, and I like it very much, however the wording of this metaphor is a bit offensive?

>the industry has always focused on hiring atoms; we'd like to try hiring molecules.

<comment><USER70> What about this is offensive?

<comment><USER69> non native so might be that, it just sounds weird comparing humans to atoms, like saying to your future employee we will treat you as a cog in the machine. OTOH, I think you are right, I was oversensitive.

<comment><USER70> Was just curious as I wasn't getting the same vibe from it myself. Plus, these guys - [http://www.mediamolecule.com/jobs/working_here](http://www.mediamolecule.com/jobs/working_here) \- already have the whole "molecule" thing covered :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Stripe changing the game again. Well done team Stripe!</comment>


More on Request rate limiting on Nginx - <AUTHOR> http://rohitishere1.github.io/web%20servers/2015/03/29/more-on-request-rate-limiting-on-nginx/

<comment><AUTHOR> wanted to cover missed out portions from earlier blog. Let me know if I should cover anything more.</comment>


Pennies contain 2.5 cents of copper - business opportunity? - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/03/31/080331fa_fact_owen

<comment><USER2> Most interesting statistic I've read today:

"Breaking stride to pick up a penny, if it takes more than 6.15 seconds, pays less than the federal minimum wage."</comment>


Using text as graphics on a budget (video): 'Nicaragua: Perception vs Reality'
 - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUmFRUSz4BE

<comment><USER2> Interesting idea. It still requires fairly sophisticated software, but at least takes out the need for lots of camera work.</comment>