Palo Alto's marijuana measure heads toward defeat  - <AUTHOR> http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/show_story.php?id=27474

<comment><USER2> Wow. Local politics on HN, even Palo Alto, might be a little bit too narrowly scoped :)

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't get it. Would the same people who voted against this measure be in favor or reinstating the prohibition?

<comment><USER4> Probably not, but it's plausible that they might be against opening three new bars in their neighborhood.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> California continues to confuse me.</comment>


Tesla's Relentless Innovation Brought 13 Improvements to the Octovalve in 3 Mo - <AUTHOR> https://cleantechnica.com/2020/08/26/teslas-relentless-innovation-brought-13-improvements-to-the-octovalve-in-3-months/ <comment><AUTHOR> People are constantly asking why Tesla's stock is valued so highly. They are innovating at 56 times the rate of Ford. In other words 14 changes in three months vs one change in a year to a model in production. Does that begin to explain it?</comment>


On the Meaning of Journalistic Independence - <AUTHOR> https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/03/01/journalistic-independence/ <comment><USER2> Pandodaily is really bizarre. Not being exactly renowned for high-quality investigative journalism, they have embarked on a journalistic endeavor (as they explain it) that anyone with half a clue directly identifies as a vendetta and the same sort of bias we can read from hundreds of sources.

They might want to readjust their strategy.</comment>


How I Hire Programmers (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hiring <comment><USER2> I feel rather silly commenting as a voice of dissent here, against a man who cannot defend himself, but here goes.

These are rather obvious metrics that a child could have drafted. Are you smart? Can do you do things? The problem is that these are subjective measures.

A smart person, who sets the world on fire and gets things done, perhaps like Aaron did or could have done, has a different perspective than say a 50-something product manager. They may see smart as seeing the future, where the programmer may see smart as knowing x86 assembly. And the fool may see smart as someone who talks in technical jumble.

There is no golden key to hiring folks. My experiences say that in a good company, the manager needing help should be in charge of hiring who he/she deems fit. Some may, perhaps rightly, cry nepotism and other factors may run amok. But putting that weight, and risks, on the manager is the point. If they hire an unqualified buddy, they are responsible and ultimately fail with them. I don't really see this as different than Aaron - someone who has their own metrics.

In short, trying to put out any 'guide to hiring people' is a short sighted goal, seeing as everyone has their own experiences and views. This is really no different.

<comment><USER3> > I feel rather silly commenting as a voice of dissent here, against a man who > cannot defend himself, but here goes.

I agree. AS being dead makes it difficult to discuss issues related to him.

I don't view AS as wise sage. I always found he was a bit of a self-promoter; a bit of a loose cannon. A person who was a hacker, but like some millennials, the validation from publicity got to his head.

It's taboo. If you attack certain things on the merits - certain people will believe you're attacking all freedom of information - because they relate AS to some sort of representation of it.

Burglarizing MIT isn't hack in the sense of hacker culture. MIT hacks were clever. Burglarizing for the attempt to swallow data isn't clever - it's a hammer.

<comment><USER4> You really are speaking ill of the dead. Calling him a self-promoter and a loose cannon isn't appropriate.

As far as the MIT incident... I don't really think he burglarized MIT. He tried to bring documents that were hidden behind a paywall to the general public. He didn't rob anyone seeing as how the documents were submitted without compensation by the people who created them. Whether or not it's hacker culture, it's a culture of social disruption aimed at the betterment of us all.

There will always be shakers, people who raise their voices loud to stand for what they believe in. Unfortunately, they will all be followed by people like you and your parent poster who will attempt to defame their character and negate their contributions.

<comment><USER5> > _I don 't really think he burglarized MIT_

I think Mr. Swartz's actions at MIT are admirable, but I don't know how you can deny that what he did was burglary.

<comment><USER4> Burglary is theft of valuables. What was stolen? Data was copied, not erased. The moral ownership of that data is by the many authors who were never reimbursed. JSTOR is a scam.

<comment><USER6> Burglary isn't theft. Burglary is breaking into a place you don't have permission to enter, with the intent to commit a crime. If you then commit that crime (whether it's theft, vandalism, destruction of property, etc.) you are usually charged with that other crime alongside the burglary charge.

<comment><USER4> Ok so lets focus on the act of breaking in, though there was no financial loss. Lets ignore the fact that he could have obtained everything without "breaking in" if he did so at Stanford. It's clear to me that in Aaron's mind, he was not breaking in. A laptop in an unlocked cabinet is not really breaking in.

It seems as though there is some kind of personal hatred towards Aaron that compels people to try and vilify him as if he was some sort of criminal.

<comment><USER6> > It seems as though there is some kind of personal hatred towards Aaron that > compels people to try and vilify him as if he was some sort of criminal.

Not on my part, I've always thought highly of him. I was just correcting your misconception about burglary laws.

> A laptop in an unlocked cabinet is not really breaking in.

Burglary, again, is gaining entry to a place you're not authorized to be, with the intent to commit a criminal act. Whether the cabinet was locked or not has no bearing on that charge. In many places, entering an unlocked car or house that doesn't belong to you constitutes burglary, even if you don't do anything while you're there. It's up to the court to prove whether you had intent to commit a crime, but the simple act of gaining unauthorized entry is usually enough to be charged with burglary.

One more thing: I agree with you in that I don't think Aaron felt what he was doing was wrong. Given my background in law enforcement, I simply felt compelled to correct a misconception.

You can read more about the charge of burglary in general here, though you may wish to read about Massachusetts's specific laws as well:

[http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/burglary- overvi...](http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/burglary- overview.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Working out whether someone is smart or not on the basis of how an entirely informal conversation goes makes you extremely vulnerable to biases.

Read "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman and you will become much more suspicious of sentiments like "I think it's pretty easy to tell whether someone's smart in casual conversation". We are actually extremely bad at guessing people's competences on first encounter, and very prone to cognitive biases such as the halo effect.

With no objective measures, it seems this method is likely to be subject to massive bias towards people that you just get on with or like for some reason.

<comment><USER8> Do you think, perhaps, after being aware of these biases it makes it easier to determine someone's "smartness" based on a sequence of interactions as described in the article?

<comment><USER9> Kahneman explicitly studies this and concludes that it makes no difference. The biases apply just as much to people who are aware of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think the most effective way to hire is to do your best without giving into to grueling whiteboard interviews, and take a chance on someone who seems smart. But also fire the person quickly if it seems like they won't be a good fit. After spending years interviewing people, this is the best conclusion I've come up with, because nothing else works as conclusively. Yes, it's brutal, and a bit ruthless, but effective. Whiteboard interview questions are a terrible measure of whether someone will be able to contribute. Same goes for the other types of interview questions.

Of course, you need to give the person a chance to ramp up, etc, but if they can't be a contributing team member in 2 months, then it's better to give them 1-2 month's severance and get rid of them. I know one late-stage startup in the city that is using this technique, and I believe (not sure) that both Amazon and Netflix use this technique as well. It sucks, and kind of creates a bit of a harsh environment, but it's a fast way to build out your team, and probably has the same success rate as any other interview method, if not better because you cull your bad performers quickly.

<comment><USER11> > Yes, it's brutal, and a bit ruthless, but effective.

I'm not saying that people who don't work out should not be let go, and I'm certainly not saying that you "owe" people anything. It's a business and not a charity. (Just remember that this goes the other way as well; people who show loyalty to some company are doing themselves a great disservice, in my opinion. I work for money. I'm passionate and will do great work, but I'm a mercenary.)

That being said, I would be very hesitant to go work at a place known to err on the side of just hiring someone and kicking them to the curb if it doesn't work out. Why? Because it can say a great deal about the management at that company, and how they will treat me. I also have no interest in being hired unless you are confident that I'm a great fit. I don't want anyone to take a chance on me. I want people to be delighted to hire me over someone else.

<comment><USER12> I guess I have the opposite stake on this. I'm a junior dev and I've been interviewing multiple times a week for the last month and a half. I've gotten better at interviewing but I still mess up on something and remember later on what the answer was. Now I get passed on the job because I failed the interview. I would rather an employer take a little chance on me and let me prove that I'm a competent developer and a hard worker. I would rather prove that on the job instead of in an interview.

Edit fixed some typos.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think Spolsky originally made this line of thought famous in 2006:

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html)

[http://www.amazon.com/Smart-Gets-Things-Done- Technical/dp/15...](http://www.amazon.com/Smart-Gets-Things-Done- Technical/dp/1590598385)

</comment><comment><USER14> As I'm going through a new round of job interviews, this article resonates well. It's kind of sad watching (and being subjected to) some otherwise great companies still going at it the old way as described in the second paragraph.

</comment><comment><USER15> I somewhat agree on this as far as interviewing goes, minus the project part - that part is too unreasonable/unfair/disrespectful.

</comment><comment><USER16> >"If you ask people at parties to name their greatest strengths and weaknesses or to estimate the number of piano tuners in Chicago, you've got bigger problems."

Well, it looks like I'm going to have to find better things to talk about...

</comment><comment><USER17> Really? So just have a nice conversation and ask questions?

Of course you want smart, curious people who can learn things and do stuff. These "guides" are just various elaborations of (sadly uncommon) common sense. There's no secret here.

<comment><USER18> I think the three questions are his main focus. Having a nice conversation and asking questions is just the example method used to determine the answers. It's not revolutionary, but showing that individually they are all necessary but not sufficient conditions was novel to me.

</comment></comment><comment> atom-morgan > To find out whether someone's smart, I just have a casual conversation with > them.

I think the value of this is highly underestimated.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> How do you interview in your companies? I think it is a cool way to interview, what do you think?

</comment><comment><USER19> I completely agree with this.

</comment><comment><USER20> aaron's writing style reminds me of PG's.

</comment><comment><USER21> Here is another Massachusetts resident whose life Carmen Ortiz has destroyed that I just read about this week. She finally brought federal drug distribution charges against a family doctor after he lived under a cloud of suspicion during a 7 year "investigation." He was acquitted of all charges: [http://needham.wickedlocal.com/article/20150515/NEWS/1505171...](http://needham.wickedlocal.com/article/20150515/NEWS/150517160)</comment>


8402: 2048 from the other side - <AUTHOR> https://sphere.chronosempire.org.uk/~HEx/8402/ <comment><USER2> Great, not only am I really, _really_ bad at hundreds of variants of 2048, now there's an AI that's much better at it than me, even when I'm doing my best to stop it. Presumably, someone will write an AI to combat this one, and I've completely lost the thread of reality to which I have been forlornly clinging.

<comment><USER3> I had the opposite feeling, I actually felt accomplished after beating it, even though I have not completed a single 2048 variant.

<comment><USER4> Same here, although I somehow wanted it to win, so I could finally at least see the mythical 2048 tile that everyone seems to be speaking of.

<comment><USER5> I took a screenshot of one for you: [http://i.imgur.com/929HNgE.png](http://i.imgur.com/929HNgE.png)

I remember watching this AI play and thinking if I could write my own strategy into an AI. The AI's strategy suffers from the issues that my strategy tries to combat. Perhaps someone can tell from my screenshot what my strategy is.

<comment><USER6> To be honest, screenshots of this game are no longer a proof of anything. I am not calling you dishonest,but just saying that I could run the AI version, and when it wins change the address at the top,and using any browser's inspect feature just remove the two buttons above the game field. It's just ridiculously easy to fake winning screenshots of 2048 now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I won! [http://i.imgur.com/VOXJaOo.png](http://i.imgur.com/VOXJaOo.png)

My strategy was to give the AI a single 2 at the beginning, then only 4s. When the board fills up enough, there will probably be a space where you can put a second 2 to make it lose before it can combine them.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's maddening! 2048 seems like it's so ridiculously hard playing the normal way. Then you play this game an it seems like it should be impossible to lose 2048.

<comment><USER9> Don't feel bad, getting to 512 is child's play (a random algorithm can do it, in fact). Going the last two steps is where it gets impossible. Up until the 512 it seemed like nothing I did would slow it down, but once it reached that, the board was finally swamped by 8s and 16s and a few well-placed 2s and 4s in the worst pattern possible finally stopped it.

Now we need a multiplayer variant a-la puyo-puyo-pop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It is very easy to win. You shouldn't be able to select 2 or 4. The decision should be random and that would be fair like the original.

The easiest solution is to have just one 2 on the table, then spam 4 in corners.

Best( lowest ) score: 1684

<comment><USER11> I beat it on the first try with nothing but 2's before I read the instructions and found out I could use 4's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I finally beat it. This seems harder than 2048 since with 2048 a simple strategy can do well, where as with this game I had to search through more opponent AI moves. Is there a simple strategy for 8402?

<comment><USER13> If you give the computer primarily 4's, you can clog the board by placing 2's where it cannot merge them. I beat the game on my first attempt this way.

<comment><USER12> I did not realize that I could place 4s.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Now for someone to make a 2 player one where one person is making 2048 and one person is stopping them.

</comment><comment><USER15> Wow, this despresses me. It pushes my nose unto the fact that I really suck at 2048, because no matter how hard I make it, this AI solves every problem I throw at it. Yet, I haven't managed to surpass 6568 after days of playing.

<comment><USER16> Ya I didn't think it was actually possible to win 2048 except through sheer luck. And then this AI just mocks me as I futilely try to keep it from winning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> [http://i.gyazo.com/61d02988bb765bd95e26e48b576e8aaf.png](http://i.gyazo.com/61d02988bb765bd95e26e48b576e8aaf.png)

This is the first 2048 variant that I'm able to beat. yay me... .__.

<comment><USER18> the 3d one I found to be the easiest: [http://joppi.github.io/2048-3D/](http://joppi.github.io/2048-3D/)

but 4d is terribly hard: [http://huonw.github.io/2048-4D/](http://huonw.github.io/2048-4D/)

edit: I did a 3d victory in the 18 minutes in editing the comment. You can generally just push higher numbers into a corner, and pick either the left or the right side to consistently fold to and you'll get it mostly without thinking.

<comment><USER19> I find 4D much, much easier to control and visualize than 3D. Maybe if 3D was somehow presented in three dimensions I'd have an easier time of it, but the 4D one was easier to grok.

That probably says something about how humans relate to interfaces that map higher dimensions to 2D planes, or maybe it's just the way the 4D layout maps to the screen.

<comment><USER18> ignore the "3d" idea. Just look at the rules of the game and play by that.

I'm sure some people can maintain clear mental models of higher order dimensions and seamlessly translate the grids on the screen in some hyperspace in the mind.

But I, my friend, have no chance of that. The more I ignore that notion, the easier it becomes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As a computer scientist I can't help but now ask: what is the complexity of this problem? If it's in P then this game is not very interesting (in that I can't hope to fool the AI).

<comment><USER21> ... Much higher than P pretty obviously. 16 possible drop points and 4 possible moves each turn maximum, let's say only half of each is available on average. That gives ((2)(8))^N for N amount of turns.

<comment><USER22> That's not really how computational complexity works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wow. This one was insanely stressful compared to every other variant I've seen so far— which is weird, because (unlike the original 2048) I was actually able to win this one.

Either way, really cool.

<comment><USER16> Probably because you are playing against an intelligent opponent actively trying to keep you from winning, where the first original is just a solitary game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The real challenge of course is to build an AI to beat the AI. Here's a random clicker:

setInterval(function(){ var cells = document.getElementsByClassName("grid- cell"); var pos = Math.floor((Math.random()*cells.length)); if(Math.random() < 0.5){cells[pos].click();} else {var ev = document.createEvent('HTMLEvents'); ev.initEvent('contextmenu', true, false); cells[pos].dispatchEvent(ev);} },100);

<comment><USER25> I'm waiting for a mathematician to show up and prove if in certain cases a game (no matter how well played) it's unsolvable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The whole wave of 2048 and the related AI problems are fascinating. Has anyone else started thinking using those at the start of a Computer science class using those as initial examples to illustrate the power and simplicity of algorithms, and motivate even non-coding-inspired students to think systematically?

</comment><comment><USER27> Cute variation, I wonder if there's a record on games' variations and whether 2048 is the all time winner

</comment><comment><USER28> Not sure if left click/right click was the best choice in controls. I keep refreshing the page. At least on desktop a typing the size of the piece you want would have been much easier. Two buttons to do the same on mobile would have likely been a better choice as well.

</comment><comment><USER29> This was incredibly satisfying. Just have to do all the things I hate when the AI in 2048 does to me.

</comment><comment><USER30> very interesting variation, I like it. Didn't notice the instructions when I played so I didn't realize I could put 4s so my strategy mainly consisted of trying to figure out where the worst place to put a 2 would be especially at the end when it was filling up to get it to catch twos by itself or other singular numbers. Won in the end so I'm pretty content: [http://i.imgur.com/7E3WBQk.png](http://i.imgur.com/7E3WBQk.png)

</comment><comment><USER31> This is insane. I can complete 2048 easily, but can't seem to win this version. For others, it's other way around. How does that work? :/

</comment><comment><USER32> Victory at 1124 puppies eaten! Highest tile is 128.

</comment><comment><USER33> I hate this game for some reason, whereas I really liked 2048. Not sure why.

</comment><comment><USER34> For some reason I find this version to be much easier than the original.

</comment><comment><USER35> Oh, so I'm not meant to get 2048? Damn.</comment>


Google Classroom and How Spaces Value People - <AUTHOR> https://www.subtraction.com/2020/05/19/google-classroom-and-how-spaces-value-people/ <comment><AUTHOR> Great read, especially as I am about to be gifted Canvas LMS for our classrooms.</comment>


Internet Archive's S3 like server API  - <AUTHOR> http://www.archive.org/help/abouts3.txt <comment><USER2> A quick google search has a bunch of people indicating it is "free" and I don't see much a TOS. Is there anything to prevent me from encrypting my data and using this as an tertiary backup?

<comment><USER3> You can use this if you are adding something that belongs on archive.org. If you are uploading something that might belong in a museum or library, you can use this api. The Internet Archive is not for your encrypted backups.

<comment><USER4> All true. However, the question was not about ethics, it was about the presence or absence of technical countermeasures to prevent less scrupulous folks from using archive.org in this way.

<comment><USER5> Peer review. Since the files are public people will spot your abuse and report it. I reported various obvious copyright infringements over time and they were quickly removed.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why are flight blackbox data still not uploaded to cloud? - <AUTHOR> I'm a layman in aviation, and I'm a software engineer working in a telematics company writing real-time system.
After doing some research into this matter I was surprised to find that we're still relying on oldschool physical blackbox to get flight data. But why? In this [1] Quora question a person claims to have gotten an answer from NTSB. They have two main arguments:
1. Data is too big that we don't have technology to deal with that much information
2. There are security concerns since people can intercept data.
I don't understand either of the arguments. Here are my thoughts:
1. Some basic search [2] leads us that there are approx in the order of 10k airplanes in the sky. Assuming there are no periods of time where flight traffic is orders of magnitude worse (since countries live in different timezones) seems like the problem we're trying to solve is streaming data from 10k clients. Assuming the biggest bandwidth bottleneck will be audio (since there is no video data and physical data is relatively cheap) we can reduce this problem to streaming movie from 10k clients at any given time. It seems like one way to verify this problem is tractable is counting how many people uploading video to youtube any given moment and finding out the delta between total video length and transmission latency. While I don't have any real numbers, it seems like a tractable problem.
2. Similarly, this seems like a problem that we already should be able to solve. AES encrypted keyboards, encrypted mouses etc come to mind; or even basic HTTPS.
Could someone please explain this layman why this problem is so hard? If someone were to attack this problem and maybe found a startup, what resources should they refer to?
[1] https://www.quora.com/Why-do-airplanes-still-use-black-boxes-while-all-data-could-be-saved-real-time-to-servers-on-land-through-the-Internet
[2]: https://www.quora.com/How-many-airplanes-are-in-flight-on-average-at-any-given-time-worldwide <comment><USER2> Forget detailed blackbox telemetry, perhaps a more pertinent question to ask is why aircraft location data is not transmitted at decent frequency (60s?) via sat comms in a manner that is not able to be disabled via the aircrafts controls. see: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_of_Malaysia_Airlines_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_of_Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370_satellite_communications) and: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370#S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370#Safety_recommendations)

Also for the other respondent about internet access, direct access is not required in many places as there are already extensive radio ground stations in use for aircraft telemetry.

<comment><USER3> Satellite tracking now exists: [https://aireon.com/](https://aireon.com/) [https://www.radarbox24.com/space-based- ads-b](https://www.radarbox24.com/space-based-ads-b)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The bandwidth bottleneck is not on the cloud side; it's on the plane side. Satellite Internet from moving planes is quite expensive and would require retrofitting new antennas in many planes.

Many safety-critical systems do not use encryption because it's one more component that can fail.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Many safety-critical systems do not use encryption because it's one more > component that can fail.

This is a good point but isn't some data still better than no data at all? If we decide not to collect encrypted data because encryption can break, then we have exactly no data if we lose the blackbox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is something that might well happen in the future. But to retrofit this to all commercial planes is not a simple or cheap task. Many planes in the sky were designed and built many years ago and so updating them to also upload to the cloud during flight requires substantial design and certification efforts that Boeing/Airbus are not going to suddenly take on unless they are forced.

Adding it as a feature of any new plane designed in the future seems simpler. Although uploading everything in real time be ideal you could easily ping with the essentials for almost no bandwidth. Every minute with location, speed, altitude and half a dozen other important numbers would be a good start.

</comment><comment><USER5> If there was a war, it would be easy to shoot down all the planes.

What I wonder is - why not multiple black boxes - some at the end of the wings that break off, some that float off in water, some with dye packs, etc

</comment><comment><USER6> Presumably there is a lot of data to be recorded and there is not consistent access to the Internet during flight? Seems like a fun problem to solve.</comment>


Terminal escape sequences – the new XSS for Linux sysadmins - <AUTHOR> https://ma.ttias.be/terminal-escape-sequences-the-new-xss-for-linux-sysadmins/ <comment><USER2> Why is it "the new XSS" when the content even says "These techniques have been known for many years" ?</comment>


Tech workers consider escaping Silicon Valley's sky-high rents - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-14/tech-workers-consider-escaping-silicon-valley-s-sky-high-rents <comment><USER3> I'm pretty bearish on the pandemic actually leading to massive change in the number of people permanently working from home. My boss put out a survey a week or two ago among my org (30 or so people), and 70% said that they want to work from the office, full time, 20% said some time or most of the time, and 10% said fully remote. And this is a group of people that would be largely well suited to working from home during the pandemic (young, no kids, etc). I just don't think that this will change much.

There is just too much detrimental effect one one's career from not being seen at the office. For a company that's not fully remote (i.e. gitlab), people who are fully remote are going to fall behind in promotions, etc. There's just not enough benefit for people who don't hate the bay area.

<comment><USER4> > young, no kids, etc

There is your major reason for that survey result. Companies with median-older workforces will see more enthusiasm for remote work.

<comment><USER5> I read it the other way. Only people who are young with no distractions at home, favor working at home. People who usually have family members at home, get too distracted compared to a office environment, to prefer working at home.

<comment><USER6> Mid 30s, partner, two kids, will only work from home. Will not consider a commute or an office. Have worked remotely for almost a decade. Doing the math, I've saved almost 3360 hours by not having to commute (~2 hr/workday), not to mention wear and tear on a vehicle and the associated commute costs.

When my office door is closed, everyone knows I'm "at work". If you don't have a separate physical space where you only work, I can see how this might be a challenge.

<comment><USER7> Who is taking care of the kids when the 'door is closed'? I guess it depends on how old your kids are... I have a 4 year old and a 1 year old, so someone has to be watching them all the time.

Also, my house only has 3 bedrooms, and the kids take two of them. My office is in the corner of the living room with no walls. I can't lock anyone out of it.

Your house has to be large enough to support a home office to work from home full time.

Although if I wasn't living in this city I could probably afford a bigger house... we pay a premium to live within 10 minutes of work, so we don't have to face that 'two hour commute' you speak of.

<comment><USER8> > Who is taking care of the kids when the 'door is closed'?

Same person taking care of them when you're at work. Except for 3 hours a day less

<comment><USER9> Most day care centers are still closed.

<comment><USER8> You miss the point -- if you send your kids off to school/daycare/whatever while you commute an hour to an office, spend 8 hours there, plus socialising, then an hour back, you can send your kids off to school/daycare/whatever for 8 hours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "I think it's fair to say that Silicon Valley is dead." —Altavista founder, 1993

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/alt.folklore.comp...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/alt.folklore.computers/bvE0Ka5nCnM/NAIOQnrEyCAJ)

(Note: Google Groups links don't work on mobile unless you Request Desktop Site in Chrome)

<comment><USER11> Interesting, however he did have a point about prop 13.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> An evergreen headline...

In the 90s I remember hearing this too. Use the high salary and property value increases to build a nestegg, but keep an eye out for other geographic opportunities because the locals are determined to keep you out, as a class, even if they are friendly one to one.

These days, the property value scam has been going so long that new high wage workers are often locked out for many years, to the benefit of all prior arrivals. But same story otherwise.

<comment><USER13> _In the 90s I remember hearing this too._

What, that due to the fact that we're all working from home because of a global pandemic, and my employer says I can WFH long-term, I'm thinking about moving out of SV?

You must run with a different crowd than I do, because I don't recall a single person saying that in the 90s.

<comment><USER12> The headline is the evergreen part; certainly the specifics are different now then they were back then!

Edit: also, check out Raldi's link to a 1993 post for complaints about housing costs and more: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23181981](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23181981)

(That said, the housing costs are far worse now then in 1993 on a wage to land price basis, I hear!)

<comment><USER14> I didn't pursue a few job options during the 90s in the Bay Area in part because of housing costs and companies that weren't offering enough to cover the difference. As you say, relative prices are much worse now. But Bay Area prices were high even then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> One thing this doesn't mention is the pay cuts that happen if you do decide to relocate to cheaper areas. Both me and my Wife's company have pay bands based on geographical region(most employees know nothing about this and most companies employ these salary COL changes for relocation) and certain regions you can take a big pay cut. Say your salary in the bay area is 100k for example, move to the South, say Florida and it typically drops 30%(typically as low as they chop your salary) so your new salary is 70k, Denver area is 15% paycut etc. These numbers change somewhat from company to company but they do exist for most companies and should be factored in.

<comment><USER16> What's the rationale for this?

<comment><USER17> Currently, the market for location-based labor is deeper than the market for location-agnostic labor, so employers assume that their competition is local - and often it is.

That's less true for the top 20% or so of tech candidates. A person with known skills and a good network can obtain offers from multiple remote-friendly companies today. There's already a location-ignorant market for their skills (probably not at San Francisco comp, but also not at rural North Dakota comp).

As more remote jobs are available, more people will receive multiple remote offers, that is, they'll find a deeper location-ignorant market for their skills. Over time, one would expect this location-ignorant comp to settle around the actual value added.

(Longer explanation in a related thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18900072#18903795](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18900072#18903795))

<comment><USER16> Interesting, thanks for the reading. I am tempted now to get a higher salary in an expensive location, work on-site and then remotely from that location, then quietly move away without telling anyone. As long as my hours are the same and work quality don't change, nobody should be the wiser.

<comment><USER18> you have to have payroll run in the state where you work

so you couldn't do this without either updating with HR or tax fraud

<comment><USER16> Cost of living within a state can vary pretty greatly. eastern vs western Washington for example. Spokane vs Seattle: [https://www.bestplaces.net/cost- of-living/spokane-wa/seattle...](https://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of- living/spokane-wa/seattle-wa/150000)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> People won't continue making their current SF salary by working out of Farmville, Ohio. I think this point is missed by many

I fully expect Twitter, for example, to come out with salary adjustment policies for people who want to work from home from an entirely different city and state

<comment><USER20> Salary based on your locale even though everyone is remote: hilarious. "Oh you live in Alabama you get 60k" "Oh you live in Manhattan on 65th street that is 150k". This will backfire into a political hell.

<comment><USER21> Gitlab famously does this, is very open about it [0], and in general has enjoyed more praise for their _all remote_ structure than hell for their differing salaries. Maybe the companies won't rush to cut salaries of current employees who go remote and move elsewhere. But I fully expect them to offer new hires different salaries based on their location. After all, they already do that with their non-remote offices. It's not like Google is paying the same salaries to workers in their SF office and Toronto office.

[0] [https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total- rewards/compensation...](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total- rewards/compensation/compensation-calculator/calculator/)

<comment><USER22> Their SF salaries that anchor this tool seem pretty low. It states $160k for a senior/staff level backend engineer and $185k for frontend.

<comment><USER23> I would agree. Senior level developers in Virginia, can get 200k as a minimum. The only downside I have found is that companies with high salaries either have more difficult work, or poor work life balance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It must be tempting to make even a short-term move out of the Bay area. If your lease is coming due and you were planning on looking for a new place anyway, why not move back in with family or get a short-term rental somewhere further out. Rents will likely be going down over the next few years, not up, so it's a terrible time to lock yourself into a new lease. And we can expect re-opening to happen slowly, so there should be plenty of warning for most workplaces before you're required to be in the office again. Based on my Zoom calls, my co-workers have been fleeing the city, moving back in with parents, moving into parents' second homes or picking up vacation rentals on the coast or in the mountains.

<comment><USER25> I live in SF but rented a vacation rental for May and June. No point to live in my 600sqft condo when everything is closed and I can rent a 2000sqft house with a pool for small change.

<comment><USER26> I'm planning to do the same. Put things into storage and get a better view. Any advice finding a place?

<comment><USER24> Check airbnb, vrbo, craigslist, or if you're looking at a vacation hotspot, local realtors often do monthly vacation rentals. Monthly rentals are often much cheaper on a per-day basis than weekly rentals. Your SF rent is going to go extremely far just about anywhere else. I am renting a 2br vacation house on the beach for less than the price of studio.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Christy Lake, chief people officer at Twilio:

> "It's probably not great business practice to pay Bay Area comps in > Michigan," Lake says. And when it comes time to promote, would those > employees have the same opportunity to advance as everybody else? "We need > to think proactively," she says.

So, in case anyone is applying to Twilio, heads up, I guess.

<comment><USER28> To be fair -

I used to live in Ohio and my parents and I lived in a 2 bedroom apartment that cost $600/mo about fifteen years ago. You could buy a 5 bedroom house for $250k. The school district I attended was also top notch. It was a great family area and I remember the mall, rec center, and numerous parks.

I checked zillow recently and 5 bedroom homes are ~$300k and apartments are about $800/mo.

At the time, my dad was the sole breadwinner and he was earning about $40k a year.

I'm out in California right now making a comfortable six figure salary, but I can't really afford a 1+ million dollar house in a good area where I can send my future kids to school.

If I was earning even $100k a year, I could comfortably afford to live in that Ohio suburb about 15 miles from a major metro.

<comment><USER29> So if you lived in that Ohio suburb, your code quality would be reduced vs living in California?

<comment><USER30> I'm going to take an unpopular/wrong sounding opinion and say it's possible. If you leave the bubble filled with world-class programmers, techies and entrepreneurs, it's possible your code quality will be 'reduced' because you don't see the value in it as much compared to taking care of your kids, building up your local community, etc. Peer pressure is important and if your peers are teachers, cops, store managers, etc would you care more about learning the ins and outs of the newest JS framework or about what dishes to make at the BBQ you're throwing this weekend?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Another thought: those workers and their companies could contribute to changing the situation in Silicon Valley and the rest of California: [https://cayimby.org/](https://cayimby.org/)

Without a change in housing policy in the US, this just becomes a big game of musical chairs:

Guy moves from Silicon Valley to Portland, Oregon. Portland gets too expensive for some other family, who move to Boise, Idaho. And so on...

<comment><USER32> >Guy moves from Silicon Valley to Portland, Oregon. Portland gets too expensive for some other family, who move to Boise, Idaho. And so on...

Yup. It's a fundamental values problem that can't be fixed without a major ideological shift. A large number of people do not believe that people have the right to do more or less whatever they want on their property. Until that is fixed you're always going to have people saying "but you shouldn't be able to build that there".

<comment><USER33> Another option could be that living in a big city becomes less necessary.

People flocked to these cities in the first place because they were seen as sources of social opportunities (jobs, venture capital, social networks). I would like to see the Internet disaggregate those opportunities.

<comment><USER31> I've worked remotely, and for creative, collaborative work, and chance meetings and that sort of thing... I still think offices and cities win.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> "In 2013, Yahoo Inc. decided its lax policies on working from home had prevented it from innovating and required everyone to come back to the office."

\-- and now in 2020 Yahoo is an innovative power house...

<comment><USER35> Just have to be more innovative than the counterfactual, which was probably the case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I feel like most of HN is missing something here, of no fault of their own because they're not in my demographic (20-something yuppie). Young people want to live in cities. They're fun, exciting, and enable a robust social life. Moving to rural Ohio or Michigan, or even a "lesser" metro in the midwest is not the same as living in SF or NYC in terms of social opportunity. I work remote and I live in Brooklyn and I think its great. I don't need a car or a big house. But unlike most of the commenters here, I don't have kids or a wife. Essentially, I put my money towards a better social life.

I'm not saying that my way is better, it's just that the whole "move to a big cheap house in the midwest, bro" line that HN loves to throw out is not for everyone.

<comment><USER37> What do you get in SF that you can't get in Des Moines? I lived in Des Moines until last year and I find most answers to this question are wrong: you can in fact get it in Des Moines. Sometimes Des Moines is even better, though I'll admit in most cases the vastly smaller size limits quantity of choices.

<comment><USER38> Diverse younger people from all around the world that are trying to reach their full potential.

<comment><USER37> You get that in Des Moines. Not nearly as many but they are there.

<comment><USER38> I have nothing against Des Moines so I'm trying to tread lightly here but I have a hard time believing someone from say London, Amsterdam, Hong Kong, or Sydney would move across the world to end up in Des Moines at even a fraction of the rate as New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, etc. It's a fine place, I'm sure, but it lacks global pull that would bring in talented people from all corners of the earth.

<comment><USER37> I agree there isn't much global pull. That is the point, even without any global pull there is a diversity of people in the city. Not as many as SF by any means, but on a small scale it is there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> When I read these I feel its way to early to start making determinations on whether "Working for Home" is here to stay.

It's going to work for some and not for others, but a few exceptional months with no clear forecasts on what happens next makes long term decisions terribly difficult. I'll be fascinated to see how this workout for Google and Microsoft coming into Q1 of 2021 compared to how things worked out for Yahoo! when they banned working from home a few years ago.

I may be more of a bear on this than most on here but I don't think working from home is going to be quite as successful as many think.

</comment><comment><USER40> "[Living in] a one-bedroom rental in South San Francisco, a short commute from Facebook Inc.'s offices in Menlo Park"

\-- might want to edit the "short" part. I think that's at least a 1-hour commute, EACH way :)

</comment><comment><USER41> Meh - people are going to be experiencing a wake up call in a couple years when they lose that job and need another. I really doubt remote based jobs will go up in income now. I expect them to fall - if anything. (Increased supply of workers wanting to go remote cause housing too expensive in big cities - can you imagine how many people are craving a bigger home now?)

Can't imagine how devastating it will be when you see your household income fall from $500k+/yr to $200k/yr. Junior ain't going to private schools anymore.

</comment><comment><USER42> Living and purchasing a home in a very high COL city feels like a marathon. You know that you won't have paid off your home until many decades later, and you need to maximize your earnings, while minimizing your risks of becoming unemployed. In other words, it can motivate you to become really good at something, but at the same time inducing a lot of stress.

Living in cheap areas, feels very different. I recently move back home, and could pay off my home with two years worth of salary. That's it, no mortgage or anything - just the occasional renovations / upgrades. On the other hand, now that I'm not chained to a mortgage, I need to invest more of my money - <USER2> the case I want to move back to somewhere expensive.

Job market isn't anywhere near the same, and salaries are much more compressed. Mid 6 figure salaries are unheard-of, unless you own a company. But it doesn't feel like a rat-race, where you need to hustle all the time.

</comment><comment><USER43> If even a smallish fraction—say 15 or 20 percent— of the workers who could move and work remotely do so, that could have a pretty significant impact on local economies. Even if wages adjust some, you'd still see essentially a redistribution of wealth from highly concentrated areas to those less so. A shift of say, 2 percent in apartment vacancy rates is nontrivial. On the whole it could be a net positive, for individuals and for stressed cities.

<comment><USER35> 1 in every 5 employees relocating is a huge proportion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> The pairing of working in an office with a hellish commute is a bit odd.

Maybe SF really is a parallel universe. Here in the UK, basically anyone earning a tech salary can afford to live within 10-20 mins cycle of work, even if they want children.

You won't have a home with a garden and all the rest of the knick knacks, sure, but that's a different discussion.

<comment><USER45> Most techies in SF could afford to live relatively close to work, or without roommates, or both.

The reason why they don't is still due to the high rent though. When living with a roommate or two, or living a bit further away means you get an extra $1000+ a month to spend on other things, that can be very enticing.

<comment><USER46> This isn't true, at least of all the tech workers I've worked with. None of them could afford to live within a 30min commute of a downtown SF startup.

<comment><USER47> I can see how this would be true for a ramen-stage startup but it's not true in the normal startup job market where engineers get paid six figures. Lots of good places available downtown for <2k per bedroom. If you don't want a roommate you can get a decent small apartment for 3k or a lower-end place for 2k in other neighborhoods. You don't need to leave the city, and you don't save all that much by doing so anyway. Good neighborhoods outside the city are also expensive.

One good reason to leave the city would be if you prioritize renting a house with a 6000 sqft suburban lot, which you can't find in the city. Another would be if you have kids and want a good school district.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I am moving from San Jose to Michigan on Saturday. My company has allowed me to continue working remotely. I know of a few others doing the same.

<comment><USER48> Care to talk about your motivations? Why Michigan?

<comment><USER22> Mostly just for personal reasons. My wife and I are both from there and our family is there too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> First, these are NOT normal work from home times. This is currently the worst time to experience what work from home is truely like.

Second, if your job requires a lot of face to face interaction them WFH will NOT be a good fit.

Third, if your org tries to do remote communication in the same way it does place based communication. It will not be a good fit.

BUT, if remote communication is first class citizen, conditions are back to the normal state of 4 months ago, your job duties are well suited to individual creative contributions, work from home CAN be a great fit.

</comment><comment><USER50> People are going to be moving Mountain House or Reno at farthest, not Cleveland. Though the thought of buying a literal mansion near Boise with your techbux is amusing.

<comment><USER51> Idaho has been receiving a huge influx of Californians.

[https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-11-10/go- back-...](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-11-10/go-back-to- california-wave-of-newcomers-fuels-backlash-in-boise)

[https://www.idahostatesman.com/opinion/editorials/article237...](https://www.idahostatesman.com/opinion/editorials/article237245439.html)

[https://www.businessinsider.com/why-millennials-are- moving-f...](https://www.businessinsider.com/why-millennials-are-moving-from- california-to-boise-idaho-2019-12)

<comment><USER50> Yep. I think the overall migration as been: Bay Area -> Seattle -> Boise -> Nevada?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Desirable areas will always be (relatively) more expensive. Even if we see significant deflation (which is unlikely given the scale of money printing), these areas (NYC, SF) will probably remain expensive so long as they remain significant culturally and economically. When it becomes uncool to live in SF or NYC, then perhaps people will move to places like Wyoming en masse.

<comment><USER53> The cultural amenities of cities are in serious jeopardy, generally. Many of the restaurants, clubs, theaters, museums, bars, etc that make the city a desirable place may never reopen.

<comment><USER54> Restaurants and bars require very little capital to open (the low barrier to entry explains why margins are so low in the industry). Even if many of the existing restaurants go out of business, new ones will quickly open up once the pandemic is over and people start going out again (which might take a little while, to be fair).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> For the 20-30 something with no kids who are showing higher productivity working from home, once the outdoor/social life returns to normal, their productivity will drop.

They will want a dedicated office space and discipline of going to an office to reattain that productivity. As a solution to this, we could have lots of satellite offices for people to come in and work but teams are still distributed and remote to each other. This could potentially maintain productivity levels as well as avoid high rents and horrible commutes.

This could work only if everyone is still remote to each other relatively. The moment a few of the team members are co-located in the same office, they start having in-person meetings and can collaborate in person, that stark difference people in office vs people remote will emerge. Then it all falls apart.

</comment><comment><USER56> It's not just about the rents and finances. Escaping Silicon Valley is also escaping a monoculture. Yes, the Bay has diversity in one sense (for example ethnic backgrounds), but in other ways (diversity of thought) it is very uniform. Urban living is also just one way of living. It's not the way everyone wants or needs to live, and those who want more breathing room can seek that out if they can work remotely. Politics also vary by geographic location, and those who are tired of issues like SF's lack of law enforcement and constant problems with homeless drug addicts have more viable alternatives now. Those who have families/friends in other places will be freer to live near them. I think this is going to be great and hope to see all tech companies adopt remote work.

<comment><USER57> Do you really think you're escaping "monoculture" by moving to Ohio?

<comment><USER51> It would at least be a different monoculture. And depending on the city, even less of one as East Coasters are fleeing their own respective sky-high rents to Ohio:

[https://nypost.com/2018/04/25/ex-new-yorkers-are-flocking- to...](https://nypost.com/2018/04/25/ex-new-yorkers-are-flocking-to-this- midwest-sanctuary/)

<comment><USER58> I think people are imagining this will be pretty plug and play, but there will be a shock for sure if your standards of living and expectations come from larger and more diverse metros. I grew up in Cleveland, and lived in those listed areas in Columbus. They feel small, like very small. The 'active' walkable part of Columbus is like 2 miles on high street, where home prices are the highest and continually higher with every year. North of this is Ohio State, which I love but it's a weird place to hang out if you are over 25 and a football game isn't going on. South of these two miles on high street are downtown, which is empty after 5pm because it's all state government buildings and offices, and the german village which is admittedly quaint but not worth uprooting your life for imo, every city has a cute older area with $5 lattes. The rest of the city is suburbs stretching out until it blurs with farmland, indistinguishable from any of the other suburbs. Most of them don't even bother building sidewalks they are so dependent on the car. Public transit in Columbus is crap, basically a pity gesture from the city saying 'yes, we do have buses' and that's about it.

Cleveland is an overall nicer city than Columbus. It has older bones and is pretty well laid out on the east side with a few RTA rail lines. There are a lot of older neighborhoods that date to when Rockefeller lived here and made his fortune with Standard Oil along the riverbanks. You can get a mansion for ~$75k a bathroom right on the RTA line in Shaker Heights. The metropark system is also enormous.

However, Cleveland never recovered from white flight. The population of the greater metro area has been stagnant for 50 years, while the city proper has lost half its population in that time. Despite the good bones, Cleveland feels hollowed out as a result, and there is a lot of space now devoted to surface parking lots that used to be an apartment building in a formerly lively neighborhood. Still, there are a lot more walkable neighborhoods than Columbus and more options for living, but the city isn't growing nearly as fast as other metro areas and will not shore up the damage done to city life from white flight in my lifetime imo. I'd say about half the people from my high school class still live in Ohio, the rest took better positions elsewhere.

Coupled with the limited number of employers and therefore lack of jobs, and the six months of depression (sometimes it would only snow once or twice, the rest of winter everything will be grey and brown and muddy and dead, and 'scenic' autumn only lasts for like two weeks anyway), and I haven't looked back since moving west. In terms of my career, physical health now that I can be more active outdoors all year, and my mental health (Cleveland in particular only gets 80 days of sunshine a year), this was the greatest decision of my life. Plus I can actually get proper ethnic food, you should see what they call a taco in Cleveland. If I want to visit, can't beat a 5hr direct flight.

<comment><USER51> Thanks for a very comprehensive description. It's a good response. Maybe Pittsburgh compares better to Cleveland?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I left a decade ago. And my standard of living went way up.

<comment><USER60> Where'd you go, if you don't mind me asking...?

<comment><USER59> Midwest, college town, house in the country on 80 acres.

My kids grew up, they could walk around outside all day and still be at home. They could invite friends to visit, do projects, shoot, saw, drive carts, dig holes. All three are Eagle Scouts, Engineers, black belts.

Wife and I have 7 gardens plus landscaping projects. Two sheds 20X50, tractors and implements. Orchard.

All for less than that old house in San Jose.

<comment><USER60> Incredible. I wonder, how different were sub-cultural an social aspects, versus the Bay?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> I'm considering it. But I am pretty sure that once things open up, my office culture is going back to one where all the important decisions get made in the hallways after a meeting. Being remote in that scenario means you have no say, and you miss out on important information.

<comment><USER22> Being the only remote person on a team is really hard. I've both done it and been on teams where someone else does it. It's less than ideal for everyone. It's a constant nag that never goes away (oh did you remember to join the hangout for Matt?) and pretty much no matter what you miss out on a good deal of communication. I definitely think remote would work best when everyone is doing it.

<comment><USER62> I'm really concerned about this. My Bay Area company is planning to go back to the office soon, but my kids are still home so I need to be home to help out with the child care. I'm one of the only ones on the team with little kids at home, so I'm going to be "that guy" that they have to remember to dial in. Hopefully the schools will get back open soon but it's not looking real good for that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Anecdotally, it surprises me how many people are still buying homes during the pandemic.

Region-wide, prices fell 2.9% in the Bay Area in 2019; it "feels like" prices merely held relatively steady, and the selling prices I'm seeing the past month or so are on track with that.

</comment><comment><USER64> I know this article focused on established players, but I'm curious what the pandemic means for early-phase startups based out of SV and NYC. When every sales pitch and networking event is a Zoom call, you lose any benefit to taking expensive space in a Mission District incubator.

If aspiring founders leave the city (even temporarily), they may still find success, but are they going to relocate back to the pricey areas when it's safe to open up?

I've spent the last 5 years hoping for a catalyst that moves tech out of the two biggest players so it can actually help stimulate different regions of the US. Maybe the quarantine will finally trigger this

<comment><USER65> I think a big factor to Silicon Valley is VCs wanting in person meetings with founders and to have in person board meetings. If VCs realize they can take pitches and do board meetings over Zoom they can start investing outside Silicon Valley and startups don't have to start and then stay here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> This could finally help solve the housing crisis in many of America's large cities. Every employee who moves out frees up one apartment for everyone else. 30,000 employees leaving is equivalent to building 30,000 apartments.

<comment><USER67> The number of tech workers in the bay who have zero roommates is a lot smaller than you seem to think.

<comment><USER68> Yeah, one of the reasons I left. A 30 year old with a 100k job needing roommates is absurd.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> " _But the trend raises complicated questions. If employees move to a less expensive location, should Twilio adjust their salaries accordingly? "It's probably not great business practice to pay Bay Area comps in Michigan," Lake says. And when it comes time to promote, would those employees have the same opportunity to advance as everybody else? "We need to think proactively," she says._ "

I wouldn't sweat it. After the pandemic has died down, companies will be requiring everybody back into the office and all those people moving to Montana will be packing up again.

<comment><USER51> Maybe companies will be forced to open offices in Billings if everyone is moving to Montana.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> I left SF a year ago to settle in the midwest. Best decision I ever made.

</comment><comment><USER71> > Just as people can work from anywhere, employers can hire from anywhere. > "The talent pool gets massive," he says. "Why would my employer pay me SF > wages?"

This is sort of a non sequitur. These calculations are already happening and becoming more common, regardless of whether some individuals choose to move or not.

It's my hope that many people do move away though. Even setting aside the horrible traffic and insane housing costs, it's just not healthy for the region to be so highly dependent on tech jobs.

</comment><comment><USER72> I can't think of anyone in my office who wants to permanently work from home.

We talk about it every week, and it's become clear that everyone is looking forward to the day where offices reopen.

I really don't see this trend of people relocating. And for those considering it, once they are made aware that salaries will scale with location it's probably going to be a strong enough deterrent.

</comment><comment><USER73> How about competition, the biggest reason they got 200k+ a year was their location. Now they will start competing with the non SV market.

</comment><comment><USER74> An honest question: isn't this what local governments want? I see cities and counties implement two policies: rent control, and blocking development of high-density residential areas. Both measurements will limit supplies (while benefiting incumbents), so naturally people would move away.

</comment><comment><USER75> Yeah, I'm an at risk group for this thing and I'm not commuting into an office for the foreseeable future, my office has been good so far but if they don't make an arrangement with me to continue this when our half baked state reopenings happen then I'll find a place that will.

</comment><comment><USER76> One interesting side effect is that local schools are already seeing declining enrollment as families can't afford to live here. I have hear rumors that my local school district, CUSD, may have to close a school and reduce staff because they don't have enough students.

</comment><comment><USER77> I'm certainly daydreaming about this, as someone living in SF right now. But IMO things are still too uncertain to pull the trigger on making a huge move. And I wonder if the likeliest scenario, is that everyone strongly considers doing this, but then we all slowly get used to the "new normal" and by the time it's clear one way or the other what the future is starting to look like, we're past the peak of the virus (maybe it's early 2021 and there's a vaccine starting to roll out) and everyone just kind of settles back into mostly the same life they previously had due to inertia.

And anecdotally I've heard very few people say they now want to stay fully remote forever. What I've heard instead is people talking about how they hope that 2-3 days a week in the office might become the new normal. That might open up your options a bit, maybe that makes you willing to commute 1 - 1.5hrs instead of 30 min - 1 hr. But that wouldn't allow anyone to leave the metro area. In fact, maybe this scenario actually _increases_ cost of living because now you need to both be close enough to downtown to commute a few days a week, and have enough space for a dedicated home office so you can work from home productively the other few days a week.

<comment><USER14> The Bay Area arguably doesn't lend itself as well to a part-time WFH situation as other cities do. Given that it's not just the core city that's expensive but the whole peninsula where most of the jobs are located and even most of the surrounding areas. You _can_ get out of it with a long enough occasional commute--though then you're probably also too far out to regularly take advantage of urban culture, etc.

By contrast, somewhere like Boston assuming the jobs are even in the city (many aren't), a drive that's 60-90 minutes depending on time of day puts you into pretty reasonably priced exurbs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> Well for those who stay, the rent prices might plummet if there's enough of an exodus.

</comment><comment><USER46> A lot of people came here to comment "you won't make the same salary". Yeah no kidding, but the ratio of salary/COL will be a LOT higher regardless. Don't believe me? Check the chart in the article.

</comment><comment><USER79> I welcome anyone trying to leave SV to come live in beautiful Southern Oregon. Great weather, not too crowded, and still drivable to Seattle and the bay. Come help build our little tech scene!

</comment><comment><USER80> If a company want to hire remote workers, why do that in US or Europe?

<comment><USER81> My company hires a lot of Croatian software engineers. Most of them speak great English. 1/3 are very, very good, 1/3 OK, 1/3 literally terrible. But we rotate the bad ones out and keep the good ones, and the rumor is they cost about 1/3 or 1/2 of an American worker. I honestly feel that the American software engineer may be in trouble if remote really does take off -- 2 solid Croatian guys for the price of 1 tech bro is a very good deal.

<comment><USER58> I expect to see a lot of companies doing this. You read the same exact docs whether you live in SF or Bulgaria. If anything you have better math skills outside the U.S. which helps you more than a language barrier would matter.

Some might argue the best engineering is here, maybe that's correct maybe not, but companies rarely want the best. They just want the cheapest possible tool for the job they think they have. If a remote dev is significantly cheaper than a U.S. based remote dev, no business will be paying that premium.

<comment><USER81> It's worth mentioning that none of our tech leads are outsourced. All of the very demanding architecture work and decision making happens here. A lot of that yields a spec that needs a hundred hours of dev time -- for example, "update the iOS and Android apps to match the redesign we did on Mobile Web". You don't need a US based engineer for that type of work, but you sure as hell want the best possible guy designing the architecture and doing code review.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> Link to article: [http://archive.md/dhoUk](http://archive.md/dhoUk)

</comment><comment><USER83> And I'm considering to become a billionaire this year. So what?

</comment><comment><USER84> This is constantly brought up on HN in the WFH threads.

Your employer cannot arbitrarily reduce your salary. The reduction has to be agreed upon by the employee or the employer has to terminate employment and rehire to reduce salary.

Very few big tech companies will update salary for a intra country move. It seems to happen most often when an employee relocates to a new country rather than a new state. This is because the new country requires a different work agreement and must follow different labor laws.

<comment><USER85> > Your employer cannot arbitrarily reduce your salary. The reduction has to be > agreed upon by the employee or the employer has to terminate employment and > rehire to reduce salary.

There might be state regulations to this effect -- and IANAL -- but there's no such federal law in the US. An employer can cut an employee's pay at any point to any value above the minimum wage, as long as they inform the employee their pay has been cut.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Has anyone else seen TCP connection issues in AWS US East this week? - <AUTHOR> Over the last week we've seen random TCP connection issues in the US-1 East data center in AWS. Has anyone else been seeing this? <comment><USER2> Maybe AWS US East is going to be the region with random failures?

"I want to have an AWS region where everything breaks with high frequency" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24103746](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24103746)

<comment><USER3> It always has been - us-east-1 is the biggest region by far, so scale problems tend to arise there first.

<comment><USER4> All updates and patching start with us-east-1.

The main reason it has the most issues is because it's the guinea pig for production update deployments.

<comment><USER5> Hmm that's not true, nowadays most new things will start with small regions, typically us-east-2

<comment><USER6> +1

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It would help if you defined exactly what type of issues you experienced. Packet loss? Early RSTs? Latency? Single AZ or cross AZ? Same for VPCs or NAT'd internet traffic?

You should take some tcpdumps and open a support case.

<comment><AUTHOR> Connection issues between hosts, it appears to be across AZ. Internal traffic inside a VPC

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yes - I've been seeing failures this morning.

Searched around didn't see much on twitter beyond this: [https://twitter.com/Flock/status/1294304262126804993?s=20](https://twitter.com/Flock/status/1294304262126804993?s=20)

We think it's one AZ in us-east-1.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah this is very similar to what we're seeing. We reached out to AWS for help and they reported issues on their side but didn't go into greater details.

we've been seeing issues like this on and off for a few weeks now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Yes I have seen sporadic connection issues with various site scraping functions my app employs. I figured it was a widespread issue but I'm glad you made a post about it that basically confirms that.

</comment><comment><USER10> One instance was randomly powered down about 22 hours ago.

We saw a synthetic monitor failure at midnight. Investigation of the transaction trace shows that a specific code path that should take maybe ~100ms took almost 40000ms.

It could have been unresponsive EBS. Or failure to look up the Redis server's IP address. Or some other infrastructure-level failure. The synthetic browser saw it as a 502.

</comment><comment><USER11> Perhaps related: our load tests this week showed an increase in 502s from the ALB. The app server request logs indicate those requests never made it from the ALB.

</comment><comment><USER12> We had a full `us-west-2` 30 minute network drop-out this week. CloudTrail shows nothing.

</comment><comment><USER13> We are seeing sporadic connection issues where tcp syn packets are dropped before reaching our elb. Have noticed off and on for a few weeks now. Still investigating and have support ticket out with aws.

<comment><USER14> Do ELBs operate behind the 'security groups' firewall? I don't think they do, but if they do, you might be hitting connection tracking limits? It's consistent with dropped syns.

Some more details below, but if you use normalish (naive?) rules in the aws firewall, you get connection tracking behavior and there's an unspecified connection limit for each instance type. Above that limit, incoming syns are dropped.

[https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ec2-secu...](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ec2-security- groups.html#security-group-connection-tracking)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not as much as TCP issues, but increased API call failure, across multiple services (cloudformation, ec2, rds), yes, on us-east-1. Mind you, still pretty low rate, but enough to notice some pattern.

</comment><comment><USER16> We had a few minutes earlier this week where a machine saw packets in/out go to zero for no discernible reason.

<comment><USER17> Same here in us-east-2.

</comment></comment><comment> jeppesen-io I've not seen anything across 4 AZs

</comment><comment><USER18> Someone asked for a region where everything breaks all the time.

</comment><comment><USER19> Yep, had issues yesterday. Botched a big deploy for me too.

</comment><comment><USER20> In any specific AZ or across the board?

<comment><USER21> Each account's AZ codes point to a different AZ—it's a way of avoiding conversations like this where people think a particular AZ is better than others.

<comment><USER20> That's no longer the case, except in legacy regions (which IAD is); I think there's a reconciliation mechanism though in those cases.

<comment><USER22> Can you cite something about this? I can't find anything, except confirming that's not true [1].

Your profile says you work at AWS so I assume you have inside info on this. Perhaps you could also explain why this change would get made? I always considered it pretty smart to do - With consistent machines, wouldn't the lowered-lettered zones get significantly more traffic? Most of my deploys go to a+b or a+b+c (and I have various services running in 5 different regions, I think). I'm not sure I even have anything running in more than 3 AZs, and thus never use AZ d, for example. I'm positive I'm not alone in that style of setup.

\----

EDIT: Just comparing two accounts I have (which are linked, if that makes a difference), it does in fact look like most regions do have the same mappings. us-east-1 and us-west-2 are definitely different, but all the other ones I checked seem to be the same. They're not all consistent (a=1, b=2, etc) though, but for example, these are the same on both accounts:

        AZ Name         AZ ID
        eu-central-1a   euc1-az2
        eu-central-1b   euc1-az3
        eu-central-1c   euc1-az1
        eu-west-3a      euw3-az1
        eu-west-3b      euw3-az2
        eu-west-3c      euw3-az3
        ap-south-1a     aps1-az1
        ap-south-1b     aps1-az3
        ap-south-1c     aps1-az2

I still find this silly. Anyone following basic examples or deploying single- AZ is going to provision stuff in the "a" zone. That zone must be 10x bigger than "c" in any given region. It blows my mind.

[1] [https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge- center/vpc-m...](https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/vpc- map-cross-account-availability-zones/)

<comment><USER23> Zone IDs are meant to reconcile this. And due to the nature of my job, it creates plenty of headaches explaining why two accounts can have different AZ names for the 'same' place.

[https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ram/latest/userguide/working- wit...](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ram/latest/userguide/working-with-az- ids.html)

My understanding of the 'why' AWS did this for many regions was to avoid folks hammering the "first" zone they came across (a) when they either didn't care about multi-zone availability or were ignorant of the difference it made. If everyone hops in the 'first' zone, you could end up with disproportionate amounts of traffic. Either way, given how many new regions don't do this (either because they stopped, or that new regions tend to come up slowly one zone at a time), it seems they've abandoned the practice. Unfortunately, even new accounts in these legacy regions still end up with randomized mappings.

I also suspect they didn't care much about this until cross-account features were offered.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Moral Center of Meritocracy Collapses - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/03/college-bribe-scandal-about-class-inequality/584797/ <comment><USER2> What moral center? The game has always been work hard and do everything to help your kids succeed, so they can do the same.

You either accept those rules and play along or don't. But don't expect others not to play b/c you refuse.

I did like the author's bigger point of the top 10% vs the bottom 90%. That divide is widening and crystalizing, which, I feel, is wrecking the American Dream.

We need a new Dream, the old one died in the Great Recession.

<comment><USER3> Most people put limits on that 'everything'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The crime isn't that these people paid money to get their children into a university, the crime is that the money went to people and organizations other than the university.</comment>


$10,000 Stack Overflow Toxicity Challenge - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/dunder-data/10-000-stack-overflow-toxicity-challenge-75951a739993 <comment><USER2> This is a classic example of a publicity stunt based on the awful premise that people should be _happy_ that Stack Overflow isn't more toxic. After all, on some places on the internet people openly talk about raping or killing people, so what's a little mean spirit and oppression on a tech help site?

What's more, the author has defined "toxic" in a way that guarantees a negotiation process _after_ results are offered. They can simply sink the discussion by demanding that, "diversity of thought means I need a new Nazi and a hyper conservative anti-lgbt religious person on my panel. Surprise surprise, no one can agree on anything."

I seldom reach for this categorization off the bat, but given that this is a _classic_ anti-debate tactic that I see all the time, I'm going to call it. This entire effort is disingenuous bullshit, and I flagged it hoping to avoid having to see more of this kind of bad logic and bad posting on the Hacker News main page.

<comment><USER3> "11\. An independent panel that both you and I agree upon will define what it means to be "toxic"."

I mean, that's about as fair as you can get when it comes to negotiating an agreement on something as subjective as "toxicity".

<comment><USER2> Having a panel whose members are open and that you could judge before comitting hours of work: that would be fair.

Instead you have to come with evidence and then negotiate the panel allowing a potentially disingenuous actor to counter pick your evidence. The way the author worded this challenge demands we consider them an antagonist. Their definition of unacceptable is rape and death threats. Given this fact, we must assume they'd demand judges with similar views.

To engage in this challenge genuinely, we are forced to accept the author's absurdly high threshold (10%?! That's a wildfire!) and their absurdly permissive definition of harmless toxicity. I will do neither.

<comment><USER4> Again this needs correcting. I am offering money. Why should I go out of my way to make it easy for you. Try to build a case on your own if you think its worthwhile (which you won't).

You seem hung up on the definition of toxicity being defined as rape and death threats. Your reading comprehension skills are atrocious. Where did I mention this?

You finally understand something, that the 10% threshold is high. I don't want to lose my money. But you do realize that many people actually believe it to be extremely high. YouTube comments might actually exceed that threshold.

<comment><USER2> No one wants your paltry prize money, Ted. What they want are environments with less toxicity.

> You finally understand something, that the 10% threshold is high. I don't > want to lose my money.

In one fell swoop you've admitted you have set an unreasonably high goal post, that you don't expect it to be attainable, and that this was not actually about the inquiry.

But sure, Ted, we should all be grateful to you for offering up money you don' expect to pay. Why stop at 10%? I'm sure you can pay someone on a bus somewhere to say 25%, and then you can peg it there. That wouldn't be substantially less disingenuous than what you've done so far, so I say: live your best life.

<comment><USER5> > an unreasonably high goal post

I wouldn't say _unreasonably_ high for 10% for a single man offering that much money. I would even say that it is rather very _risky_.

Besides, claiming a platform is "a toxic wasteland" puts that platform on par with the ones like 4chan, and that does seem to require 20% toxicity to me, maybe even higher. For it to get more strict like 3-5%, the claim should be lighter, something like "slightly toxic". It is nice of him to empathise and assume that the claims are probably exaggerated, and to set the threshold to something in between.

> No one wants your paltry prize money, Ted.

Lastly, I definitely would enjoy an extra 10K, but I don't really think I can beat that requirement, since I don't think Stack Overflow is even slightly toxic.

<comment><USER2> It stuns me that you write this, in a public forum, and don't expect people to conclude your entire effort was a self-centering publicity stunt.

Your goal is to discredit anyone who suggests your favorite crowdsourcing website has any toxicity at all. So you set absurdly high thresholds and put into place unfair processes to make sure the prize money can't be claimed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This competition is a prosecutor's fallacy ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutor%27s_fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutor%27s_fallacy)), _especially_ since the definition of "toxicity" in this problem is 100% arbitrary.

Also, about the required input fee:

> _I am offering a free $10,000 of my own money. If you really believe that > you can win, then obviously $500 won't deter you at all._

Since we're talking about statistical modeling, the rational argument would be that a person would only participate if expected value of winning the competition is greater than the input pot. A ~5% chance of winning, given the time investment and opportunity cost involved, isn't compelling enough to risk it. That's why Kaggle competitions are free.

<comment><USER7> He does address this:

> An independent panel that both you and I agree upon will define what it > means to be "toxic".

But the author is right so there's zero chance of anyone taking him up on this offer.

<comment><USER2> That's a non-answer though. That process point alone means no prize need ever be rewarded. If you actually wanted to get results from this, you'd have this panel selected in advance so that people could just the fairness of the panel _before_ engaging. Not allowing for post-engagement "Ha ha I demand Milo Y. is on my panel and he thinks this is fine to say to a woman."

Of course that's just one of many red flags.

<comment><USER3> I believe this is addressed in the "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" section. If Stack Overflow is anywhere near as toxic as some people have suggested, this would seem to be a reasonable method of encouraging people to prove it.

One of the often repeated comments of several popular conservative "speakers" (Shapiro, although I think I've heard something similar from Peterson, Crowder, etc.) is that if you present proof of a specific problem they would be happy to work with anyone and everyone to resolve it. A generous interpretation of the author could be that they want to see Stack Overflow succeed, and by addressing this potential issue directly they can fix it, if it does exist at all.

<comment><USER2> Who anywhere has suggested that Stack Overflow is 10% rape and murder threats? This is an absurd standard that is being advanced.

Of course I can't prove that. I never wanted to. The author is using a straw man so potent he can comfortably put a lot of money behind it.

<comment><USER4> Why is your reading comprehension so bad?

<comment><USER2> Oh I'm sorry, did you NOT set a threshold of 10% and then say, and I quote, "In an internet filled with people wishing you were dead or raped (see YouTube comments sections), Stack Overflow is a saint."

Sorry for drawing the obvious conclusion: that that's where you draw the line.

Maybe, Ted, just maybe... no one needed your opinion, your shoddy poll, your patronizing fake bounty, your bait and switch methodology, or your Dawkins- style rant about how people should be grateful they aren't the direct victims of violence. Maybe you had nothing positive to add, and you're feeling clap- back because what you did add was so bad even Stack Overflow walked back from you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't know how one would define toxicity for the purpose of this challenge, but I am certainly baffled as to how people accuse StackOverflow of being a 'toxic wasteland'.

Some people can be a bit curt or even rude with poorly worded or low-effort questions but I can't say that's something I see there in even 1 out of 25-50 questions I see.

I suspect that some people get frustrated when they first try to ask questions and get rebuffed because they didn't follow the rules of the site. If you hop on there asking open-ended opinion questions or asking something that can easily be found with search, then yeah it might get closed rather quickly. Doesn't make SO a toxic community by any means.

</comment><comment><USER9> I disagree with the tweet about SO being a toxic wasteland, but OP really undermines his point by being so combative about it. Especially when he turns around and says stuff like:

> If someone really believes that Stack Overflow is toxic then they should > back it up with actual data and not hysterical and slanderous remarks.

It's poor form to call a woman's opinion "hysterical". There are other words that can convey a similar meaning without the heaps of sexist baggage that "hysteria" has historically implied. I suggest "inflammatory" here.

It's pretty telling that of the few comments on medium, two are actually people from SO trying to distance themselves from OP's "challenge".

<comment><USER6> Yes, I recommend reading the comments on this article, they're interesting. When a commenter argued that the fee is unfair toward minorites, OP replied:

> _What is it about minorities that makes you believe they have less > propensity to make the donation? That's blatantly racist. If you know you > are going to win $10k, then it shouldn't matter to you. I'll be happy to > lower this to $100 in 6 months if nobody makes a submission._

That attitude is arguably more toxic than the typical Stack Overflow comment.

<comment><USER10> What is particularly toxic about this comment though?

I would actually agree that there won't be many poor/minority people participating, but that has more to do with the challenge itself, not the fee. Poor people buy a lot of lottery tickets, particularly when the chance of winning is high. The issue here is that the chances of winning are not high, so the only reason someone would try and go after the prize would be to prove a point, and spending a lot of time and effort to prove a point like this one is a luxury many people don't have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I can imagine an environment in which less than 10% of the posts are toxic, yet it feels toxic to one person.

I'm at a conference between sessions, and there are small groups of people standing around, discussing the latest developments at breakneck speed. Back and forth. Talking a mile a minute. Saying half an idea out loud, and letting others fill in the blanks. Tons of jargon and inside references I don't understand. I squeeze into one of the larger circles, and I would like to join the conversation, at least to understand what they are talking about, and perhaps add something to the conversation, if I can. I finally see an opening, and ask a question. Each person in the group is suddenly silent and stares at me for a few seconds. Finally one person says, "RTFM noob". Everyone stifles a laugh, and the conversation picks up where it left off.

Count the number of "posts" in this example. Hundreds, or maybe low thousands. How many were toxic? One. Doing the math… Yeah. That's much less than 10%.

Does this feel toxic to me? Oh yeah. Does it feel toxic to everyone else? Some would say yes. Some would agree with you and say, "No. This does not feel like a toxic wasteland to me. I'll admit, there's a small amount of toxic discussion, but at least it's much less toxic than other conferences I have attended."

My point is that you can have a forum where less than 10% of the comments are toxic, and yet that forum can feel very toxic to some of the people. So your 10% challenge does not prove anything.

<comment><USER4> I agree with nearly all of what you said but that wasn't the point of the challenge. I completely agree that many individuals experience negative events on Stack Overflow and would compassionately listen to them. The only thing I am challenging is the notion, that on a whole, SO is a toxic wasteland. That is it.

The reason 10% was set as a threshold is that many people actually believe it to be higher than that. 10% is an absurdly high number of toxic posts and the real number is going to be far lower. I value authentic statements with accurate data to the highest degree.

I hope that we can get some real research on this topic with more accurate data which can only help to improve outcomes.

<comment><USER11> On reddit, it looks like someone had some data which calculated that the number of toxic comments on SO is about 1%. That sounds about right to me.

But even 1% toxic comments correctly still makes it a toxic wasteland to the people who have been on the receiving end of those toxic comments, and to those who don't enjoy seeing others treated like that.

<comment><USER11> I mean imagine that you had a job where you were constantly having short conversations with people from all over your company.

I'm your boss, and I call you into a meeting to let you know that you are on the edge of being fired because of your toxic comments. Some of your conversations have resulted in coworkers crying and going home early. But I'm willing to give you one more chance.

In the meeting you tell me, "Hey, relax. It's not true that 10% of my conversations have resulted in coworkers going home early. I can prove that it only happens in 1% of my conversations. And 1% is fine, so get off my back."

I would tell you to just pack your desk right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Response by StackOverflow's David Fullerton: [https://medium.com/@dfullerton07/cto-of-stack-overflow- here-...](https://medium.com/@dfullerton07/cto-of-stack-overflow- here-27d84691d9a3)

<comment><USER13> Maturely said.

<comment><USER4> His comment is dishonest. It claims that "By point-blank denying the experience of women, people of color, and others who are telling us that we have a problem, we diminish them and communicate to them that they are not valued and do not belong"

I am not denying anyone's personal experience or that there isn't a problem. I am rejecting the claim that SO, as a whole, is a toxic wasteland.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It would be nice if the author provided some examples of posts that they found to be toxic.

</comment><comment><USER15> Why have facts when you can just dump the term "toxic inhumane wasteland[…]shaming[…]…excluding women and people of color" without a shred of evidence and running away?

<comment><USER12> Have you looked at what she has posted, or did you see the screenshot of a tweet in this post and believed that's all there is?

<comment><USER15> I saw her post, yes. One of her examples was the tragedy of SO automatically removing "hello" from the start of posts.

Oh, the tragedy!

She completely ignores that it's _more_ disrespectful to waste the readers time with small talk before a question. If she wrote an FAQ, would she write an FAQ like this:

Q: Hello HSBC, I hope you're well this Friday afternoon. I was wondering what your phone number is.

A: Hello dear customer. Happy Friday to you too! We would love for you to call us. We always appreciate talking to customers about their banking. It's XXX- XXXXXX.

Q: Hello HSBC, I hope you're well this Friday afternoon. I was wondering what your phone opening hours are.

A: Hello dear customer. Happy Friday to you too! We would love for you to call us. We always appreciate talking to customers about their banking. We'll be ready for your call between XX and YY Mon-Sun.

So that's what a non-"toxic inhumane wasteland[…]shaming[…]…excluding women and people of color" would look like?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's really weird that even stack overflow as organization admits that they have diversity problem and they are looking for ways to fix that.

Why this person needs to question that, it's already been accepted? Then he includes so many caveats to this challenge that it looks that he's the only person who needs to believe that stack overflow is a totally fair and unbiased environment.

<comment><USER17> Your definition of toxicity may differ from mine, but a lack of diversity does not make something intrinsically toxic to me (even though usually one would typically want to try to reduce a lack of diversity)

For me toxicity generally implies an actively negative response.

Conflating toxicity with a lack of diversity would stereotype the dominant group!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The issue isn't that the questions/answers are toxic. It is that the flagging system is used toxically.

</comment><comment><USER10> Actually looking at other things the woman making the "toxic wasteland" comment wrote, I certainly don't agree with her on everything, but I'd say she actually makes a lot of good points. Particularly about how delivery style matters.

And yet, her comment itself is clearly an exaggeration (let's be real, no one is going to take up the $10K challenge), and is just as toxic as anything she mentions. It just shows that it is always far easier to see problems and possible fixes in other people's behavior, than in your own.

<comment><USER4> Very well said and well done grasping exactly my issue - that calling SO a toxic wasteland isn't correct nor helpful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Stack Overflow's semi-hostile approach to asking questions you can look up yourself was one of the most useful lessons I ever learned. It forced me to explore all my options before asking a question, because getting called out for not doing basic research was pretty embarrassing.

Maybe I'm an outlier here, and maybe some people don't appreciate that barrier to entry, but it seems to work. I don't think I've ever run into any _really_ hostile or offensive comments while using Stack Overflow.

<comment><USER17> It's a matter of perspective about who's starting hostilities when a questioner asks with no obvious investment of effort! But that way leads to endless squabbles fairly soon.

Clearly it's good to deter such people, but where I think SO could improve a little is if it had some more up front deterrence, and thus avoided more of the naive (some would say lazy) questioners from proceeding, only to get embarrassed/called out. They do try to identify similar questions but perhaps a specific step right before a new user submits asking them to highlight which part of their question covers what they've already tried/researched (with a friendly option to add such a part if they've merely overlooked it)

Like you, I've never seen it particularly unfair or harsh, but smoothing things along helps everyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm sure it's going to go really well when you propose a contest in an attempt to marginalize a woman's perspective by calling her hysterical.

</comment><comment><USER20> > All posts must be chosen at random, where each post has an equal chance of > being included in the study (simple random sample)

Well there is a massive bias straight off.

Nobody arrives at a post at random, nor will the toxicity be uniformly distributed.

When last did you go to Stack* and say "Show me a random comment please".

</comment><comment><USER21> What is the definition of "toxic"?

For the record, obviously not 10% are "toxic" (based off of my personal definition of toxic).

But what if I considered comments that are off topic or slightly factually wrong as "toxic". By that definition, 10% would be possible.

<comment><USER2> It seems like 10% is such an absurdly high minimum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is just a publicity stunt, some no name guy who sells books and has negligible twitter followers. Hence publishing on Medium.

Just because its on Medium it doesn't mean anything, its like linking your personal Facebook page. He took a twitter poll of 20 people.

</comment><comment><USER23> Toxic is one of those words like racism, someone accused of being a racist has no accepted mechanism to prove otherwise.</comment>