City of Austin Cancels SXSW March Events - <AUTHOR> https://www.sxsw.com/2020-event-update/ <comment><USER2> I find it ridiculous that SXSW had to be forced by the City of Austin to cancel. If it were up to the SXSW organizers, who apparently care more about "the show must go on" than they do about people getting sick and dying, SXSW would still be happening.

The SXSW organizers are foolish for not cancelling earlier in the week when the major sponsors started to pull out. The writing was on the wall, clear as day, that it inevitably would be cancelled, but instead of taking the opportunity to gracefully cancel it themselves or use the time to start making alternate arrangements, they doubled down and had to be forced by the city to cancel and now have less than 1 week to figure out how to handle it. Not a good look.

<comment><USER3> Didn't know this and this does shine a different light...

However, I'm guessing that it's better for the organizers to have the gov "pull the plug" than themselves since this will allow them to (potentially) renege on all the supplier contracts they must be have in order to put on such an event.

I'm pretty sure SXSW organizers are in direct contact with City officials.

Edit: Or indeed collect insurance as the other commenter points out

<comment><USER2> Based on their passive aggressive wording in SXSW's official announcement, it seems to me that SXSW did not want to cancel at all but are doing so reluctantly because they are being forced to by the city. That _might_ just be a PR move, but personally I doubt it.

From what I've seen, the insurance thing is just a rumor/speculation going around reddit and Twitter. I haven't seen any official information about an insurance payout.

<comment><USER4> And you won't. You can be sure lawyers and insurance companies were putting in long hours.

<comment><USER2> [https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2020-03-06/sxsw-c...](https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2020-03-06/sxsw- cancellation-not-covered-by-insurance/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder how their contracts and/or insurance worked, e.g., if the organizers were hoping the city would step in and cancel as it would be financially better for the conference than if they voluntarily cancelled.

<comment><USER4> IANAL but probably. I saw some legal (by a lawyer) discussion of this the other day and his conclusion was that, while it depends on the specific contract, if you have _no_ choice but to cancel something--the headliner band pulls out of a concert, the city makes you cancel for reasons outside your control--it's probably easier to collect than if you were just worried about going ahead with the event even in exceptional circumstances.

<comment> Sparkle-san The latest episode of OA[1] has a segment that focuses on force majeure clauses and the enforceability of them around COVID-19

[1] [https://openargs.com/oa366-your-guide-to-the- coronavirus/](https://openargs.com/oa366-your-guide-to-the-coronavirus/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For those like myself wondering, this is close to a $400M revenue impact to Austin as a whole [1]. I expect rescheduling would only recover less than half of that, so it's no surprise it took them so long to make this decision.

[1] [https://variety.com/2019/music/news/south-by- southwest-2019-...](https://variety.com/2019/music/news/south-by- southwest-2019-economic-impact-1203364879/)

</comment><comment><USER7> It took a while to get there, but this is the right call. All the other big conferences have cancelled, holding this would have been terrible PR.

Question is: How far out does your conference have to be for you to not cancel right now?

<comment><USER8> I just registered for AWS Reinforce (2 day security conference at the beginning of July). I did it feeling pretty good that the worst will have passed by then, but I'd lie if I said I felt 100% about it.

<comment><USER9> I'm going to put this comment out there and see how in fares in 10 months:

I think it's very likely what will happen with coronavirus is what happens with other pandemics: there are multiple phases, and the second phase is usually the worst. The initial phase usually isn't as severe; there are widespread measures to reduce the spread that bring numbers down after the initial onslaught, and it looks like coronavirus also has a seasonality factor that lessens its contagiousness during warmer months. Come next fall/winter, though, people have put their guard down and have somewhat of a "quarantine fatigue", and that's when the second wave just explodes as latent underlying cases spread extremely quickly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Getting sick at conferences is so common that they have a phrase for it: "con flu". [https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=con+flu](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=con+flu). Glad this was cancelled, it would've been a bad outbreak.

<comment><USER11> I hear 'Con Crud' commonly used. Conferences are like speed dating with germs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Meanwhile the City of Houston hasn't cancelled the huge rodeo and livestock show, with nightly concerts, that goes on through March 22

<comment><USER12> It really depends how many people are flying in from out of town for the event, otherwise the same logic leads to shutting down all schools and stores.

<comment><USER8> We are starting to see COVID19 spread from those who haven't traveled recently.

[https://www.businessinsider.com/four-us-coronavirus-cases- li...](https://www.businessinsider.com/four-us-coronavirus-cases-linked-to- community-spread-not-travel-2020-2)

The recent Houston area cases were from a group that traveled to Egypt recently; I'm sure at least one person in that group was interested in going to the rodeo, which averages about 2.5 million attending each year:

[https://www.rodeohouston.com/About-Us/Who-We- Are/Attendance](https://www.rodeohouston.com/About-Us/Who-We-Are/Attendance)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> No city wants to become the center of a health crisis. If they didn't cancel it there was going to be a shitstorm of bad press for the Austin leaders and the city in general. Millions of dollars will be lost, but the health of millions + the reputation of the city was at stake. That was the right call IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER14> We have reserved a booth and planned to launch our SaaS product in SXSW. Hopefully they will refund. Probably a local positive coronavirus discovery forced the city. Just guessing.

<comment><USER3> My guess is they should and will, if not, call your credit card company and file a cancellation there for non-fulfillment of goods/services.

Edit: Sorry about your launch being cancelled, the Coronavirus is a bummer, but you/we are doing the _right_ thing here in trying to curtail its reach.

<comment><USER14> Yes. We are fine with it. Correct decision by the city. Wish they could have done this little earlier. We would have saved some money - banners, t-shirts and other stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> More information from _The Verge_ :

[https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/6/21162247/sxsw-2020-cancell...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/6/21162247/sxsw-2020-cancelled- coronavirus-austin-texas-virus-fears-public-health-event)

</comment><comment><USER16> Last night my friend and I made the call to cancel our little trip focused on the film portion of the event for two reasons: 1\. There is a lot of revelry in SXSW despite it being more of a conference than a festival and it did not seem appropriate to take part in that during a pandemic.

2\. While we are both young-ish and healthy, it does not seem appropriate to participate in an event that would unquestionably increase the spread of COVID-19 knowing what it is doing to older folks.

Really, the city should have cancelled it days ago. It took all three major labels pulling out this morning to make this happen.

I believe the most substantial takeaway from the coronavirus so far has been how every government seems to be focused measures that support short term finances i.e. worker productivity and consumption rather than taking swift and far reaching measures to combat this virus.

That said, the next high-profile event I'm watching is Burning Man.

(comment copied from a duplicate post)

</comment><comment><USER17> I thought the heat was supposed to kill the virus? Something the president mentioned, but sounds like they aren't 100% certain... Wonder if it got killed in the summer, if it'd come back in the winter again? Like a new flu?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's spreading in Singapore, which doesn't have anything _but_ heat. Average highs range from 86-90 year round.

<comment><USER18> Most Singapore buildings and its public transport system are fully A/C.

<comment><AUTHOR> If scientists actually thought summer heat would kill the virus, that'd change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Its disappointing, but at least sane.

There's a great paper about the 1918 flu epidemic that shows how cities that continued on with things like mass gatherings saw a large uptick in deaths, while those that banned them and took other immediate interventions remained within the baseline.

[https://www.pnas.org/content/104/18/7582](https://www.pnas.org/content/104/18/7582)

</comment><comment><USER20> Tim Ferriss did a lot: [https://twitter.com/tferriss/status/1234860126756012039](https://twitter.com/tferriss/status/1234860126756012039)

</comment><comment><USER21> This seems pretty reasonable but I am curious for how long it will seem so, if we had better testing in place would it be better? If we had the vaccine (for sure) it would be better, but what do we as a society do in the interim.

</comment><comment><USER22> Wow can't believe they actually did it</comment>


Phil Schiller Is A Man On A Mission: To Save The App Store - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/15/phil-schiller-is-a-man-on-a-mission-to-save-the-app-store/ <comment><USER2> Let me say up front that none of this is a criticism of Phil Schiller. Just the opposite in fact.

But the bottom line is Mr. Schiller is a downright brilliant marketer (he's Apple's highest ranking Marketing executive for God's sakes) and marketing is all about getting people to think what you want them to think. More importantly Marketing is not about setting corporate policy (though I'm sure Mr. Schiller has the ear of Steve Jobs in a way that very few others do).

I guess what I'm saying is when you're thinking exactly what someone as good as Mr. Schiller wants you to think you have to ask yourself whether it's their marketing skills leading you there or whether something is actually happening. What I see right now is a few well placed communications but no real change in Apple's overall policies.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does the App Store really need saving? I still have yet to hear any complaints from anyone other than a handful of geeks.

Before anyone throws a fit, yes, there may be some issues which need to be resolved, but I think the headline for this article is a bit ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER4> The only way to save the App store is to kill it's monopoly.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a great thing for Apple if he's really planning to get stuck in and fix it. He is the guy who saved several of Apple's products and created some of the viral/classic brands.

I've always thought Schiller is as, if not more of, an important part of Apple's success as Jobs.

<comment><USER6> which products did he save and what viral brands did he create?

<comment><USER5> iMac, Powerbook etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Schiller. Marketing. Funny.

<http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/shill></comment>


Is Ken Thompson's compiler hack still a threat? - <AUTHOR> http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/184874/is-ken-thompsons-compiler-hack-still-a-threat-yes-no-why

<comment><USER2> The paper on Trusting Trust is as much a thought experiment as anything. It's not really about compilers, and thinking of it as a "compiler hack" misses the point somewhat. The bigger point of that hack, is if a component of a system is integral and implicitly trusted, then compromising that component means that the _entire system_ can no longer be trusted.

It seems sort of obvious when stated that way, but Ken's demonstration pointed out a few significant details. First, that such an attack didn't have to be large, only two or three changes to the compiler. Second, that such an attack was practical to implement instead of just theoretical. Third, that once a system is compromised, it couldn't even be relied upon to tell you that it was compromised (his follow-up included a third compiler tweak to alter the decompiler), which was probably the scariest point of all.

The type of attack that Ken described is still relevant, even if it's not the compiler that's the target. For example, if you could compromise Windows Update, you could do basically the exact same thing. That's why Windows Update requires crypto signatures.

<comment><USER3> And the crypto sigs on WU don't matter because you can compromise the boot process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A variation of the threat very much exists: Do you know (meaning, there are no unknown unknowns) that no piece, anywhere in your toolchain (OS, compiler, library, framework, buildtool, CI etc), contains malicious code? At the time Thompson made this comment, he talked about the C compiler because it was the one bit of shared code everything else depended on. Today, the attack surface is much, much larger.

If I was running a foreign intelligence service (or a sophisticated mafia operation (potato, potato)), I'd target trusted members of the communities around popular open source projects. A high ranking committer to a library that Rails depends on slips in a bit of clever code in a fix for a legitimate problem, and I can compromise a large number of websites.

<comment><USER5> I think you vastly overestimate the difficulty of getting a code execution bug on Rails relative to the resources of a nation-state. You don't need to do anything remotely suspicious; just hire vulnerability researchers. They're ridiculously cheaper than aircraft carriers.

Or, to put it another way, anybody with $20k can uncover an RCE in Rails without needing to suborn any community member.

<comment><USER6> $20k is too low, but your point stands.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very much so. Note the malware hack against Delphi compilers: [https://lists.owasp.org/pipermail/owasp- cincinnati/2009-Augu...](https://lists.owasp.org/pipermail/owasp- cincinnati/2009-August/000187.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> Basically a compiler "rootkit".

I found this comment interesting:

 _"At some point, aboveboard modifications to the compiler or login program might get to the point where they defeat the backdoor's compiler- recognizer/login-recognizer, and subsequent iterations would lose the backdoor. This is analogous to a random biological mutation granting immunity to certain diseases."_

</comment><comment><USER9> I've seen this implemented in a Lisp compiler before. It's surprisingly easy to do.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've read about this scenario before but I didn't realize it was Ken Thompson who proposed it. Very cool.

When I read the title I thought maybe Ken Thompson's compiler hack was Go (golang), which he co-created, and I was going to hear a bunch of Python or Node fans talk about why Go is not a threat :)

</comment><comment><USER11> Did he really do that?

<comment><USER12> Better: he announced the exploit in the talk he gave upon receiving the Turing Award:

<http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html>

<comment><USER7> And, after he first mentioned the exploit, and before he achieved the award, the AT&T lawyers made him say publicly that he didn't really do that.

<comment><USER13> Where can we find records of him stating that this never happened?

<comment><USER7> I am unable to locate it now.

It seemed very weird at the time--the AT&T lawyers making him deny what he had done.

And it is possible that the denial was about the general release of the exploit, rather than whether or not he really did it. My memory could be slightly off for events back that far ago.

It was a minor industry rag and the story was published shortly after the hack was announced. It might have been the same paper that Dennis Ritchie told of auditing the behavior of Coherent and saying publicly that it was definitely not a clone. I think the lawyers were upset about that as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The other day, I was putting forth the idea that this threat vector exists in 3d printers. I don't know any obvious reason why I'm wrong on that.

edit: I hate having to ask, but instead of downvoting, are there actual reasons this fear is completely unwarranted?

<comment><USER15> Did you mean that the compromised printer would be made to produce compromised output? If so, the downvotes may be because it's relatively easy to audit the output of a 3D printer, compared to the output of a compiler.

It's a common practice, for example, to x-ray a critical piece of structure to verify it's free of cracks. A similar inspection would generally show if the hidden internals of a printed object conform to the original design.

Auditing the output of a compiler, on the other hand, would be devilishly hard, multiplied by the fact that every program it has ever produced is suspect. Given that this might include your kernel, filesystem, network drivers, etc., it's hard to find an adequate 3D printer parallel. Yes, a bit of crucial structure might be compromised by a pwned printer, but it would probably be relatively easy to spot.

<comment><USER14> So, the full argument my friends and I were having, was that it would be impossible for a government to enforce printers that could not do guns. My assertion was it was likely more doable than my friend would care to admit. My claim centered on this idea, as well as the identifying marks laserjets do on printouts and a belief that they already have scanners noticing when money is scanned. (No, I don't know the details on all of that, so I fully concede my argument is not air tight.)

<comment><USER16> "Money" is a lot more of a known quantity than "gun." How would they detect a printer making a gun I'd designed myself?

<comment><USER14> I was thinking more of the common types of gun. Much more likely someone would try and make an AR-15/whatever than a self designed thing.

Again, I wasn't meaning this to be air tight. Just more doable than nothing.

<comment><USER16> Well, fair enough. If you hard-code in a few of the more common files that contain AR lowers, you'll probably catch 80% of this.

<comment><USER14> Actually, I was thinking more that you could target common ammunition types.

Regardless, I thought it keyed into this idea, because so long as you had it in the printer to make it such that any printer it created also did this, it fits this description perfectly. (And yeah, I realize I just jumped from 3d printer to replicators. My knowledge in this area is as shallow as it seems. :) )

Edit: forgot to add, the idea was originally that the printer would make the gun in such a way that it would be identifiable as coming from that printer. Not that it would have to refuse to make them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How do you know Intel cpu can be trusted?</comment>


Java Magazine: The Rise and Fall of JVM Languages - <AUTHOR> http://www.javamagazine.mozaicreader.com/#&pageSet=4&page=0 <comment><USER2> Link appears wrong. The linked issue is about UI as far as I can tell.

<comment><USER3> There's an editorial with the title at the front. But the format does not make it very readable.</comment></comment>


For the good of software, software must die - <AUTHOR> http://alarmingdevelopment.org/?p=555

<comment><USER2> Software depends on its hardware. If the hardware dies, or no one writes an emulator, that program will stop being used. But even if a particular incarnation of an idea is no longer used, it _will_ exist on modern hardware if it is still a useful thing to do (via a port, a rewrite, or even as a dedicated part of the hardware itself). That isn't to say it won't _cost_ more to keep an older design afloat, but it happens all the time.

Some forms of emulation are not even obvious to end users. For instance, there is an _alarming_ amount of effort spent on Windows operating systems and the Intel architecture to enforce decades-old decisions so that programs expecting certain behaviors don't require code changes. You may not know it when you run something, but its very ability to execute can be the result of a hack upon a hack at both the software and hardware levels. It's not even that uncommon for a platform to say "if program A, apply hack X; if program B, apply hack Y; else hack nothing".

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice theory... but, sometimes the old stuff is pretty OK.

How about time limited GPL instead? Transition to public domain after 5 or 10 years.

Or tie it to media copyright terms - If company X wants Y to be public domain, they have to lobby for shorter copyrights on movies. :)</comment>


Uber Banned from Operating in New Delhi - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2014/12/08/uber-banned-from-operating-in-new-delhi/

<comment><USER3> > Police on Sunday arrested a man they identified as Shiv Kumar Yadav, a > 32-year-old driver who works for Uber, in the case. He was due to appear in > a Delhi court on Monday. It wasn't possible to reach him for comment and it > remains unclear whether he is represented by a lawyer.

> A statement from the Delhi Transport Department on Monday afternoon said > that the "horrific crime" meant it had "banned all activities relating to > providing any transport service by the www.uber.com with immediate effect."

If it were not for Uber, the police would almost certainly still be searching for him, and the case against him would be less certain due to the lack of electronic records linking him to the passenger.

</comment><comment><USER4> People from Delhi are searching for all sorts of reasons or way to make rape hard. They should instead understand why people are doing it ? It is sadistic mind of people due to which these crimes are happening not because of uber or police.

Instead of blaming the man and society, they want to blame everything else... Shame that Delhi is also becoming rape capital of India.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Uber never applied for any permission to us, is not recognised under the Radio Taxi Rules and has flouted most of the laid-down rules," - <USER2> commissioner of Delhi Transport Department.</comment>


Troublesome manager.. what would you do? - <AUTHOR>

So I'm a senior at top 10 engineering university and since January I have been working as lead webdev on a large, sponsor/government-funded project. I've done everything from focus groups, usability studies, surveys and have been creating a top-notch site.
I was away for two weeks in the time between summer semester's end and the beginning of fall semester and got an email from my manager saying essentially "hey, I've been working with someone else on the site". What was created from that was a complete bastardization of the design and was all new code. I had lots of PHP for general ease of dev and the new guy did all 50+ files in html.
Fast-forward to yesterday, new guy won't be working on it anymore and my manager wants me to take over. I've looked at this guy's code and it's a horrible mess - I want nothing of it. Deadline is in about a week.
Going back to my code is an equally large task as he had been adding other pages, content and "design features".
What would you do? I'm sure I am not the only one that has had this problem. <comment><USER2> 1\. What is your direct stake in the project? (tied to your grades? Large monetary investment?)

2\. What is your extended stake in the project (manager have lots of connections? Is this industry leading and highly visible?)

3\. What are the chances you will succeed if you start work again?

Based on the answers to these three questions (which I know will be difficult to obtain) you should make one of the following choices:

1\. Politely refuse to work on the project, saying you've committed to other things and do not want to over-extend yourself.

2\. Bite the bullet and fix the project based either on you code or the current mess. (and shut up about things until you're done) Walk away once released.

3\. Perform some type of negotiations with the manager: (e.g. extend the deadline (all deadlines can be extended), limit the scope of the release, limit the expectations of you) and schedule a post-release evaluation of the project and your role in it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I got two semesters worth of credits towards my major. However, those two semesters are now over and I've gotten my grades. I feel like somewhat obligated to help if he can't find anyone else but I have my own stuff to do with a ton of CS classes assigning projects now.

"manager have lots of connections?" - the project is in a different department than my major so it wouldn't help me.

"Is this industry leading and highly visible?" It's up there.

<comment><USER2> >manager have lots of connections?

I was talking more industry connections. Nobody gives a damn about your schooling once you've done it, to be honest. If your manager however sits on some boards, or is influential in the people that he knows and interacts with, it may be in your best interests to not burn this bridge.

>Is this industry leading and highly visible?

Then you may want to be able to say that you completed it, even if it means you have a couple of shite weeks, otherwise, you can use it as an answer to one of those wacky "worst experience" interview questions.

From what you're saying, I'd strongly lean towards option 2 or 3. Being in the workforce for a few years now, I can't emphasize enough how much it hurts you to burn bridges, no matter how much you're in the right. These people come back to haunt you in peculiar ways.

Good luck. Just remember you have a lot more to lose in this situation by walking away than you have to gain, from what I can gather.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would ask for a lot more money to finish the job (a lot more) and say "take it or leave it". If he isn't willing to pay the extra money, I would just walk away.

There's nothing to be gained from debating with a troublesome manager who doesn't understand programming. You would just be wasting your time.

</comment><comment><USER4> I can't imagine two weeks causing too much trouble. I've seen crap rewritten over and over on 6-month iterations that could make you weep.

Just say the other guy's design is bad and you're going back to your own. If it's an "equally large task", obviously you're better off with a familiar code base. Suggest to the manager that he should not swap devs in and out of a project in time frames normally smaller than those used to ramp up new workers.

</comment><comment><USER5> Throw away his two weeks of work, and negotiate the deadline. It's not your fault that your boss went out and hired someone entirely incompetent without even consulting you.

If the deadline is a must, just work with the awful crap he has to get to the deadline, and scrap the crap immediately after the deadline.

</comment><comment><USER6> First talk with your manager. If necessary, talk to your manager's manager (or whoever has a say in it). Explain the situation. If possible, refuse to work on the "horrible mess". That's risky, but it's better than letting your name be associated with that project forever.

</comment><comment><USER7> Take it from the point from which you left it. Tell your manager that it would take more time trying to fix it tan to scrap these changes. If he says no, why waste your time doing something you hate doing?!

</comment><comment><USER8> Quit and do a startup.

</comment><comment><USER9> A week is more than enough time to massage 50+ html files into whatever you were doing before. Just do it in a couple hours and take the rest of the week off.

</comment><comment><USER10> "Deadline is in about a week."

Impossible to do a re-write and he'll shift the blame to you.

</comment><comment><USER11> Use version control?</comment>


Acquisition Offer and Y Combinator Application - <AUTHOR> Hi,
We like to apply for Y combinator next month, but we also have started two acquisitions offer talks which can take up to four to six months.
So we wonder should we mention this fact in our application? Does it have a negative impact on our application?
Also, we have NDA with those companies, so we can name them. <comment><USER2> Acquisition offer talks should not be taken seriously unless the interested party is willing to put something in writing. That also includes some sort of financial benefit to you in the case the deal falls through.

I would not take offers without such conditions seriously.

In regards to YC, how can joining an accelerator that opens a valuable business network be anything but a benefit?

<comment><USER3> I want to add to this comment. Previous HN discussions on acquisition have talked about asking for a non-refundable negotiation fee (a certain percentage of your approximate valuation). Acquisition is a distraction, and in a lot of cases falls through. You need to make sure the other side is serious about the aquisition

Found the HN thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22013700](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22013700)

And the related article [https://baremetrics.com/blog/i-almost-sold- baremetrics-for-5...](https://baremetrics.com/blog/i-almost-sold-baremetrics- for-5m)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great Point. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It signals that you are looking to sell early, which is the exact opposite of what YC and VCs are looking for, which are startups that try to go big to create outsized returns. Don't mention it.

That being said, there is a conflict of interest here that you may want to think about more deeply. Trying to sell a company while also applying for accelerators? What do you want, build a high-growth startup or cash out asap? Both are valid, but you may be unhappy with your decision of joining an accelerator if all you want to do is make a quick buck.

</comment><comment><USER5> Related: [http://www.paulgraham.com/corpdev.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/corpdev.html)

"It's usually a mistake to talk to corp dev unless (a) you want to sell your company right now and (b) you're sufficiently likely to get an offer at an acceptable price. In practice that means startups should only talk to corp dev when they're either doing really well or really badly."

I think it's fine to mention this. VCs appreciate having as much data as possible. Hiding data that hurts your application makes you come across as shady.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is a huge distraction, unless you want to sell, now. Otherwise, I think you are a little confused about what YC is looking for. At best, acquisition talks are social proof, but you can't focus on growth and diligence. Also, it s teams you don't want to be a big business.

So, you're going to broadcast that you aren't committed to going big, nor are you focused on a building a product that people love. That's not a great way to approach YC.

</comment><comment><USER7> I can't speak for what impact it would have on a YC application, but I can say that acquisition talks are exactly that - talk. Don't make business decisions on the assumption that talks will turn into anything more than just talk.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I got the point about how mentioning it can show us an unambitious team.

My main concern was around if we were not transparent.</comment>


Windows 95 Defrag Simulator (makes noise) - <AUTHOR> http://hultbergs.org/defrag/ <comment><USER2> Am I the only one that found it peaceful to watch a drive being defragged?

I used to start a job and just ... watch it ... pretty funny to think about now with everything I own either being SSD based or doing defrags on a schedule off-hours, but there was something hypnotic and meditative about watching the filesystem chaos start to organize.</comment>


Ask HN: How to prepare for an Engineering Manager interview? - <AUTHOR> I have 10 years of experience as a software engineer with various roles as a lead engineer. I have never managed anyone directly - nor hired/fired anyone. I recently applied for a manager role at a great company (not a big-5). To my surprise, they're interested in my profile and would like to start the interview process. My goal is to grow in those areas and gain a new set of skills.
This role does not involve intense coding but requires a good high level understanding of technologies. It is focusing a lot on career growth, decision making, resource allocation and mentoring.
How could I make a good impression despite the lack of management experience? I did mentor engineers, etc. in the past. Happy to hear about things I should be expecting. <comment><USER2> Two things that I always advise new managers when I promote them or hire them.

First, (for new managers) managing people is a completely different skill set from engineering, expect to suck at it when you start and let go of your hard won pride that you developed becoming an awesome software engineer.

One of the "failure" modes of new managers is that they are so uncomfortable doing these new things, and so comfortable in the software engineering role that they find excuses to write code and do development which makes the team wonder why the 'boss' is trying to do their job, and it takes your eye off actual things you should be looking out for and fixing (like team mates getting conflicted, people who are having trouble but not asking for help, etc.)

Second, your success is entirely in your team's hands. It is their ability to do the work and make the deliverable and their production that shows you that you are doing a good job. This is so challenging for people who are used to being on the development team and measuring their success by comparing their "production" to that of the team. Now "they" haven't accomplished anything, but the folks writing code, they built all sorts of cool things to brag about.

So understanding that your success is tied to keeping your team understanding where they need to be, and knocking down any roadblocks in their way, is critical. It's also a different way of thinking for a lot of developers.

<comment><USER3> > Your success is entirely in your team's hands.

This isn't true. A lot of a manager's job is doing the little things that are necessary to get done. This may involve scrum master, project management, and even product management. Find the gaps and fill them!

<comment><USER4> You are correct, but I think the original comment is more geared to the idea that you probably shouldn't revert back to what you are comfortable with and jump in and start coding when there are bugs, or tight deadlin s, etc.

I do think you should do some coding, even if you can only do it 10% of the time. It'll give you credibility with the team and you'll get to better understand what everyone deals with on a daily basis.

<comment><USER5> You should be writing code, experimenting, attending technical reviews, but _never_ put yourself in the critical path. Your job is no longer to deliver code, it is to lead the team or product.

<comment><USER4> Agreed

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are already some great suggestions on here, but I love this topic so here are mine.

For the interview, come up with an answer to this: Tell me about a time you leveraged your experience and knowledge to multiply the efforts of your team.

A lot of what you will be doing is spending your time helping your team do good work on the right things, so any experience you have where you have done that as a senior or lead is relevant.

When you become a manager:

1\. Find a mentor

2\. [https://www.manager-tools.com/get-started](https://www.manager- tools.com/get-started) \- Some really good fundamentals in podcast form. You can listen on your commute(if you have one)

3\. [http://randsinrepose.com/archives/category/management/](http://randsinrepose.com/archives/category/management/) \- Articles on management from an engineering manager.

I would pick one article and one podcast to consume each week so you have time to actually absorb it. If you try to implement some kind of perfect program from the beginning you will likely fail.

<comment><USER5> In the startup world finding a mentor may be hard, and if you are in that situation you may want to look outside for a mentor. But if you are at a large organization, there is often a support network or mentor program already available. Take advantage of it!

If you can, ask your current manager to write a SWOT and use it to pair you up within a mentor to make strengthen your weaknesses. Try to find a mentor outside of your reporting chain.

<comment><USER7> I often suggest having an external mentor regardless, because you can be more candid with confidence that the conversation isn't going anywhere. It's easier said than done, but finding a mentor from a high performing company who is 1-2 levels above you has been really ideal for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I did the same journey as you are about to embark on a year ago. It did not end well.

The job itself was titled "scrum master", but the description read more like a team lead/product manager role. I've done a little bit of both and was interested in exploring this career path and I jumped on.

The recruiting was not what I was used to. All in all I had 8 interviews over a course of 6 weeks. They focused heavily of my personality and I did a lot of self-assessments. No coding or case studies. When I reached the end of this I was so fatigued that I forgot to do the due diligence of my part, this turned out to be a BIG mistake.

\- first and foremost, i inherited a team. If this is the case with you, MAKE SURE YOU CLICK. While I get along with most of my team on a person-to-person- basis in a team setting they've been working as six one-man teams for several years and Weren't interested in changing that.

\- make sure you can tolerate the product you're building. If I had joined as a developer i would have quit within a week. This has an impact when you need to defend it/the team to the outside world. How much belief in the product can you fake?

\- you will be alone. Your team won't be your friends anymore and neither will the managers above you.

Long story short, after almost burning out a second time in my life I resigned and am now looking for new work.

<comment><USER9> What was wrong with the product / team?

You didn't know what the product was when you started?

<comment><USER8> Without going into details, the product was started 10 years ago by one of the programmers whom I suspect wanted to be a game developer, so the product is filled with gamedev patterns and due to a tech choice it's not possible to migrate to a modern architecture without rewriting the whole thing.

<comment><USER10> Would be funny to see, say, an enterprise software filled with gamedev patterns. Would you care to elaborate on any of it? What kind of patterns were specifically glaring/out of place?

<comment><USER11> you're right, that does sound pretty funny. "the database backend was actually on the GPU - it was all in openGL, just in case. We were Mobile first, too - got 1 GFLops on iOS. Unfortunately we sold irrigation controllers for large farms."

<comment><USER8> You don't know how close you are...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here's some random things I'd consider green flags during an interview:

\- A desire to help others accomplish their goals, not simply extract work from them. Sometimes this means moving them to another team/project or even out of the company.

\- Proficiency in *-manager skills (product manager, project manager, etc.). Frontline managers often end up filling the roles that their team doesn't have anyone else for.

\- You mentioned mentorship, which is great to talk about. Sometimes you're a direct mentor, sometimes you're identifying potential mentors, but it's important to understand what works well.

\- For this situation in particular, be honest about the fact that you're new to management and looking to skill up. Part of managing people is understanding their career goals and how to help them move up, and understanding your own career, where you are, and where you'd like to go will illustrate that skill.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't often hire people into manager roles if they have no management experience (usually there are internal people who are looking for that career growth, if we are pulling from outside then it's about experience). That said, there are a few things that would make me at least consider it.

1) the person wants a management career path and seems to understand what it means (org builder, team player, perf reviews, hiring and firing) vs person who thinks their only option for career growth is management and thinks they've done it already as a tech lead and wanna do that role more

2) lots of cross-functional hat wearing and a clear appreciation and happiness with doing project and product management work, a willingness to do any shit work happily in order to make the team better

3) an awesome growth mindset willing to have determination in getting better at it with or without my help, lots of autonomy

4) preternatural judgement and ability to see the forest from the trees, clear potential to help us get better

Interviewed somebody like this recently and it's honestly just hard to say no

</comment><comment><USER14> So what you need to know is that you are going to be joining a club - i.e the managers at the company.

You have to focus on fit more than anything else.

The first time you do it - its weird - very weird. All your previous ideas of work and work culture will be obfuscated. You'll realize that managers are a class onto their own.

To figure out fit, you mostly need to be able to read someone in about the first minute of meeting them. What do they value? What do they distrust? What will make them feel comfortable with you?

Older managers - probably want to know that you'll do what you're told, keep engineers in line and accept their management philosophy without question.

Newer age managers - you're very flexible and you'll take on a lot of work and you'll be part of the culture and that you worship at their altar - scrum, team velocities, standups and the rest of it.

Most important point: Do not criticize or point out large flaws in their system or process or thinking. (I've done this and have always lost out on the offer.) Focus on fit more that pointing out their errors.

At a low level like yours its probably best focus on showing that you've done a lot of thikning about the regular manager duties and to be as authentic as possible. This leaves to chance of whether they work in the same way but since its your fist time you probably don't have time to prepare anything else.

Welcome to the club!

</comment><comment><USER15> I've never hired for an engineering manager before, but it just popped up on our OKR this quarter. I think what I'd be interested in knowing about someone's management background:

\- tell me about a time you had to let someone go. How did you deliver the news? How did the other person react? How did you communicate it to the engineering team and broader organization? Was there any fallout, and if so, how did you help people through the transition?

\- tell me about a time you had to deal with layoffs. How did you communicate it to your team?

\- tell me about a time you helped level an engineer up or multiplied their productivity. How did you give them feedback? What was the most difficult conversation you had with them? How did you help them reach the next level?

\- tell me about your own progression from an IC to a manager. What was the most difficult feedback you've ever received from a teammate? How did you act on that? How did you react to the feedback?

\- tell me about a time you had to say no to an engineer asking for a raise or promotion. How did they react? Did you setup a long term plan? Did they leave or stick around? What did you ask them to do?

<comment><USER5> These are all good for an experienced engineering manager, but keep in mind the OP was asking about having no management experience. I still think someone could take the questions and relate to their technical career in some form or another. If you can't you may want to question if you are ready for the new role!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> More from a startup perspective, Graphistry started hiring here, so we've been thinking about it. We broke it down across several dimensions. Each is effectively a team multiplier. Hitting all of them makes you a unicorn who can do all forms of management... which is unrealistic. Instead, we've started looking to see if a candidate will help us cover the dimensions across multiple hires.

Roughly, we'd be looking for:

\-- Technical: Will engineers trust you to help improve what they build and how? For example, can you architect across the stack and advocate best practices for code quality? Do you like leading from behind? As a startup, can you pitch in as needed?

\-- Project management: Will you make development more predictable and productive? For example, as a feature moves from product design to implementation to production, will you help engineers technically spec, scope, decompose, tackle, & maintain features? Can you help with roadblocks, such as identifying risky parts, and making sure collaborations happen?

\-- Product management bridge: Will you improve how product designers, sales engineers, and even early customers work with engineers, and vice-versa? Will you make sure infrastructure & operations are represented in engineering discussions?

\-- Domain understanding: For engineers who lack experience with aspects of enterprise software and our customers' needs (security teams), will you help fill the gap? Will your visibility be a boon to the company?

\-- Engineering management: Will you facilitate hiring? In what ways will you help engineers thrive & grow? Can you help with the ups & downs of rollercoaster startup life? Will you grow the company culture -- improve diversity, the daily environment, ...?

\-- Junior developers: Will you help them integrate & grow?

\-- Outside face: As a leader in a small company, can you assist with random customer-facing tasks like sales engineering and customer success? Recruit? Give tech talks?

\-- Growth: As we go through the next doublings, how will you grow with us?

We look for awareness on most dimensions, and strong experience & interest on several. However, the form those take can be pretty varied.

... And if any of these sounds like you, please ping build@graphistry w/ a CV :)

</comment><comment><USER17> There are some great suggestions already, however, it sounds like many comments are focusing on their experiences as a tech manager and not the interview preparation, which was your question.

I interview a lot of technical managers, and beyond technical chops, I focus mostly on communication skills, charisma, and personality.

I tend to ask a lot of behavioral/situational questions to understand how the candidate would handle different situations and how his personality lines up with the team. We are usually hoping for a thoughtful and genuine answer.

Additionally, I often schedule lunch with the candidate and the key players on the team, without the participation of the recruiting team, so they can speak freely.

You can prepare for some of the situational questions but keep in mind that it is totally ok to say "I don't know" or "I have not thought of that".

Best of luck!

<comment><USER18> What kinds of questions?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> In addition to what's already been discussed, you should also think about how to answer questions related to the hiring process. In today's competitive world hiring a great team consumes a huge amount of a manager's time and energy. Some questions to think about, how would you attract top talent? What's the interview process look like? How do you know an engineer will be a good hire? Things along those lines.

In the other comments people have spoken quite a bit about managing down in to the team, I'd also think about the project management and scope negotiation portion. As a partner to product management you're often called on to help shape what's possible long before ideas enter sprint planning or get turned into stories. Think about how you'd help negotiate scope when often the actual requirement has not been clarified.

</comment><comment><USER20> I recently interviewed a whole string of experienced engineering managers. My interview style tends to be pretty open ended. Most of the folks I interviewed were eager to talk about specific technical achievements they and their team accomplished.

This is understandable. Conquering and deploying a specific technology is hard and feels like a real achievement. That said, I found myself being more interested in each person's specific approach for determining what work to do, quantifying that work, and tracking it to completion. I had a surprisingly difficult time leading the conversation in that direction.

Specifically, I want to know how one interacts with product managers, prioritizes features, determines architecture, distills architecture to actual tasks, and guarantees that those tasks get completed in a timely fashion.

<comment><USER21> For me a major disconnect here - and this is always the case with management - is that what management means differs greatly from one organization to the next. For instance, I would consider all of those: "how one interacts with product managers, prioritizes features, determines architecture, distills architecture to actual tasks, and guarantees that those tasks get completed in a timely fashion." senior engineering tasks, not engineering management tasks. Of course, line managers often are going to be also senior engineers who do senior engineer things part of the time, so these aren't inappropriate per se, but engineering management, to me, is more about people and organization management. Employee evaluation, hiring, empowering, professional growth, organizational growth, that kind of stuff as opposed to making product/project/engineering decisions, which should primarily be steered towards product management, project management, and/or senior engineers. With that said, at a lot of places - and I think this is what every organization drifts towards if you don't try hard to fight it - engineering managers are expected to manage projects and provide technical leadership, with people management responsibilities merely being used to give engineering managers the stick to perform their primary duties.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Read The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change by Camille Fournier

<comment><USER23> OP - do yourself a favor and read this short book (or just the first few chapters applicable to you). It's the best, most practical book on software engineering management that I've seen, and I'm only half-way through it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Ten years and you have never led anybody? Think back, I am sure there were moments where you led/guided/coached peers or were a sparring partner.

You should sell those experiences as first steps into being a leader.

However, you should be aware that managing and coding are so different, even if it's in the same field. Managing people is tough and you learn it by doing.

<comment><USER25> The author seems to be pretty clear about having been a team lead but never having directly managed anyone. Huge difference. Having a similar background myself, I can say this is probably one of the biggest hurdles if you're looking to get into management. You can talk at length about mentorship and leading through influence and judgment and all the stuff that goes with being a "technical lead" but it doesn't make much of a difference--they want someone who's had direct reports.

It's the typical hiring chicken-and-egg problem: You need experience doing X to get a job doing X. People management is no different.

<comment><USER5> I've heard lots of names for managers, but never had someone called a "team lead" and not had direct reports.

<comment><USER26> It's reasonably common for there to be a "first among equals" type situation where the person with a title like "technical lead" or "team lead" has technical decision-making authority within the team, but isn't formally a manager of any of the team members in the HR sense.

<comment><USER5> Yep, "technical lead" is that in my head, but perhaps that's because a "team lead" is line manager everywhere I have been.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Read _Behind Closed Doors The Secret of Great Management_ by Johanna Rothman and Esther Derby.

Look for opportunities to do supervision. Non-profits are always looking for help, and it makes you look well rounded on your resume. There's no substitute for doing to learn how to manage.

</comment><comment><USER28> I don't know exactly what this company is looking for and how big a team you would be managing so it's hard to speak for them, however, an Engineering Manager is usually a pretty high level position and you should be expected to have a lot of experience under your belt in management, leadership and software engineering. The fact that you're never been in a management role even as a lead engineer (how is that possible?) means you're potentially unqualified for this position. I know that's hard to hear but I want you to come into this with the right expectations.

Having said that (and if you're still going to go for it), I'll try to give you some pointers.

1\. Being a good engineering manager means having a good framework for getting things done. You probably have something like this already but as a manager, you have to be disciplined about keeping your team happy and productive, as well as knowing what everyone is working on at all times.

2\. Be able to demonstrate how you think strategically and not just tactically (e.g. tactical: we're going to use MySQL because we have a hard schema, strategic: we're training engineers on the AWS tech stack because we have (or want) to move our organization in that direction for financial reasons).

3\. Value "output over activity". Andy Grove's High Output Management is a godsend that explains this concept very well, but for the interview, demonstrate that you know the difference between people flapping their wings vs moving the needle forward.

4\. Be able to speak about the difference between leadership vs management. Leadership is getting people to follow you while management is having people work for you. Management also means understanding the schedule, building a roadmap, and working with other groups to influence or lead important initiatives.

5\. Helping ICs manage performance, motivate and incentivize good work, providing mentoring and guidance including career advice, rooting out low performers and managing them out. This is the hard, potentially unpleasant part of the job, and you'll need to demonstrate an understanding and willingness to do this (no one else will do this for you, this is the manager's job). Critical; since you don't seem to have experience here, you better brush up on this stuff most.

6\. You job is also to understand current technology trends and be up to speed on the code, the process on the team, and the ways that things could be improved. Understand iterative process improvement and talk about how you've done this in the past.

There's lots more but this should hopefully cover the big important stuff.

All the best to you!

<comment><USER29> Being non-native english speaker, could you explain to me what does the IC abbreviation mean? (I've seen it mentioned in your post as well in several others; and google didn't help). Thanks

<comment><USER30> Individual Contributor

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I maintain a list of engineering management resources here: [https://github.com/charlax/engineering- management](https://github.com/charlax/engineering-management)

I think it provides a pretty comprehensive list of topics that you could chat about during your interviews. Rather than making a good impression, you should talk truthfully about those topics. Worst case you'll learn something about them. Management is a great role that requires constant learning.

Good luck for the interviews!

</comment><comment><USER32> I read this book a few years back and enjoyed it, it's good for understanding both sides of managing (up & down). The title is pretty flipping clickbaity but the book is pretty balanced, and I saw myself in some of the "tyrant" habits and it was helpful in an introspective way:

[https://www.amazon.com/Tame-Your-Terrible-Office- Tyrant/dp/0...](https://www.amazon.com/Tame-Your-Terrible-Office- Tyrant/dp/0470457643)

</comment><comment><USER33> You don't have the experience for the role. And that may be okay as long as you're honest and upfront about that and show a willingness to learn.

A big component of managing a dev team is performance-management- managing good and bad performers. Don't try to BS your way through that or other questions, but rather acknowledge where your gaps are and let them know that they are known unknowns rather than being oblivious to their existence.

</comment><comment><USER34> Never use the word "manager" again. Instead, prefer "leader". If you are somewhere where the team needs to be managed then there are better jobs out there.

Buy and read Jim Whitehurst book The Open Organization before your interview and actualize the information in that book. Recall times you put into practice the things that are mentioned in the book (good and bad).

<comment><USER35> I'd add slightly to this. Managers are one path in the leadership ladder. Management is organizational leadership the other is technical leadership. Technical leadership is the principal engineer, architect, or technical fellow at most companies. In most companies the lower parts of the ladder is shared as in technical or IC roles.

Surprisingly there is a large amount of leadership that is shared between both ladders. Group communication, group mentorship and coaching, group leadership is more or less the same. Teams are particularly weak if they don't have both technical and organizational leadership.

The technical leaders typically are focused on mentoring and growing engineers with architecture and technical guidance. Organizational leaders are focused on mentoring and growing engineers on their career path and a lot of the softer skills.

I agree 100% on the if a team needs to be managed, it needs to be changed. Teams will always need leaders to provide focus. And ideally they need both organizational and technical leadership. Rarely does that come in one package.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I have hired few dozen people during last decade just for my own projects so speaking from my own experience. I am listing some of the responsibilities that an engineering manager should have -

1\. Facilitating your team to succeed.

2\. Shielding your team from company politics and making sure they are getting the resources they need.

3\. Know your team's strengths and weaknesses

4\. Understand your project\product

5\. Be a leader and not a manager. Leadership is just like any other skill which can be learned and developed

6\. Share your vision with your team.

7\. Understand that your team members are also humans and they have emotions too so do not try to come across as a cold person.

Good luck.

Reading list - [https://sites.google.com/a/khanacademy.org/forge/for- develop...](https://sites.google.com/a/khanacademy.org/forge/for- developers/engineering-management-reading-list)

</comment><comment><USER37> I'd gather you'll want to think fairly hard about scenarios you have encountered in the past where you helped a team you were on through a rough patch, or helped ship a product on time, or pull people together. You'll probably also want to have some sort of hypothesis about what makes a successful manager, what makes for a successful team, how to deal with failure, etc. If you haven't though about these things or are not interested then you may not enjoy management.

Edit: I would also come ready with any sort of anecdotes about how you took initiative to do something and managed it end to end. Could be an event, could be a product, could be a code release - but that track record is definitely an indicator.

</comment><comment><USER38> Three things I try to find out in a manager / director level interview :

1\. What is the process for reviewing, committing, merging and deploying code ? How are technical designs vetted before starting development on large projects ?

2\. What is the process for hiring engineers and reviewing performance ?

3\. What is the process for describing, prioritizing, and ultimately building and releasing new features ?

Understanding those 3 things as they exist at the company (and your approach to each) will tell you a lot about the organization, how to proceed, and will tell the company a lot about what you are bringing to the table.

</comment><comment><USER39> In general you should be more than capable of explaining your lead role as a coaching role and helping people to get better. Ideally some of that experience was not just with juniors but also mid level - senior engineers.

Did you start anything up in the company - ideally yes. Shows you can spot opportunities.

Do you understand the role of the manager in this company, in the context, probably good to show some self awareness (Are you being hired in for a new team, existing team, if so why not hire internally etc.)

After that expect to explain how you deal with poor performers, how do you reward people etc.

</comment><comment><USER40> Read this article. It'll show you the gaps between a Lead Engineer and a Manager. Focus on these gaps for your interview. Some people here seem to mix the difference between the two roles, you don't "manage" anyone as a tech lead, you do manage technical decisions though:

[https://carouth.com/blog/2015/02/15/i-am-a-technical- lead/](https://carouth.com/blog/2015/02/15/i-am-a-technical-lead/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'd like to thanks everyone who participated in this thread. Very good stuff. It looks like I'm gonna have to highlight my personality to make sure it's inline with an engineering manager role. Since it's the only thing I have on top of a strong tech background and mentorship. Interestingly, I also have a little bit of product management experience. But really it looks like it will be about my ability to make all my interviewers feel like home.

cheers!

</comment><comment><USER4> One thing that I've found difficult to do at times is to give your team space. Space to explore, try new things, do some things differently than you would do, make mistakes, etc.

You should always feel like you can overrule or supplement a decision, but you don't have to be the one to come up with every solution.

</comment><comment><USER41> I applaud your willingness to take on engineering management. Having made the move myself about 4 years ago, it's an often unappreciated form of contributing but I find it highly rewarding. It seems that most new engineering managers seem to get promoted from within since it allows them to leverage the respect they've earned inside the organization as an engineer. In no particular order, here's a few recommendations.

\- Think back to the managers you've had and think about what they did well and what didn't work as well. The more you can talk about and have an opinion about what makes a good manager, the more you can show your desire and ability to become a good manager. Before becoming a manager, I spent a year going through my career and really looking in depth at my previous managers so that when I started I could try to use that to be better myself. What I found is that this made me very good at managing down and I was very popular with my team, but managing up was somewhat of a problem. So when you look back at your history and your previous managers, be sure to look at not only how your managers interacted with you and your teammates but also how your managers interacted with their managers and the rest of the org. This can be harder to see, since you're not a part of those interactions, but if you think back, you might remember at least some part of that.

\- The most important part of being a manager, from my experience, is being able to deliver feedback. The more effortless and clear you are, the more easily you can provide frequent and minor course corrections as well as provide natural encouragement of desired behavior. It also makes firing/disciplining employees easy. For one, if you're giving constant feedback, those instances are much less frequent since employees can make those course corrections. But when it does become necessary, it's not a surprise. Either there was some major incident or there's been a long build-up where suggestions/warnings have been repeatedly ignored. When I've interviewed other managers, I've looked for their ability to deliver feedback and, crucially, their abilities to notice the things they should be giving feedback about. Many managers, especially new managers, just don't have the awareness to constantly be looking for small course corrections or the feel for when an employee needs a bit of emotional buoying that can come with positive feedback. Hopefully in your mentorship and lead dev experience, you've developed some of that awareness, so the more you can talk about that, the more you'll show you're ready. As far as delivering feedback, there's a lot of theory on the right way to do that, but it also requires practice. Read up on that and then find a friend who's willing to help and role play a few different feedback scenarios. You'll quickly get better with practice.

\- I'm going to expand your question beyond the interview because I think it will help you with your interview. Because if you get hired, that's not the end of it. It's not a case of showing that you can do the work, getting hired and then just organically becoming good at it. Once you get hired, that's when you need to start diving into the theory behind the discipline of engineering management. If you can internalize that, then you'll be able to convey to your potential employer at the interview your willingness to work to become better. Try to show your interviewer that you have a plan for learning how to be a great manager and the concrete steps you'll take to achieve that goal. Because if you have zero experience and they know that going into the interview, that's the most they can expect from you.

\- Not every engineer actually enjoys management. Many engineers really like knowing all the little details and have a hard time stepping away from that level of knowledge and only knowing the larger building blocks. If you can talk about your excitement to work at that higher level and willingness to give up that lower level, you'll at least convince them that you really want the job. Make sure that this is actually true, because it's hard to fake. But if you can show that enthusiasm, you'll subtly make a better impression.

\- Lastly, try to stress areas of being a manager that you're already good at. For instance, as a lead developer, you've probably interviewed a lot of engineers. If you're great at hiring/recruiting, it makes being a manager a lot easier. If you can show that you're able to bring great engineers into their organization, that alone makes you a great hire. Another thing you've probably done is write 360 reviews for other engineers. If you can find one that you're particularly proud of, remove all identifying information from it, print it out and bring it to your interview as an example of the kind of thinking you'll bring to their organization.

Best of luck in the interview!

</comment><comment><USER42> One of the things you should think about in your interview is how you're planning on interviewing them to make sure they're the right fit for your first managerial role. Managing a team, even for those who have been tech leads or in some leadership position without management responsibilities, is a very different role than being an individual contributor. You should think about this the same way you might if you were coming in as a Junior SE, or pivoting into a different specialty within the profession.

So, a few things I would think about would be:

[1] Who will you report to, and what is their management experience? How do their direct reports (likely other managers) view their management skills? Are they a teacher, or do they expect you to "pick things up" on your own? If they expect you to pick things up on your own, will they work with you and potentially pay for training classes or professional coaching?

[2] What is the structure of the team? Is it mostly senior members, or mostly junior members? What are their expectations of a new manager? Does the company typically promote from within, and you'll be an abnormal outsider?

[3] What are the expectations around the management responsibility, beyond day to day team issues? Will they be expecting you to hire new employees? Do you need to handle raises, promotions, and firing? Will you be expected to put together a budget every year?

All of the above is meant to help you to assess whether the role is going to be one that you can be successful in. Management is a great job, and I loved helping my teams grow in their careers; however, I think I would have floundered had I not had a great mentor who helped coach me specifically in these skills. I also think I would have struggled mightily had I jumped into a management role, without prior management experience, with a new team and a new company. Managing a team as an outsider is one of the toughest new roles in a company, even if you have a ton of experience.

Quick shameless plug: I'm co-founder of a venture-backed startup focused on helping people grow in their careers, such as yourself. My email is in my profile if you have any questions and I can be of help to you.

</comment><comment><USER43> Think about how to express when and how you would prioritize the needs of the business over the needs of the engineers.

Demonstrate your grasp of cost optimization.

<comment><USER44> More generally, if you never say "no" you probably don't have a strategy.

<comment><USER43> Exactly, going both ways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Just remember you are there to support your team always have their back and you'll do just fine...

</comment><comment><USER46> Do know what a critical path means.

</comment><comment><USER47> If you have to ask this question, maybe you shouldn't have applied for the position.</comment>


All new mobile phones in India will have a panic button for women's safety - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2016/04/26/india-mobile-phones-panic-button/#0w56Op6Rriq4 <comment><AUTHOR> Would be nice if it would record audio and video and send directly to the cloud for police to know what is happening in real time.

I see Drones killer app would be for women who job or walk alone. If you could have a drone record what is happening and people would know they would recorded if they violated a woman it would drastically lower crime against women.

<comment><USER2> That makes a lot of sense as a smartphone app, but probably not as a requirement considering many featurephones may not have usable data connections.</comment></comment>


Male and female brains are built differently (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/12/male-and-female-brains-really-are-built-differently/281962/ <comment><USER2> It seems weird that you would use an age group of 8-22. Afaik both sexes brains continue to develop into the late 20s, so to extrapolate the aforementioned age group to the entirety of humanity seems premature. This limitation isn't directly addressed in the article.

</comment><comment><USER3> My boss who is a mother of three once told me they compared brain scans of women vs men when hearing a baby cry. She mentioned that the women had a certain part of their brain activated (I think the concern part of the brain) vs the men who didn't have anything really activated. So yeah, there is some instinct hardwired into brains of different sexes.

</comment><comment><USER4> no shit Sherlock??

<comment><USER5> studies add value regardless of whether you think they follow conventional wisdom or not. The burden of proof is on science to prove something, not just make common assumptions about it.</comment></comment>


Amazon to open grocery chain separate from Whole Foods - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/01/wsj-amazon-to-open-new-u-s-grocery-chain-separate-from-whole-foods <comment><USER3> Smart move. Whole Foods has a limited appeal. It's not just price - <USER2> people want to buy Cheetos or pizza rolls that don't taste like cardboard.

Slightly related thought: Why not design a store which allows instant fulfillment from a wide selection of goods while taking up less ground level space? I could see an Amazon/Walmart/etc store where you reserve the shelf space for presentation, but the goods are actually stored on higher floors and delivered to the customer upon checkout? Real-estate is a premium in many markets and probably keeps out super-center style stores. If you could build up, without having to extend retail niceties to all floors, you might make the costs work.

<comment><USER4> Yes, I imagine a store in which you just walk around and scan QR codes on your phone and your bagged groceries are waiting for you when you walk out (all paid for on the app, too, so no checkout).

<comment><USER5> How is that better? It saves you from... pushing a cart?

Not to mention, until robots can handle every variety of produce and package, isn't the real life manifestation basically going to be a sixteen year old dashing about in a mirror-store hidden in the back, tracing your footsteps, picking up the things you scan, and putting them in a cart?

<comment><USER6> A few reasons:

1\. Potential for less waste through 1) people not avoiding ugly produce, 2) not leaving refrigerated stuff on a non-refrigerated shelf, 3) leaving freezer doors open, 4) stealing things.

2\. Less congestion in the browsing section.

3\. Better stock tracking.

4\. Easier stock management. You don't have to have people move stock between a warehouse and a shelf.

5\. And yes, you don't have to push a cart.

There are significant drawbacks too. The biggest one I can think of is that the fulfillment mechanism doesn't actually exist.

<comment><USER7> you forgot "instant checkout"

<comment><USER6> I doubt you would get that. You still have to wait for fulfillment. I guess at least you probably wouldn't be in a line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does your business 1) work in retail and 2) have more than 2% margin?

Then Amazon is coming for you.

<comment><USER9> This is clever.

So I'm curious, how is Amazon able to execute so effectively in so many different spaces? It would seem to me that any company endlessly extending itself into new markets is doomed to lose sight of its core competencies and eventually collapse under it's own weight.

And yet Amazon still grows, and keeps executing. How is this possible? Is the 6 page memo the magic sauce of sprawling corporate empire governance? Am I just not understanding some fundamental tenet of business?

<comment><USER10> They appear to have a strong focus on what customers actually want, hire bright people to figure out how to build it, are willing to gamble on some of it even if boss disagrees, make sure they keep whatever they build lean + scalable, use that to be profitable at scale on low margins, and tie stuff together as much as they can for higher satisfaction of customers and cross- selling them.

I'm not an Amazon guy or customer. Just guessing from what I read. I am pretty sure that lots of big businesses going cheap on or ignoring workers' advice, investing in expensive or inflexible systems, and pretending to listen to their customers contributes to their loss of market share to both startups with high customer focus + flexibility and pivoting behemoths like Amazon that emulate that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think the average Whole Foods has plenty of wasted space and that they could easily start to carry products that the average consumer has to go to a normal grocery/convenience store to buy (liquor, snacks, candy, soda, beauty etc). I don't think it will diminish from the experience. Plenty of higher end grocery stores do the same, even with a smaller footprint.

<comment><USER12> Whole Foods already carries all that stuff.

<comment><USER13> Whole Foods doesn't carry liquor in any place I've ever lived.

<comment><USER14> The ~4 I've been to in SF all carry some liquor (usually a small end cap with 1-2 options of each variety). Maybe it's a regional thing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why test when you can A|B test?</comment>


Common CSRF vulnerability in OAuth2 implementations - <AUTHOR> https://www.online24.nl/blog/common-csrf-vulnerability-in-oauth2-implementations/

<comment><USER2> It takes 3-4 extra lines of code to implement CSRF protection for oauth2 login in python. The same kind of idiots who set themselves up for stupid sql injection attacks omit CSRF protection. How is this interesting?

<comment><USER3> It's interesting precisely because that mistake is "common" (though I'll admit some frustration that the actual vulnerabilities aren't disclosed, so we don't know how common). It says so right in the headline.

Maybe you already knew this. Maybe you are too smart to make such a mistake (though in my experience, people quick to dismiss "simple" security practices are the _most_ likely to forget them and make this kind of mistake). Some people aren't. And others, like me (also way-too-smart-to-ever-do something- like-this of course) don't actually know much about OAuth and read the link interested in learning more about its security landscape.</comment></comment>


English is no longer the language of the web - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/96054/english-is-no-longer-the-language-of-the-web/ <comment><USER3> >English will be a language of economic opportunity for most speakers: they'll work and think in their mother tongue

I'm not sure I agree with that. I grew up with German as my mother tongue, but with a strong English environmental influence (TV, strangers on street etc). Both taught as 1st language in school.

It starts out with "thinking in one language, speaking another", but as you improve in both it just becomes a blur - to the point where I can't tell you whether the thought I just had was in English or German. Sometimes I think the thought just "is" as an abstract concept language-less concept. Sort-of like a geometric shape isn't German or English.

<comment><USER4> > Sometimes I think the thought just "is" as an abstract concept language-less > concept. Sort-of like a geometric shape isn't German or English.

I've found that learning another language becomes incredibly easier if you can get to that point - linking words in the new language to the idea of the thing itself instead of the word for the thing in your mother tongue.

<comment><USER3> Frankly it took me years to get there (English) - and that was with teachers that were well flawless. Languages isn't really my strong suit and I doubt I'll learn any more.

Regarding German...I'd glad I learned it while I was a kid...its a bitch of language to learn. My school subsidized some of the poor locals - on the condition that they take German as 3rd language. Man those people suffered. Then again they got an education 10x better than anything they could have hoped for otherwise so fair trade.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If Lessig was correct when he said that "code is law," I am not sure how anything other than English could be the language of the web. RFCs inform/direct/control the creation of code and RFC Series Format Requirements and Future Development[1] reads:

        2.1.2
        *  The IETF works in ASCII (and English).  The Internet research,
        design, and development communities function almost entirely in
        English.  That strongly suggests that an ASCII document can be
        properly rendered and read by everyone in the communities and
        audiences of interest.

       3.3
        The official language of the RFC Series is English.  ASCII is
        required for all text that must be read to understand or
        implement the technology described in the RFC.  Use of non-
        ASCII characters, expressed in a standard Unicode Encoding
        Form (such as UTF-8), must receive explicit approval from the
        document stream manager and will be allowed after the rules
        for the common use cases are defined in the Style Guide.

[1] [https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6949.txt](https://www.rfc- editor.org/rfc/rfc6949.txt)

</comment><comment><USER6> Interesting to think about, but the publicly searchable web seems like the only meaningful number to me.

Ok, there may be a whole bunch of social media in some language each accessible to small groups of facebook users. Does that help the average speaker of that language find a manual, recipe, learn a programming language, etc?

<comment><USER7> Good point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The BIG obstacles to multi-language computing are computer keyboards, operating systems and spell-checkers/dictionaries.

It is very difficult to write in several languages on all common operating systems. Sure you can have an English keyboard and use some on-screen means for writing accented characters but that is a real pain if you want to write more than a few words.

There is no such thing as a "universal" keyboard. If there were, it would have to be enormous. Just look at the newspaper typesetting keyboards for Chinese newspapers.

Most operating systems can be configured to handle a single language, but very awkward when you want to seamlessly switch to another.

Spell-checkers/dictionaries in other languages are not as capable, accurate as English ones.

So ... if we wish to promote real multi-lingual web, we really need to address these core issues. Having unicode and different character sets is but a very small part of the solution. There is lots more work to be done.

<comment><USER9> > Spell-checkers/dictionaries in other languages are not as capable, accurate > as English ones.

But they are less needed in certain languages. If you know how a Spanish word is pronounced, you can probably guess how it is written. If you are uncertain of an English word... well I'd take a dictionary over memorizations and "rules of thumbs" when it comes to the gigantic mess that is English spelling.

<comment><USER8> That's very true. But when I need to write in a language that I'm not fluent in, it would be nice to have a competent spell checker, etc. For example, my Spanish pronunciation is rather poor, so chances are that I would also misspell words when I write them. And it is very easy to innocently write something which turns out to be rude or even vulgar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's a great point, _but_ I think as long as most programming languages are chiefly written in English (I think?), the web will still be "English".

Which I guess is a question I am curious about - how widespread is foreign- language programming language use? Like, instead of "while" it's "正在", etc.?

<comment><USER11> Code I have encountered that was made in France most often used French variable names and comments, and documented in French if required otherwise. It shows that the language in which programming keywords are didn't influence those programmers enough to change the language in which they were thinking. (If that's the argument you are trying to make)

<comment><USER12> The code and comments I've seen in Finland have always been in English. France is probably an exception, as they value their own language a lot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> English is a (dominant) language of the web. Perhaps not quantitatively already, but qualitatively it still is.

Time to draw some attention to contracted languages (i.e. Esperanto). It would be a much more unbiased and time-saving choice for the world community.

<comment><USER13> Esperanto is far from "unbiased" \- it's obviously extremely influenced by European languages. It's not a fundamentally great design either. E.g. no non- gender pronoun, for some reason. Use of diacritics and extra pronunciation rules are also a negative.

Moving to Esperanto would not save time at all, and would be significantly more difficult for the many people that now have to learn yet another very Euro-centric language with complicated. And, there's really very little benefit to switching.

Making up a language won't gain traction. Even most programmers can't figure out how to write/read decent programming languages Why on earth would we think the rest of humanity will accept it for spoken language? And at any rate, it'd have to be a lot better than Esperanto or alternatives for it to be worthwhile.

<comment><USER7> > Esperanto is far from "unbiased" \- it's obviously extremely influenced by > European languages.

I agree here! It's so much easier to learn for English or Spanish speaker. But still Chinese or Japanese speaker will learn Esperanto 10 times faster then English. Huge improvement.

> E.g. no non-gender pronoun, for some reason.

Well, most languages including English doesn't have non-gender pronoun. Yet in Esperanto officially you can use "ĝi" (it) or "tiu" (that person) for referring to the person of unknown/unspecified gender. But people seem not to use it often.

>Use of diacritics and extra pronunciation rules are also a negative.

Majority of languages use diacritics or non-latin writing system and steel doing fine. It's not that hard. But as a trade-off you get one sound - <USER2> letter philosophy.

> Moving to Esperanto would not save time at all, and would be significantly > more difficult for the many people that now have to learn yet another very > Euro-centric language with complicated. And, there's really very little > benefit to switching.

Moving to Esperanto is like moving from Latin numbers to Arabic. Yes, sorry, it will require at least some learning to use.

> Making up a language won't gain traction. Even most programmers can't figure > out how to write/read decent programming languages

We don't need most to create something good.

> Why on earth would we think the rest of humanity will accept it for spoken > language?

I don't thing so. But there are good reasons mentioned in this comment.

> And at any rate, it'd have to be a lot better than Esperanto or alternatives > for it to be worthwhile.

It's pretty awesome, really. I was skeptical too until I tried.

<comment><USER14> A Chinese would rather learn English and trade with most of the world (then Spanish, and trade with 400M people), than learn Esperanto even if it's "easier."

Besides, once you've learned Chinese, any European language with an alphabet looks easy to learn.

<comment><USER15> > Besides, once you've learned Chinese, any European language with an alphabet > looks easy to learn.

Well, there is the fact that Chinese children learn Pinyin (Chinese romanization) in school. Of course Pinyin attributes different sounds to the letters of the alphabet than Western European languages do, but at least they've already seen the characters when they start learning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Happens to every medium.

<comment><USER8> It sure does.

Some of the issues are technical and others are cultural.

This thread focuses on the cultural issues and largely overlooks the technical issues. That is, operating systems are only convenient in a single language. Try using a French notebook with French keyboard to write English, especially if you are used to the QWERT layout !

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Good for them. I think this trend will discourage monoculturalism.

Personally I don't care too much what language I'm using (I only have English and my native tongue to use). But frankly I'm fed up with the amerocentric (not a word) content that I go through. I'm fed up with reading about things that interest me on an international platform and having to endure a majority of America-colored views and experiences of everything. I'm tired of reading about slightly-technical/non-technical opinion pieces having to do with programming, and the writing clearly being about some American issue. I'm tired of all my uni-level books being American "International Edition" textbooks with examples ridden with calculating the mean and standard deviation of some GPA's (stats), flights between Phoenix, NYC, Miami, LA etc (graph theory) [insert common knowledge to anyone who has lived in the US].

This wouldn't be different if all of these things had been simply translated to my native tongue.

All of this might seem petty, but I'm tired of being a foreigner on the Web that I frequent. And a foreigner in the _same damn country each time_ , at that</comment>


Free the Network: Hackers Take Back the Web - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/motherboard-tv-free-the-network

<comment><USER2> "working with satellites high above"

How can you tell, with traceroute or some similar tool, that your packets have gone through a satellite? Or a particular undersea cable?

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks like you can tell by the jumps in latency.

Source: [https://www.tolaris.com/2008/10/09/identifying-undersea- fibr...](https://www.tolaris.com/2008/10/09/identifying-undersea-fibre-and- satellite-links-with-traceroute/)</comment></comment>


New website of MessagePack Project introduces next-generation RPC. - <AUTHOR> http://msgpack.org/

<comment><USER2> How is the transport layer implemented? Does it use TCP? Or does it build its own reliable transport over UDP? Of another concern is the message delivery latency.

<comment><AUTHOR> It basically uses TCP. Raw unreliable UDP is also supported on Ruby and Java. TCP or UDP will be enough choices for most of applications. Practically, MessagePack-RPC mainly focuses on cross-language communication, like Ruby frontend <-> C++ backend. So portability is rather important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure I understand the obsession with speed here - at some point isn't the RPC latency going to be the dominator rather than the encode/decode time? Shouldn't we be really close to that already for well-designed applications without a ton of RPC roundtrips?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's true that network latency is dominator rather than serialization. But low CPU/memory usage is still important for CPU/memory-bound applications. Especially, zero-copy feature is effective to raise maximum throughput. As for RPC performance, parallelism will be important for high-load systems. It's described at [http://msgpack.wordpress.com/2010/05/08/messagepack-rpc- for-...](http://msgpack.wordpress.com/2010/05/08/messagepack-rpc-for-cp/) On the other hand, some uses serialize/deserialize directly on search engine or caching to pack objects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like how the site shows sample code on the home page.

Anyone care to compare to Thrift or Google Protocol Buffers?

<comment><USER5> Also curious about how this compares to BERT, which uses Erlang's binary term format, which makes sense to me since so much infrastructure uses Erlang these days.

<comment><AUTHOR> Message Pack vs similar utilities: <http://gist.github.com/290425>

<comment><USER5> Disturbingly bad results for Bert! Thanks for the helpful link.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


New MacBook every 90 days - <AUTHOR> Has anyone tried to get a new MacBook like every 90 days via:
1) buy new MacBook from apple
2) sell old one on http://www.sellyourmac.com
3) figure out the price you "rented" your new MacBook for.
Repeat. Any service that automates this? <comment><USER2> I had a coworker who did this every 11 months so that the used Mac was still under AppleCare which increases the resale value.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why would you abuse the return policy like that?

And don't you think Apple would blacklist your card/address?

<comment><USER4> I think he said he was selling it to someone else.

What I don't get is his motivation, other than estimating a price; many people don't see the value in upgrading a 2yr old laptop, particularly including the hassle of migration.

<comment><AUTHOR> My motivation is compressed cans of air to blow the dust out of the keyboard don't work very well. I'd rather just have a fresh Mac in perfect condition every 90 days. Plus, this way I always have the latest and greatest from apple and I get very good at having all my data in the cloud. Getting the new MacBook needs to be very fast to setup with Xcode and all my git repos etc. I might need to image the hard drive or make a very good script that loads everything up. This also reduces my fear of my MacBook being stolen or lost. The 90 days rule means I'm very used to just going to Apple Store and getting a new one and I'll be back to work in less than an hour.</comment></comment></comment>