The hidden costs of A/B testing - <AUTHOR> https://www.stickermule.com/blog/hidden-costs-of-AB-testing <comment><USER2> It is, in fact, fairly normal to get a very low number of tests that actually move the needle. Most ideas you have suck and will not improve our conversion rate! This fact will not change if you stop measuring.

The article is right that some ideas aren't worth testing. For example if your checkout page is broken, just fix it.

One mistaken idea a lot of people have is that half your A/B tests will win and you'll get instant magic results. This myth comes from multiple places. Vendors and CRO agencies push case studies about wins, not about the process (which includes lots of losses). Until last year all A/B testing tools (including the one I work for) were nothing but false positive engines [1] due to support for multiple goals without applying Bonferroni, using non- sequential tests, and similar issues. Even if you just ran a bunch of A/A tests you'd get lots of wins!

[1] This is still true to some extent. The situation is now better - VWO, Optimizely and A/B Tasty all have fairly solid stats. There are a lot more than these 3 vendors, however.

(Disclaimer: I work for an A/B testing vendor.)

<comment><USER3> But I can make $60 million

[https://blog.optimizely.com/2010/11/29/how-obama- raised-60-m...](https://blog.optimizely.com/2010/11/29/how-obama- raised-60-million-by-running-a-simple-experiment/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A/B testing has become somewhat of a cargo cult, with tools like optimizely making it insanely easy to run tests. IMO, simple copy tweaks or button color changes are usually waste of time tests.

I'm a big fan of running A-B tests on major product changes - which is basically just standard business benchmarking. Measuring the impact and understanding the results of a change are important whether you run a web app or a flower shop.

PPC is the one place for me where smaller AB tests are absolutely essential. In most other scenarios there are too many confounding variables to really understand much from small tweaks in a product.

<comment><USER5> 100% agreed. I've worked for companies where A/B testing is so consuming that nobody see that they're shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.

Like ANY other tool, A/B tests have their place, but the incremental gains you're likely to produce from a different color button pale in comparison to what else you might be able to do with that mental energy.

Also completely agreed that paid traffic is a completely different beast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _Some ideas are obviously good_

Are they? Of course everyone thinks their ideas are "obviously good", but testing often proves otherwise. That's the whole point of it.

<comment><USER7> This comes down to definitions. What I'm taking the article to mean is the sort of mini/micro A/B tests that many people do (taglines, button colours etc).

Using your example of "obviously good", lets say something seems "obviously good", so you launch it, and after a week, you see that it converts worse or better. That's an A/B test, where A is before the change and B is what is after. You don't need software for that, you don't need to do on-the-fly A/B testing, you can just launch.

Given a site has existed for a while, it has a pretty known A for most things you'd want to test. Doing A/B tests on small elements seems may indeed not be worth the extraneous costs of time etc.

<comment><USER8> There are a lot of factors that can contribute to the second week converting better or worse Eg public holidays, paydays, sporting events.. That's why ab tests run at the same time so you can compare the same population.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've run almost exactly the same number of experiments as the author, and experienced the same frustrations until recently.

It sounds as though the author needs to combine the "How we improve conversion without A/B testing" section with user tests and data analysis to build stronger hypotheses. Since we've put more effort into the research phase, our success rate has improved dramatically.

The real value of A/B testing is validating meaningful hypotheses that help you learn what matters to your customers, not unrelated individual improvements. By only observing the overall trend, you miss out on this.

I wrote about this recently here: [https://medium.com/@nickboyce/5-steps-to-a- better-a-b-testin...](https://medium.com/@nickboyce/5-steps-to-a-better-a-b- testing-process-61155697dee1)

<comment><USER10> I couldn't agree more. Simply spending the time to understand why you are testing certain elements is valuable on it's own.

The author doesn't mention what kind of tests were performed, but often when I read about the "futility" of A/B testing, it's usually due to lack of up front preparation and discussion of the tests true objectives. So the classic "red button vs. green button" might get you a result in the testing software, but it doesn't necessarily translate to more sales/leads or whatever the ultimate goal is.

<comment><USER11> The post wasn't about the "futility" of a/b testing. It's about the costs of a/b testing that are rarely considered. There's plenty of "pro" a/b testing advice in the world that leads startups to mistakenly waste resources on it.

A solid a/b testing process doesn't just happen without time & effort. You need someone smart analyzing user behavior and forming hypotheses as well as a talented design team to develop concepts that test them.

We simply acknowledged the costs of doing a/b testing well and decided our resources are better spent elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interesting article and very contrasting opinion. It's hard for me to agree with most of it though, but I might simply be too closed minded.

A few notes:

 _> I should admit that we still A/B test some ideas. Rather than adhering to a strict A/B testing process, we let our team to A/B test ideas they're curious about._

The idea is that you don't test everything in the first place, only test things where your thinking is "My hypothesis is that changing or adding feature X will improve certain metrics" \-- and in those cases, you a/b test. Else you aren't really proving that you're right or wrong. If it doesn't matter if you're right or wrong, why implement feature X at all? If it's a qualitative improvement, it doesn't make sense to a/b test it.

 _> 3) Performance >Related to lost conversions, A/B testing tools make your site slower and this also reduces your conversion rate--even for the control. The additional conversions you lose because of this performance hit are another, often ignored, cost of A/B testing._

You should probably be using a different tool if it makes your site slower.

 _> 5) Speed >A/B testing slows down your organization's decision making. Some ideas are obviously good and adhering to a strict A/B testing process reduces your time to go live. Time is finite and the number of improvements you implement per year has a major impact on your growth trajectory._

It's impressive that growth is simply a factor of time within this company. This makes sense only if their average production decision making has a positive impact on growth/conversion rates as a factor of time.

 _> You can monitor your long term conversion trend rather easily via Google Analytics to gauge if you're making good decisions._

Yes, but that would be very unactionable. If the growth is going up, you pat yourself on the back and say "I'm clever" and if it isn't you say "I suck". But since you don't know which decisions or what the real reason is for conversion going up or down, you don't know what the fundamental metrics are that drive your growth up or down. You basically say "I don't care why things are going well" or even lie to yourself and say "Things are going well because I make good decisions."

Growth is not just about growing, but about knowing why you are growing and using that knowledge to find new ways to grow. If you know the fundamentals about what drives your growth, you also know which things you can or cannot change without affecting growth.

<comment><USER13> > You should probably be using a different tool if it makes your site slower.

Any recommendations? I see a lot of tools out there that work by basically rewriting the page on the client side, which will tend to give you suboptimal performance. And if your app's already a JS heavy SPA thing, your over optimistic byte budget is probably already running a deficit.

<comment><USER11> We use Split: [https://github.com/splitrb/split](https://github.com/splitrb/split)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can't really agree much on this article and I have the sense it is somehow written out of frustration and lack of experience.

The '6 hidden costs' can all be addressed, some are not even hidden like time, running tests take time and resources like anything else. The other factors like speed/performance and confusion can all be solved very easily.

Some of my take-aways for testing

\- Don't focus on small changes like buttons, copy etc.. these are mostly useless yes

\- Make radical changes, e.g. on stickermule can try to have the whole product to make a sticker to checkout on 1 page or start with configuration first and then select sizes etc..

\- To filter out false positives, compare same sample of data (e.g. organic traffic is good) for the same period range before a winning test went live and after

Personally I have seen some great results with the above tips in mind, from B2B making visitors perform small actions first or showing a demo vs. presenting them with a form immediately (4x more leads) to e-commerce sites adding a direct checkout vs. normal checkout path (lower avg. order but much higher conversion rate to largely make up for it) etc..

You could argue these are part of product (which a conversion department should be part of, not marketing) but without doing the testing you can only guess about the outcome. And sure many tests are fixing usability (e.g. seen 250% increase in registrations by fixing telephone number prefix and date of birth field formatting) and UI issues but that's part of it.

<comment><USER11> It's unfortunate to dismiss another view point as you're frustrated or inexperienced while ignoring the actual points made.

The biggest point being #1: Resources are finite. Time spent on A/B testing cannot be spent elsewhere. How you use your time determines your growth trajectory. A/B testing is a growth tactic, but it's not always the best use of your resources.

There is absolutely no way to solve this problem. You'll always have a trade off to make when it comes to how you spend your resources and time. You shouldn't neglect that cost when deciding if a/b testing is necessary for your organization.

Btw, keep in mind, I admit we still do some a/b testing. It's just not an key component of our growth strategy.

<comment><USER14> I agree it might not always be the best use of resources, this depends on a wide array of factors within your business.

What I mean is that don't see it anywhere as a hidden cost in the true sense of that word as you know it takes resources and time, but more so about wrong priorities and business value.

As for the other points, they are so easy to solve:

>>Lost conversions

Trade off you need to make beforehand and need to be aware of with the end goal in mind which is to improve your main conversion metrics.

>>Performance

Most decent conversion platforms use fallbacks and also your way of setting up experiments makes a big difference.

>>Confusion

Letting other departments know what you're doing and what's running, might be harder in big corps though.

>>Speed

This goes for everything in a company I think (new feature/product releases, quick fix vs. proper solution etc.). I personally don't mind spending x amount of time to improve y % in conversion rate, so comes down to setting good KPIs and testing what really is important to your business.

>>Focus

Can be done with a proper conversion team that has all these roles covered (bit hard to set up but possible) or making the conversion department a client within the company. Also the teams mentioned work for other departments as well and improving conversion is a win across the board not just for the conversion team.</comment></comment></comment>


Report of the WHO-China Joint Mission on Coronavirus Disease 2019 (Covid-19) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-china-joint-mission-on-covid-19-final-report.pdf <comment><USER2> IMO the flagship items are:

\- The marginal case fatality rate is 0.7% in China, and 0.6% globally, and trending down [page 12, 13]

\- Death rate under 7 is 0%, under 40 is 0.2%, under 50 is 0.4%

\- Almost 55% of people are asymptomatic entirely and not counted in the fatality rate data due to lack of widespread systematic population testing

</comment><comment><USER3> Perhaps I'm mistaken but to the extent that I've been following the developments, it seems to me that practically all of the most insightful information we have about this outbreak has come from outside the WHO, who have been playing catch-up. The organization might end up being the virus's most prominent victim.</comment>


Programmer salary in mainland Europe? - <AUTHOR> I am an American programmer living in Southern California making around $100,000 USD per year. Pretty much your average experienced programmer salary, maybe even a little on the low side.
I have been applying for programming jobs in San Francisco and in Germany, the Netherlands, and other mainland European countries. I finally got an offer from a company in Austria but the salary was a lot lower than I was expecting, only 45,000 EUR (~$65,000 USD). This is even a "Senior" programmer position!
To put things in perspective, I also got an offer from a company in San Francisco that is a significant raise from my current salary, but that is to be expected given the current programming job market in SF.
I was expecting the pay to be worse in Europe, but not that worse. The company in Vienna insists that this is a fair salary for the region but I am finding this very hard to believe.
I'm not in this for the money at all, but I also don't want to sell myself short. Can anyone help me out with their experiences with programmer salary in mainland Europe? Should the disparity be this great? <comment><USER2> You could not compare US/EU pays. The tax system and the benefits vary widely.

For example in France: a salary of 50k€/year like me, you should add 30% of tax paid by the compagny you would have paid from your own salary in US.

This salary is brut. You could retire 20% of direct tax on it. So it give a ~3000€ net by month.

Benefits paid by tax: \- health insurance (70% rembursment for standard care like a flu, 100% for emergency or expensive care) \- retirements (vary in function of the employment status, but count 60% of the 10years best salaries) \- job insurance (6month to 80% of the previous salary, from memory, need to check)

All of this you have to pay from your US salary. If you want to compare a US salaty with an european one, you have to factor all the social benefits you would have to pay in US.

<comment><USER3> In the US typically the employer pays for your health insurance and it's not counted towards the salary number.

As for retirement, there is social security in the US, although not many people are happy to base their retirement plans on receiving social security checks. Whether the European retirement systems will fare better, the time will show.

I believe you have a point with respect to severance packages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Mainland Europe is a big place. (As is the United States, Japan, etc). There are huge, huge, huge disparities in income between e.g. programmers working finance in Paris and somebody cranking out back office code in Poland.

I have no specific knowledge about the market in Vienna, but find it easily within the realm of plausibility. You'll still be making a 50% premium to e.g. some fairly senior developers in the Midwest, and almost a 100% premium to common programming wages in Nagoya.

<comment><USER5> and Poland is not your target. I'ts quite sad, but and true.

Working as Python developer with 4 years of experience. Close to 23.000 eur(net), and used to think it's quite good, after this message it's no longer true. Thanks guys ;)

<comment><USER6> Same situation in Italy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm pretty sure that IBM Germany wouldn't pay you more either. Guess how shocking I found salaries during my first time in the US ;-) Also, even though taxes in CA are "high", taxes in Germany will prob. be a lot higher. I recently spoke to a Norwegian who just moved here. He couldn't believe that he has to pay more here than back home. >50% including social benefits etc. is standard for a single.

However, you have to take into account, that, as far as I can tell, this already includes quite a decent federal retirement package. Additional private retirement plans are getting standard here now, but up until quite recently, lots of people would be happy with their federal ones. My parents for instance never bought a private plan.

Depending on what you prefer, there can be more bang for the buck, or quality of life. For instance in my hometown Munich, rent might be higher than in any other German city but even for European standarts its a joke. You can easily live in the center for way under 1000 Euro per month if you're not to picky. You can prob. reach everything incl. work, city parks and even mountains without a car. In theory bike + train can get you anywhere. The crime rate is a LOT lower. The best beer in town costs about 50 cents per bottle. There are almost know bums on the streets. And so on...

As far as I can tell if you try to save money, the US is the better place to be a high demanded employee. If you want to enjoy life, maybe central Europe is better for you. Oh, and last but not least, don't expect to find a start up community, larger than a few dozen entrepreneurs.

<comment><USER8> > I'm pretty sure that IBM Germany wouldn't pay you more either.

Wrong guess, they do pay more. I worked for IBM R&D Germany right after graduation and my salary was more than 45k, even excluding overtime, which was paid extra.

As for Germany, there's also a gap in salary depending on the size of the company you work for. Generally, larger cooperations pay better than smaller ones, so if you're looking to make more money, go for the bigger players.

<comment><USER7> Of course, there a huge differences in salaries for the same work, even within a company. Anyway, I know some IBM Germany employees in development/project management who don't make 70k after >10 years of job experience. Do you have any data to share on how much your senior peers at IBM made? Even public German research labs pay their Phd students >38k after graduation, so your numbers don't surprise me so far.

And many employes don't get paid overtime. They officially have to take vacation, which again is usually not possible due to project pressure. Hence, many vacation days become void after deadlines.

I don't have any good data on this, just what I hear from my peers. So my post is as anecdotal as yours. However, if you look at the Heise report, my numbers are not so far off.

I second your last point, but thats not a German/European uniqueness, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In Amsterdam as a starter you can expect somewhere between €30k and €38k, depending on your skill set and company you're applying for. I think €45k for a senior position sounds about right, but this really depends a lot on where you're going to live: cost of living in for example London is much higher than somewhere in Spain.

As an indication for taxes: €45k before taxes would probably be around €30k after income taxes in the Netherlands.

<comment> tomh- I've seen financial companies offering around 40k for starting developers. I would think 30k is a bit low for a university graduate, most offers will be around 32k - 35k I guess. 45K euro for a senior dev sounds really low to me though!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I can concur that the pay sucks in France - ludicrously low compared to Australian rates (like, half!) and it's not like living expenses are lower, that's for sure. If you're only in it for the dollars, then avoid!

However, bonuses are (at least for me) much much lower working hours. Which means plenty of time for side projects.

<comment><USER7> I second this. "If you're only in it for the dollars, then avoid!"

The usual employe is expected to take all of his 6 weeks (in Germany the minimum is 4 but 6 is standard, in France I think its 8 weeks) of vacation even though there are lots of federal holidays and <40 hour weeks. Maybe you can even collect over hours for additional vacation. But don't expect to get paid for them, let alone 150%.

And yes French food is expensive. But com'on its French food!

<comment><USER11> That's untrue. In France high responsibility positions have a different status (called "cadre") and there is no such thing as RTT for them (although in very large companies they might happen to actually take them into account): there is practically no weekly limit and it's usually anywhere between 40 to 50 hours a week (known as the "you leave when your work is done"). Holidays are at least (and usually) 5 weeks.

<comment><USER12> This is not always true. I am a French software programmer, with the cadre status. I have 9 days of RTT. With the 25 paid holidays, I have almost 7 weeks of holidays / year (34 days).

As a cadre, I am not paid by the hour: I am paid to attain results ("you leave when your work is done"). If I can do it in 35 hours, great. If I need to work more, so be it. I often work 40-50 hours, but it's a choice. And I have relatively flexible hours, as long as the job is done.

Now, while the actual number of hours worked varies, and nobody keeps count of those hours... my employment contract still specifies that I am supposed to work 37,5 hours / week. Which is more than 35 hours. Which means I get 9 RTTs / year to "compensate" for working 2.5 hours more than I should (I work a lot more in reality).

Some cadres have contracts that specify they should work 39 hours / week, and they get 18 RTTs / year to compensate. Regardless of the actual hours worked.

Some companies have contracts that specify their cadres work 35 hours / week, and they get no RTTs... Even though they often work a lot more than that.

FWIW, I had 9 RTTs in my current and in my previous company. Both around 100-150 people.

(note: we should have 10 RTTs, but we lost one day due to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journ%C3%A9e_de_solidarit%C3%A9...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journ%C3%A9e_de_solidarit%C3%A9_envers_les_personnes_%C3%A2g%C3%A9es) )

<comment><USER11> Oh, I'm very late. Thanks for the information, I really thought it was not legally possible to have RTT as a cadre (a quick Google search proved me wrong and, as I see, you too).

So I guess, that's because there was a negotiation with your employer to work on a 37.5h per week basis and get 37.5 - 35 of compensating RTTs (hence the name, by the way).

I remember being paid on a 35h per week basis as a cadre a few years ago. I guess this is what led me to a broken conclusion.

BTW, I'm French too, enchanté.

<comment><USER12> You are not late, it's me who decided to comment 11 days after you posted ;)

I think it definitely depends on the company. Maybe I was "lucky" with my first two companies? (both SSIIs, with around 100-150 employees).

I got offered a job at a smaller company (a "PME" with less than 20 employees), and it did not include any RTTs... Which is one of the reasons I declined (since the compensation was not better anyway...). I think small companies have a special status re: RTTs, and do not need to give them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am a programmer living in Vienna (currently self employed, but I was an employee not that long ago).

45,000 EUR is above average programmer pay in Vienna (that is about the same as the highest offer I ever got here, for doing java enterprise stuff about a year ago).

Sounds about right.

However, as a contractor you can make significantly more (500-600 euros/day).

<comment><USER14> Hey, I am also living in Vienna (or at least close to it) and I want to get self employed as well - any tips how to start? (already have a few years of programming experience under my belt and soon a master in mathematics)

<comment><USER13> Send me an email! My address is in my HN user page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Salaries do vary significantly between different European countries. For example, salaries in Germany are much higher than in Spain or Portugal. Within a country you can also expect some variation depending on the city. I don't know about Austria in specific but I would expect higher than that.

To give you a point of comparison, in Amsterdam (The Netherlands), I've known of several people with a salary like that, take or give 5k, and around 2-3 years of experience.

Suggestions: Check glassdoor, payscale and those types of sites. Remember to check how much tax you're expected to pay, some countries in Europe have very high taxes. Finally, cost of living, especially property, is a big factor in how much your money will be worth.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm a developer living in Amsterdam. From what I see around (in job offers and my last two employments), the pay is around 50K EUR per year for a senior position.

In the last company I was working there were also developers getting 60K. But they had around 10 years of experience.

<comment><USER17> Sounds about right. My base salary, no benefits, would be about 58K a year if I worked full-time. This is in Rotterdam, where salaries are slightly lower than in Amsterdam.

<comment><USER18> Senior ASP.NET developer in Rotterdam (Creative Agency), BICT degree, 6 years experience, 42K

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> You're comparing to the one tiny part of the US that pays programmers more than almost anywhere in the world. If you applied for the same position in different cities across the US, you'd also not be offered the same salary you get in California.

</comment><comment><USER20> Heise, an IT publisher in Germany does regular surveys of IT salaries. See [http://www.heise.de/jobs/artikel/Wer-verdient-wie- viel-98184...](http://www.heise.de/jobs/artikel/Wer-verdient-wie- viel-981845.html?artikelseite=8;view=zoom;zoom=12)

<comment><USER7> Yeah, the German slashdot. Highly recommended if you want to get in touch with German IT - but don't expect to much ;-)

<comment><USER7> For those to lazy to fire up a translator: According to the heise.de statistic, the highest pay category for a software developer is "group/team leader" and will get you 67 800 Euro on average.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Hi! :)

I'm working in Poland (Python / Django / Java (in previous job)). 3 years of experience. My salary is ~ 10000$ / year. I've talk recently with friends who I've been studying with, and I earn quite nice comparing to them...

<comment><USER22> I would assume that you are either talking net income or you mistyped the number?

<comment><USER21> Yes - I'm talking about net income. I've a small mistake: ~ 10.000 Euro (not $) / year this is ~ 14.000$ / year.

<comment><USER22> Sorry to be inquisitive even further, I am not in Poland but my friend is thinking about moving there. Are you talking Warsaw here or a smaller town (Krakow, Wroclaw, Tricity area)?

<comment><USER21> I'm working in Krakow, but I know that salary in Warsaw can be much more higher.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> You need money to flourish like everyone else, but you say you're not in it for the money. Then what are you after?

Are you prepared to accept that Europe's socialism (taxes and regulation) are the cause of these low wages? Are you even open to asking yourself if this is true?

Incidentally, how did you choose "socialist_coder" as your username? Are you trying to be facetious by doing so, or are you serious?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not in it for the money as long as I can keep my current quality of life. I enjoy traveling, eating at nice restaurants, buying gadgets, etc.

I remember back when I used to make $65,000 I was not able to do all of those things. I had a lower quality of life.

I'm to the point now where I feel like all my monetary problems are solved. I don't want to go backwards, but I also don't think any additional salary increase is going to increase my happiness.

The reason I was applying for jobs in Europe was because I thought the social benefits outweigh the lower salary. I want to live in a society where there is a good social safety net and where there is less income inequality than in the United States. I was prepared for a lower salary but I was expecting about 20% lower, not 40%.

<comment><USER23> I just re-read pg's essay, "How to Make Wealth": <http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html>

Have you read this? I think there's plenty in it that might stretch your mind. Here are two paragraphs taken from his essay almost at random:

"I can remember believing, as a child, that if a few rich people had all the money, it left less for everyone else. Many people seem to continue to believe something like this well into adulthood. This fallacy is usually there in the background when you hear someone talking about how x percent of the population have y percent of the wealth. If you plan to start a startup, then whether you realize it or not, you're planning to disprove the Pie Fallacy."

...

"This is why so many of the best programmers are libertarians. In our world, you sink or swim, and there are no excuses. When those far removed from the creation of wealth-- undergraduates, reporters, politicians-- hear that the richest 5% of the people have half the total wealth, they tend to think injustice! An experienced programmer would be more likely to think is that all? The top 5% of programmers probably write 99% of the good software."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Working as experienced contractor in Belgium you can make between 500 and 650 euro's per day. Less experienced can go from 350 until 500 euro's per day.

As a foreigner working in Belgium and you incorporate in a tax beneficial country you make a decent wage.

If you are going to work as a salaried employee you will take a lot less. So contracting work can be more lucrative.

<comment><USER25> are you doing this? Whats your recommendation as for a country to incorporate in?

<comment><USER24> I'm a Belgian working in Belgium. So my only option is to pay Belgian Taxes. But with my incorporation I can optimize a little bit. But in the end I pay a lot of taxes ;)

But If I would go to work in Germany or any other Shengen country I could optimize better.

Now for an American you first need to get a work permit: [http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/234826/how_to_move_...](http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/234826/how_to_move_from_america_to_belgium.html?cat=37)

Then your options are open: all tax free places are possible to start your company. You can google for these places.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I can't comment on what the actual average salary for a programmer in Europe is, but you have to remember that you can't just convert straight from EUR to USD and compare the amounts. You have to consider the cost of living etc. in the country you are getting the offer from compared to the cost of living where you currently live.

<comment><USER27> Good point. For this, I would recommend Purchasing Power Parity. See the map here:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity>

The "2003" map may not be the freshest, but it gives a rough estimate. Relative to US:

      * Canada, Australia have 90%
      * Africa typically ranges from 20% to 30%. South africa is much better, often 40%.
      * Most of Asia is 20%, sometimes lower
      * Poland is 50%
      * UK, Germany, France are around 100%
      * Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Norway...) are 120% (!). Japan should be around 120% too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Depending on your skills, a "senior" developer in Berlin would earn around 45 to 60,000 € per year. If you're specializing in Ruby on Rails or Magento, for example, you would be paid higher. Finally, don't forget the additional 20% of social security fees that your employer would have to pay on top of your salary.

</comment><comment><USER29> California (and NYC) pay outsized salaries compared to everywhere else.

However, your US work ethic/hours/vacation is out of wack with what you'll see in Europe. You'll work a lot of fewer hours there in general.

Compare hours, days working vs off, etc compared to what people _Actually_ work in a california software company.

</comment><comment><USER8> > I'm not in this for the money at all

So what are you in for? Are you looking to live in Austria for personal reasons or is the new job scope intriguing?

If former is the case, maybe sticking to your current employer and telecommuting is an option? Or you could keep ties to the US and do contracting work remotely?

</comment><comment><USER30> Pay is generally a lot lower in Europe, compared to the most competitive market in the world for developer talent. Be sure, however, that you're both talking about the same things: the number before taxes, and try and get an idea of how much actual take home pay would be.

</comment><comment><USER31> Contract rates in London seem to be just shooting up. Two years ago £600/day was a "high" rate. Last year £700. This year several places are offering £850/day and I've heard rumours of £1000/day or more.

If you want to live in Austria, why not work in London and just commute ;-)

<comment><USER32> I had an offer of over £1000/day a few months back (it's was for a C++ lead dev at a firm no-one wants to work at).

<comment><USER33> I'm not sure how £1000/day even makes sense. Isn't that like £20000/month, which computes to ~$400K/year? What am I missing? Is it only part-time because of consulting?

<comment><USER32> It's was for an investment bank, full-time 6 month contract, they were looking for someone who was strong at multi-threading and networking, and could be a lead dev. That's a rare enough combination of skills.

<comment><USER33> When working this way, do you get to keep more or less of the money as compared with a "normal" position?

Well done anyway ;-) As a lead dev myself I totally agree that people strong with multi-threading and networking are rare.

<comment><USER32> I'm actually trying to bootstrap my startup, getting people waving wodges of money in front of me to do contracting work instead is really distracting :P

Typically you get to keep more (generally 73%-75% of the amount), but you'll also need an accountant to minimize your taxes and that'll cost you about a grand a year. But in most cases it's worth it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The rule of thumb is that programmer pay is crap outside of NYC and Silicon Valley.

</comment><comment><USER35> Developer in Paris here, 45K is about right. And this city is expensive, not as expensive as NYC, SF, or London, but definitely more than Barcelona.

Keep in mind the further south and east you go the lower the salaries.

</comment><comment><USER36> yeah in Spain the average salaries are quite a bit lower than most places but you can get around 45K if you have a couple of years of experience. Throw in low prices, benefits (extra tax free restaurant tickets, pension plan, health care) and in the case of Barcelona awesome weather and lot's of beaches and it becomes more of a lifestyle decision than a pure monetary one. Yeah you might make 60K+ in London but the taxes are higher the rent is over double and the food is 50% more expensive.

<comment><USER37> «45K if you have a couple of years of experience» LOL that's interesting because, you know, it's false :) replace «couple» with "more than 5 years" and I will begin to believe you.

It's true that in BCN and Madrid things are better, but not that much. And in London you can earn more than 60K per year.

Spain is near Poland in salaries, we have tons of people with CS degrees (which doesn't means that they are good at programming) that make the salary lower by offer/demand law.

To put in perspective: rent a flat (average in the south) 600 EUR/months, buy a car 10.000EUR/30.000EUR, buy a house 150.000 EUR. And that's the south, in BCN you can increase rent and house price nearly by 100%.

<comment><USER36> It's not that bad. I rent a 3 bedroom flat for about 850 eur and most of my co-workers rent for between 700 - 900 eur a month. Prices have come way down during the crisis :)

<comment><USER37> Absolutely true, my 3 bedroom flat rent in the south is now 450 EUR month ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> In Geneva, Switzerland, earning more than CHF 100,000 / year (ca. USD 110,000) as a programmer is not an exception, by far. Wages are rather high here, compared to the rest of mainland Europe. The cost of living is high, but overall Geneva is a good place to live. It is full of wealthy institutions, which makes it a advantageous place to work as well.

This has a two drawbacks however. First, it's not such a good thing for us programmers to have too many cash cows in one place. Indeed, too many employers of software engineers here are service companies that tend to neglect the good "explorer" mind set, resting on a more lucrative "milker" working style, and sometimes even relying on "cowboy" techniques to catch new clients. This is very disenchanting for engineers that cross their paths.

Another issue here is that you have within the same narrow space institutions with huge cultural distances. It is well known that Geneva has a bunch of international organizations, as well as banks and financial institutions. It is less known that some of the biggest tobacco industries have chosen this area to monitor their business, and that some health organizations have to deal with this neighborhood. If you are a sensible worker with values, all this will put you in trouble sooner or later, and maybe in very unexpected ways. Pragmatic programmers, beware of the cynics in pragmatism clothing!

This leads to my suggestion: think twice before you leave your friends and beloved ones in the hope of a better salary. There are plenty of reasons to move to other places or to explore the world, but this should not be the first one. Instead, concentrate on the good you can do with your skills, and the fun they can bring you.

</comment><comment><USER39> I'm not a programmer myself, but I do know about CS graduates working as 'IT consultants' in Germany doing actual programming work getting around 50-60k EUR/year, fresh out of college, _before_ bonuses.

to be noted, the salary variation in Germany is actually quite huge with Munich, Stuttgart, Hamburg (and some other high salary areas) being at the top. in some rural areas you might only get half the pay as in these metropolian areas.

</comment><comment><USER14> Here are statistics for germany:

[http://www.heise.de/jobs/artikel/Wer-verdient-wie- viel-98184...](http://www.heise.de/jobs/artikel/Wer-verdient-wie- viel-981845.html)

From my personal experience I can tell you that colleagues at the company I previously worked for in Vienna, Austria made about 42 k / year with a several years of experience and a masters in computer science. But pay was always an issue there.

</comment><comment><USER40> It really varies a lot in my personal experience - in the UK/ROI salaries are much higher than for senior roles, salary basically spans from 45-50K to 80-90K euros, but contracting you can easily make much more than that. In Switzerland you get good deals, but if you cross the border to Italy you go back to figures similar to the one you mention for Austria.

</comment><comment><USER41> I can only speak about France. In Paris you could expect maybe a little bit more than in Vienna, but it vastly depends on the company of course (small or large).

What you need to know if you get an offer in France :

Official working hours are 35 hours per week, and ~7 weeks of holidays, but in small companies expect to work much more than 35 hours (and don't expect to be pay for the extra time).

Quoted salaries are vast fantasies, not actually tie to any sort of reality. Or, more precisely, born out of the obfuscation dreams of some bureaucrats.

A 45k "brut" salary means :

\- you get ~35k ("net" salary), on which you still need to pay income tax at the end of the year,

\- your employer pays ~30k of "social contributions" which pays for healthcare, retirement, unemployment insurance (if you are fired you keep getting a large chunk of your salary for a while), and other stuff like URSAAF, which I'm yet to figure out the purpose.

So that put the total at ~65k, but you don't see much of it.

</comment><comment><USER37> In Spain you can find net salaries from 800€/month to 3000€/month (if we forget about big banks, and top notch developers in Madrid and Barcelona).

Yeah, we have substandard salaries and we are not that crappy. This could be the reason why many London based companies are installing here their dev shops.

I work for one of them :)

</comment><comment><USER42> In Madrid (Spain), an engineer with 10 years of experience in a technical role can expect an average of 55k€ per year, before a 25% tax cut. Similar (or a bit lower) for a programmer. I won't call it a crappy salary. You can make a pretty decent living with that. Welcome to southern Europe!

<comment><USER37> 55k€ - 25% = 41250€ = 3437,5 EUR/month... after 10 years, in Madrid, which is expensive for Spain.

More or less in the range I told in my comment :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'm from Vienna, I would say it's quite average. To calculate taxes and to put it into perspective you can use this online-calculator of the federal ministry of finance: [http://www.bmf.gv.at/service/anwend/steuerberech/bruttonetto...](http://www.bmf.gv.at/service/anwend/steuerberech/bruttonetto/_start.htm)

Comparing salaries in europe is quite difficult, in Austria, for 45,000 €, your employer have to pay about 14,000 € taxes additionally which you don't see on your pay slip, so the employer is spending in your case about 60,000 €. And you have 25 holidays a year and lots of public holidays [http://english.bmf.gv.at/Ministry/PublicHolidaysinAustria.ht...](http://english.bmf.gv.at/Ministry/PublicHolidaysinAustria.htm) ;-)

</comment><comment><USER44> There are a lot of variables to computing salary. What kind of industry are you in? What kind of technology are you working with?

As others have already mentioned, Europe is a broad spectrum. Salaries in UK and Scandinavian countries is about comparable to US. When you move south and east from here, expect to see a drop in salaries. On the other hand, living expenses tend to follow that trend as well.

Regardless of salary, do your self a favor and get in contact with a union in the country you're moving to. They will know what salary to expect and they can help you with a lot of legal things. I don't know specifically about Austria, but in Scandinavia, unions have considerable political influence.

</comment><comment><USER45> Your best bet is to go for the fiscal havens in Europe: Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Swiss. They have really LOWER taxes and banks pay VERY well.

As a graduate and competent C# developer you can easily get 65kEUR+ per year + car + meal vouchers working for a service company in Luxembourg. That's a bit more than 3500EUR/month in your pocket with pension + health insurance + unemployment etc paid for. Banks pay MUCH more than that. And European institutions pay about 5kEUR/month net with even better pension/health plan/etc.

It's 40 hours/week in Luxembourg and 25 days of paid holiday. I have yet to experience unpaid overtime.

<comment><USER46> Hi R4cOOn! I've a question about work market in Luxembourg - can I send you an e-mail? (My mail: email@example.com - please send me your address)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Dont forget to factor in the welfare and pension differences between EU and USA. I Work in Norway and people in our wider group in the USA get about 20% more salary and a much much cheaper cost of living. That said, I get real universal healthcare, excellent working conditions and employee rights, a state pension and a company pension and good working hours. Dont be too worried about getting paid less in Europe.

</comment><comment><USER48> It's interesting to see the salary in different countries. I'm starting in a junior developer position in Norway with a salary of €56k/year ($82k/year). However, we have reasonably heavy taxes and cost of living. Another important aspect is that our currency is crazy strong right now. Just 10 months back it would have been about $65k/year.

</comment><comment><USER49> I'm a developer in Stockholm, Sweden. Making around $72-75K a year. Pretty average salary around here, I think?

<comment><USER7> How much do you get after taxes?

<comment><USER49> Around $55K I guess, maybe a little less.

<comment><USER7> Thanks.

I agree that there are so many things you can hardly put a prize on. Heck, I'm sure for many people living close to Christiania in Kopenhagen is a quality of life they would miss elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I'm a senior developer in Salzburg, Austria (about a 1 hour drive from Munich). 50400 Euros before taxes, which means I'm only taking home 31870 a year. No matter how you look at it, Europe rewards lazy people and punishes the ones doing the work. I'd stay in California, if I had a chance.

</comment><comment><USER51> €45K = $65K = £39K

In my eyes that IS a really good salary. I earn £36K (€39K) with 6 years of experience in London.

It's certainly enough to have a quality of life in the region better than most. Personally I think you're lucky to get the opportunity to travel and experience another lifestyle.

<comment><USER40> dude, you should be making _way_ more than that - in Ireland (not even dublin) senior (perm) positions are going up to €70K

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> you have to take into account that cost of living will not be anywhere near sf cost of living in germany or austria.

i cant say anything about austria but in germany 36-40k€ would be a good starting salary for someone with a Diplom or M.Sc. straight out of college.

</comment><comment><USER53> I'm working as Rails programming for a new startup in Madrid and I'm earning 40,000 EUR working as Senior. I think you can expect higher salaries in other countries like Germany, Netherlands and Nordic countries

</comment><comment><USER3> Since you are thinking of German-speaking countries, consider Switzerland. The pay is better than in Silicon Valley, and the taxes (in Zurich at least) are lower.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm trying to stay in the video game industry, and to my knowledge there aren't many video game companies in Switzerland, but I am going to check now. Thanks for the tip!

<comment><USER54> Look up CCP in Iceland, they're hiring for positions in Reykjavik, Atlanta and Shanghai.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> You can find that salary for a "senior" position in Utah as well. California salaries are much higher than the average.

</comment><comment><USER56> I'm a programmer from Russia, Moscow. My salary is ~$3000USD per month, I think its average picture.

<comment><USER57> $3K is way above average in Moscow, and Moscow salaries are much bigger than anywhere else in Russia. To give a comparison, a salary of $1K per month is considered above average in most of the Russian cities, except for 2-4 largest ones.

<comment><USER58> It's above average if you're not software developer or you have no experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> guys, <http://www.worldsalaries.org/computerprogrammer.shtml>

US has the highest income in the world for programmers. The only european country close to US is UK, everything else is at least 50% less.

</comment><comment><USER57> What about Greece? Is, for example, 2000 EUR per month net a decent salary there?

<comment><USER60> That's a huge salary for Greece, believe me :)

<comment><USER37> In Spain/Greece most salaries for young people are 1000€/600€ month.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> I made around 45K with 2 years experience at a big company in Hamburg, Germany.

</comment><comment><USER25> In Paris, its right on target

</comment><comment><USER62> Oh man.

Don't make me start on South African salaries. You'll cry.

</comment><comment><USER63> America just is the place to be. JUST FACE IT, europe sucks. They should nuke it.</comment>


Internal Documents: Samsung Wants To Abandon Android - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/internal-documents-samsung-wants-to-abandon-android-2014-4?

<comment><USER2> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7579614](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7579614)</comment>


Why self-driving cars are not going to happen - <AUTHOR> https://yinwang0.wordpress.com/2016/03/22/self-driving-cars/ <comment><USER2> Human drivers can feel safe around other cars because of mutually assured destruction. You are both afraid of dying if you make a significant mistake.

Self-driving cars will never have this fear holding them back from making mistakes. You could argue there is actually an incentive to let them crash once in awhile, because the valuable real world data will be phoned home and used to improve the product for the small price of a human life.

Once corruption sets in down the road, cars with autopilot capabilities will enable easy kidnapping and assassination. Simply activate backdoor remote piloting and crash the target's car (or the self-driving taxi they're in) into a tree at 70 mph, or lock the doors and drive to a pickup location to complete the kidnapping.

Driving in a traditional car wouldn't protect the target, because a group with ubiquitous optional remote control over self-driving cars could also force surrounding cars to enter kamikaze mode and ram the target off the road.

Governments will demand some kind of backdoor like this at some point, and then we have to trust they'll never abuse it (lol) and that no third parties will ever be able to hack it remotely.

Even if you think the government is your friend, the first worm using a remote code execution exploit that hops from car to car via Bluetooth and activates its payload on a specific date will be able to kill tens of millions of people.

<comment> nommm-nommm I am a human driver. I do not feel safe around other cars.

<comment><USER3> I am also human driver and I feel safer around "dumb" cars. I don't ever intend to ride a self driving car, and will do my best to avoid being near one.

Aside from being vulnerable to malicious actors, self-driving cars make "cold- hearted" mistakes that don't make sense; mistakes that humans would never make. Sure, the total number of mistakes they make will be lower than the equivalent number of accidents caused by humans. However, having human life lost to the type of mistakes self-driven cars make is, in my opinion, an unacceptable price to pay.

If I must loose my life to a car-related indecent, I want the it to be caused by a human, and not some quirk or edge-case in an algorithm or neural net.

<comment><USER4> As someone almost killed this evening while driving home from the Thanksgiving holiday weekend by a driver texting and not paying attention behind me at highway speeds (with my wife and newborn daughter in the car), I welcome the cold, calculating embrace of self driving cars with open arms.

Edit: The driver ended up impacting a semi trailer that had been in front of us, with me leaving the lane for the safety of the grassy interstate median.

<comment><USER3> Firstly, I'm glad you and your family were not harmed.

I do not in any way mean for this to be offensive or disrespectful, but would you still welcome self-driving cars had this incident been caused by a malfunctioning self-driving car as apposed to a reckless driver?

My point is that self-driving cars lack the common sense that humans have. A human would immediately halt if they hear a child scream near their car, a car would continue moving along as if nothing is happening if it isn't designed or trained to detect screams.

Until machines gain sensory and cognitive capabilities that exceed ours, and a working comprehension of human values, I maintain my stance regarding this issue.

<comment><USER5> > A human would immediately halt if they hear a child scream near their car, a > car would continue moving along as if nothing is happening if it isn't > designed or trained to detect screams.

I don't know to what extent they use sound as an input (makes sense that they'd do, given horns). But for what I've seen, self-driving cars are much better than humans at detecting pedestrians in their vicinity, including cases in which a child can't actually be seen by a human driver and he happens not to be screaming.

<comment><USER3> Machines are much better than humans at detecting pedestrians, but only in situations they are specifically designed or trained for. If a machine finds itself in an unfamiliar or unknown settings (or if its sensors fail in a way not accounted for in the design), it will fail catastrophically. A human will not.

Hell, machines tend to fail even if the setting varies slightly from what they are designed for; just see the numerous ways self-driven machines failed recently for examples.

Machines must gain sensory and cognitive capabilities that exceed ours and a working comprehension of human values for me to trust them.

<comment><USER5> > but only in situations they are specifically designed or trained for

Where are you getting this from? An obstacle in the LIDAR is an obstacle, there's no common-sense or training needed for the car to know that.

> the numerous ways self-driven machines failed recently

I can only think of the Tesla crash, Tesla cars being notorious for trying to work around the need of LIDAR or similar (being deemed too expensive). What are the other, numerous examples?

> If a machine finds itself in an unfamiliar or unknown settings (or if its > sensors fail in a way not accounted for in the design), it will fail > catastrophically. A human will not.

Fail catastrophically how? Worst-case scenario for a well-designed car in a situation it can't understand is to park itself and refuse to go on unassisted. There's no neeed for general AI to implement such a behavior.

<comment><USER3> >An obstacle in the LIDAR is an obstacle, there's no common-sense or training needed for the car to know that.

>Worst-case scenario for a well-designed car in a situation it can't understand is to park itself and refuse to go on unassisted.

All these are false positives. What I object to are the costs of false negatives; A situation where the car mis-recognizes an abnormal situation as normal, and then proceeds to act on it's failed understanding.

The Tesla is a good example of this; the car failed to recognize the obstacle in front of it and acted accordingly (namely, crashing full speed into the object). Regardless of the underlying reason, a machine did not recognize it was in an unknown setting, and thus failed to react correctly. A human, on the other hand, notices, and will generally use what capabilities they possess to at least attempt to handle the situation safely.

I do acknowledge that self-driving cars will likely be statistically safer, but until these cars completely exceed the all the capabilities of human drivers, I refuse to trust them. Regardless of statistics.

<comment><USER6> >The Tesla is a good example of this

A car without LIDAR, only relying on camera.

>A human, on the other hand, notices

The camera didn't even doubt that there wasn't an obstacle in its path due to how it camouflaged against the background. I doubt the human would've seen it.

And you're speaking of a prototype hacked on a car barely prepared for self- driving situations (again, no LIDAR and early iteration) and being used improperly.

You're not making a good argument here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Disappointed that this article even made it to hacker news.

Problem#2: "Liability Issues" doesn't make sense. Geico, Allstate and other insurance companies can easily provide coverage. In fact the insurance gets easier with self-driving cars. Premium might go up or down based on the technology used. But coverage is very much doable.

Driving is so monotonous,that it is a perfect "killer app" for computer vision and cognitive computing.

</comment><comment><USER8> The two reasons offered are the complexity of algorithms and the liability.

I don't think these reasons are valid. For the complexity, I would be really surprised if self-driving car programmers wouldn't consider dangers from objects falling from other cars. In fact, this is relatively easy to consider.

The other one is the liability. One explanation for ML software was that if "regular" software is about data and algorithm, the ML software is about data, model and algorithm. The idea is that algorithm in ML case is somewhat generic, and a lot of customization comes from learned model. In case of liability I think it's quite possible that a judge would make a decision basing on analysis of the model - if the model is "reasonable", then the decision based on that model could be too.

</comment><comment><USER9> And this new article, about self-driving trucks _next week_ in Ohio has been posted to HN [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/self-driving-trucks-will-hit- the...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/self-driving-trucks-will-hit-the-road-in- ohio/)

</comment><comment><USER10> As you're saying it can't be done, just don't get in the way of the guys actually getting it done.

The mattress is a nice example of a novel problem, but a remote edge-case. Being safe from all badly secured loads is not a prerequesite for self-driving cars -- they merely need to be more safe _on balance_ than the mass of human drivers before they start taking over. I suspect that even if self-driving- cars all did the worst possible thing and tailgated all badly secured loads, the overall safety improvement would still be a net positive.

This prediction will suffer the same fate of other naysaying predictions by experts (never fly, never get to the moon, never know what a star is made of, etc., etc,., etc.....).

</comment><comment><USER11> I would agree that the ability of computers to identify novel problems and hazards (such as a falling mattress) will continue to be inferior to that of humans for a long time.

However identification of a novel problem and the anticipation that it will be a harzard in the near future is a trait that is only needed if your reaction time is too slow.

A self driving cars reaction time will be fast enough that it doesn't need to anticipate anything. It will identify the the velocity of objects (it does not need to know what the object is) in front of it within in milliseconds of it becoming a harzard and decide on the correct corrective manouever to avoid it within milliseconds again.

<comment><USER12> In addition even assuming that computers will not be as good at novel situations than humans (I don't agree with this, but I'll assume it for the purpose of this argument), we also need to assume that (damage prevented by himan's reactions to novel situations) > (damage caused by humans failing in non-novel situations), for the authors argument to work. I don't think this is evident st all, and if asked to pick, I would overwhelmingly favor the opposite.

Further, for self driving cars, the moment something novel happens to them, it won't be novel to pretty much every self driving car running on the same software anymore (and assuming some basic data sharing between manufacturers, probably to all self driving cars). So a mattress falling is a novel situation for every driver the first time it happens to each individual driver. It's a novel situation for self driving cars only the first time it happens to any one of the self driving cars sharing the same model.

The liability issue is not very useful. We would have to change laws slightly, but the insurance for self driving cars will be far more predictable, and the likes of Geico will probably give the owners of self driving cars better insurance than they would owners of human driven cars, because their safety record would be better.

In fact, I bet if self driven cars come with the ability to also be driven by a human, once they're a little established, the ones that do have this feature will be far more expensive dive to insure than the ones that are purely self driven.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I feel like issue number one is being given the naturalistic fallacy treatment. If animals can react to falling objects, so can computer models. There's nothing magical about instincts.

</comment><comment><USER14> Very good points. Liability is an issue that has not been played out yet in any meaningful way.

I think driving cars will happen soon simple because the ROI is too great to ignore.

It doesn't have to happen on a grand scale. It could start with small things like pizza delivery or package delivery.

</comment><comment><USER15> This writer sure does have a high opinion of human cognition and hiw it applues to driving. In Los Angeles, I've seen people drive worse than trained monkeys.

The problem with human drivers is that a lot of them maje idiotic mistakes a self-driving car wouldn't. Two weeks ago I saw a guy driving the wrong way down a one way street and he continued past me without realizing it.

</comment><comment><USER16> It'll happen. It'll happen soon.

</comment><comment><USER17> Its a trillion dollar industry it'll happen sooner or later.

<comment><USER18> by the same token ... it will put a lot of people out of work... expect civil unrest...

<comment><USER5> Hey, no worries, the president-elect will negotiate the best deals with the robots.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Cute [http://i.imgur.com/duI91L6.png](http://i.imgur.com/duI91L6.png)

</comment><comment><USER20> Strong opinions and weak arguments.

</comment><comment><USER21> Surely you are joking</comment>


The first Swift conference worldwide (Feb 6th, Paris) - <AUTHOR> http://www.dotswift.io <comment><USER2> For a formative language, it would be wise for Apple to send a representative and for dotSwift to get Apple officially represented. I am sure the organizers understand this, but this would also mean a cultural departure for Apple.

<comment><USER3> 'Wise' seems a bit over the top. Generous and positive spirited might be a better way to characterize it.

I am curious what such a representative could offer that would not be better in a produced video distributed by Apple?

<comment><USER4> They could have two-way conversations with developers who are using and learning Swift.

<comment><USER5> They are active, communicative and responsive on the dev forums.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Shoot me an e-mail about having one of our instructors speak if you'd like, we launched the first in person Swift class ever in early July! zach (at) nycda (dot) com

</comment><comment><USER7> This looks interesting. How long are the super early-bird tickets open for?

<comment><AUTHOR> Until they sell out, we have a fixed number of tickets in each price category

<comment><USER7> Darn. I'll keep my fingers crossed they don't sell out until I get a little more cash on hand and can buy one then! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I can do a talk about OpenStack Swift if they need speakers ;)

</comment><comment><USER9> When the speakers will be announced?

<comment><AUTHOR> We should have the first announced in the next few weeks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can't wait!!!!!!!!</comment>