Stray Dogs Master Complex Moscow Subway System (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://abcnews.go.com/International/Technology/stray-dogs-master-complex-moscow-subway-system/story?id=10145833#.UX7lveJI47z <comment><USER2> This raises all kinds of cognitive questions. How do the dogs figure out how to achieve their goals using the subways? Is it trial-and-error, resulting in a step-by-step procedure that is followed by rote? Or do they form some kind of a mental model of the subway system? In the former case, a dog would be completely lost if a train fails to show, but in the latter, they might be able to adapt.

<comment><USER3> They form a mental model, called a cognitive map [1]. This is classic cognitive science, discovered by Tolman's famous 1940's experiments on rats in mazes [2]. The experimantal setup is simple yet brilliant. He allowed rats to learn a path from a fixed starting location to a fixed endpoint with food. He then changed their starting location, and the rats would immediately adapt their path, showing that they had learned a mental map rather than simple input/output responses.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_map>

[2] [http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/tolman.htm#T...](http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/tolman.htm#Theory)

<comment><USER2> That's wonderfully informative stuff; thanks for posting.

BTW, I notice, in the WP article:

> In a review by Bennett[8] it is argued that there are no clear evidence for > cognitive maps in non-human animals (i.e. cognitive map according to > Tolman's definition). This argument is based on analyses of studies where it > has been found that simpler explanations can account for experimental > results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've seen this a couple times. Honestly, it's not surprising so much as it's cool.

Subways are fairly predictable and they have a natural rhythm to them, animals can deal to deal with this sort of system.

We should be designing more user experiences that are so natural and predictable, even dogs can take advantage.

<comment><USER5> I've never noticed dog riding a train in the moscow subway. I could have pay not enough attention though.

<comment><USER6> I love the thought of someone so focused on a book, phone, or conversation with a friend that they didn't notice they were sitting opposite a dog on the subway. It could be a comic in The New Yorker.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> All anecdotal. Wish they would gps-tag a dog and proof it's commuting between a small set of stations regularly visiting the same stations. I mean, using the train to just get away from where you are would already be cool, but that's not the author's claim.

<comment><USER8> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casper_(cat)> Heres a similar ca story thats not anecdotal.

I'm not at all surprised by the story growing up with working dogs on a rural farm. Dogs would constantly surprise you with the understanding of the world around them, often better than people you would work along side. One dog we had knew the locations of buildings by name, and you could tell it the speed to get there and wait for you (I think via the urgency in your voice). You could say "met at the house" and it would turn and head straight back to home, or "go to the kennels", it'd shoot off and wait for there etc.. (Collies BTW, various other breeds we had struggled with simple things like avoiding running head first into barns if you called their name out loud while they ran LOL).

Whats more fascinating to me is this Boing Boing piece on baboons raising pet dogs <http://boingboing.net/2013/04/26/baboons-raise-pet-dogs.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Transit police here would run down the dog and taze it for not paying the $2.75 fare, and being ambivalent to their authoritanT

</comment><comment><USER10> Related, I've seen more than a couple of Bucharest stray-dogs which actually learned how to use the pedestrians' crosswalks, i.e. only crossing the street when the light was green etc. There was even a promo made by our local traffic police that was based on this: [http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gCQ7qZ1pR...](http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gCQ7qZ1pR7oyn21Oin7FjDLQJcTg?docId=CNG.7a1f92947db32cf12283434ba615941a.a1)

Later Edit: And the dogs weren't actually mimicking the behavior of the people waiting for the green light to turn on, because even when the light was red there were a couple of people crossing the street but the dog wouldn't follow them.

</comment><comment><USER11> I have heard some amazing stories about dogs, this one is pretty good.

In my home town, a dog escaped and went 7.5 miles to the Tim Hortons where everyday it was getting a TimBit. I was super impressed, before reading that I didnt think any dog liked timbits...

My brothers doberman is really intelligent. She can figure out how to get any piece of food no matter where you put it. She will move furniture to try and climb up and can be absolutely relentless. She has escaped on the leash a couple of times during walks and always ends up on the front porch no matter where she escapes. Dogs are like humans, driven by motivation.

</comment><comment><USER12> This sure is a great story, but when is it ever going to die? I've seen this story revolve around and around on the Internet so may times. By now, I'm actually just more surprised that some people haven't read it.

<comment><USER13> its a big internet

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Now I feel quite stupid that I got _pretty_ lost and overwhelmed in the Moscow Subway System when using it the first time. I had a printout of the map, don't speak/read/understand the language and had no internet connection. I think the dogs win this one.

</comment><comment><USER15> When I first heard it ages ago I was dubious. The fact this is the only story since then makes me pretty sure it is a load of BS.

Seriously "Author Eugene Linden, who has been writing about animal intelligence for 40 years"

Pretty sure Eugene Linden has zero training in animal intelligence and is just a journalist.

Why can't people just be happy with the fact non humans are just that, not humans please stop trying to anthropomorphism them.

<comment> guard-of-terra "training in animal intelligence" sounds impressive.

I believe this is the guy: <http://www.eugenelinden.com/index.html> He actually wrote an awful lot of books.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is 3 years old...

<comment><USER17> What's your point, that people should not read content that's over a month old?

<comment><USER16> On a site with "News" in its name, you'd expect articles to be at least somewhat timely. Otherwise, we could all just start posting random wikipedia articles or other things we happen to have just discovered ourselves, regardless of whether they already made the rounds months or years ago.

This was a great article - I read it when it came out - three years ago. Unless there's an update, it's worth noting that this is a three-year-old post.

<comment><USER17> You read it when it came out, but keep in mind that not everyone is exposed to the same content, due to any number of reasons. The site is designed to allow its users to control the visibility of posts - if its interesting to others and you've read it, skip over it.

<comment><USER16> Yes, but the site has significant flaws when it comes to handling old content regurgitated on other sites. Which is why it's relevant to point out how old a post is - because the site itself doesn't.

In this case, this is essentially a repost of something PG put up three years ago: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1071429>

It's simply not detected because it's in a different publication on a different URL. If the dupe system was more "effective" it wouldn't even show up, as it's exactly the kind of repost that is intended to catch.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


If your company requires you to work nights and weekends, your company is broken - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/jasonfried/status/1209115637148274690 <comment><USER2> Or should be compelled to pay double time for anything over 40 hours. No excuses. Management need to learn how to actually manage. I'm looking at you games industry. Yeah I'll single you out but there are plenty of other examples. Theyre the ones who are angry reading this as they are repulsed by the waste of time.

Lets explore a few aspects, then...

If you're working more than 40 hours your "real world" suddenly involves much less community involvement. Your family has less time together. Interests other than work suffer. You probably don't have any civic involvement. Probably spending a lot of time in "junk time" activities. Sport/exercise is likely limited to squeazing in lunch time or other oddball times. A bunch of long term issues are likely chasing you even without your knowledge.

Everyone is different, I get it. Just don't think that 80 hour week doesn't have long term impacts. Hopefully the exchange is worthwhile to you. It had better be, you'll be paying 2x somehow in some way. And someone will receive the benefit of your lost time.</comment>


Free Tool for Workflow Management - <AUTHOR> https://craft.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> there`re integrations with JIRA and TFS, so it works good for project management between different teams. well, for more then 50 users it is paid, but for small projects as mine it suits perfectly!

<comment><USER2> Curious if it is your project.</comment></comment>


Switzerland: Say no to a surveillance state - <AUTHOR> http://buepf.ch

<comment><USER2> You might want to see the discussions in the following thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6007255](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6007255)

To avoid redundancy.

</comment><comment><USER3> It took me a while to notice the Chrome bar that said this was translated from German. Wow, I wouldn't have thought so otherwise, it's impeccable.

When's the deadline for this?

</comment><comment><USER4> It's a pity that foreigners who live for a long time in Switzerland cannot be part of this...

<comment><USER5> If you live in Switzerland legally, you are allowed to sign the petition.

<comment><USER4> really? this is great! thanks for the info. Do you have any link by hand which defines these rules? (i.e. what kind of permit do I have to have, does it differ from canton to canton? ...)

<comment><USER5> No links to hand I'm afraid, but I'm pretty sure that it's anything more permanent than a tourist visa. Don't think it varies by canton. I'll try and remember to dig about/ask my wife (sorry, just about to go to work..)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well, today I learned that a google search for 'BUPF' is not equivalent to 'BÜPF'

(for your convenience: [https://www.google.com/search?q=B%C3%9CPF&oq=B%C3%9CPF&aqs=c...](https://www.google.com/search?q=B%C3%9CPF&oq=B%C3%9CPF&aqs=chrome.0.57j0l3j62.254j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8))

According to this article: [http://netzpolitik.gruene.ch/nach-den-usa-nun-die- schweiz-gr...](http://netzpolitik.gruene.ch/nach-den-usa-nun-die-schweiz- grune-netzpolitikerinnen-gegen-bupf-und-ndg/)

The law in question has been updated to retain data for 12 months instead of 6 and authorizes the government to install Trojan type programs. Does anyone have more info on the Trojan type programs proposed?

<comment><USER7> Well, you could try to search for BUEPF instead.

In German when you cannot write the umlaut, an e gets added to the letter that should have the umlaut.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you have any family, friends, business colleagues in Switzerland, please forward this information / petition!

EDIT: This is NOT like a whitehouse.gov petition! This one has a very real effect, so DO IT!

EDIT 2: If anybody is on Slashdot or Reddit: please post about it there as well. Let's show them what the network effect is!

<comment><AUTHOR> I still don't see a post on Slashdot and/or Reddit!

If you do, please post a the link here. If you don't, please post if you have an account there. Democracy says hi and thanks!

<comment><USER5> und jetzt hier: [http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1hw3n1/stop_the_su...](http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1hw3n1/stop_the_surveillance_state_in_switzerland_swiss/)

(Excuse the assumption you speak german! ;) )

<comment><AUTHOR> Great, thanks!

Everybody, vote that Reddit post up!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to fund a small idea - <AUTHOR>

I'm a fairly experienced software engineer. I have a small hardware idea that I know I can execute really well on and would be very well received by the small community that would use it. I'm fairly certain this product won't expand the existing market, just solve a really tough problem this market has been trying to crack for a while.
The lifetime value of this product, given the market, is reasonably $10 million dollars in the US. I'm being very stingy with my estimate, but this market would never, even globally, crack $100 million (probably not even 50). I know this is exactly the kind of thing VCs AREN'T looking for. Let's say I need an initial 100k to get going, and no more than 500k over the lifetime of the company. What are my options how can I get this kind of money for such a small idea?
tldr; How do you raise a small amount of money for a small payout? <comment><USER2> Look at places like Kickstarter, Indigogo, Lending Club, and of course still apply to Y Combinator.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was wondering about Y Combinator. Do think they're going to be interested in an idea that is so limited?

<comment><USER3> The more important concern is: can this work well starting off? Can you make it through those first three years, and raise additional funding as needed? If you have a strong team and reasonable initial plan, then they'll believe you can figure the rest out with time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> use your own money. that's how.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't have a spare $100k</comment></comment>


Using Techstars To Accelerate Success With Erica Douglass - <AUTHOR> http://foolishadventure.com/audio/perseverance-and-building-on-your-success-with-erica-douglass-fa167/

<comment><USER2> This was cool look inside Techstars and why funded founders would choose an accelerator.</comment>


Is developer compensation becoming bimodal? - <AUTHOR> http://danluu.com/bimodal-compensation/ <comment><USER2> I teach computer science at a well-known, large and mediocre university.

I see bimodal grade distributions all the time. The more technical a subject, the more bimodal the grades.

In fluff subjects like software engineering where grading relates to essay writing and group projects, grade distribution tends to be gaussian. OTOH in technical subjects where I grade by automated test suits, basically students fail almost all tests or pass almost all tests.

These grade distributions have been constant, regardless of university, regardless of who teaches the course.

There really is a sharp threshold that separates those who get programming from those who don't. And those who get programming really are _a lot_ more productive than those who don't get it. Moreover, once you get it, learning further parts of CS (e.g. new algorithms, new programming languages, new OSes etc) is much easier then if you don't get it, and learning new things makes you even more powerful. The mastery of doing great things is joyful and makes you want to learn more. The frustration of failure drives you away from the subject.

I find it plausible that grade distributions turn into similar income distributions later in life.

<comment><USER3> Actually doesn't your experience hint at the opposite trend in the working sector?

If everyone (roughly) either fails programming, or aces it, then the working professionals are the ones who passed AND excelled.

<comment> jon-wood Oh if only that were true.

I've worked with people in the past who know just enough to hack together a front end on top of a simple database, but who would completely fall apart when presented with anything more complex than that. These are the sort of people who when asked to build an internationalised website "solve" the problem by copying an entire PHP application into directories called "english" and "german" and then proceed to change the text in the German version.

<comment><USER4> There's that XKCD about asking how novice users solve computer problems. "I save the video to iCloud, then copy the url into this video downloader, then put the download into this transcription site, then upload that to..."

I think this is a big chunk of explaining how bad programming goes, too. It's not "too incompetent to build a thing", it's "incompetent enough that everything runs on voodoo and evil".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I suspect the bimodal distribution for programming and law have the same explanation: a group of highly profitable firms targeting a subset of the overall industry have imposed a de facto hiring floor that limits supply, raising wages.[1]

Why is Cravath raising salaries while 85% of legal grads are taking jobs making half or less of its old salary scale? Because it has a hiring floor. It won't hire lawyers that aren't at least one standard deviation, if not more, from the mean.[2] Their demand is high--each lawyer generates on average $1.3 million in revenue--and supply is limited to the 10-15% of the market that meets the hiring filter.

I suspect the same is true in the tech industry. Google, Facebook, etc. don't hire candidates who can "do the job." Like in law, there is this idea that it's important not just to have competent programmers, but programmers who are smarter than your competitors' programmers. These firms limit their pool of hires to those who, by their metrics, are one or even two standard deviations away from the mean.[3]

Meanwhile, everyone else is willing to hire the median programmer. They can do the job, and there isn't the same idea in that segment that it's worth paying much more to have people who can not only do the job, but do it faster/better than your competition.

[1] How this group of highly profitable firms continues to exist despite market competition is outside the scope of this post.

[2] Cravath measures that as a function of law school rank and class rank. No comment on the validity of this model.

[3] Again, no comment on whether going to CMU and acing interview puzzles makes you a top programmer. What matters is that these firms think it does.

<comment><USER6> Most of the comments seem to be focusing on the supply side. I agree the demand side is probably the greater factor.

<comment><USER7> Yes, I agree.

The web-scale software segment is at a unique point in time where it is still in an "arms race" mode of growth for the best employees between its competitors AND making tremendous profits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If there's a pronounced bimodal distribution, it seems like the biggest driver of it would be the lumping of various programmer specialties into one giant bucket. It seems like the 2 sub-buckets would be:

1) $100k or less: backoffice programmers where software itself is not the product sold. Also known as enterprisey/LOB/CRUD developers working outside Silicon Valley. (E.g. programmer working on mortgage servicing software for a bank in Kansas earning $80k salary.)

2) $150k or greater: programmers for a "tech" company in Silicon Valley. (e.g. the programmers at Apple/Facebook/Google earning $150k+)

If you combine those 2 groups nationwide, you'd end up with 2 humps in your graph.

<comment><USER9> I really think it's location, location, location, not necessarily whether or not the software is the product.

I've worked for consulting companies, product companies, and right now I work for a sort-of back-office organization. The best I've been able to do, despite several years of experience, good references, inside connections, a graduate degree, and being pretty (I think, anyway) personable is...75k. And I don't know anyone doing much better _unless_ they moved to SV or NYC.

My long-term plan is to see if somehow I can find the time to find a side- project or contribute to something open source, so my ability is out there and highly visible to anyone considering me, but that is going to be very difficult for where I am now. I'd _love_ to make low six figures, it seems difficult to believe even in SV there are new grads making 150k, and it's frustrating to me because I know I perform at the level of people making that much money.

EDIT: In case anyone was curious, new grads hired for development in my area of the US get paid from about 35-45k.

<comment><USER10> IDK, I'm calling horse __ __on that.

I'm a self taught developer who have roughly 1 year exp. and moved to Tennessee(40th poorest state in the union, ultra low cost of living) for a software gig last year. I'm black, 30 year old male, and have a resume with more job/career hopping than a con-artist.

I'm not really that great at programming(got fired after 6 months!).....first offer(I took it) was low ball....at 55k!! Next job I took over paid me and offered $92k with zero negotiation to lower it: All within one year.

I've worked prior tech jobs offering $25k-40k and they were usually some unholy mash up of lite programming and I.T. help desk/system admin roles.

From talking to companies, the non-sexy locations have to pay up the ass and fly in talent for open source. The .Net guys around me make bank too.

If you have several years of programming experience and can only get $75k, I wonder if you program in VB or some obscure academic language....I usually have to argue with recruiters to lower their pay requests per hour...in the south.

<comment><USER9> I mostly have done enterprisey stuff, webdev and desktop, so C#, Python, Java, C++, Javascript, and then a long tail of other stuff. Really good at SQL. No IT stuff.

I can't explain the .NET world, but I think what could hurt me with open- source type companies is my lack of a Github. Nothing I've done for work has been public, my personal projects are nothing I'd be willing to share and, quite simply, the very last thing I want to do when I get home at the end of a ten-hour day is program, especially when I have many, many other things that need to be done - around the house, with the family, etc.

Like I said, my plan is to somehow find the time and contribute, so there's _something_ out there, but it's going to be rough and take a while. But if that's what I've gotta do, that's what I've gotta do.

Overall, I think the biggest factor is my unwillingness to move. I do live in a very poor state. I am very confident that if I went elsewhere I could make a lot more. There are maybe a dozen and a half employers here. Generally the rule seems to be the commercial companies pay nothing, and the government contractors pay by what you can negotiate plus years of seniority.

Maybe I should go the recruiter route - I never have. That's one reason I posted, to see what other experiences are. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Majority of new IT grads earning 150k? This can't be representative sample for US.

> this is from about 100 data points, members of the "Hackathon Hackers" > Facebook group, in 2015.

What's the point of analyzing data from such narrow and unusual sample?

RE: how to get data about programmers salaries, I'd say try to check job postings, they usually say how much company offers.

<comment><USER12> Does 150k include bonuses and stock?

In my experience, 150k base pay sounds awfully high

<comment><USER13> It's about average for LA at the moment. Not new grads mind you but 5+ years experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The most important thing to remember about developer compensation, especially when comparing to more "traditional" roles, is scale.

A programmer working at a large internet company may be impacting millions upon millions of people. Building a feature that lets you collect (or save) a penny from a user every month is worth $240K a year when spread out over 2 million users. $120M when spread out over 1 billion users.

That's really my answer to the common question at the end of the post: "I don't understand this at all and would love to hear a compelling theory for why programming "should" pay more than other similar fields, or why it should pay as much as fields that have much higher barriers to entry."

<comment><USER15> A roadworker should be paid amazing rates, then, because millions of people will end up using that road.

<comment><USER16> Construction workers are traditionally resources, They can be quickly replaced. With software this becomes tricky. You need to spend considerable time, amount and energy to find the correct replacement who can drive it with same efficiency. The 2 reasons why companies like Google, Facebook etc pay so much is because: 1) They want to attract the top talent, top 1%, 5% may be. 2) They want to keep people happy so that the key people working on most important features don't leave the company.

<comment><USER17> The majority of companies consider developers to be "resources" too. Do you have an HR department where you work?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Funny thing that I was having a discussion with one of my friend who is in the middle of salary negotiation. The company is pushing him hard to accept the offer well below than his expectations and he was expecting more hike as he was relocating to bay area. He was quite disappointed that he didn't get the salary figure he was expecting but still wanted to accept the offer as he didn't want to loose the opportunity. We discussed at length about how the salaries in software ended up like this. Why are they not transparent like finance guys, lawyers, doctors etc. This is also the standard structure across the world for all software industries irrespective of the country. The salaries are not transparent and the developers are kept in dark.

How did we end up like this? Is it not a bad thing for the company that employees are demotivated when their pay sucks? I feel it is a very basic thing. To make more profits you need to build better products and sell better. How much can you save on operating costs by paying employees less?

I feel the companies & HR needs to modernize itself. There was a time, you could get away by paying a particular employee less and he may never find out. This is an Information age!! Information freely flows. There are many sites like Glassdoor, Paysa where people can go and find out more about salaries that you are paying to your employees. It is no longer a well kept secret. What is required here is that companies and HR's understand this and make salaries open and relevant to the value produced/added to the company.

Since the early managers probably didn't understand the dynamics they went with what they could do best at their time. I feel this model of negotiating a salary based on previous salary should be deprecated. It should be replaced with a more open model.

It doesn't hurt much to know that the next guy is getting paid more than me, if that guy truly deserves it and produces much better code or is adding more value to the company than me. What hurts more is that to know that the company values the other guy more and pays him more just because he is straight out of college or gets lucky at salary negotiation.

I think it is time Developers & Engineers talk more freely about their salary.

<comment><USER18> > Why are they not transparent like finance guys, lawyers, doctors etc.

The average banker or lawyer is an order of magnitude better at negotiation and valuation than the average developer. It's literally their job. For a finance guy, not optimizing your compensation package is sacrilegious.

Meanwhile we have still have lots of developers who think it's absurd that they'd even be paid $100k and don't want to think about money at all. [0] They drag down compensation for themselves and for others.

Unfortunately it's not simply a matter of information. You can tell people that the market rate for their position is $200k/yr but they'll tell you that's absurd, that they think it's too much, or that they'd rather just focus on code.

Doctors solved this by sharply restricting supply and making it illegal to practice without being part of their cartel.

[0] Seriously, on HN people regularly complain about making too much. Even in this very thread you can find people who are skeptical of high salaries: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12588504](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12588504)

<comment><USER19> I was interviewing in Spain a while ago, the salaries are fairly poor here. Some guys with ten years experience were asking for very little. I should have told them to up their requirements.

At the same time none of them seemed very enthusiastic at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does anybody else think the salaries are a little high? Perhaps the sample size is skewed? I'm somewhat senior in software engineering, but I literally don't know a single person making over 200k. Nada. Not one. I also don't know any college grads who started making 150k. That seems absurd, unless you're only looking at certain companies and top performers or something.

<comment><USER21> 200k isn't that rare for senior engineers in large firms in NYC or the bay area.

<comment><USER22> Not even senior.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23>
      > Programming also doesn't have a licensing body limiting the number of programers,
      > nor is there the same prestige filter where you have to go to a top school to
      > get a well paying job.

This is my favorite quote from this article. I went to a great school and even though it wasn't Berkley, Stanford, MIT, or CMU, that qualification has _never_ limited my ability to get great opportunities.

<comment><USER24> While it's true that a prestigious degree is not strictly necessary for obtaining a good job, in my experience, it helps a lot in getting your resume nearer the top of the stack for those job openings.

<comment><USER17> It matters alot in the first 5 years of your career.

Consider tho' that a developer with say Google on their CV has the "prestige" that once would only have been conveyed by a university.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Developer compensation is high because developers produce more valuable work, and in the short term the labor market isn't that efficient. People don't make very efficient initial choices of career, and their initial choices are fairly sticky.

In the middle of a gold rush, how does it happen that people change their plans, and go out and mine the gold, sell the pick-axes etc? Dropping your plans generally sucks. All else being equal, you'd rather not. And you probably know less about the opportunity than the one you're pursuing. Because not everyone is going to drop everything and go mine gold, if the gold mining is profitable, the people who do pursue the opportunity are going to do very well. And that'll continue to be true for a long time — because people just don't respond to these opportunities that efficiently.

As a comparison: in Australia during the mining boom, the salaries available for work in the mining industry compared very favourably to other industries. And yet I knew lots of smart high-school grads starting degrees in fields like chemical engineering, aerospace engineering, computer engineering...Smart kids would eagerly enroll to study fields where there was no industry to speak of in Australia; even though a lot of them weren't planning to move overseas. In the meantime, salaries for mining-related fields were sky high.

My hand-wavey, empathic read on this is that following price signals into a field you don't have a particular affinity for feels somehow wrong. I think smart kids are very vulnerable to this sensation. They feel like simply going into the high-paying field is somehow too "obvious". It's an affront to their sense of individuality. I think the small/large company thing is in part a similar effect.

<comment><USER26> It's say it's the "smart but not intelligent" kids that are vulnerable to that. The "smart kids" ride the wave to get their foot in the door and pivot into something more stable.

Being the local subject matter expert on a relevant topic or straddling the management/technical line goes a long way. Look at what happened in the defense industry in the 1990s and tech in the 2000s.

Being able to code well and having domain specific knowledge is more valuable than just being able to be a rock-star. When times get tight companies shed weight (people) and carrying around a splitting maul is a better deal than a sledge and wedge because it even if it's a little less powerful overall.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The discussion about bimodal pay distribution is interesting, but I think there's a much more parsimonious explanation to it. Most of the companies that are going to be paying software developers $150k+ are based in or around SV, where rent is abnormally high.

But what's even more interesting to me is another question the author discusses halfway through the article:

> How is it possible that programmers are paid so well without these other > barriers to entry that similarly remunerative fields have?

The author posits three hypotheses: 1) supply of programmers is naturally low, 2) immigration laws keep the supply artificially low, and 3) the overall relative efficiency of American companies create a productivity force multiplier for everyone at the company, including programmers.

I want to introduce a fourth hypothesis, which is that programming _skills_ are highly commoditized, which causes demand for those skills to increase.

If I work for OmniCorp using 100% proprietary OmniCorp technologies, they have no reason to pay me more than the bare minimum because I'm effectively married to them. If I work for OpenCorp on a 100% open-source stack, then the buzzwords listed on my resume prove I can be productive at thousands of other companies, giving them all incentive to compete for me.

<comment><USER28> But isn't OmniCorp married to their devs too? Those devs probably took a while to get up to speed on the proprietary stack, and outside devs would have a ramp up time. Not to mention outside devs would be hesitant to take the job seeing as they'd get stuck learning proprietary technology making them less mobile.

<comment><USER19> Tech is a vast field. We are having trouble finding a Django developer where we are. Project managers decision to hire based on this, my opinion is we should look for a good all rounder, as Django knowledge only makes up around 25% of the knowledge that is needed. Someone that knows HTML, some JavaScript, _any other framework_ , how to set up remote servers and use a database effectively. If your only skill is Omnicore, your suggestion makes sense, but there are so many different things to learn, that having a wide knowledge base makes sense.

<comment><USER28> I agree with all of that. It's a complex issue. And it's compounded by the general "we have no idea how to hire developers" that is found throughout the industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The assortive matching is very real, but whether that's related to salaries is another matter. I live in a far smaller tech market than the valley, and it's plain as day. We might have about 20 large employers that use the JVM. Out of those, it's so easy to see the good from the bad that many of the good places are skeptical about even giving an interview to someone working in one of the bad ones without a reference. Interestingly, places can transform by altering the way they hire and who they retain: I have worked for a place that was known as a terrible place to be, and changed their fate by building a very good interview process and laying off the weakest side of their staff.

I remember doing the climb from the bottom myself: Few places hired new grads, but the ones that did hired pretty much everyone. it only took a few weeks for teams to realize who knew how to program and who didn't: inter team communication quickly became a network of the people that could get things done. Eventually, as people came in and left, the high performers started taking other high performers with them to better companies, where similar sorting happened again, but with a higher floor.

What I have seen instead of big salary differences is that the best firms have better management and treat developers better: Given that outside of consulting, the market has relatively well defined maximums, the good developers congregate in places where the work is more rewarding and doesn't put high tolls on peoples' lives.

In the valley there are companies that get so much more value out of developers that they can pay more, but even that has a ceiling, and when we get to that ceiling, being good companies to work for becomes the next differentiatior.

</comment><comment><USER30> Being a physician or attorney confers additional compensation in the form of social status and prestige which I think it's fair to say we don't get by virtue of working on code. I also think that as a general rule there is a fairly small percentage of people who like programming, and can sit in front of a computer and focus on code for hours at a time and consider that a fulfilling way to make a living. I doubt that percentage is ever going to be much higher than it is now.

<comment><USER31> Social status and prestige is all in our minds. You can code and be very respected in society if you act that way. The problem is that the type of work attracts (filters?) for introverted behavior. The folks that aren't going out and being flashy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> You can find salaries data by looking at Swedish IRS, the numbers are public, but may not be in digital form/easy API yet.

But you can order a catalogue from a redistributor, containing every persons income from work and income from capital and taxes payed, for previous year. Would not take much to scan it and analyze.

<comment><USER33> Here is a quick Google Sheets with most "Developer employee codes" that are reported to the tax authority/Statistics Sweden.

Salaries listed per Quartile, in SEK. The categories are quite broad. There is a listing per decile but I could not find it right now.

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yPjcXoKuwq8SBngQ2-G9...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yPjcXoKuwq8SBngQ2-G97dxalLT1PqelSM8VXcdDLaY/edit?usp=sharing)

[http://SCB.se](http://SCB.se) is the source.

<comment><USER32> This is nice, and should give a good picture of the industry as a whole.

The data probably masks those who are self-employed subcontractors and take a lower salary in order to lower taxes at profit time, which should effectivly double or tripple the reported salary.

Ofcourse, it does get a bit difficult to compare this data vs USA, because we have social necessities already payed for by the high tax of the collective workforce, such as health care, pensions, safety, and many other insurances.

So, say average is 42 000sek per month, that gives about 59 000USD per year salary. Which may seem low compared to USA, but behind those 59 000USD, is 31.49% in taxes for things we enjoy.

<comment><USER33> Yep all very true.

I believe the salary listed here is pre-tax so the take home pay (for someone living in Stockholm) would be 30 330 Kr/m or $42.5k/yr.

This number excludes social costs; the total cost per month for the employer is just over 55 000 SEK/m.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34>
        > Developer compensation has skyrocketed since the demise
        > of the Google et al. wage-suppressing no-hire agreement

Is this true? This seems like a bold claim, given that most of the post is about how little data there is on programmer compensation.

<comment><USER35> Yes, it happened. Thanks Steve!

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> FTA: "One possibility is that we have a shortage of programmers. If that's the case, you'd expect more programmers to enter the field, bringing down compensation."

This is imo a big part of why high-end salaries have skyrocketed, but the author's reasoning is total "let them eat cake."

It's not that there's a shortage of programmers overall. There are lots of programmers working non-industry jobs for relatively piddly salaries who would leap at the opportunity to double or triple their compensation at a big name tech company - if they were qualified to do so.

The problem is that there's a shortage of people who have the aptitude and skills to work in a big tech company with very high expectations for even their entry-level engineers. I don't doubt that there are intangibles at play: soft skills, "cultural fit" biases, to a lesser extent academic pedigree, but none of that trumps needing to be an actual honest-to-goodness engineer, rather than a "programmer".

Plenty of other pieces (citation needed) have been written about the growing chasm between the two classifications of development jobs - engineers who can create software, vs. programmers who can write code - and I think the salary differences are just an aspect of that.

</comment><comment><USER37> My working hypothesis is that there's more programmers in the "very good" bucket that don't care all that much about monetary compensation than in other domains. As long as a certain X that is deemed fair is reached they are way more interested in interesting problems/an opportunity to learn new things/access to hardware or data they couldn't otherwise get etc.

Or in other words, (good) programmers care a lot more about motivating factors than hygiene factors than other employees.

I have no data to back this up, only a gut feeling.

<comment><USER19> I think this is true to at least some degree. I have noticed that the better paying jobs here are Java or Microsoft stacks, probably more corporate style jobs. Personally I prefer working in a smaller place in Python, and feeling genuinely valuable to the company, having done some corporate stints earlier in my career.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'd like to see that adjusted to cost of living where the job is. I bet is not bimodal anymore.

<comment><USER39> I do not have US data but in India a few friends and relatives living in same city have 5:1 ratio in compensation for same no of years as experience. The lower ones are in traditional IT job others in mobile app / big data.

I think in US it will be same cutting edge skill vs traditional skills.

<comment><USER38> Ratio of highest/lowest doesn't have much to do with distributions. This is about having blocks of people paid more than others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Just bimodal?

I work for a large, well-known tech company and they just re-titled all of their front-end engineers to "Software Engineer" (probably to stop creating a pay divide between front-end and back-end engineers). If you have a "Software Engineer" doing basic wordpress stuff, another "Software Engineer" doing PHP/Zend framework stuff, another doing pure JS/React/Angular stuff, and another doing backend services (concurrency/spring boot/API, etc) - the pay scales of all these "Software Engineers" _should_ be different.

I'm surprised it's not trimodal.

</comment><comment><USER41> Having been in the hiring and compensation path at a few companies both north and south of the boarder, this seems to only apply to the US, and in particular silicon valley.

Up in Canada, the compensation seems to be more of a normal distribution.

</comment><comment><USER42> Yes.

Tier 1: Those who solely re-implement. You can do a lot copying and pasting. It's just not worth as much money.

Tier 2: Those who re-implement while creating anew, typically in specialized areas or occasionally very well over a wide range of tasks.

Note the importance of re-implementation to both job tiers.

</comment><comment><USER43> I'm trying to figure out how most of this thread meshes with, say, the growth mindset.

</comment><comment><USER44> I just assumed its becoming bimodal due to silicon valley rents being so high.

</comment><comment><USER42> Yes.

Tier 1: Those who solely re-implement. You can do a lot copying and pasting. It's just not worth as much money. Tier 2: Those who re-implement while creating anew, typically in specialized areas or occasionally very well over a wide range of tasks.

Note the importance of re-implementation to both job tiers.</comment>


Ask HN: Has the HN front-page ranking algorithm changed? - <AUTHOR>

It seems the ranking algorithm for HN has changed. I've been noticing submissions with as little as 8-9pts (~2 comments) submitted over _24 hours ago_ often showing up in top 10. In the past age of submission definitely had a much larger effect on the rank of a submission.<p>Note: As of now (3:20pm EST) the current #1/2 submission (Yann LeCun on the IBM neural net chip) was submitted over 24 hours ago with only 15 pts. <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8157788](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8157788)

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, but how do they decide which posts to resurface? manually? I hope not, that would introduce bias

<comment><USER3> It's currently a mixture of automated and manual effort. That's what we mean by "experimenting".

The goal is to automate as much as we can, not to eliminate bias—I doubt that's possible, or even well-defined—but to eliminate work.</comment></comment></comment>


Amazon Cloud Drive is currently broken garbage - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/DanielDent/git-annex-remote-rclone/commit/1e76436d23591560ea3fa160f9f8b284d39d2372 <comment><USER2> The rclone api access key was revoked.

A few months ago, I was doing extensive research on personal cloud backups (Backblaze, Amazon Cloud Drive, etc). My requirement was to have _client-side_ encryption synced to the cloud. A modicum of googling led me to rclone. After reading about how rclone works, I immediately made a mental comparison to Amazon's "official" client GUI sync program and thought, _" there's no way Amazon has blessed rclone."_ It would be very risky to invest hours into building custom backup scripts built on top of rclone if Amazon blocks it. Well, it turns out _that 's exactly what has happened._

<comment><AUTHOR> rclone was blessed by Amazon. It was an official app developed by a developer using their official API.

And now, without any warning, it is not. For many use cases, rclone is the only practical way of getting data in and out of Amazon Cloud Drive.

Amazon still hasn't bothered contacting me to let me know. Despite the fact that rclone was used with my Amazon Cloud Drive account daily.

"Oh hey FYI, we've disabled the app you use to access your data, good luck getting your data, have a nice day" would have actually been better than they approach they chose instead (disable my access + radio silence).

Fortunately I planned for this eventuality.

But this is yet another striking reminder of how foolish it would be to doing anything important while depending on just one cloud company.

After the thunderstorm, when the sun shines, often the clouds are no longer there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Link as originally submitted leads to a commit message where the submitter, maintainer of git-annex-remote-rclone, a tool which wraps the multi-provider cloud storage client rclone [1], makes the following comment:

 _" Amazon has, without warning, revoked the API keys necessary for users to access the data that Amazon's paying customers have entrusted with Amazon. A data storage offering that simply stops working one day is not a data storage offering at all."_

In effect, this is a self-submission to an opinion that leads to a dead end; I propose a better source is this reddit thread [2] which includes a screenshot of an email from Amazon support confirming the news.

As another poster writes, Amazon has revoked rclone's OAuth2 API key. However, consider that rclone's default OAuth2 client id and secret are compiled into the rclone executable, and thus effectively public; aka. anyone can extract them and pretend to be rclone, and fool users into obtaining access and abuse them for unrelated purposes.

A _far_ better option is for the cloud provider to let users generate their own OAuth2 clients, such as Google does (and supposedly Microsoft, although for me it's always errored out). Unfortunately, Amazon has a "call us" style of Developer access, which effectively translates to no new API access being granted to these types of users.

The speculation around the web is that Amazon also wanted to shut this down because they offered "unlimited" storage, and people were using it to store very large amounts of hard-to-compress, hard-to-dedup data. Breaking a popular tool used to accomplish this (e.g. it supported on-the-fly encryption, producing the exact style of difficult data) will cause some portion of less profitable users to migrate elsewhere. This may or may not be true, but it's certainly an intriguing point.

[1] [https://rclone.org/](https://rclone.org/) [2] [https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/6c3mnv/amazon_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/6c3mnv/amazon_confirmed_rclone_is_revoked_aka_banned/)

<comment><AUTHOR> My submission was unnecessarily terse. Thank you for expanding upon it.

I agree with all your points about OAuth2 clients. But I would also add:

All clients (Amazon official or not) will ultimately need to have API keys compiled into them, and/or use a (less secure for the user) remote service to do the OAuth flow.

And for all of these clients, it will be possible for users to obtain the keys with some very simple reverse engineering and/or protocol analysis.

Which makes this entire thing seem like a real waste of everyone's time. Provide an API/service available on the internet, or don't.

Trying to tell people exactly which configuration of which software they should use to access your service is both disrespectful of your user's freedom as well as a fool's errand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Better links:

[https://github.com/DanielDent/git-annex-remote- rclone/issues...](https://github.com/DanielDent/git-annex-remote- rclone/issues/22)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/6c3mnv/amazon_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/6c3mnv/amazon_confirmed_rclone_is_revoked_aka_banned/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I used them years ago as part of free trial offer but they had rate limiting for their APIs ,it was totally unusable, to upload it would take months to finish my NAS drive, so i stopped using them completely. its the crappiest i have ever seen.

</comment><comment><USER6> Amazon Cloud Drive's shitty sync application still works...

</comment><comment><USER7> Context-free rageclick post is pretty much always lousy, whatever the current status of Amazon Cloud Drive.

<comment><USER8> Here is more context, found via Google:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/6c3mnv/amazon_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/6c3mnv/amazon_confirmed_rclone_is_revoked_aka_banned/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> but did they read the Terms of Service...

<comment><USER8> Where in the TOS is rclone's behavior prohibited?

EDIT: "You may not use the Service to store, transfer or distribute content of or on behalf of third parties, to operate your own file storage application or service, to operate a photography business or other commercial service, or to resell any part of the Service." I imagine "your own file storage application" is at issue here.

But if customers should only use the (reportedly awful) official app to sync files, why offer an API at all?

[https://developer.amazon.com/blogs/post/TxRNQX3SWVLUYC/Amazo...](https://developer.amazon.com/blogs/post/TxRNQX3SWVLUYC/Amazon- Cloud-Drive-Now-Accessible-via-REST)</comment></comment>


Amazon Merchants Continue to Find Ways to Cheat - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-24/amazon-merchants-still-find-new-ways-to-cheat-in-shopping-frenzy <comment><USER2> fake/dangerous products are the bigger issue with Amazon. I have seen prenatal fish oil supplements that are supposed to retail for $50, on Amazon fulfillment for $40 and on Alibaba for $18. Who's to say 3rd party merchants aren't reselling the fake Alibaba ones on Amazon for tidy profits? Odds are the fake ones are just repackaged low quality supplements, chock full of mercury.

With the breakneck pace of scams can anyone really trust Amazon fulfilled Merchants for items with very specific safety tolerances? (medication/supplements, hepa air filters, electrical components, just to name a few things) I have just started ordering more things direct from manufacturers web-stores rather than deal with the stress.

<comment><USER3> >Who's to say 3rd party merchants aren't reselling the fake Alibaba ones on Amazon for tidy profits?

Hmmm. Have you looked at Amazon? A lot - or most IMHO - of the products ARE Chinese (So you get the famous "Made in China Quality Control"). Sellers usually add $10-$20 markup over Alibaba/Aliexpress.

(Don't know how Aliexpress is so profitable since their website is worse than Amazon (yes, that is possible); they couldn't even hire a native English speaker to copyedit it.)

Depending on the product $10 markup is probably a good deal, since you get Amazon-quality shipping as opposed to the Chinese sellers stuffing your purchase into a trashbag with zero padding.

<comment><USER4> > Don't know how Aliexpress is so profitable since their website is worse than > Amazon (yes, that is possible); they couldn't even hire a native English > speaker to copyedit it.

Aliexpress sells to Chinese people which makes it profitable, but also to drophippers and reseller which makes it even more profitable but also to international buyers across the world and (with alibaba) sells bulk. All at affordable prices and with a glitch in the matrix in shipping fees. They also charge you in your local currency to avoid additional currency exchange fees.

This beats amazon.com not selling their products outside the US and having to contract a US reshipper and adding customs fees and international shipping on top of it.

I'm not sure why the bad mouthing of aliexpress and Chinese sellers, I've been doing business on aliexpress for several years and I'd say 95% of my orders went flawlessly and maybe 2-3% were not up to par in term of shipping. I got 99% refund for those.

Also yes amazons and ebays have a lot of Chinese sellers and resellers of Chinese stuff, most of the time with a hefty markup but sometimes cheaper than aliexpress, go figure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The only people that should be able to leave reviews for a product are people that have purchased it from that listing. I've found that the only reviews worth reading are the ones that are from verified purchasers.

<comment><USER6> > The only people that should be able to leave reviews for a product are > people that have purchased it from that listing.

That might make sense for electronics and other items, though even here sellers have found ways to get around it by offering to reimburse their shills who bought the product just for a 5-star shill review.

However, Amazon's introduction of the Verified Purchase tag on reviews and recent changes that make non-VP reviews difficult to view, has had a deleterious effect on reviews for books, films and music. There were a lot of great well-written and insightful reviews written by people who got the media in question from the library (or a filesharing community). For books and films, that reviewing culture lives on at Goodreads and IMDB, but both are now owned by Amazon and who knows how long those reviews might last. There is however no analogue for reviews of music (Allmusic has strict character count limits and few ever go there, Discogs reviews seem mainly meant for vinyl enthusiasts).

Yes, in retrospect it was silly for fans of music, books and films to create a rather non-commercial community of enthusiasts on the basis of a site whose sole aim is to make lots of money, but I still regret what has been lost.

<comment><USER7> > it was silly for fans of music, books and films to create a rather non- > commercial community of enthusiasts on the basis of a site whose sole aim is > to make lots of money

Nothing silly about it at all. I've written many such reviews and I'm well aware that I'm giving my work for free to a profit making entity. The thing is, I also benefit a lot from reviews on Amazon, even for things I'd never buy. Amazon is my go-to site for reviews on books and music. (Not so for films, I use IMDB for that.) I enjoy writing and posting the reviews, and enjoy getting "likes" on them from others that find them useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you poke around, you can easily find newly launched listing with hundreds of reviews ranking on the first page of popular keywords. E.g. search "earbuds". There will be a handful of results on the first page from no name brands, with all reviews within the last month, many unverified. That first page placement gets them thousands of sales before it falls off and they go launch a new product.

I don't know the methods but it's more than just reviews.

</comment><comment><USER9> reddit found that some Adidas Ultra Boost sneakers sold on Amazon were replicas (fake). The authentic and replica sneakers are co-mingled. It's crap shoot what you get; even some "ships from and sold by Amazon.com" sneakers were fakes.

Amazon's response is to issue a refund if you receive reps. However replicas are often quite convincing, and most customers won't know how to tell the difference. The carelessness here is just astounding: it seems like they're begging for a lawsuit.

1: [https://www.reddit.com/r/frugalmalefashion/comments/685wca/u...](https://www.reddit.com/r/frugalmalefashion/comments/685wca/ultra_boosts_on_amazon_for_126/)

</comment><comment><USER10> As the topic has been discussed on HN over the years, I've often thought it might be cool to create a browser extension that only shows reviews from HN users with the option of specifying a minimal karma threshold. Perhaps the HN community is too small, so substitute reddit where appropriate. Anyone have thoughts on such a thing?

<comment><USER11> That's a neat idea, how would you confirm identity, though? Could be challenging to reach critical mass.

Why tie it to only HN and/or reddit? It could be a choice for users to make, about which sites to correlate with which review sites.

In any case, interesting idea, thanks for sharing!

<comment><USER10> As def_true_false mentioned, the way keybase handles things would be what I was thinking, but the crypto doesn't have to be as strong, nor the workflow so elaborate.

And for those mentioning gaming, HN does pretty well against all but the most sophisticated and motivated. Browse with 'show dead' on you can see there are plenty of attempts. A link to their profiles on HN and reddit would allow for review of their comment histories in order to determine authenticity/ how closely tastes align.

Even Amazon could allow us to filter reviewers by review history, or other such criteria.

Edit: You are probably right about allowing other identity providers, but the idea was to minimize the addressable market in order to study the dynamics of such a platform. Your comment definitely made me think of it as a possibly viable idea, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "I'm a bit reluctant to buy this because from what I've heard, Levi makes these specifically for amazon and they are of much lesser quality. They had a similar deal a few months ago (where a certain pair was available for pre- order) and I can tell you first hand that those were much lesser quality than the other 511's I have."

Recently gleaned from a user of /r/frugalmalefashion on reddit. I think it adds to this discussion quite a bit. Ironically I'm still perusing amazon hard today as part of Black Friday sales.

<comment><USER13> With regards to Levi's specifically, I've found that their highest quality jeans are made in Turkey. I can't speak to any "Made in the USA" Levi's, they cost more than I've been willing to pay. Made in Mexico Levi's have, in my experience, been the next tier down, and made anywhere else tends to be lower quality fabrics and workmanship. I haven't been to an outlet, but I have landed some really good deals on quality jeans on the clearance rack at the Levi's store in King Of Prussia, knowing that their online promotions are matched in-store.

While you can't look at those tags online, the MSRP on the Levi's website is typically a decent indicator of the quality you're looking at. Jeans marked down to $49.98 from $69.50 are a cheaper grade (e.g. cardboard patch on the back instead of leather, lower quality fabric used in the pockets) than $49.98 jeans marked down from $89.50 or $128. All that said, stick to 12oz denim and higher and you're looking at diminishing returns going upward from an MSRP of $89.50. I've snagged some of the higher dollar stuff during the summer "Take 50% off sale prices" seasonal blowouts, and aside from one positive comment about a pair of Made & Crafted, no one else has ever noticed if I'm wearing a $20 pair or a $120 pair.

<comment><USER14> I'll just pitch in on this - I've noticed that textiles made in Turkey are really great quality, unlike many of their other exports.

Same goes for tableware, good quality for cheap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's a systemic problem with Amazon's marketplace, but their stock has been performing well, so until they start taking multi-quarter financial hits, their executives don't have a huge incentive to care about these marketplace problems.

The FBA aspect of Amazon has created many of the problems, such as fake reviews, merchant scamming, and counterfeit products, but FBA sellers are also a huge money maker for Amazon, so they are in a very precarious situation of managing expectations across their customers, sellers, and themselves.

</comment><comment><USER16> I use [https://www.fakespot.com](https://www.fakespot.com) to filter out fake product reviews and I found to match my gut feelings most of the time.

</comment><comment><USER17> One time, I was contacted by someone who wanted to open up a community forum for Amazon sellers. I told him that's about the worst idea I've ever heard.

The online selling community is so cut throat and fractured that it goes well beyond healing at this point. It's a game of win at costs.

This absolutely nothing new. Sellers will leave bad reviews, flag legitimate listings for fraud, sue each other, and myriad other things.

To give an idea of how old this is, look at the origin story of Nast Gal clothing.

</comment><comment> blubb-fish That was one of the reasons why I decided to completely ditch Amazon. And I don't regret it.

<comment><USER18> I haven't had this issue with Amazon myself, but the threat of it does weigh on my mind. Nonetheless, what pushed me over the edge of not buying from them anymore is they really just don't care what happens once a package leaves the warehouse.

Amazon insists on regularly using a specific carrier to get product to me which alters altogether the concept of what it means to get product to someone. There's a whole story behind this, but Amazon is a big company and clearly is shooting to satisfy the lowest common denominator. I've tried to resolve my issues with them but just get whatever script their corporate spokeshole gives to customer support to parrot. I get it, I'm not their common problem... but since I'm their edge case... I'm done with them.

I will shop Amazon chiefly as a sort of search engine when necessary and buy direct or from some other seller once I know the product exists; maybe use them for price check. In fact, given the unreliability of Amazon actually getting product to me in any predictable fashion, it's usually just more convenient to drive to a B&M store and make the purchase (I do check inventory before I leave the house ;-) ).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> If Facebook is concerned about fake news, why isn't Amazon concerned about fake products?

<comment><USER20> Facebook isn't concerned about fake news, it's concerned about bad press and possibly facing regulation. Make the bad press about Facebook fake news go away and Facebook will stop caring about fake news on their platform.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/19/opinion/facebook- regulati...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/19/opinion/facebook-regulation- incentive.html)

<comment><USER19> I'm not saying FB's concern is sincere, just that it exists. They are aware there's an issue. They are aware it could hurt them.

Jeff \ Amazon seem to be taking the head in the sand approach.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Maybe they could form a partnership with Consumer Reports? Like, if you're a prime member, you could see related Consumer Reports reviews? Maybe Consumer Reports could review Amazon's practices?

</comment><comment> j-c-hewitt In some categories, Amazon is putting more weight onto editorial reviews. It'd be a good thing for Amazon and a good thing for product oriented media companies for those reviewers and reviews to regain some of the clout and influence that they have lost to easily manipulated user reviews.

On the flip side I think media companies have to do more to deserve the trust of shoppers. More Consumer Reports style product evaluations and less clickbait trolling, more investment into respectable writers/video reviewers who have integrity and earn a real salary to make them resistant to PR bribery.

I don't think most shoppers fully understand how extreme the review manipulation is on the brand and merchant side of things. One issue is that the Federal government does not enforce the laws on the books against many of the worst types of manipulation. I'm not a particularly pro-regulation type of guy, but this is one of the consequences of zero law enforcement in a particular area of business: you become a sucker if you abide by the law when none of your competitors are.

The Yelps and Amazons of the world are kind of split on this because they both want to restore/retain the trust that users have in these reviews without drawing attention to how absurd the level of manipulation is.

Another issue is the entirely legitimate manipulation of reviews that nonetheless confers a competitive advantage. One local car dealership that did some service on my car has earned thousands of positive five star reviews by being extremely aggressive with e-mail followup to people who show up for even minor service interactions. I gave them five stars out of bemusement and because we legitimately received good service on a free interaction paid for by the car manufacturer with a rebate. But I would have been much less generous with my five star review had I had to pay for the service, as everyone is. That's why Amazon as of last year bans that practice.

I have myself counseled clients in ecommerce and written email sequence scripts to do just this kind of manipulation. But in the case of this dealership and of most people, is the dealership that is the most efficient at running an email marketing program really the best car dealership in the area by an order of magnitude? While it may be an indicator of the overall professionalism of the company and a signal of business health, it's pretty unrelated to the business of selling cars and servicing them. As a rather clueless car owner, I'm not even really qualified to give an intelligent opinion about the quality of a dealership apart from how I feel about it and whether or not I (rather clueless) think that I was ripped off or not.

Why is my unqualified opinion based on that minor interaction worth more than that of someone who really knows a lot about cars, bought a car from that dealership, and has had dozens of service appointments with the mechanic? Why is my dumb 5 star rating worth the same amount as that guy's? It makes no sense.

<comment><USER22> Consumer Reports is expensive. Media company reviews are free.

<comment><USER23> It's not that expensive considering what you get (essentially saving me, collectively, tons of hours researching products like toaster ovens and leaf blowers I don't necessarily want to learn that much about).</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft now blocks reply-all email storms to end our inbox nightmares - ajay-d https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/10/21253627/microsoft-reply-all-email-block-reply-allpocalypse-storm <comment><AUTHOR> This is one of those features that seems so common sense that it's surprising it's taken this long to show up. It reminds me of when Gmail and Outlook started giving you a warning if you said the word "attached" or "attachment" in an email, but didn't attach files.

This reminds me of the best email storm I ever saw. Someone at a large company I worked at sent an email to a discussion group that everyone had filtered with rules, but they put a one-letter typo in the domain name. So imagine something like sending it to email@example.com instead of @email.com. The thing was, the company actually owned enail.com to keep competitors from squatting on it, so the email actually went through, but completely broke almost everyone's rules. The results were quite spectacular, and entertaining.

<comment><USER2> Great story.

Ridiculous that MX records were assigned to a defensively held domain name. Just asking for edge cases. Lucky this one didn't have security consequences.

<comment><USER3> > Ridiculous that MX records were assigned to a defensively held domain name. > Just asking for edge cases. Lucky this one didn't have security > consequences.

Not really. Think of it from the customer's side. You sent an email to who you were thinking was legitimate. You want it to go to the person/group you sent it to.

So, because of that, the admins (and customer facing) want to deliver the message.

I do understand the complexity of this problem. I'm sure for large corps that wouldn't be true...

<comment><USER4> The solution here is a bounce message, not completed delivery.

<comment><USER3> But why bounce when you can do what was intended?

To me, that seems like the "Technical is the worst kind of correct" answer. And if your smaller org does good customer service, then you liberally accept and help.

We on HN like to talk about horror company one of. We never talk much of the ones that do things right (or better).

<comment><USER4> For two reasons. Firstly, you want people to have the correct email address - because they can see the domain, and if it's wrong, you'll cause brand confusion.

Secondly, you have to setup all these special mechanisms to correct peoples' typos, permutations of which can be numerous. Think about the compounding complexity of your system as you cater to the very few cases of people making an error that can otherwise be alerted to them to be fixed.

...not to mention the potential for security vulnerabilities. Will your anti- spam filters work on all these alternate domains? Will you setup SPK DKIM etc for them all to prevent spoofing as well? Will you have website forwards... ...the list of things to think about goes on.

For what? To cater to that one idiot and his fat fingers? Just tell him he fucked up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Whenever I've worked at a company with Exchange/Outlook I always set up my one mail rule I can't live without: any incoming email that doesn't have my own email address in the To: or Cc: fields is moved into a different inbox (subfolder).

It was rare for any unaddressed stuff to matter to me, and it was certainly never urgent, so usually I gave it a quick scan once a day and mark it read.

Almost makes email tolerable.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I do almost the same but my rules set different colors on emails where I appear in To or CC. This way I have a quick way of determining the important (To) and perhaps important (CC) from all other emails. I wouldn't want to work with email without these rules.

<comment><USER2> Nice. In my case, my _direct_ mail load was very low—typically around 3 to 5 emails per day—and anything I was specifically CCed on was just as important for me to read as anything sent to me personally.

Whereas stuff sent to group lists (and other automated mail) was on the order of 10–30 emails per day. Enough to make any "new mail" notifications utterly worthless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've seen a few of these and, as somebody without anything to do with the running of the email servers, I can say that they have been quite good fun to watch.

The right thing to do, of course, is email the whole group asking them to stop emailing the whole group ....

<comment><USER7> > The right thing to do, of course, is email the whole group asking them to > stop emailing the whole group ....

It's also important to get to the bottom of how and why we were all added to this list, a discussion that is certainly appropriate for this list!

<comment><USER8> If reply all didn't exists I think the world would be a better place. There are rare occasions it is needed, but in groups of 10+ is it really required? At a minimum an irritating series of "are you sure" dialogues might help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't know anything about email software, but would it be difficult to add a popup after hitting the "Send" button that would appear only if there were more than X recipients (w/ a user-configurable minimum and sane default)?

Something like: "This email will be sent to 5,000 people. Are you sure you would like to send it?"

<comment><USER10> This would not solve the issue when the email is sent to a mailing list.

<comment><USER11> When the mailing lists are internal Exchange-based lists Outlook can check how many people are on them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _" 10 reply-all emails to over 5,000 recipients within 60 minutes"_

It reads like that's hardcoded. Surprised you can't configure it. A welcome feature nonetheless.

Edit: Appears it is hardcoded, at least for now. _" We are considering possible future enhancements to improve our reply all storm detection accuracy, add admin customizable thresholds and block duration, as well as producing reply all storm reports and notifications."_

<comment><USER13> Yeah, it really should be configurable. I personally would want it for any list over 50. It's rare that such a large list requires everyone to know something new 10 times in less than an hour. And if that many ppl do it would probably benefit from a teams channel discussion not email.

<comment><USER8> That would make universities shed staff instantly. The number of massive group emails sent and the daily storms that result keep many employees.

<comment><USER13> Can't tell if you're being serious or just aren't fully explaining

<comment><USER8> Mine was was an unhelpful comment. Universities seem to like sending huge group emails about everything, and there are always many "reply all" responses and it's awful. The department would do it, as would the school, faculty, facility, campus and head office. And often others from that list that I wasn't involved in would sent them too. It was a daily train wreck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> [https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/exchange-team- blog/me...](https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/exchange-team-blog/me- too/ba-p/610643)

[https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20121015-00/?p=63...](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20121015-00/?p=6333)

</comment><comment><USER15> Story time - Steve Ballmer sends an email to the entire company about buying Nokia. Some high level exec replies all and says "Told you so ". To which Ballmer also replies all with a smiley. Don't know if they knew they were replying all. Or if they didn't care. Quite bizarre.

</comment><comment><USER16> "Reply with Teams"

I just create a rule after a single reply all saying "please remove me"

But I haven't seen one of these in many years.

</comment><comment><USER17> There's no faster way for me to know that someone is a person I'd never want to work with than if they participate in a reply all storm. It's 2020. Learn how email works.

<comment><USER18> I participate in every email reply-all storm.

Because I'm not a soulless, joyless, curmudgeon who gets upset by receiving emails "oh noes my inboxzero!"

And it's funny.

<comment><USER17> Well, I should have been more clear. I enjoy the trolling responses, not the ones from people who have been at a company for 5 years and haven't figured out how to unsubscribe themselves from an email list.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Centralized forums?

</comment><comment><USER20> I wonder if there is an exception for execs. At a previous employer it was quite common for a big piece of news to be announced by a senior exec and then have the CEO and other execs reply all in a big storm. Definitely more than 5,000 FTE on the list.

<comment><USER21> There often are exceptions for execs for rules like this, which can cause their own sets of problems. I was at Microsoft when Steve Ballmer sent the company-wide email announcing he was going to step down; Reply All was disabled for most people, but some poor VP in MSR, who I guess was high enough up to be an exception, accidentally reply-all'd the whole company with his positive reaction to the announcement. That guy must've had an awkward day.

<comment><USER22> I find it sometimes interesting to skim through trivial (praise/reaction) and nontrivial (response/correction) reply-all threads to gain a better understanding of the social dynamics, attitudes, etc. across different departments in a company.

In other words, while they aren't always useful for immediate work, they sometimes help with metawork.</comment></comment></comment>


Deleted my account on Quora, with confirmation, account/data still viewable. - <AUTHOR>

I recently deleted my account with Quora [1].
I asked them in the email to delete the account and all data with the account.
They replied via email and stated they would be happy to delete my account and help me out - and they were sorry to see me go. [2]
Now I see that the only thing they deleted was my name and picture from my profile.<p>My account appears as "account"
My profile still states my Location and company affiliations.
"account" is still receiving upvotes and notifications in my feed. [3]
Posts, questions, edits, all still viewable (albeit maybe to me only) (I am using the transparent chrome extension)
I sent another email stating I noticed they have not complied with my request and asked for a confirmation by EOB tomorrow.
[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4333119
[2]>From: firstname.lastname@example.com,  firstname.lastname@example.com
> Hi Sam,I'd be happy to help you with your request.  I've now processed your request for account deletion and you should find yourself completely removed from the site.  We're sorry to see you go but hope you'll consider rejoining the Quora community some day!
> Thanks,
> Anjali
> User Operations
> Quora
[3] http://imgur.com/a/aY20p
In my original posting, I may have gone overboard calling the folks at quora "kids" (Too much wine?) - however, it appears I was dead accurate in my questioning of their morals.
The fact that their staff reply to me, confirm that my account is deleted and then keep all data visible and undeleted is ridiculuous.
Following in the footsteps of FB.
This reinforces why I deleted my account.
Zero respect for user requests/privacy. <comment><USER2> Could have been a mistake?</comment>


Ask HN: Start a charity-driven staffing firm? - <AUTHOR> TL;DR a recent health scare has me reevaluating what I want out of life.  I reason my wife and I can run a boutique staffing agency placing primarily software developers in the NYC area drawing salaries of up to 75k each, pay our overhead and together aim to donate 100k-200k+ as a business yearly.
I'm a veteran of the NYC IT staffing market but recent years have me disillusioned with the business and just doing some consulting work and taking some down time.  A recent health scare really makes me want to make some big life changes that include focusing on work that matters.  I think we can reduce our family spending to the point where we could take a family pay cut but do work we find fulfilling that ultimately makes a difference in the world.  In my mind the goal would be to somehow have a formula that gives 50% of every placement to charity and the rest to cover payroll and overhead until we reach our 150k total salaries at which time everything short of overhead would go to charity.  If our message resonated with companies and candidates to a point where our daily focus could be service rather than sales the amount we could give away (as two normal working people) could be incredible.
Question to the HN crowd:  Am I crazy, could this work? <comment><USER2> Have you seen the movie Dave from the 1990s about a guy who looks like the President and ends up being the stand-in for the President when he has a stroke? He runs a staffing agency who helps people down on their luck get jobs. Anyways, your thread title made me think of that.

I would say instead of just giving away the $$ to charity, why don't you put it towards helping low-income people have career advancement, or training homeless vets, or ex-cons?

</comment><comment> barry-cotter You are crazy and this could work. However, if you're going to run a staffing agency there are multiple ways you can do good with it. There's only so much money to go round and your customers are not going to pay you more money because you donate a lot of money to charity though it may help with marketing and sales. Ultimately the money is either going to come from you or your employees. You've decided it's going to come from you, which is greasy. You do what you want with your money. Staff are not going to work at below market rates for a company just because the owners donate a lot of money.

There is absolutely no way you will be able to skimp on sales and focus on service. Real businesses pay people large sums because they think they're worth the price, not out of the kindness of their hearts. If you want to donate a lot of money you're going to be doing the same kind of work as now and donating more money. Services don't sell themselves.

If running a staffing agency and donating money doesn't sound super rewarding all by itself consider taking on people who need a break, training them and sending them out into the working world until they move on.

Look at what Lambda School and Jessica Livingston are doing. [http://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/women-learn-to- program-t...](http://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/women-learn-to-program-this- summer)

Could you sponsor one person a quarter to do this, to come to your office while doing it and get paid, and then work for you for nine months after?

Or you could work for a company or organisation you actually thought was making a positive difference in the world. I think Lambda School is awesome because they're trying to make a Lin education that leads to a good job available everywhere. I'm sure you can think of _some_ company you admire.

Or look at the 80,000 hours job board, the product of some smart people looking for jobs that they think will make a big positive impact.

[https://80000hours.org/job-board](https://80000hours.org/job-board)

<comment><USER3> I also used to be interested in effective altruism.

They're mostly smart people, and I respect them for sticking to their principles.

However, I don't think working at something you feel neutral, or negative, towards, and then donating the bulk of your income, is a path to personal happiness.

You need to do more thinking and reflection on your personal values, priorities, and the work you personally find fulfilling, meaningful, worthwhile. It can take years of thinking to figure out your purpose, but it can be done.

Try this as a place to start:

[https://www.romangelperin.com/shop/self-actualizing- people-i...](https://www.romangelperin.com/shop/self-actualizing-people-in- history-preorder)

Or maybe this: [http://aristotleadventure.blogspot.com/2008/05/what-is- centr...](http://aristotleadventure.blogspot.com/2008/05/what-is-central- purpose-in-life.html)

<comment> barry-cotter I suggest you take a look at the 80,000 hours website. Earning to give has become less emphasised as 80,000 Hours has done more research and the broader effective altruist community has grown, in experience, numbers and expertise.

[https://80000hours.org/articles/comparative- advantage/#shoul...](https://80000hours.org/articles/comparative- advantage/#should-i-earn-to-give-or-do-direct-work)

> Should I earn to give or do direct work?

> We often advise people who say: "I have high earning potential, so I have > good personal fit with earning to give, so I should earn to give".

> But this doesn't follow. We're in a situation where we need the right ratio > of funders to direct workers, so what matters is comparative advantage. This > means you need to compare your earning potential to other people in the > community who might do direct work or earn to give.

> If they have even higher earning potential, then you might have a > comparative advantage in direct work, even though you have high earning > potential compared to people in general.

> Cases like this might be common. There are people doing direct work in the > community who could donate over $500,000 per year earning to give. So, even > if you have earning potential this high, you might still have a comparative > advantage in direct work.

> Of course, some people's comparative advantage will be earning to give. If > it looks like you might be less good than existing people doing direct work, > or you have struggled to find work in direct work, we think that earning to > give is a great alternative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yea can totally work - it gets at a lot in the zeitgeist in tech recently. I left Airbnb and started [https://alma.app](https://alma.app) for similar reasons. We help companies with strong social missions (and their employees and their customers) connect with charities that share the same broad goals.

Many people I worked with would I think not only want to work with an agency that supports charities, but you could go a step further and also help those employees use their skills at the charities to volunteer, the companies support them too.

Always happy to talk, just ping me a note!

</comment><comment><USER5> To me, business is business. When a business gives to charity, I usually see that as a gimmick dreamed up by their marketing department. I would rather make more or pay less, and then donate my own money to charity. No I guess I'm not a fan of your idea, but don't let me stop you from trying!

<comment><USER6> I think it's a gimmick if you decide to do it later for marketing reasons. If it's there from the beginning as a representation of company's values, it's something different. (Better?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems like you need to be well-known, and/or have a deep network of contacts. Some way to get your name out there.

And I suspect that candidates have little loyalty to staffing agencies -- vs more of a broadcast. So you need to keep hustling.

</comment><comment><USER8> I work at [http://givelively.org](http://givelively.org) for the same reasons. I want my work to be about more than making someone profit, so I work at a place that doesn't make profit. For what it's worth, the fact that the mission of your organization would be aligned with ours would certainly be very attractive to me as a hiring manager. I would furthermore be encouraged by the idea that your pool of candidates may also be of a similar mindset. Of course I am an exception. Most hiring managers may not see things the way I do. But nonetheless, I want to share my words of encouragement and I hope you'll reach out to me if you end up moving forward.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to all who replied to a stranger on the internet thinking a crazy idea out loud. I appreciate the links that were shared and will definitely take a deep dive into them. There seem to be a few agencies out there in the temp space helping out those looking to get back into the job market (ex-cons, homeless, etc.) which is great. Temp placement, even at the lower end of the pay scale, takes a rather large amount of capital to cover payroll and what I'm guessing would be very high insurance costs (manual labor, ex-felon, etc.) Also, probably more than 1 or 2 people could handle from an hours in the day standpoint without administrative/recruiting help. I feel like the big firms probably give such marginal amounts that while helpful feels more to me like marketing spin which a few of you felt this post could be construed as. The industry as a whole has such a negative reputation and unfortunately it's probably well deserved. Maybe some of you are right and I'm barking up the wrong tree but I appreciate your thoughts nonetheless and plan on taking up the offers to chat/correspond by a few of you. If you didn't have a profile in your email and wanted to touch base I set up firstname.lastname@example.com where we can correspond and I can send you my personal email address/details.

</comment><comment><USER9> Some comments have suggested that the money needs to come from somewhere / business/staffing is still business, and/or that donating could be done in several ways.

Could you turn these two threads into two birds to kill with one stone? I'm thinking perhaps instead of donating to a 3rd party charity, are you able to perhaps do something like a training and internship program for disadvantaged candidates, be them career switchers, vets, non-college graduates, basically people that slip through HR-nets, with your clients where to get the clients on-board your people into post-training junior experience-building roles for a few months (no or minimal fee for client, you pay a retainer salary to your people) then after 3 or 6 or 9 months if the client wants to retain them you get a lump-fee (and perhaps they stay on your books as an agency too).

Sorry, just thinking aloud. But something like the above seems not only to be a one-off killing two birds with one stone, but might be a sustainable model depending on how you get client buy-in.

</comment><comment><USER10> _I'm a veteran of the NYC IT staffing market but recent years have me disillusioned with the business_

Why are you disillusioned with the business?

Why do you feel that simply giving half the money to charity somehow makes it okay to continue working in an industry that you currently see in a negative light?

Do you think you could make a staffing firm that would solve the issues within the industry such that you would stop feeling negatively about it?

I'm all for some charitable giving. I think that helps make the world work better. The world needs some means to help those folks for whom life simply isn't working for some reason.

But I generally feel that when people see regular paid work so negatively and their answer is to do the same work, but give away most of the profit, then this suggests the system is broken. Something is fundamentally wrong. A new model is needed so people can feel that their paid job actually matters and is a positive thing.

Best of luck.

</comment><comment><USER11> Can you really hire NYC area devs for so little pay? Even with the mission to help win candidates over, that seems incredibly low. I would normally be more worried about finding contracts (unless you have contacts you haven't mentioned), but I don't think that's going to be the primary problem in your plan.

<comment><USER12> I think he means paying himself and his wife $75k each. The placements would presumably be at market rates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think you should also consider paying the employees more than you strictly need to. I think lots of private companies squeeze their employees on wedges. And sure squeezing them for charity is better than for shareholders.

If it were me I'd do an employee owned nonprofit, than a 'profits go to charity'.

</comment><comment><USER14> I like your question very much. IMHO, every entreprise is a social entreprise. No matter what it does, it affects society, does it not?

So, giving away a % of the revenues shouldn't be necessary, as long as the business does something _meaningful_ for society.

Looks like you would help people make a living, while helping companies find talent. That seems more-than-enough meaningful.

And if you'd like to be even more meaningful, you may experiment with how you select your clients -- so they, too, do meaningful things.

I'd keep all the revenues, not out of greed, but simply so that you don't suffer, allowing you to keep helping society in the long run.

<comment><USER15> Others have downvoted you, so I want to add some ideas why you may not be right here.

From an economist's view, it is clear that such "market behavior" may be efficient in allocation of ressources, but not morally or ethically efficient. There are many "pareto efficient" equilibria, for example, but the subset of those which are socially desireable is small. Since we are not aware of a good regulatory mechanism that ensures both allocative and distributive efficiency, it is certainly commendable for individuals with wealth to throw their weight into making society better for more people. Another sense of how this may be desirable is that the more we look toward the long term, the more important social incentives should become - while we as humans often think very myopically. This is a view of efficiency.

From a sociologist's perspective, one may say that social norms - for example how much we can and should help other people - are driven by both the behavior around us, and what we observed in the past. So, being able to help people and improve society is something that can move us, collectively, to a better path. And not doing so, may cement a system that is not really desirable, yet binding for individuals.

So indeed, doing things like this may not only feel meaningful, but they are meaningful. And meaning in our actions is important for personal happiness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I hope you have a long and healthy future. But if the staffing work is draining to you, how will this free you for "work that matters?"

It seems like the changes you're proposing are (1) cutting your own spending, and (2) publicizing your charity goals. But neither (1) nor (2) alters your work or gives money to your clients. Are you hoping (2) will bring you clients you admire, because they like your charitable goals?

It could work, in the sense that NYC IT staffing had better spin off >$75k/per employee in profit. But it doesn't seem to optimize for gains to charities or your personal pleasure.

</comment><comment><USER17> All of the big firms in NYC already have their own heavily branded / promoted charity day / events / philanthropy programs - your own charitable contributions aren't going to be a selling point for them.

If you want do this for your own reasons, great, I am sure it could deliver a lot of meaning and satisfaction in a field where that is perhaps hard to come by.

(Shameless plug - I do happen to be on the job market in NYC now, if you wanted to connect or offer any advice I'd be receptive, email in my profile).

</comment><comment><USER18> Crazy in a good way. I don't think you need to talk about your earnings distribution with either party.

Please remember to keep your hiring process human too and inculcate a culture among seekers where job attributes thus relevant are paid attention to.

As someone who worked in the wall-street in a quant role it can be a mad rush to nowhere and easy to get lost. So if you succeed, you'd be helping a whole lot of people.

Remember though- businesses take time to setup. The more you deviate from the normal the longer it may take you to get established.

</comment><comment><USER19> To me, it comes across as a disingenuous marketing gimmick.

If you're still going to be a staffing agency making income from placements, what changes will you implement to transform it into a "service"?

And what's the difference between your idea and simply being an individual who donates a portion of their income to charity?

</comment><comment><USER20> I mean, if you don't want to operate your business for profit, then don't. However, personally, I find it odd when business makes donations to charity. I would just take it as salary and donate it yourself. That shouldn't have any tax implications if you set the business up as a pass through entity.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is a great idea. I know a recruiter (and motivational speaker) who places people _in_ charities and knows the ins-outs of "social good" and recruiting. Let me know if you want to chat with him or have me send this idea over to him. :)

</comment><comment><USER22> So where should I send my resume to work for you? I used to work for a boutique staffing firm; I'd love to help.

</comment><comment><USER23> Great idea. you could also consider making it a Co-op staffing agency or a non-profit.</comment>