Ask HN: I feel my dream slipping away - <AUTHOR> They say advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.
Well, I'm not looking for hang-in-there-buddy-advice but rather employment ideas or immigration hacks from someone in my situation or who understands it. I'm an Engineer working at a big corp in California - a job I so hate but have been needing to hold on to for green card purposes (I'm a foreign citizen). I'm still at least 2 years away from getting it. Meanwhile, in my spare time, I've been hacking away on my boostrapped startup idea. I released a MVP two months ago and it has been gaining steady traction. I intend to hit ramen profitability by early next year. This is where it gets hard on me. In spite of spending many waking hours working on it, moonlighting often translates to slow progress. At the end of a full 10 hour day working for the man, creativity and productivity are not at their peak when I get to work in the evenings. I fear that when competition gets wind of the opportunity that exists in their blind spot, they will get to work and could outdo me quickly.
One option is quitting my job cold turkey but that may mean going back to my home country. I've lived in the US for 8+ yrs now and want to stay here. I want to build my business here. I like it here. Is that so bad? Isn't America the land where you can realize your dream and help others realize theirs too?
It gets very frustrating at times and I fear my dream is slipping away. I will turn 30 soon (no, that is not precipitating this :). I'd like to spend the next decade of my life building my own company, not waiting for a green card. I am making progress but at a snail's pace (at least I feel so). Plus from my last venture, I learned the lesson that working with a useless co-founder is worse than going it alone. This time, I am solo-ing until I can find a partner who is as passionate & hard working.
I've been bearing this situation for two years now and feel like I'm stuck in this rut for the foreseeable future.
Are any of you in similar shoes? How do you deal with it? Are there any immigration hacks that you are aware of? Have you figured out some way to spend a major chunk of your time working on your startup but staying in legal status and maintaing your perm residency petition?
tl;dr: Working on startup venture. No green card. Stuck in this situation for 2+ yrs. Slow progress and sometimes feel dream slipping away. Suggestions?
Gosh. I hope I don't come across as whiny. I'm not.
[EDIT] I've been trying to reply to some of your comments but the post isn't going through. Would you know why? I'm a long time HN user but this is a throwaway account and I'm not sure if it's because this is a new user. <comment><USER3> Five minutes after winning the presidential election of 1904, Teddy Roosevelt vowed not to seek re-election in 1908. Six minutes after, he regretted what he had just said. He tried to return in 1912, but failed and regretted his hasty decision the rest of his life.

Why do I mention this? Because whenever I feel like I'm in a difficult situation (not all that much different from yours), I promise myself not to pull a Teddy Roosevelt and do something hasty that I'll regret forever. Neither should you.

FWIW, time is _not_ slipping away. In spite of what you may think here at hn, _30 is not old_.

My suggestion: keep your job and stay on your path to a green card, but find a way to do it and your startup at the same time. You have to get creative. Put in a few hours on your startup before work, not after. Get rid of you TV set. Block out huge blocks of time on weekends. Use your PTO for your startup. Work from home a few days a week and squeeze in extra startup work with the time/energy you save. You get the idea.

You're already creative enough to build a startup. Now use that creativity to free up more time and energy to work on it. Forget about the competition and time slipping away; just do the best you can. And don't pull a Teddy Roosevelt.

<comment><USER4> But what is the Teddy Roosevelt decision, staying in the job or quitting? Saying "I have to be in America"?

I am 37 now and I think time IS slipping away. (Note: I am not the OP)

<comment><USER5> Statistically speaking, you've lived about half of your life. A little under, depending on country. I suppose you are a glass half empty sort of fellow?

Really though, it's not so bad. We all face utter oblivion; the question is "When?" and not "If?" Live peacefully and with confidence. Be content that you do not live in Swaziland. Thirty-seven years is a long time to yet exist.

<comment><USER4> The thing is, I haven't done anything all that great yet (by my own standards). If I just keep going on as I did before (ie staying in boring jobs), how am I to expect that in my second half, something exciting will magically happen? Some opportunities are already gone forever, ie nobody will cast me as a singer in a boy group anymore (just saying). I keep hoping that one day there will be a market for rock stars who only started playing their instruments in their 60ies...

I don't think the glass is half empty. Despite all the problems, I think the world is an amazing place with countless interesting things to do. I am just not in favor of the "play it safe and keep your day job" advice, because time definitely is finite (though I am rooting for the singularity guys). I am not in a position to really advise against it, though - what if somebody quits their job and ends up broke and miserable? Everybody has to decide for themselves, I guess.

I think "fear is the greatest enemy" is true, though - what exactly is the day job buying you? Also think in opportunity costs - what could you do in the time you weren't working for the man?

<comment><USER6> Usually I would agree about quitting the job and just going for it. Like you said, time is finite. But, one does have to consider the details of one's situation.

 _what exactly is the day job buying you?_

In the OP's case, US citizenship, which means a lifetime of opportunity to build businesses in a free country which he/she likes living in. Two years of steady income, while still working on your business on the side, sounds like a good bargain.

Of course, your situation must be different, so you would have to decide accordingly.

<comment><USER4> True, 2 years seems like an acceptable price in that case. I don't have the citizenship issue, so I am not losing anything besides money. Since citizenship (presumably) can't be bought by money, the stakes for leaving the job seem to be a lot higher for the OP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> H1-B Transfer to your startup? [http://www.askthevc.com/blog/archives/2008/04/does- having-a-...](http://www.askthevc.com/blog/archives/2008/04/does-having- a-h.php)

See one of the comments:

"I have a lot of experience with this, having done it several times myself. Proving the company is 'real' to the USCIS can be tricky, because they don't consider companies with cash but no revenue to be viable. Luckily it never usually gets to that stage of analysis for a simple H1B (although green cards are a whole different matter). Just make sure you have an office address,letterhead, phone numbers, a bank account and good lawyers. The USCIS will often pick up on little details that show the business is being run out of someones backyard.

The hardest part is in the early stages, prior to transferring the H1B visa, because technically the visa holder can have no involvement in the company i.e. cannot attend meetings or talk about the opportunity without violating their status.

One approach I used successfully was to get my accountant to create an LLC. The LLC held my shares in the new startup. My immigration attorney then applied for a part-time concurrent H1B to work for that LLC as a board member a couple of hours a week, in parallel with myexisting H1B visa, allowing me to be involved from day one (you can start work the moment the visa is filed). When the startup was funded, they then filed a H1B transfer for me. "

<comment><USER8> This can be done, but it's not a long-term solution and honestly I wouldn't recommend it.

H1B visas are granted for three years, and you can renew _once_. That gives you a total of six years after which you have to go home - no matter how well your startup is doing at that point. I've never heard of anyone doing the above _and_ managing to keep their Green Card application going. I'm not sure it's actually possible.

In contrast a Green Card can be renewed indefinitely, so it's a rather valuable thing to wait for. Totally worth it in my opinion.

<comment><USER9> > H1B visas are granted for three years, and you can renew once.

Not exactly. They can be renewed past the second term indefinitely, as long as an immigration application (I-140/I-485) has been filed with USCIS and is under review -- can be a long process.

<comment><USER8> Right, yes that's true, but if you submit an immigration application while you're at a large company, and then do your own startup and transfer the H1B, I'm pretty sure you will have to give up on the immigration application. I've heard of people starting companies and transferring H1Bs, but never of anyone who has done that and managed to keep an immigration application going.

<comment><USER9> I think that most people file I-140/I-485 concurrently and apply for employment authorization at the same time. At that point they are not tied to their company exclusively, and theoretically they could even leave, if they are confident that the company would not maliciously retract their application. The risk there, of course, is that as soon as EAD is used to justify employment, H-1B is no longer valid, and if the initial application is denied, the applicant is automatically out of status.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Don't worry too much about a large company seeing what you are doing and moving into your space faster than you. Large companies go through several stages of copying ideas

1) What a dumb idea, that will never work

2) That company seems profitable, but we will beat them

3) We better copy that idea, but it is not our core business / it will cannabilise our profits

4) Okay, lets get some of our non-motivated, non skilled, unimportant engineers to look at this niche in our typical boring locked down plodding way

5) Budget cuts!

So yeah, don't be too worried about large companies.

<comment><USER11> I'm not trying to be negative, but when your company is one person, a five man startup with a similar idea -is- a huge company, especially if they don't have to work ten hour days. Things are relative, and the megacorp isn't the only competition. Or even most of it.

<comment><USER10> Completely true. However it is extremely rare for multiple startups to go for _exactly_ the same niche.

Also, most customers you approach will never have heard of either of you - unless you are in a tiny market your competition has very little effect on you (other than encouraging you to work harder)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> First, as edw519 mentioned, 30 is still quite young. A friend of mine moved from Japan to the US at 38, taking less than half his former salary, and is still waiting for his green card at 43. He doesn't like his job that much but it keeps him here and the lifestyle is much better for him.

I myself am 35 with a wife and two kids. I've been bootstrapping solo for the last two and a half years. Traction takes time (like 2-5 years). You can't just put something online and expect it to grow. You have to physically talk to your potential customers, even if it means doing so repeatedly for very small deals.

You're actually quite lucky to be employed while working on your side project. Keep your job (or find another one if it won't screw up your green card process) and figure out a way to keep building on the side (make sure you're covered from an IP perspective). If you really want to make it happen, you're going to need a lot of energy and patience.

Also, don't worry about competition. It's the least of your concerns.

</comment><comment><USER13> The real answer is, it depends. I totally understand what you are feeling.

I went through a similar situation. Was in the US for about 7 years, did both my degrees there and OPT both times. Was about to let a company I had a good relationship with apply for my H1-B, but decided to move home.

Now that I am back home, I can't explain to you the weight that has been lifted from my shoulders - to be a citizen again. It's not something that can be explained to someone who has not gone through the immigration process for a few years. But it is the most liberating feeling ever.

The beauty about the space we are involved in, is that we can start a startup from anywhere.

You don't have to live in the US. The truth is, I never saw myself moving back home either, but after I got married (she isn't an American) and had my first child - we decided it was best to raise him at home (where there is more help).

However, once my startup reaches a point where I can expand, I plan on opening an office or some sort of presence in the US - which essentially allows you to get a green card - once you are creating enough jobs, and invest enough in the US.

So don't feel like going degree -> H1-B -> green card is the only way.

All in all, I don't know your particular situation, but going home might not be ALL that bad. Especially if you can work on your startup and be earning USD living in a country with much lower cost of living.

Just my $0.02.

</comment><comment><USER14> Advice is what I look for when I feel like I should know the answer to something, and I don't.

You have a perfectly viable third option, and it's one that I nearly took while trying to juggle a business and a regular job at the same time. I certainly would have taken it if I felt that it was necessary to keep the regular job.

That option is, get help. You have a steady, reliable job now, and you might not enjoy it, but you might also be surprised at how much more enjoyable it can be if you have a successful business on the side that's _taking care of itself_. Also, I'm beginning to think that "getting help" is one of the most challenging steps an entrepreneur eventually has to take; why not handle it right away?

Take a day or two off from your regular job, if you can. A long weekend would be good. Decompress a little -- but don't procrastinate! -- and then sit down and draft an idea of what you want your business to do, and when you want it to do it. It doesn't need to be fancy; it doesn't need to be a business plan. Just: "in X months my business should be doing Y" kind of stuff.

Then, once you've got a clear idea of what you want to accomplish, start looking for people that can help you do it. The economy is your friend right now -- you should be able to find some part-time or contract help for pretty cheap. You'll get to learn how to manage them really effectively, since you won't be able to look over their shoulders 40 hours a week.

Two years from now, you can have your green card, _and_ you can be way ahead of schedule in your business, just because you got help sooner rather than later.

<comment><USER15> And try to avoid creating situations in this setup where you are a bottleneck that is constantly holding up whoever you've delegated to (speaking from loads of experience). And when that happens (e.g., content needs to be written to launch), sometimes you just need to relax control and delegate.

Worst case, it's easier to tweak or rewrite something that's been already written than start from scratch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Let me advise you something different, its valid & legal and it works perfectly fine... i know many have done this before by applying for Canadian permanent residency (same as USA green card) so that they at least have stability and dont have to worry about going back to home country. Canadian PR is easy and fast and you can work from Vancouver (close to silicon valley on Canadian side) and in the mean time keep working on your job & project... just in case if you want to work full-time on your startup then you can go to Canada and work from there, also once you've PR from Canada, you can go to US on visitors visa as many time as you want, this is good if you want to meet VCs and other project members. Also you can get Canadian citizenship within 3 to 5yrs after PR.

Do I sound like sales guy for Canadian immigration :-) anyway find an immigration lawyer who has knowledge of both countries (USA & Canada), again trust me this will be immensely helpful for planning your future and stability.

edit: by the way, once you get PR for Canada, you may migrate there and easily find a job that is not stressful, you can work for 40hrs and rest of the time you can work for your startup.

</comment><comment><USER17> Keep on the path for your green card. 2 years is not such a big deal in the grand scheme of things.

<comment><USER18> And try to enjoy life in the mean time. Life is not about the destination, the trip is also important. You can do things on your free time, but you can also find ways to enjoy your job more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm 49 years old, and further away from my green card. You're in a good spot, don't take it so seriously.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm sort of in a similar situation, but in the UK. The visa/work permit situation is a lot easier here though. So, soon after I started working on my startup I quit my job and got a new visa which allows me to do any kind of work (including self-employment). I also like it here and would like to stay until I get permanent residence. I saved up enough from my job to keep me going for a while, hopefully until my business takes off.

I'm finding working alone on my startup quite hard. And all that emotional rollercoaster stuff I heard about also seems to be true. I'm doing it fulltime and still feel like I'm moving painfully slow. So I can totally understand your frustration and fear.

I think I agree largely with what edw519 says. Keep the job and keep working on your startup but try and slowly build up the momentum.

Is there a chance for you to get another less demanding job? It sounds like you must have a decent paying job, so presumably you can save a bit of money from that which could help.

Finally, given your situation, the classic route of consulting might be a good option.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I really appreciate the advice, kind words, encouragement, and wisdom you guys have offered here, edw519, thaumaturgy, gridspy, patio11, adityakothadiya, rgrieselhuber and others.

Patience is a virtue and I've been practising it for a few years now. My green card petition has been pending for _5_ years and it still seems far away. Given the immigration climate and the general xenophobia, I dread waiting another few years (2 is my optimistic guess _if_ immigration reform goes through, else...). I sometimes put myself on the other side of the fence and wonder that if things don't pan out, will I regret not taking the leap? It's hard sometimes, you know.

I don't want to take any hasty decisions and screw everything up. But as adityakothadiya pointed out, I do want to know that I've exhausted all possible options and have no other resort.

I need to get more efficient and as thaumaturgy pointed out, get help. I am planning on bringing in some help over the summer. I'm also considering taking a leave of absence from the job if possible.

Entrepreneurship is difficult (euphemism) in and of itself. Add first time founder, solo founder, part-time work, and green card bull and in those moments of weakness, I despair. And as Unseelie pointed out, when you're one person doing something, even a five person unfunded team can seem scary.

That being said, overall, I'm optimistic and will continue to do what I'm doing. I'm still living some form of my dream and it is exciting to watch this baby grow.

No one wants to live with regrets but often you don't know in advance what you will or will not end up regretting. I'm figuring it out.

If I don't do a good job at building my startup, or finding product/market fit and so on, I can live with it not going anywhere. But if I end up realizing (a little too late) that dedicating myself to it would have made a difference, that's a bitter pill to swallow.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is a great example of why the U.S. needs startup visas (without $1 million requirement) to keep and encourage entrepreneurship in the U.S. and generate jobs + tax revenue.

It's a tough call what to do within the limits of our current environment and I wish you the best of luck in your current situation.

<comment><USER21> Or just do what New Zealand and Australia do, and allow people in required professions (programmers being one of them) a visa and a 2-years fast track to citizenship.

<comment><USER22> You mean immigration as a federal skilled worker, right?

I thought they were making this process tougher because of the current economic climate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> When was your last vacation? Perhaps you just need a break.

<comment><AUTHOR> Jan 09. A while ago.

<comment><USER23> You're burned out. Take a break.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Marry an American, get citizenship, then go found your startup. And never, ever think you're too old.

Your situation sounds a lot like my dad's. He came here after college, finished his Ph.D in the U.S, then got screwed over in every industrial position he took. The immigration situation sucks in this country. You need a company to sponsor you, but the company realizes that you have zero leverage as a foreigner, and treats you accordingly. He was paid less than native-born citizens, missed out on all the scientific conferences given abroad because he couldn't leave the country easily for visa reasons, and found that promotions and accolades went to his American colleagues that knew how to work the system, rather than the people who did the best technical work.

He ended up getting his citizenship when he married my mother, a few years past 30. But in a sense it was too late for him by then: he was so bitter about the way he was treated in industry that it poisoned all his future ventures. It did mean that my sister and I grew up as native-born U.S. citizens, though, with all the cultural capital that comes with that.

My advice for now: forget about the startup. Instead, concentrate on learning as much about American culture as possible. Go out with coworkers after work. Start cultivating your own social life - invite friends to go do stuff with you. Date some American girls. Listen to pop music. Someone said throw away the TV set - I'd actually disagree with that, I think you should watch _more_ TV, but don't just veg out. Instead, listen carefully to what shows the people around you are into, and then watch them so you have something to talk about with them.

This'll all be useful if you ever found a startup in the future, but more to the point, it's essential if you really plan on staying here permanently. My dad never fully assimilated into American culture, which meant that my sister and I had to pick up a lot of it as kids, sometimes very painfully. And then it caused conflict with my father, who remained very Chinese (and distrustful of Americans) until he died. If you stay here, you'll need to interact with Americans wherever you go, you'll need to rely upon them to build a business, and your kids will become American. Better to join them than fight them.

It's very easy for non-foreigners to forget just how much of an advantage cultural capital gives them. There's this huge iceberg of cultural skills that white middle-class Americans take for-granted, that are just unknown to foreigners, poor people, minorities, or children of foreigners. You hear these stories about immigrant entrepreneurs who hit it big in America - but if you talk to any of them, you usually find that they mastered the culture _first_ , and then founded their companies. It's not a matter of "the smartest engineer wins"; it's a matter of "the smartest engineer who acts and talks like me and that I can feel comfortable doing business with wins".

<comment><USER25> The only thing worse than a company that knows you have no leverage is a wife that knows you have no leverage.

<comment><USER26> Huh? I think you and the upmodders do not realize that once the spouse gets the marriage-based green card, it doesn't get revoked in a divorce. AFAIK and IANAL.

Unless there is some other point to this comment that is going WAY above my head.

<comment><USER27> Well, your knowledge is surely lacking. To prevent immigration fraud, the rule is that when you marry a citizen, you get a temporary green card which is valid for 2 years. You must go back to USCIS after 2 years to get a permanent green card. Also, it's quite possible that USCIS will ask for proof that your marriage was legit (wedding pictures/honeymoon pictures/joint bank accounts). If you get divorced before 2 years, it becomes kind of tricky to get permanent green card. [Read <http://www.shusterman.com/greencardsthroughmarriage.html>, scroll to 'REMOVING CONDITIONAL RESIDENCE' section]

Also, if you get divorce after getting green card and if USCIS finds out that you married citizen only to get green card, they can revoke it.

<comment><USER26> Yes, I knew about the "probationary period" etc.

But the unqualified "no leverage" of the OP seemed to imply at least to me that they thought that the green card would be taken away in a divorce irrespective of number of years of marriage (it doesn't after two years unless you got into a fraudulent marriage).

And I do not think the GP suggested getting a sham marriage. Yes, if you really enter into a sham marriage then the "wife" will have lots of leverage over you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> _"... tl;dr: Working on startup venture. No green card. Stuck in this situation for 2+ yrs. Slow progress and sometimes feel dream slipping away. Suggestions? ..."_

Patience.

</comment><comment><USER8> I spent three years waiting for a Green Card while working at a boring job in a big company. It is very frustrating.

My only piece of advice would be to look for ways to hack the Green Card process. While it looks completely unhackable on the surface, there were a couple of times dring my application where we managed to find influential contacts who sped things up by as much as six months. If the immigration lawyer your company is using isn't doing everything possible to make your application go quickly, find a lawyer of your own to review the paperwork and see if anything more can be done.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER29> I've gone through and read all the comments below, and am pretty overwhelmed by the hopes, the energy, and the tenacity of so many of you. I am a 35 year old first time entrepreneur, but I'm a citizen, so I can relate to some of the pressure - but only a tiny bit. But that's not what I wanted to comment on - <USER2> wanted to comment on the fact that I am blown away by those of you making a go of this...you make this country great even when it makes it hard for you. We are lucky to have you.

</comment><comment><USER30> Don't try to work on your project after a full day of work. You're physically and mentally tired, you won't produce quality work and you'll begin to dread working on your side project.

Here is some simple advice that has worked for me very well in the past, in exactly your situation (and I've gone on to run those side projects successfully and even exit from one via acquisition).

__Work on your side projects in the morning__

This involves some lifestyle changes, i.e. waking up early. The process, once mature, involves 3 steps:

1) On the commute home after work, think of 1 concrete thing you want to achieve the next morning on your side project. Relax and watch TV etc whilst going over in your head what you're going to do in terms of execution.

2) Go to sleep early (say 11pm) and wake up at 6am.

3) Do the stuff you thought about. Your mind will be fresh, you'll be looking _forward_ to working, and if you can charge through 1 to-do list item per day, that's good, consistent progress.

Keeping a strict routine of this you can maintain a very quick pace of product iteration. Much faster than you'd think, for just a couple of hours a day. It's all about filling those hours with concrete tasks and being in the right mindset to Get Things Done.

Hope that helps.

</comment><comment><USER31> Focus on what you can and want to do. Not on what you can't change. In your situation this would be: 1\. Get a better day job which is higher paying or which makes you feel better about your life in some way. Eg: let's you live near the beach or in NYC et . 2\. Start proving in some fashion (eg: letters of intent from customers) that you have a great product. You think that the green card is the problem but if your a first time entrepreneur I can bet even if you had a gc the state of your company is not at the point you could go it alone right now. Be honest about this. 3\. Save up some money. Your going to need this when you start on your own. 4\. Date more American women. :) ... Even if you never find your wife thus way, it'll increase the quality of life... Well at least for sometime. :) 5\. Average age of receiving a gc is 31. At least that's what I've seen. So hang in there.

Yes I ve been in your shoes. I got my gc but then realised that my idea/implementation was fundamentally flawed. Now I'm doing all of the above so I can quit in another 6 months.

Use this time to really vet your idea. 3\. Seriously network with others

</comment><comment><USER32> Might I ask what is taking up most of your time getting your concept to fruit?

Is it the programming? Marketing?

It's been said here so much it might as well be on a stone tablet: 30 isn't too old, but I totally understand that such a milestone can put irrational pressures on someone. Trust me, I know.

As for your other dilemma, your fear that others might catch on to your idea and beat you to the punch.

No one can guarantee a surefire hit. Lord knows there's been a ton of those that ended up being total duds. Consider this though, an idea that's sat on is an idea that's wasted. Don't let the threat of competition scare you off. If you've got a great idea, it will remain great even if others are doing it, and if yours is better, people will come to you.

I've sat on a few ideas of my own for lack of time and technical help, only see other people start their own version of it or another. I think mine's still better, but seeing others attempt it gave me a bit more confidence in the viability of the idea, and a kick in the butt that I gotta get moving. Don't be afraid to find the right people to work with, sometimes it's a trial and error thing, but don't quit.

</comment><comment><USER33> Focus as much time as you can on the start up over the next two years and try to get it profitable but most importantly keep the job.

If you hold on for two years, you will end up with a solid start up, a green card and in addition to your salary you'll have another revenue stream.

That's a very nice way to enter your thirties.

Hang in there!

</comment><comment><USER34> I am in the same boat - at least a year away from my green card, working for BigCo, moonlighting, even turning 30 soon!

I've researched a couple of options to expedite green card processing and these may be applicable to your case - email johnbray8 at google's email service to chat.

</comment><comment><USER35> Start looking into full-time positions in Canada as a backup for when your US visa expires. I know others who are in the same predicament as you who were able to find positions within their own big corp employer. Canada is favorable as US allows for partnerships with Canadians. There is also a cultural fit and comfort factor from customers & future employees. You are not alone. Even motivated U.S. corps have to jump through many hoops to get their H1s passed. It is not always the employer who is at fault. For example, there is a waiting period for public companies to start processing H1s after a large layoff. Add to this the bureaucratic nature of big corp + big gov't in general.

</comment><comment><USER36> There's some really good advice on this thread. FWIW, here's my take.

You are _living two lives at the same time_. It's possible to do it, but you have to sacrifice and avoid traps. You have to acknowledge you will be vulnerable due to tiredness. Your main pitfall is falling into depression, despair and alienation. Here are some very simple techniques I use. It is vital to achieve a good mindset and excellent health.

 _Master your time_ and in particular your sleep. Every day _sleep at least 8 hours_. Don't moonlight if possible. Wake up very early in the morning, 5 or 6am maximum. Go for a walk or a run, then have a very quick healthy and filling breakfast (avoid boxed cereals!) If you have time, work some on your project. Get to work before anybody else, get sort everything you can in the morning as everybody else is drowsy and slow. Exploit that. Master the "wally reflector", perhaps preemptively.

For lunch time, have something very light like a sandwich or salad. Push meetings to the afternoon, if possible. Focus well on people talking to you, don't multitask on meetings. Avoid the water-cooler gang, don't waste your time even at the office, remember you are worn out more than your co-workers. If you need to _clear your mind, go to a quiet place and rest_. Do the same at lunch, if possible.

After work, avoid the pub and go straight to your project and put as many good hours as you can. If you work at home, get rid of any possible distraction, in particular _avoid time sinks like TV, social sites, and chat/im_. Hold dinner until you are done.

Drink water all the time, perhaps a glass every hour. Avoid any other soft drinks. Eat healthier, get enough nutrients in particular good proteins (milk, egg whites, soy) to help you recover. Also don't neglect good oils (sunflower, algae/fish.) A healthy lifestyle will help you save money, too.

Stay away as much as possible from coffee because it will give you insomnia and stomach problems while in the long run you end up with a dependency and without the buzz. Avoid alcohol (and soft drugs), its effects will cascade into the week because you are vulnerable. Avoid heavy and unhealthy foods, it will give you indigestion and get you drowsy. Stop eating sugars, candy, chocolate, and soft drinks.

When you are feeling bad at work, visualize your goals. Repeat to yourself often, perhaps in a mirror: "this is just a stepping stone and I'm moving forward to my dream life." Or something along the lines better fitting your situation.

Keep completely to yourself either Saturday or Sunday, zero work. Have a good time.

Now the hardcore tricks. In just 2 weeks you can clean up from the typical western sugar addiction. Hang in there with your cravings. Only when you are completely in control, you can have a little bit of _sugar as last-resource remedy_ to help you get by when you reach very low points of the week. Drink lots of water with it to even out the effects from 15m to 45m. Don't eat or drink anything else. Sugar is a strong stimulant and an occasional shot can help keep discipline, but it works only if you don't have resistance to it. (There are several studies on this subject.)

Another trick is to schedule properly the work that wears you out. Put it all together and finish it as soon as possible, then resume your normal schedule.

And the best trick is to go to bed early on Sunday night, perhaps get your doctor to prescribe your some light sleep inducing pills. Some people swear by herbal remedies, too. When you start the week with the right foot it tends to have a good inertia.

And the top trick, _write a log_! Even if you write a single line it will help you keep focus and will help you become aware of progress. Write it even on bad days, highlight what went wrong. It takes just a minute.

Even though this is a hard life, if you manage to do it right it will be among the best times of your life. Things will change sooner than you expect.

</comment><comment><USER37> This will either inspire you or further depress you:

Things Other People Accomplished When They Were Your Age <http://www.museumofconceptualart.com/accomplished/>

Thirty is not old. Keep working. It doesn't matter if someone else swoops in and "steals" it. You'll have other and better ideas.

</comment><comment><USER38> I was in a similar situation, except I had an American co-founder to create the company and do the paperwork to transfer my H-1B. It took much, much longer than we hoped, but you can get there in the end.

So that would be my advice -- don't wait for the H-1B; find an American co- founder who can bring you on-board.

</comment><comment><USER39> Focus on improving your engineering skills; Switch to a much more interesting day job; Make your life more interesting; Developing your product in moonlight (Reference: read book Ignore Everyone).

Or just choose to give up the green card for something which matters more to you.

</comment><comment><USER40> Check out [http://www.amazon.com/Copy-This-Hyperactive-Dyslexic- Compani...](http://www.amazon.com/Copy-This-Hyperactive-Dyslexic- Companies/dp/0761137777) and don't be afraid to ask for help. You don't have to be a one man shop.

</comment><comment><USER41> A number of YC companies were founded by non-americans who ended up staying in the US, it might be worth approaching them to see how they did it. Possibly some hack involving an H1B for the company or maybe even an E2 for a VC financed company.

</comment><comment><USER42> "I learned the lesson that working with a useless co-founder is worse than going it alone."

Find one that's not useless. All the problems you've mentioned can be solved by having another set of hands around to help.</comment>


Reddit Is Down? - <AUTHOR> Website throws Service Unavailable Text <comment><USER2> [https://isitdownorjust.me/reddit.com/](https://isitdownorjust.me/reddit.com/) there are plenty of these services, why ask on HN? o0

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> old.reddit.com seems to be working

</comment><comment><USER3> Nope.</comment>


Ask HN: Are my feelings of job inadequacy in reality or all in my head? - <AUTHOR> Hello, I have to ask something about my abilities as a developer in a professional capacity. But I also have to rant. I feel very inadequate. And I don't really think it's just impostor syndrome anymore.
Reason 1 for feeling inadequate: I do not have a proper CS degree. Although this seems like the least problematic thing for many people.
Reason 2: I lack a good network for my years of experience. I rarely follow up with co-workers because I'm asocial. My closer friends also can't tell apart a programmer from an IT employee. So they're not good for leads.
Reason 3: I am probably an Expert Beginner. A chronic problem if you're 10 years experienced like me.
Reason 4: I'm grossly underpaid for my local area, living in a big city.
My objective and description: Web developer of ~10 years experience with Arts degree seeking low level embedded work, and gradually working into a semiconductor company to do work that's more interesting to me. I'm super burned out on web development and want to get away from it.
With my experience, several people have told me that going back to college is a waste of time. But I don't know about that. My applications get ignored in certain roles and departments I'm targeting. These companies go ahead and hire entry level CS graduates for these departments. People with little real world corporate experience get picked over me. I feel like a washed up NBA pro that loses 1-on-1 to many college rookies.
But I see "Experience trumps college!" being parroted around a whole lot, as if your length of job experience is the only relevant variable. People should really stop saying that. They place zero recognition of other variables that affect the individual's chances to land their target job, or even to get the first interview.
So is my inadequacy grounded in reality? Is it really true that I am as bad as I think? I can't tell what is dominating me more, impostor syndrome or real lack in ability. <comment><USER2> I come from sales/marketing background but i am a very in demand person in mostly adtech space and yes I've programming/technical experience under my belt.

I also don't have any degree. When i was new i did doubt myself but then i realized how clueless people with actual degrees were, so it gave me confidence to lead them.

If you've low level expertise, how about working for a blockchain startup? And getting on stage, doing programming talks (scripted obviously)

You've expertise but no one knows about it, so it's not worth expecting anything from a market which doesn't even know you exist.

Believe it or not, to seperate yourself from the rookies you need to be well known in the industry, if you really have all that experience. Why don't you talk about it in programming communities, give a talk, setup a brand, charge speaking fees etc..</comment>


The Great Inflation Mystery, Still Unsolved - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/business/23every.html?ei=5087%0A&em=&en=232021096c9b55ea&ex=1190692800&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> "We do know that if the Fed starts printing money, Weimar style, and dropping it from helicopters, Bernanke style, we will probably have big inflation."

[http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/2007/09/21/afx414376...](http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/2007/09/21/afx4143768.html)

How are we not printing money Weimar style? =)

<http://www.idorfman.com/Charts/bernanke-helicopter.jpg>

OT: if i had millions of dollars it would be so worth it to drop 10-20k out of a helicopter in a major metro just to see people's reaction.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pretty good, aside from the typically inane Bob Dylan quote at the end.</comment>


The transatlantic trade deal TTIP may be dead, but something worse is coming - open-source-ux https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/06/transatlantic-trade-partnership-ttip-canada-eu <comment><AUTHOR> Does it have to be true that they only have to succeed once? It feels like we need another set of laws in our constitutions to prevent it.

Imagine a world where there's no constitution and no fundamental rights for people. Without it corporations would also constantly try to make deals to enslave citizens where the existing rules specifically doesn't forbid to. Same thing is with these trade deals, just different scale.

<comment><USER2> The problem is that these things are designed to stay on indefinitely, once ratified. Also, it builds on the most debilitating feature of government: There are only ever things added to it, almost never subtracted. The only realistic ways of achieving large scale government reform seem to be revolution (not necessarily bloody revolution) and losing a major war. But those come with their own downsides.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> they will try and try and try until the people blink...and it takes just one blink.

<comment><USER4> As alluded to in the article: eternal vigilance is the cost of liberty</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Option to invest as a condition of employment? - <AUTHOR>

A question for founders: what would you think if a prospective hire agreed to accept a position on the condition that he be allowed to make an angel investment in the company?
To clarify, in addition to the employee getting X salary + Y amount of stock (vested over 4 years), he also gets to purchase Z amount of stock immediately (at the normal investor price/terms).
Here is the background for such a question: you've saved up money for the purpose of funding your own startup, but before doing so you get an interesting offer from another company.  Unfortunately, the company is later stage than you're looking for (i.e. raised money and paying salaries to employees).  This is a way to take the savings, and become more founder-ish in the new company via increased ownership.
Thoughts? <comment><USER2> _What would you think if a prospective hire agreed to accept a position on the condition that he be allowed to make an angel investment in the company?_

This is SO not my world, but since comments so far have been on the negative side: I can't actually imagine what the downside is in asking. They will either say yes or no. If they say no, you presumably have the choice of accepting the employment anyway or walking away. Provided all the negotiating is done courteously, I'm not sure what the problem could be.

I guess there is some scenario whether they are so shocked and appalled by you asking (an Oliver Twist moment) that they would withdraw their employment offer completely, but would you want to work for them if they are that touchy?

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right about just asking. Still, I wanted to get a sense of how unreasonable such a thing would be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've done this with my last startup and also have seen this happen on two addition occasions with new employees putting in 6 figures each.

1\. Funding is usually open for employees to participate. Founders love taking money from employees rather than VCs.

2\. VC's like this because the team is invested to win. No, they love this.

3\. Be like a VC and be diversified. Don't put all your eggs into one basket.

4\. putting in new bucks likely won't bump you up close to founder-ish levels of equity.

5\. Timing has a lot to do with this. Don't force the issue if any tension arises that can take away from your core responsibility of doing a good job.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is very unlikely to happen because: 1\. When a startup sells shares (i.e., you purchase stock) it sells them not only for money, but also for advice and connections. Most of the time these are more valuable than the cash. Since you are likely (only) an engineer/geek, your part of the deal is short. 2\. Even if they would want your money, evaluating a startup's worth (for pricing your shares)is extremely difficult and/or expensive. So the won't go through this process for a few thousand dollars.

<comment><AUTHOR> Everything has a price. If the seller doesn't want to sell, it just means the price is too low.

<comment><USER4> Technically you are right, everything has a price. Except when that price is way too high. So if you think a share is worth between say, $5 and $10, they can either say (nicely) "we're not selling shares right now", or say (rightly and rudely) "we can only sell YOU shares for $1000/share". And that may really be a fair price from their point of view, since having you (a nobody in the VC world) as an investor is really detrimental to their image.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Unless it was a significant amount for the company, or they were already raising a round, my guess is most would decline.

Definitely a reasonable thing to _ask_ about. Any employee that wants to dump his savings into the company is probably going to be pretty committed.

</comment><comment><USER6> Stock options may be taxable, depending on your jurisdiction.

Talk to your lawyer/auditor.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure why that applies... The stock options here (Y amount vested over 4 years) are no different than the ones you'd get at any company. The interesting part is the Z amount of shares bought at full price.</comment></comment>


Flawed Computer Models Add To European Flight Delays - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor/computing/software/flawed-computer-models-add-to-european-flight-delays <comment><USER2> Of course, if the airspace _wasn't_ closed and a plane went down, the airlines would be blaming the authorities for allowing flights in unsafe conditions.

</comment><comment><USER3> Reading a British newspaper on a European topic is a bit like reading a American newspaper about Russia: not really the best way to understand.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like the EU needs to work something out with the Flightcaster guys.

<comment><USER5> Because an iPhone app that tells you your flight is delayed can model the effects of ash ingestion by jet engines?

I think the EU was just playing it safe. Two planes have flown into ash clouds before. Both were essentially destroyed. Do _you_ want to be on the plane where you hear the engines go silent and the captain announce, "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped."?

<comment><USER6> Yes the issue is tho', that the government relied _only_ on the computer model, whereas the airlines compared the model's prediction with a) satellite data and b) their own observations by making test flights.

Willie Walsh, CEO of BA, himself an experienced pilot, was onboard the 747 BA sent up to take a look. Lord Adonis the transport minister declared the skies safe again having never left the ground himself. Who do _you_ trust?

<comment><USER5> I would trust neither, as both parties have other interests in mind.

The government will suffer political fallout if a plane crashes, so they err on the side of caution.

On the other side of the coin, BA loses money every second that a plane is not in the air, but their insurance company covers them if the plane crashes and kills everyone on board. So they err on the side of keeping the planes in the air.

With neither group being interested in objective safety, it's hard to believe either of them.

<comment><USER6> Insurance wouldn't cover them if they knew it wasn't safe and flew anyway.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Technology giants at war - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/21567361-google-apple-facebook-and-amazon-are-each-others-throats-all-sorts-ways-another-game

<comment><USER2> It seems that journalists now talk about Microsoft as being a spent force simply because it's become _boring_ to continually recognise their dominant position in the computing industry.

<comment><USER3> By that token, you could also complain about the exclusion of IBM, Oracle, etc. These companies aren't really fighting it out for new territory the way Apple, Google, and Facebook are. They are big and relevant, but they're making money off existing fiefdoms.

<comment><USER2> Microsoft has the overall No.1[1] spot - it sells the OS and the software that virtually every office in the world (and most homes) rely upon. _Nobody has come close to challenging that._

You can look at their other ventures - XBox, Bing, Zune, HD DVD, HotMail, SQL Server, IE, Windows Mobile/Phone and point out that they have not 'defeated' their rivals in these areas. But these are secondary or tertiary industries for Microsoft, where their main objective is to head-off any would-be challenges to their dominance of the PC market. Eg. consoles replacing the home PC, Google rendering it obsolete, Apple breaking into office sales.

[1] Yes Apple is the biggest company right now in financial terms, but Microsoft's turf is still the most desirable (though not quite as glamorous)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm a military veteran. I've been to war. What the article is written about is not a war. It is a competition between companies in a safe and opportunistic market, which is the furthest thing from warfare and destruction that I know.

<comment><USER5> Relax. The analogy is more to storybook combat (Game of Thrones is the model) rather than real war. I found the extended analogy to be clever and fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's odd that Microsoft's name does not come in the discussion that talks about technology giants. Google, Apple all are competing with Microsoft tooth and nail. Amazon and facebook maybe less so. Not mentioning it makes me question if its the bias or lack of knowledge on the part of the author.

<comment><USER5> Read the article -- MS is mentioned in what is probably appropriate context -- as a side issue to the great game currently underway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like the illustrated map by David Parkins. Good for desktop wallpaper or printing out and framing.

Any other tech-related fantasy style maps out there?

<comment><AUTHOR> XKCD has done some <http://xkcd.com/802/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What other ancient empires are still in play? IBM deals mostly in the realm of enterprise, eBay is still around as the master of its own specific market (with PayPal fighting back at the insurgent Square), and Oracle does- litigation and acquisitions?

</comment><comment><USER9> World Web War III. Reminds me of Game of Thrones, "Winter is coming!"

<comment><USER10> Did you not even bother to read the title of the article?

<comment><USER9> went straight to the map. oops.</comment></comment></comment>


Amazon close account without notification - <AUTHOR>

i`ve, just created an amazon seller account without any notification they just closed my seller account in order to open this account i have got an brand new credit card, my company registered and new bank account, after doing this much i`ve got closed seller account on amazon. the notification says that your account is related to another seller account which is closed by amazon earlier, i have no clue how is it possible when i`ve started selling on amazon just now. i`ve read some posts stated that amazon closed their account mistakenly and later they reopen it. but not sure about mine. could anyone please suggest what to do now. because i have invested a lot already by stocking the products in my warehouse.<p>regards, <comment><USER2> Did you contact Amazon support to tell them that this account and the account holder has no connection to any previous accounts? What did they say?</comment>


Why You Should Use TypeScript in 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://serokell.io/blog/why-typescript <comment><USER2> I either use JavaScript or a strongly typed programming language in a strongly typed environment but not something between.</comment>


My heart is ok, but my eyes are bleeding - <AUTHOR> http://blog.leafsr.com/2014/04/11/my-heart-is-ok-but-my-eyes-are-bleeding/ <comment><USER2> "Naming a length variable 'payload' is borderline sociopathic"

<comment><USER3> I think it further indicates that not enough review of the code was done before it was integrated. Dumb variable names like that should be caught at review time.

<comment><USER4> I suppose the lack of interested reviewers is a decent indicator of how many people/companies actually cared about the heartbeat feature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The simple statement that was given here: [http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/analysis-of-openssl- free...](http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/analysis-of-openssl-freelist- reuse) that the developers just had to test with normal malloc to detect the error is a little to simple for me. I can't see this "simple" solution.

Testing is utterly hard. It means that you need creativity, something that many lack or are to lazy to. Many programmers are to lazy to think about testing, I fear. That is the reason, there exist some very limited number of really good software testers in the world.

When you want to find that bug in testing (taken, you even have the super- malloc), you first have to come up with the idea, to send a falsified message length for exactly this message type. Without this idea, even the super-hero- malloc would have no chance at all to give any indication of a bug.

AND when you have such an idea, you would find the bug, even without any super-hero-malloc ... any malloc or any freelist would suffice, because the result would show you, that something bad is going on.

So the focus on the self-written allocator seems to get a little biased in this discussion.

Yes, when writing security relevant libraries, you should be really, really careful and you should take any chance you get to make it more save. And it might have in some cases increased the chance of finding the bug _in production_ , when just using the standard malloc (with security mitigation active) -- but I really doubt, that it would have increased the chance in testing.

I also must say, that really many successful software products use their own specialized allocators -- the reason is simple: Because malloc is so unspecific, it is not the fastest beast around -- and many specialized allocators have their own security mitigation build in.

A last point: Google also wants (or wanted) to switch to OpenSSL. The reason: Speed. So to blame the OpenSSL guys that they want to make their library really fast, has a little bad taste. Everybody wants speed -- even those that claim other _after_ something has happened. My thought for you: What would be the benefit, if OpenSSL would fail because of bad speed, nobody would use it but an other product -- and exactly that product would have the trouble we found now in OpenSSL (or worse?) .....

Computer Industry can sometimes be unforgiving. How you do it, it is wrong.

<comment><USER6> On some platforms, malloc(3) and free(3) are implemented in terms of mmap(2) and munmap(2). Which means, if you go beyond your buffer space, you'll end up in an unmapped page and cause a SIGSEGV or end up in NULL data.

Since they used the freelist/malloc wrappers, they avoided this trap.

Plus, IMO, if you're implementing a freelist, you're implementing 80% of what a malloc is anyways. It's _mostly_ freelist handling, the only way to add memory to a process aside from mmap(2) is setbrk(2). There's no way to give memory back, so they only thing left for a malloc implementation to do is create a freelist to reissue memory previously freed.

You can say you're still backed by malloc(3) if you want, but you're only getting the setbrk(2) handling and throwing away everything else it's trying to provide you.

<comment><USER5> I don't understand what you want to tell me with all you said, after the "Plus".

The point of self implemented allocators is not, that they are all better than malloc or that the implementor is more wise or that there is some magical additional stuff or even that some code is saved (the oposite is true) ...

The point is only, that malloc implements the most general case (what it must, since it is the magical "I can do it all" tool (at least in memory management)). When you go away from the general case you can find several specific cases, that can be implemented specialized for this case -- and those specific cases could be implemented very much more efficient (concerning speed, not coding!).

That is the whole point. Also there are some specific allocators that also implement some safeguides for common memory problems. But that seems to be more of the exception, when I take into account the feedback.

<comment><USER6> What I was trying to convey is that if you say "I'll just implement a better freelist" you're really just fooling yourself. What you are doing is re- implementing most of malloc on top of malloc, poorly.

If would have been better if they had gone whole-hog with a malloc library and built it from the ground up for their specific purposes instead of half-assed "freelist speedhacks."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> He is right, after all, it is just a bug, like so many others some of them we are not aware off, and it did not break internet. It just may leak information, if and only if you really know your job in coding and are very good. People that could be hired by organization with the money and the need for it? Nooo.. You have to be paranoid to think so. And ... then throwing the stone at openssl would be like distrusting all softwares: they all have bugs. By the way, I never saw a software with a legal liability clause for bus for a software... so ... if a user have a problem or money loss caused by softwares, then he is the responsible for his choices.

</comment><comment><USER8> There was some discussion here[1] that OpenSSL had implemented their own allocators, but doesn't seem to be the case. As this article points out, a quick review of the code will show that OPENSSL_Malloc() is simply malloc by default[2].

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7565064](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7565064)

[2] [https://github.com/openssl/openssl/blob/a898936218bc279b5d7c...](https://github.com/openssl/openssl/blob/a898936218bc279b5d7cdf76d58a25e7a2d419cb/crypto/mem.c#L77)

</comment><comment><USER9> This analysis doesn't support the conclusion that the bug isn't severe at all. And telling the reader that nobody cares about their email is rather smug. The egos in the security community are out of control.

<comment><USER10> There have been remote code execution vulnerabilities in OpenSSL in the past, yet no one panicked. Those vulnerabilities gave you what heartbleed does and more. The worst part about heartbleed is that its easy to exploit and the tools to do it are readily available. Its bad, as I state, but not the end of the world. The main point of the post was to correct the public analysis of the freelist implementation.

Please don't mistake a poor attempt at humor for ego.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't see a byline here; is this written by Chris?

<comment><USER10> Yes, it was.</comment></comment>


Sequoia Backs Graphcore as the Future of Artificial Intelligence Processors - <AUTHOR> https://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/sequoia-backs-graphcore-future-artificial-intelligence-processors/ <comment><USER2> The Next Platform has a nice little primer on what Graphcore's IPU is about (though specific details about the architecture are still under wraps):

[https://www.nextplatform.com/2017/03/09/early-look- startup-g...](https://www.nextplatform.com/2017/03/09/early-look-startup- graphcores-deep-learning-chip/)</comment>


Equifax to Pay $575-700M as Part of Settlement with FTC and Others - <AUTHOR> https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2019/07/equifax-pay-575-million-part-settlement-ftc-cfpb-states-related <comment><USER2> well the real value is the six free annual credit reports, sadly the majority of people I work with probably never have looked at theirs.

has anyone ever had any value come from identity monitoring services? one card issuer I have emails me for every charge above a threshold, which I have set to zero. I keep my credit frozen so theoretically it should not be possible to open a new account. My concern with a monitoring service is that it is yet another person who can leak</comment>


The Math Behind the Futuregrind Track Editor - <AUTHOR> http://futuregrind.tumblr.com/post/101354098523/the-math-behind-the-futuregrind-track-editor <comment><USER2> I solved this same problem, but Blender-specific way, for a game a while back by having adding special handling for splines to the Blender export script Unity ships with + a custom import script.

The Blender export would export the spline with multiple Transforms that were a fixed distance apart and numbered, then the import script would find splines and spit out a ScriptableObject listing each point, so the camera's position and rotation were a lerp between 2 of the transforms (since the exporter took rotation along the spline in Blender into account). It was somewhat quick and dirty, but it worked well enough with letting artists change areas of the camera track that didn't match the levels' tracks</comment>


Ask HN: What compensation to expect as new CTO? - <AUTHOR> I'm trying to get an idea of what to expect in terms and salary and stock for a CTO/Co-founder position at a startup. This is a startup that has raised money and working towards series A and is earning some revenue already.
A few searches online show wildly different figures so I thought I'd ask here and see if anyone has experience in this area to share?
While I'm really looking forward to working at this startup and in a new role, obviously I want to make sure I'm compensated fairly and have a good chance of doing well in any liquidation events in the future.
This is in London, UK by the way. <comment><USER2> Take a read through this (not my content just something I have read):

[http://rob.by/2013/negotiating-your-startup-job- offer/](http://rob.by/2013/negotiating-your-startup-job-offer/)

The key is understanding how equity works and how you can benefit or get hosed with it. A well funded seed company should be paying employee's a reasonable salary along with equity, a Series A should absolutely be nearing if not at market rates. Always ask for the details, burn rates, how much money is left in the bank, expected next funding date, what's the biggest risk, is someone focused on funding full time, total option pool, what debt financing or debt equity exists etc. You need to understand it to know if what you are being offered is fair or not, and there really is no way to know that without having a fairly complete picture, since details will vary so much from deal to deal. Anyone who balks at giving you the details I'd say no thanks.

Also, make sure you know the difference between early hire CTO and a true co- founder. A true co-founder will not be treated like an employee in terms of equity or salary, so make sure you evaluate really what they are offering. Essentially, as a co-founder you would have a far smaller salary early on, but your equity would be more. A co-founder isn't someone with < 4-5% pre-dilution equity IMO. Although others may disagree.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just finished reading this, thanks it's a great resource especially all the breakdowns comparing the salary lost over 4 years vs stock value after vesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> For more reading about your possible outcomes in liquidation events, check out [https://github.com/jlevy/og-equity-compensation](https://github.com/jlevy/og- equity-compensation)

It is US-centric (especially the tax stuff), but there is still lots of useful vocabulary there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for that, looks really useful!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It depends on a lot of unique factors, from the mundane:

Is the CTO/Co-founder title part of the compensation?

To the social:

How many other founders are there?

To the financial:

How much money has been raised at what valuation under what terms?

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> All good points, thanks for the input :) I don't want to go into too much detail here but it gives me something to think on so thanks again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "CTO" in and of itself means absolutely nothing. I've seen places where CTO was just a fancy title they gave the de-facto sysadmin and I've seen places where the CTO was more involved in running the place and making decisions than the CEO. In both places the compensation received was entirely in line was responsibility and completely unrelated to their title.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I know it's _just_ a title but generally CTO is a board level position and as such you're expected to be in charge of the technical side of the company including some strategic elements as well. At least, that's how I've always seen it and I believe this is how the other founders of this company see it too.

The problem when trying to work out a fair compensation is searching for CTO salaries online tends to return only large company information and not so much startups. Same thing with stock, how do you know what is fair for a late entry co-founder? It could be anything from 25% down to 5% I guess, I simply don't know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> if they're already profitable (original co-founders) then I'd say you might be offered %5. Could go up to %10 if they think you can help double/triple that profit. If it's only to take care of the technical aspect of the company, then %5 seems reasonable. Salary might be competitive though I believe.</comment>


How the LIDAR tech GM just bought probably works - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/10/a-deep-dive-into-the-tech-behind-gms-new-lidar-on-a-chip-company/ <comment><USER2> Interesting. Frequency-modulated continuous-wave LIDAR is easy to do as a one- point device. Many such devices have been built. But they're usually short range, such as the discontinued Swiss Ranger, and don't reject ambient light as effectively as pulse systems.

Being both eye-safe and sunlight-tolerant is hard. Eye-safe is easier if you can increase the diameter of the outgoing beam. Eye safety is measured based on beam energy through a 1/4" hole (an eye pupil), and if the outgoing beam is made wider (say an inch) the energy per unit area drops. But the optics become bigger. Flash LIDAR units emit a spreading beam, and if you can keep people from getting close to the emitter and staring into it, it's not a big problem. (It's a distance measuring device, so if it detects something at range < 1 foot, it must cut the power way down.)

Sunlight tolerant is done with a few tricks. Narrow-band interference filters cut out everything but the color of the beam being used. A pulse LIDAR can outshine the sun for a nanosecond. Continuous-wave systems could in theory operate below the noise threshold, but the detector has to not saturate.

Anyway, there are lots of technologies that can work. Continental bought Advanced Scientific Concepts' technology, which is known to work fine; it just cost too much when each unit was built by PhDs in Santa Barbara. Continental is a huge auto parts maker; making a million of something cheaply is what they do.

<comment><USER3> The Mesa Imaging SwissRanger is an amplitude modulated system, not frequency modulated. It's also not really LIDAR, as it uses LED illumination, but AMCW LIDAR is more or less the same principle. A better comparison might be laser tape measures - these often use phase modulated LIDAR rather than direct ToF. You can also buy phase shift scanning systems from people like Leica Geosystems.

In a ToF camera (at least some of them - see lock-in pixels), each pixel is sampled four times per cycle to detect the phase offset from the outgoing illumination. The SwissRanger was one of the first time of flight cameras. The reason it suffers short range is because of phase ambiguity - the lasers are modulated at around 30MHz which gives a wavelength of 10 m or so. The ambiguity distance is half this (5 m). LIDAR systems historically got round this by using multiple modulation frequencies for different distance scales.

This tech is now everywhere thanks to Microsoft buying Canesta.

<comment><USER4> Leica Geosystems used to sell phase-based scanners. These units were actually rebadged Zoller+Frohlich scanners. But the partnership ended a few years ago when Leica introduced the Pxx series. Today the company only makes time-of- flight scanners.

source: I work at Leica Geosystems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wondering why no one has thought of using a Acousto-optic modulator? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acousto- optic_modulator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acousto-optic_modulator)

It's solid state, has a very fast response time, super cheap to manufacture, and can steer a beam with high precision. And they are very efficient, achieving a >90% first-order diffraction efficiency. The AOM material can be solid and thermally insulating (such as glass), so you can get very high power.

In the paper cited, they produced a device that had an effective power of 4 mW with active cooling. How are they going to scale this up, taking into consideration first order diffraction depends on the angle of incidence of the incoming beam? The steering mechanism is basically a tunable diffraction grating which means the active area is going to be tiny.

Most high power diffraction gratings work by expanding the surface area of the grating, it would still be very expensive to create a large tunable waveguide/grating (think how much it costs to make a CPU die), making the whole cost savings of solid state a moot point. You could make an array of the devices, but you're going to need a ton of them to get the necessary power and reasonable deflection angle range.

<comment><USER6> From the Wikipedia page:

> Consequently, the deflection is typically limited to tens of milliradians.

This is the big drawback with AOMs. They're very precise, but the angle through which they steer beams is small. You would need hundreds of scanners to scan a full circle under the best conditions.

AOMs are interesting though in that they provide a way to modulate the frequency of the light they deflect. This is how I've seen them used before: as a very precise way to introduce small frequency shifts into a laser beam for physics research.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I have a genuine question to all the LIDAR experts here: all the optical phased array research I've seen, such as the MIT, UCB and DARPA "SWEEPER" work only has a range of something like 2 meters, and 10 meters after lots of work. All the research papers I've seen also mention that accurate and high power phase shifters are a challenge as well as getting the optical phased array to a high enough output power. On the other hand, Quanergy seems to claim that their standard optical phased array on silicon is getting them 200 meter range and really good specs. Do they have something that academia doesn't have? Also Strobe's advisor's thesis says that their LIDAR only has a range of ~2 meters, isn't that totally unworkable for SDC LIDAR?

<comment><USER3> The Quanergy system looks like it's doing conventional pulsed time of flight (maybe FMCW, but I don't know). They're operating in a frequency band that lets them put out a lot of power without risking eye safety, which means long range. Pulsed LIDAR is basically limited only by signal to noise, so provided you get some photons back and you know they're 'yours', you can measure long distances.

<comment><AUTHOR> The DARPA SWEEPER was also pulsed lidar, and it only had a range of 2 meters. And the problem really isn't the regulations for power output at the wavelength, but rather that the optical phased array itself can't put out the necessary power, regulations notwithstanding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I assume LIDAR is needed since the AI isn't advanced enough to do depth perception? If I can drive with two eye balls, then I'd think a circular camera array would be plenty. Maybe this is what Tesla plans on using (in combination with RADAR).

<comment><USER8> While LIDAR and stereo cameras (as well as RGBD depth cameras like Kinect) both effectively do the same thing, LIDAR typically has a much longer effective range while keeping high resolution.

To give you an example, this[1] commercially available sensor head can give great resolution stereo depth at around 10m but the included LIDAR unit is good out to around 30m.

LIDAR also has the advantage of operating on a different portion of the EM spectrum. It can sometimes be more well behaved in situations where there might be interference on the visible light wavelengths but not on the LIDAR wavelengths which is typically IR (e.g. extremely bright sunny days).

I think that there's a place for both in vehicles as a sort of redundancy. While they both mostly do the same things, they do them in different ways, and if LIDAR can be made cost effective then having both is a huge gain.

[1]: [https://carnegierobotics.com/multisense- sl/](https://carnegierobotics.com/multisense-sl/)

<comment><USER9> That sensor you linked looks to have its two cameras about 10cm apart. A car is easily 1.5m wide, giving a very cheap 15x increase in range for far objects and beating the LIDAR quote by a ton (and of course you can have multiple camera pairs for different distance ranges of course).

I'm with the grandparent: I genuinely don't understand the obsession with LIDAR in this space. It's complicated and fiddly, and seems to be competing with an "obvious" solution involving $3 camera parts.

<comment><USER8> More cameras still doesn't fix the interaction with ambient light and LIDAR units like the ones produced by Velodyne or Ibeo have ranges out to 200m[1]

Again, I think they both have their uses. If LIDAR can be made not so complicated and fiddly, I think it brings a lot to the table.

[1]: [https://autonomoustuff.com/product/ibeo-lux- standard/](https://autonomoustuff.com/product/ibeo-lux-standard/)

<comment><USER9> Sure, it could. But again its competition is cheap camera hardware that can be had for a few bucks and that outperforms the human eyeballs that we _know_ are safe enough to drive cars on real roads.

I don't doubt that LIDAR _can_ work with some development. I'm just shocked that it seems to be the default position in the industry and want someone to explain this to me in a way that makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One of the advantages for solid-state LIDAR has to be an increase in reliability.

Nobody wants to buy a car which requires a new LIDAR to be installed after 100,000 miles for the sum of $7,000.

Hopefully once production starts and yield rates increase the unit costs can shrink small enough to being becoming feasible for integration into lower-end products like cell phones or laptops. I think there are a lot of cool applications for LIDAR which have been blocked by the current expense.

<comment><USER11> It will probably lead to the advent of the "car as as service" sales model. Although the pushback from traditional dealers will be huge.

<comment><USER12> Traditional dealers push back against anything and everything, so, that can only be expected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Out of complete curiosity, and knowing nothing about these technologies:

How does these system avoid interference with other cars? Say if ten exact same car, with the exact same model of LIDAR are on the same street / crossing. Can I expect some noise being received by the sensor?

<comment><USER14> Yep. Every sensor will receive the output from the other emitters. This problem is actually pretty similar to the problem of sharing the wireless signal spectrum - how do all the cell phones in one area work at the same time? There's a few standard approaches to solving these problems:

\- Frequency Division: each detector uses a different frequency/wavelength. This approach is very simple to implement, but the usable range of wavelengths for LIDAR is fairly narrow. So we'd run out of choices pretty quickly.

\- Time Division: each detector is allocated a different operating time slot, so that only one is active at a time. For cell phones, this is relatively easy to implement because they all connect to a central system that can coordinate the timing. But for cars, this would be more difficult since there's no central system that links the detectors on different cars together (although they could still communicate with each other through other means).

\- Code Division: each detector's output is pulsed in a unique pattern so that the reflected signals will return that same pattern, then the processor can reject any patterns that it didn't send out. This approach is much more complex, but doesn't suffer from many of the drawbacks of the other solutions.

Code division is by far the most widely used approach here, but frequency and time division also play a small role as well since different manufacturers/detectors use different wavelengths and not all detectors are being operated at exactly the same time (the time needed to send and receive a single signal is extremely short).

<comment><USER13> thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I genuinely don't understand obsession with LIDARs in the autonomous vehicle community, a millimetre wave radar is late seventies tech, does the job many times better, for less money, and can be made by an electronics engineering undergrad from radio shack parts.

Commies had them in such abundance that they put millimetre wave imagers (and that was in seventies) on thing as cheap as vision aids for tank drivers, field guns, single shot atgms, and even small arms.

<comment><USER16> I don't see how you can say millimetre wave radar "does the job many times better".

State-of-the art 79 GHz automotive radar: 0.2 m range uncertainty, 5 degree azimuth angular uncertainty, dozens of points per second.

Spinning lidar: <0.05 m range uncertainty, <0.1 degree azimuth angular uncertainty, a million points per second.

Radar definitely has its uses as it can see through weather conditions and tell velocity, but lidar is the vastly superior sensor otherwise.

<comment><USER15> Looks surprisingly close to specs of a Panasonic made radar.

That is far from what is currently considered advanced for mm-wave radar in 93-95ghz range - 0.5 degrees

Google "GPU Acceleration of SAR/ISAR Imaging Algorithms" and see how much you can get with with regular high bandwidth 10ghz radar and computing power in tenths of gigaflops.

<comment><USER17> SAR generally relies on assumptions that your target is not changing. I question how well it would work in a complicated environment like a road scene. In my opinion, the single-shot nature of LIDAR is more robust. But its possible that SAR techniques have advanced since my work in it 3 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Skimming those papers and reading about the silicon tunable lasers was a bit mind blowing.

I studied optics a bunch in college but never managed to work it into my electrical engineering job. Might be lame, but I didn't have any clue this kind of integration was possible yet, it's certainly quite exciting. Probably the coolest thing I've read about in quite some time.

</comment><comment><USER19> OK I have a question, but dont shit on me if you think its stupid:

Wouldnt any of these smart cars be able to know they physical volumes of many number of cars, including themselves, as well as communicate with eachother - and share their velocity, direction, volume, intentions so as to have a hive mind of the moving bodies?

What if you also just had a beacon which reported this information to other cars in a short network where the driver is human - so the smart cars all know where the human driver operated cars are.

Then, in addition, you collect all the point data, from lidar, you subtract the known data points given "a prius with a shape and mass and volume of this moving at a speed of that - and over time you have built out a complete point cloud of the static, non-variable topology?

rather than spending $75,000 on one lidar periscope, spend 75,000 on developing a beacon such that all cars are telling eachother where they are, their mass/volume and speed?

<comment><USER20> (Assuming I'm understanding you correctly,) if the issue were only other vehicles, this might be feasible. However, the world includes much more than just the other vehicles on the road, and the road and its environs aren't static.

I can imagine something similar to what you're proposing being a part of the overall system, I suspect there will always be the need for something vehicle- based that "sees" the environment.

<comment><USER19> Yeah I meant in addition to, not instead of.

And I was saying that these beacons should be just a part of the car and super cheap. The beacon just says "hey I'm a Prius and this is my speed direction and location"

But you'd have to make them completely anon - we already have too much activity tracking.

So the devices should cycle through random IDs that just spray out the specs of the vehicle, but they change frequently the ID so you can just say that a smart car would know that it just sees various cars - not that it knows that "Jim is just ahead on the left"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder who is going to buy Luminar[0].

[0]: [http://www.businessinsider.com/peter-thiel-backed-austin- rus...](http://www.businessinsider.com/peter-thiel-backed-austin-russell- launches-luminar-lidar-startup-2017-4)

</comment><comment><USER22> I see a number of beams going forward. I wonder what this tech can do however to avoid side collisions, number of my friends have been involved in those and those are particularly horrifying - perp running red light and ramming on the side. Schematically it can be an interesting problem to solve too.

</comment><comment><USER23> So "no moving parts" by leveraging optical phased arrays and prisms.

I wonder how much their patents restrict others from going the same general route.

It does seem like the only obvious truly "no moving parts" solution. MEMS still has moving parts, they are just tiny.

</comment><comment><USER24> How would this be better than / supplement 0 lux-capable machine vision? Rangefinding? Doppler shift relative velocity?

If the benefits aren't at least 3x better, it might not be marketable enough to justify the added complexities and costs.

</comment><comment><USER25> In other words: Swept Source Fourier Domain OCT</comment>


Ask HN: How can I explain this idea better - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I read a blogpost from FogCreek that was posted here this week (original article https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8959036 and story http://blog.fogcreek.com/random-meet-ups-to-maintain-company-culture-with-remote-workers/) which resonated with me (I work remotely for a company with ~100 employees spread over remote, 3 offices in the UK and 1 in Sweden) so I've built a service (no idea if it's monetiseable) to see if I can get my employer interested in the idea, but from sending the original blog post to HR and the link to the site I've built they don't seem to "get" the idea.
Based on the article and my welcome screen (http://breakmates.co.uk) do you get the idea, is there anything I can improve on the front-page to communicate how it works better (ie it doesn't schedule anything, it just pairs people together and lets them arrange a date/time that week to get together physically or virtually for a chat)
Cheers
Kevin <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: [http://breakmates.co.uk](http://breakmates.co.uk)</comment>


The House Just Voted to Bankrupt Graduate Students - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/16/opinion/house-tax-bill-graduate-students.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage <comment><USER2> Here lies my concern with any sort of government-sponsored program in the US: once it becomes policy, any discussion that involves cutting, limiting, or removing expenditures becomes an ethical argument against the group benefiting from the programs. Here's another spin on this: subsidies to graduate students are bankrupting the United States. This article isolates a single decision, politicizes it, and demonizes anyone who isn't in favor of keeping the program as-is. But here's the kicker - they don't offer a solution or an alternative. The US has an unsustainable level of deficit spending, and we can either increase taxes, cut spending, or some combination of both. The article doesn't even offer an alternative, or explore the underlying justifications for why they opted to cut these benefits, which further emphasizes the point. We don't live in a world of limitless resources - every dollar we spend on X is one fewer dollar we can spend on Y. This type of narrowly-focused journalism isn't productive, and has made me more cautious of politicians who want to implement policies that cost money, but don't talk about how they're going to get the funds.

Just as a full disclosure, I'm actually in favor of the deductions/exemptions, and I'd rather see reductions in government administrative staff, entitlements, and military contractors. But I'm not naive - cuts need to be made, and as recent news has shown, increasing taxes isn't always as cut-and- dry as it needs to be due to the various loopholes. The most egalitarian solution would be a flat percentage-based cut across all programs, and some form of flat percentage-based increase in taxes, but instead of gaining bi- partisan support, it would probably just piss off everyone. This is probably why I'm a better accountant than politician - because people want to do what they feel like doing, irrespective of whether or not it's the right thing to do.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15716704](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15716704)

<comment><USER4> Looks like that one was flagged to death.</comment></comment>


Mossberg: the iPhone 7 had better be spectacular - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/23/11286052/walt-mossberg-apple-iphone-7-preview-predictions <comment><USER2> Smartphones are depressing. It used to be tomshardware, anandtech and such had interesting articles. Now it is "there Is a new iPhone", I guess somebody must want a small flagship phone". Intel is not competing on performance, but the will o wiap of power which can be wiped out byna stupid web ad that spina up your CPU. They have phone envy but the result is today's computer isn't better than a 4 yr old computer so of course sales are in the toilet.

Now those review sites have quiet computer porn and don't tell you that you can buy the same skus they talk about and then wind out switch's the fans, hard drives and other things ten times or so before your custom build is quieter than a 737 takeoff.

They are always hiring new smartphone reviews because it is a soul destroying job for anyone who has a passion for software, electronics, business, etc. They oughta hire a fashion reporter.</comment>