Ask HN: What's it like to work in the same company for decades? - <AUTHOR> The longest I've been at a place has been 2.5 years. I find that I'm usually itching to get out around after the 2 year mark due to various reasons like boredom from doing mostly the same thing over and over, lack of change in environment, no new challenges, people I know having mostly left/transferred to better places. <comment><USER2> I've worked for the same company, a large technology firm, for a little under twenty years starting in my early 20s. I've changed jobs inside that company four times and changed locations three times. The ability to change jobs but not employers has helped a lot.

I have enjoyed it, for the most part. If you like the thrill or engagement or whatever other descriptor you want to use of smaller companies or startups, then it is definitely not that. What it has been is rock-solid stable, interesting, and good benefits and pay.

I've debated looking for another job several times, usually on crappy days, but I still come back to I've been at this company for a long time, I know how it works, I have many of the benefits of tenure (more vacation time is one, that managers and other groups give me more of the benefit of the doubt is another), and maybe a little bit of me being "boring." I don't want to change for the sake of change and I'm happy to go to work, do something I mostly like, get paid well for it, and then go home and live my life separate from work.

Hope that gives you some insight into why someone would stay at the same employer for so long.

<comment><USER3> >get paid well for it,

I am curious what your pay is.

I feel like people get screwed if they dont change employers.

<comment><USER2> Since you asked, and I believe in transparency: Inclusive of stock and cash bonus compensation, my W2 says I was paid a little over $225k in 2018. The W2 I received for my first year of employment says I was paid a little over $60k in that year.

I don't know if it's true that people get screwed if they don't change employers. I certainly don't feel screwed. Maybe I could make more if I went to work at one of the other large technology companies; that's certainly been something I've thought about. But I'm quite happy with what I am paid and feel like the downsides (real or imagined) of changing employers are not outweighed by the upside of a higher income.

<comment><USER4> where is this job located, that matters a lot in evaluating if you "got screwed" by being at total comp 225k after 2 decades. For comparison, 175k was my total comp at Bay Area job out of college.

<comment><USER2> I live in Seattle, though that's not where I first started with my employer, so that may skew the numbers.

Also, depending on when we respectively graduated from college, the starting salaries are different. Starting salaries for IT where I lived when I graduated were in the $40-50k range.

<comment><USER5> Your answers read exactly like most of the people I know at Microsoft. I think to a certain extent companies with high average tenure produce cultures where people become risk-averse and reinforce these values through statements like your own.

For what it's worth, by staying there you are leaving a serious amount of compensation behind, assuming your skills could find you another job. $225k would be $350k elsewhere, easily. Many of the MSFT lifers I know don't really have a skillset that would translate or be valuable elsewhere, due to their focus on their company. That's probably true of most cases where someone stays at a single firm for a long time.

By no means am I suggesting there's anything wrong with your worldview, just pointing out that in this industry, you are leaving serious comp behind by not shopping around. Your work after moving would probably be more enjoyable and interesting, too.

<comment><USER6> I don't know about this math. What if you change jobs and hate the new job? How do you put a dollar value on months wasted working at a place that's not a good fit for you.

There's only a 33% chance a job will work out. That is, that both you and the employer agree it's a good fit after a year. So you are more likely to fail in a job change, and the odds get worse the more jobs you change.

<comment><USER5> That's not how that math works, _at all_.

Besides, you have an asymmetric opportunity, since you can interview, get an offer, and decline it if you don't like the new option. You don't need to quit before interviewing. In fact, that post-offer woo phase can give you a huge chance to get more information about the new gig.

<comment><USER6> Time has value. And interviews only give you a partial view of your ultimate working situation. But you and I are looking at this from totally different perspectives, I have no interest in convincing you I'm right. My experience is that if money is really what you want, you should start a business. As a owner you will earn more but must deal with instability. If it's stability you want, you get a job. That's the trade off I and many other entrepreneurs often consider. So job hopping to make a few extra K is a waste of time. Why job hop when you can do your own thing and double your income? Seems like someone that's afraid to commit either way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The longest company I worked for was one I built. And I probably should have quit earlier. ;)

I have worked with a lot of people who are primarily lifers at their company. My role has often been that of a change agent (outsider / consultant hired specifically because I'm an outsider).

One thing I have seen consistently is that the real power and influence sits with those with tenure. The older a organization the more critical tenured employees are to its operations.

Young people often think that they can gain influence or freedom to do what they enjoy by changing jobs and getting a better title, only to run into the "old guard" who refuse to accept change.

But there is another more reliable method. And this works in large organizations best, becoming a trusted influencer...trust comes from doing your work to the best of your ability and keeping a positive attitude.

Good leaders are often taught to find the influencers when joining a new organization. So the longer you stay, the more influence you gain. And influence gives you the ability to determine what you want to do. There tends to be a lot of turnover at the top and bottom of an organization. Making those in the middle very important.

This is so critical to established companies that they have all sorts of programs designed to retain people identified as important once they have gotten past the initial audition period. IBM and Intel are famous for their leadership development on both technical and management fronts.

If you want to enjoy the perks of being around a company for awhile, you need to go to bigger organizations or companies with mature management that are setup to facilitate this.

Some people want to work on new things / startups every other year. Nothing wrong with that. But when you have a company full of people like that, the culture isn't going to be conducive to doing the things required to keep people around for the long term.

<comment><USER7> _IBM and Intel are famous for their leadership development on both technical and management fronts._

These companies are more famous for slowly and subtly purging their technical and management staff like after they are too old. Like over 40.

<comment><USER8> Interesting assertion, do you have any facts to back it up ?

<comment><USER9> [https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2018/09/18/the-ibm- ag...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2018/09/18/the-ibm-age- discrimination-lawsuit-will-shed-light-on-this-harrowing-trend/#1580ceb65ce1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't understand view points like this. Why the constant itch for change? What's wrong with just going to work, doing your job, collecting the check, and going home? People are so caught up in the rat race and keeping up with each other. Career does not have to be the definition of success.

I wish I could give perspective on working in the same job for decades but I'm only 7 years in. 34 to go and zero intention on changing employers or careers unless I have to.

<comment><USER11> > What's wrong with just going to work, doing your job, collecting the check, > and going home?

You spend more time at work then anything else, perhaps tied with sleeping. More than with your spouse. More than with your kids. More than relaxing. Why not make work mean something? If work means something, you can't just do it for 40 years as a punch in, punch out. That sounds horrible.

<comment><USER12> I find meaning in having enough resources that my partner and kids are happy, regardless of the challenge or enjoyment of the work I do.

It would be selfish (and borderline irresponsible) for me to prioritize excitement and self-actualization at work over a comfortable, stable life for my family. That's what holidays and hobbies are for.

<comment><USER13> I think it's fine to have a bit of selfishness in your life. I'm not saying that you need to make very irresponsible decisions, but if all your decisions are made based on what others need, you end up living for others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've done a bunch of 2 years, a 5 year and an 8 year. Staying longer at a place you like is great. I don't believe there are no new challenges, after a few years you have more knowledge and authority to do the major work on a big system. Choose an area you like and work on it - maybe the front end or the back end tuning, or build pipeline, or monitoring - there are a million things that need doing. Alternatively you get to choose on refactorings, rewrites, and new architecture. I think you have to be honest and confident enough to say you want to do it, or often just start doing it. If you're the new guy on the team you can't really do that, the guys who've been around can.

The other benefit is getting to know business and management. Usually they turn over less frequently, they love someone who actually is committed to the business and they can rely on.

The culture of a place that looks after people and has longer term employees is great. Less turnover means less interviewing, fewer clueless newbies that need training and fixing up after. My favorite project had 30 devs and 25 of us had been there for more than 5 years - no one need hand holding or did stupid things, we were super productive and everyone enjoyed a great time.

For some people it can be easier to get promoted by moving, I'd suggest the opposite - just start doing the job you want to do, usually no one will complain.

Finally you said people you work with moved on to "better places" is that grass is greener or you are always working for your second choice employers?

Oh - one last thing. If you have a family its great to have a steady work schedule and you can concentrate on looking after babies and not worry about extra job hunting stress. Find a place you like and enjoy the stability.

</comment><comment><USER15> Not decades but ~8 years...

Good: you know the company politics. You know who to ask for anything, who not to trust, who you can joke with and who you can't. You can talk back to higher-ups, tell them what you want to do rather than being told what to do, bend the rules a little or set your own rules. You can pull from prior experience - "I know you don't think that estimate is right, but we did something very similar five years ago and it overran because of this same risk factor."

Bad: you know the company politics. You're embroiled in every stupid "this guy doesn't like that guy!!" management issue. Unless you have remarkable self- control, it's all impossible to stay out of. Also, people either come to you for every tiny matter because you know everything, or they see you as unapproachable and won't talk to you when they really need to, forcing you to chase them. Either way, in total, RIP coding time.

</comment><comment><USER16> I've been working at the same place since December 1984. I am working at Kennedy Space Center. I have worked for 5 different contractors and on about 20 different projects. I have basically been a mainly a system administrator for an Alpha Micro AMOS, OS-9, Apollo DomainIX, SUN Solaris, various linux systems and for the last 20 years Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, 5, 6 and 7. I have administered individual workstations, servers, clusters, SAN systems.

The secret is to always be trying to learn enough to move the next new project. My goal everyday is to try to learn something new each and every day.

<comment><USER17> -grin- I get the impression you've played around with fortran 77 scripts before. (I sometimes work on software older than I am lol)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've been at my current company for over a decade. The company has changed a lot over the years, going from a large public company when I joined, to private, back to public again recently.

The reasons I stayed are simple: I've learned a tonne, changed roles and responsibilities, interacted with many interesting characters, and continue to grow personally. No matter the tenure, if you aren't being challenged then your boredom will affect your performance.

Create new challenges that solve problems within your organization, and if that doesn't work by all means strike out for greener pastures.

Best of luck.

<comment><USER19> Sounds like Dell. No matter, glad you were able to survive through the reorgs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> At the 5 year mark, I started developing a sense of jealousy towards the new people: I am envious that they come in and are overwhelmed with all our technology stack and they spend months learning it, and you can see their knowledge of the system grows day by day, whereas for me it reached a plateau since I already know how all those systems work, for the most part.

I try to work on greenfield projects where I have to research a new topic from scratch, which sometimes is exciting, but in the end it's not the same, so I'll likely not wait until the 6 year mark and I'll jump ship sometimes this year.

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't think working in the same company for decades is really an issue.

I just wouldn't recommend you do the same _job_ for more than ~24 months.

</comment><comment><USER22> Bit of a rambling reply, speaking from experience.

Companies with tech departments (that will cater to this crowd) that are around that long tend to be maybe big, somewhat stable, somewhat largish revenue companies.

It is not the norm for people to stay that long at a company (tech company especially) these days. Lots of coworkers come in and eventually leave (by their own choice, sometimes not). You end up staying in touch with the ones that you like. You end up cherishing the people you work with, because some of them might have been there as long as you. You end up going to their children's birthdays, and celebrate holidays with them. They can be life friends once you share that amount of time with them.

Leadership drifts in and out. Passing the baton that often ends up diluting the company culture to a point where the business itself becomes its own organism, carried by its own inertia and making very clinical decisions about its own survival. Some of these decisions begin to weigh down on you. I guess it's true what they say, familiarity breeds contempt.

Some good things - you have a lot of time to design, implement, and deliver on projects. You can wind up with quite an eclectic portfolio of internal initiatives that you've delivered. Many of these can be quite fun. Benefits are good over that period of time. Many companies end up delivering benefits on a graded scale based on seniority. I'm up to 6 weeks of paternity leave if I ever want to use it.

Assuming you joined near the top of a payband, years of merit/cost of living increases can give you golden handcuffs. You get a lot of time to build wealth, but without careful planning you will not financially be able to leave. You become even more beholden, and less willing to leave over time. Victim of your own comfort? Actually, maybe not comfort. Inertia?

There's some thoughts. The people around you, and the company change over time.

</comment><comment><USER23> I've been at the current job for almost 16 years now, joining when we were about 90 people and now we're at over 15,000. We're a manufacturing company that started out without in-house manufacturing, then added a few of our own factories, then bought some other companies in our space (some of which had factories, some of which are entirely outsourcers).

Over that time, I've held countless different roles, starting as IC, moving into leadership roles; we've expanded product lines, expanded geographies for both production and development, evolved tech several times as well. I've worked in development, tech operations, manufacturing, and some cross-cutting roles. (I joined before AWS or public cloud computing was a thing; my group is now almost [98+%] entirely cloud-based.)

If we are able to continue to thrive as a business, I expect this might be the last place I work. I _could_ retire now and we'd be OK, but with two kids in elementary school, I'm realistically way better off working another 10-ish years as I get plenty of PTO and a 4-week additional paid break every 5 years.

Same company, many different jobs (which seems to be a pattern of sorts in the other responses). Pay is OK; I could make slightly more at a FAANG (or at least at the FxAxG subset that have local offices), but I take pride in what we've built from essentially the ground up, love the LT I work on and a portion of the company's success is traceable reasonably clearly to what my group does and how well we do it. If we fail to thrive, it will be at least partly my fault.

Somewhat ironically, I didn't even want to join this company back in 2003; I was just at the worst job I'd ever held, essentially being bribed to keep a chair warm and do nothing for 6 months until some outsized bonuses got paid out. The day those bonuses hit, there was a _line_ of people waiting to resign to the director of software. I think I was #6 that day and he was exhausted from hearing the same story. This company wasn't sexy, their tech was fairly weak, they didn't have the best reputation, but when I got into the interview process, I was blown away by the calibre of people working there and the vision of the CTO/CEO. I went from "I'll take anything because it beats getting paid well to do nothing" to "Hey, this is interesting!" and it's only gotten better since.

</comment><comment><USER24> I've been working for the same company for 12 years, same role, same position.

Why did i stay? i was the only dev for like 8 years, being responsible for your work and not being able to blame someone for legacy code is an eye opener.

it makes you love your craft even more, i joined to start a port, turns out this porting process never ends (I like improving my own code).

</comment><comment><USER25> I've been at my current company since 2005. I've changed disciplines twice, business groups (1000s of employees) three times, teams four+ times, roles at least three times (IC, Tech Lead, Manager). Many smaller re-orgs occurred in between and a few too many office moves.

In short, in a huge company there are challenges at all levels of the technology stack and that's completely forgetting about areas like finance, marketing, business development, legal and HR.

It's hard to get bored if you try to keep learning and challenging yourself every day.

</comment><comment><USER26> You'll probably find people working in one company for a long time where the company is large enough to swap roles internally. I've worked with people who did 30+ years in the same corp, but the environment obviously changed a lot.

</comment><comment><USER27> Often times, cozy.

Some things might suck, but if you have great managers, great benefits, and like the work you do, you might stick with it. The grass isn't always greener on the other side.

</comment><comment><USER28> Coming up on the dawn of my fourth decade with the same company. By all measures, I've been compensated handsomely as the company grew.

It only worked because of growth: both of the company and of my personal development at every stage in the growth. It's been like changing companies 4-5 times, but with no risk of getting into a situation I regretted. And a lot of my peers jumped at 10% raises or minor status improvements, and fell behind.

If you can hit the right company in the right market at the right time in its growth, prove yourself valuable and acquire equity, you will find many professional challenges that will far outweigh job-hopping for short term bumps. Take risks on this if you are under 30.

I can't emphasize enough the importance of growth and health of the company though. FAANGs get all the joy from eager 22-year-olds and antsy 25-year-olds, but at some point each of those companies were 200 or 500 or 1000 person companies--when it made a lot more sense to join.

My advice: pick a small, promising company in a field that holds risk but will still be relevant 30 or more years from now, and build your career there.

</comment><comment><USER29> 10 years and looking for an out. One thing to be aware of is that long stays are probably better with a large company with a slower rate of change. Staying at a small company for a long time is riskier in that you end up becoming more of a generalist, become the goto and the goat and are in real danger if the company changes leadership late in the game. Find that as an older individual trying to get back into a 9-5 workplace after 10 years in a specialized environment (doing everything) does not translate well to the current market.

<comment><USER30> I like the generalist route and have always avoided roles that lock me into a specialty. I'm marketing so maybe that changes by industry but I feel this is better for future employment as you you have multiple roles you can go into. As long as you are knowledgeable in said area the interview should bring that out.

Also just for enjoyability, I prefer variety of tasks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I haven't worked at the same place, but in the same industry since 2001, doing almost exactly the same work for each place I've been. Having so much domain knowledge is extremely useful. I'm not a great developer but it sets me apart, very far apart in my opinion.

The part that sucks is that very few people recognize it and the ones that do are rarely the ones that get to make the calls. The ones that do make the calls think any developer can do what I do. What I've seen happen several times, is the company decides to replace me with outsourced/cheaper development, and after an attempt to reason with them, I stay for a bit to help them move in that direction and then move on to another place. Invariably, they call a year or 2 later looking for help, not because I've planted some obscure code no one can understand but me, but because no other developers have the knowledge to form the necessary follow-up questions to the ever-changing specs handed down from the higher-ups before moving forward. They end up with systems full of incorrect assumptions that fail daily and tie up all the developer time being fixed. Now I can't help them because I'm working for a competitor. It's infuriating. Every company I've ever worked for I've wanted to make the best in the industry, but they've consistently been blinded by short-term goals, driven by unfounded hype to be "progressive", when all they needed to do was a few basic things better than the competition to take the majority of the market. Even when I get far enough to produce numbers to prove that point, they still want to do some wild shit no one is asking for, or they get bought out (because they start growing rapidly) by a venture capitalist company that just wants to do a quick flip.

<comment><USER32> Why is it that an employer can let a developper go only to need to call them later and ask questions? Do you think this a documentation issue?

<comment><USER31> The questions aren't usually about things I left behind, though that does come up and documentation could help that. They're usually looking for someone to build out a new integration with a big customer that has to be done right the first time, quickly, or risk loosing the customer to a competitor. Outsorced dev teams with high turnover and little domain knowledge just can't pull that off, a fact many places learn too late.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I've worked for the same employer for almost 20 years now. Although I interview externally every few years, for the most part it's been a great experience.

I average 5% compensation growth (higher if you factor benefits), and aren't compelled to move to a saturated, expensive market. Same employer doesn't mean same role. I usually stick around in a particular thing for 2-4 years until recently, but now my scope is very broad.

End of the day you need to decide if you want to do the same role forever or if you want to evolve. If you want to be a senior programmer forever, staying in the same gig is my vision of hell.

The risk is that if you are forced to change employers by circumstance, you're less attractive to employers, especially when you hit senior roles that aren't executive.

</comment><comment><USER34> I am at the same company for a year now and I want to stay for the rest of my career, a lot of people work here for their whole career and 30+ years isn't unheard of.

The company is one of the global leaders in its segment, treat their employees very well, pays very well (probably less than FAANG or your SF startup ;) ) and gives me a lot of autonomy and opportunities to practice leadership.

I don't see why I would want to change companies. I've worked in seven companies before this one (startups, big companies) and usually left around the 2y mark. This one hits all the check boxes (work environment, work/life balance, technical challenges, perks, good pay). I can certainly see why people stay here for a long long time.

</comment><comment><USER35> The key is company that allows you in house change. So, when you get bored or are not learning anymore, you can negotiate different team or task. Or maybe just smaller shift in responsibilities. The advantage of doing that is that you know what you go into, so you can choose what exactly you want.

There are companies where people change often and then there are companies where people stay for long. There are companies where people who stayed long became stale (not moving in positions) and then those where they continue learning.

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm coming up on a decade. I didn't start as a software engineer, but that's what I grew into. Every couple of weeks I start to think to myself, what am I doing here? And actually, part of posting this is me hoping someone will be like, yo, do this, or that.

I'm in my late 20s, and I guess I would be considered a senior developer. Coming up on 8 years of JS/Node/Go Development experience. ONLY problem is, all of our software is utter trash. I have dozens of projects I maintain and I can't keep up with any of them. I'm constantly debugging or building a prototype, that, somehow makes it into production as a prototype.

I'm not paid amazingly. About 20%-40% below market. I have been promised the moon and it's pretty unlikely I will ever see half of the promises come to fruition. Especially since our projects are hitting critical mass. That is, nothing works and nothing can be fixed because of how massive the architecture is and how small the "team" is. I've been trying to move a DB from a server that is about 2 years past life span, for the last few months.

I declined a job as a lead developer/CTO. I absolutely annihilated the interview and the offer went from a front-end developer to running the whole team and potentially CTO. I don't think I am anywhere near ready for that. I never test, have no successful continuous integration projects (despite my best efforts to get people on board), and have basically no apps running at a high capacity.

I digress to the question itself. In tech, I would never stay at a job over a year or two. Unless I really jive with the team, am making adequate cash, and feel like I'm still moving forward. Yeah, I know, I'm a hypocrite. I regret it. I think I would even have been much happier if I quit my current job for like, two years, then came back after spending some time at a well established shop. But who knows really. My job is the wild west and it may have just made me more disgruntled to know how to do everything right, and still lack the time to do so.

Here are some reasons why long tenure sucks:

1\. You get completely complacent. I spend a lot of time just messing around. Again, hypocrite, like, hey jackass, use that time to test. Ha, too complacent and if I even start setting up a test environment, someone will smell blood and task me off to prototype land. Don't get me wrong though, I spend a lot of time at home, off the clock, building random new crap for the company.

2\. You get stagnant in hierarchy. Basically, they like me where I am at and they won't compromise that with any form of promotion.

3\. You quit making relationships with coworkers. I'm fairly young, but I have been employed here longer than anyone else. I've seen thousands come and go. I stopped making much of an attempt to know anyone. Unless they're developers, of course.

4\. Newer employees despise you. I make more than them. I look like I do less. Also, I get away with pretty much anything. Which, causes quite the rift.

5\. Managers become overly confident in your skills. Example: I was tasked with building something like uber, by myself, in a single month. While maintaining my 12-15 other active projects. Let's just say, we didn't make deadline and also, I'm now proficient with quickbooks and several varieties of payment processors.

6\. You get honey-potted into their culture. Everything is wrong here, and I know that. Despite how hard I try, I can't get it to change. Perhaps we're only successful because we cut every corner, or perhaps that's the only reason I'm not writing this from a beach in the Grand Cayman's. Bottom line, if you're at a company for ten years, you'll know the problems and the futility of trying to solve them.

Here are some reasons why long tenure rocks:

1\. I don't have to EFFING interview. I hate it. I hate it, I hate it. I suck at interviewing unless I am in a very social and charismatic state. Something I've been trying to perfect. My mind works better with logic puzzles and overcoming obstacles than it does with explaining my love/hate relationship with NPM.

2\. I don't have to worry about employment. Unless of course the company goes down in a fiery mess of runtime errors.

3\. I can pretty much take time to learn whatever the heck I want. I know AWS Infrastructure, Accounting Software, pretty much all of Google's APIs, Currency APIs, hell, I've even dabbled with crypto currency APIs. A metric ton of front-end frameworks and libraries. I couldn't learn any of this if I worked at a assembly line shop.

At the end of the day, I just worry that I'm going to be Cinderella at midnight. Will I be hire-able, being a jack of all trades master of literally nothing. Will I have to accept a novice position? Who knows. For now, I'm just some Brogrammer.

<comment><USER37> Honestly, get out now. Your story resonates strongly with me because it's basically my story word for word. Except I started as the only developer/operations guy and now I'm managing a small team.

At first it was great because there was (still is) so many greenfield projects and I had the autonomy to choose what I thought was best/would make the most gains for the company.

Now I'm early 40's, coming up on my second decade, and I've recently found out that the majority of the staff are paid more than me. I feel taken advantage of and undervalued, and I'm so fucking depressed that my complacency has walked me down this dead end street.

Trust me, if you're feeling like this now, leave. Nothing will change. Company culture is hard enough to alter, but it's impossible if you don't have the support of the CEO. I've fought against it for at least ten years and really have nothing to show for my efforts but a kick in the teeth.

<comment><USER29> Almost every small company with the sole survivor has this story. You know where all the bodies are, have done everything once and then discover some uncomfortable truths. You are right to get out in your early 40s. Don't wait.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Not quite the timespans some folks have mentioned, but I've been at my company 6-7 years. I helped start it, and it was recently acquired. It's still super fun to work on. That's enough for me.

</comment><comment><USER39> I worked for a company for 10 years. Never doing that again. My works history is 5 months, 1.75 years, 1.5 years, 10 YEARS, 1.75 years, 6 months (will be leaving asap).

<comment><USER40> what didn't you like about working for the same company for 10 years?

<comment><USER27> Or maybe they liked the 10 years job but knows they won't be working for 10 more years.

<comment><USER39> Ideally, yes...I don't want to be working full time in 10 years. A few more ~year long gigs, and I'll likely put myself out to the 1099 pasture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> If all you do is simple crud web apps then sure, jump around a lot because it takes a week to learn the domain. If you're in some industry where it takes a couple years to learn the domain, stay longer and actually contribute.

But then, if you suck at what you do, definitely jump around often enough where people can't figure out just how bad you suck.

Note: General "you" not specific "you".

<comment><USER42> Big companies re-org often so bad employees often get re-org'd around so they can start afresh each time. Some people develop this as their primary skill.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> after 25 years, it's institutionalising.

</comment><comment><USER44> lol I love that the comment section is blank. I think it's reflective of how long our generation (assuming most people reading this are 20-40 or so), and in particular people in our industry normally stay in jobs which aligns w/ the two year marker the OP mentioned.

<comment><USER45> I often feel like a throwback to another time, as I've worked in the family business for 25 years now. I've taken the company over from my retired father who started it 48 years ago, and my teenaged son is now working there part time on the assembly line.

I did the whole 'big tech company' thing working as a coder for a couple of years right out of school, but hated all the politics and bull. In my small company I've always been kept busy and interested doing custom embedded systems work for various clients, and have enjoyed taking us from ancient hand build electronics processes to almost fully automated manufacturing over a twenty year period. It also helps that since I'm the boss, I don't have to put up with anybody else's crap :)

<comment><USER18> >> _It also helps that since I 'm the boss, I don't have to put up with anybody else's crap :)_

Do you sometimes find it lonely at the top? I hope leadership loneliness is somewhat blunted by having your father around for counsel.

<comment><USER45> No, I actually have some good long term employees working for me whom I admire and trust. So I don't actually pull the "I'm the boss" trump card too often; typically just when _somebody_ has to make the decision. It usually feels like a team working together rather than a bunch of people working "for me".

My dad still has an office at the company and comes in a few times a week, I think mostly to get out of the house. So you're right, I often make use his council and advice.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Please review my project jobsPirate.com - <AUTHOR>

I wanted a quick way to compare jobs across different cities and even countries. It gives me perspective and opens up my options. What do you guys think?<p>http://www.jobspirate.com/beta?q=hacker is an example of hacker jobs across the US <comment><USER2> I just graduated from a PhD program in natural language processing. So I search for "computational linguist", and click "Sydney", where I live. Immediately this position comes up: [http://www.iitjobs.com/candidates/ShowJobResults.aspx?jid=15...](http://www.iitjobs.com/candidates/ShowJobResults.aspx?jid=157569&type=search) . This position would be an excellent fit for me, and even though I'm not _really_ looking for an industry job, it's tempting to talk to them anyway!

So I consider this a bit remarkable. I have niche skills in a city without a huge number of start ups, and the main job search sites turn up absolutely nothing for me. This found me a position I'd be a strong candidate for immediately!

<comment><AUTHOR> Your's is the perfect use case for the site. Pity you cannot take the job. Thanks for commenting. It is very encouraging

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It would be nice if you would submit your project under either Ask HN or by submitting the link to it, but NOT both. I don't think it should essentially be submitted twice; it clutters up the New page.

<comment><AUTHOR> wyclif, You are right. (embarrassed about it)</comment></comment>


Facebook is for college goobers (review of social network transitions) - <AUTHOR> http://current.com/items/88913552_social_networking_wars

<comment><USER2> This video is hilarious! I'm going to use all the little social-network icons to the left of it and share it with my friends.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm running a workshop on Websites, Blogging and Facebook for business this week, and this clip gets a definite play - good commentary for those of us familiar with the networks, and I believe enough information to be insightful (and funny) for those who've only heard of them on TV.

</comment><comment><USER4> Tho voice of Tom is hysterical.

</comment><comment><USER5> Wish I could downvote

<comment><AUTHOR> Why? I thought it was a useful, and amusing insight into the ridiculous nature of social networking, and ties in with a lot of stuff that has been talked about on HN (eg Matt Maroon's posts, and paul's)

<comment><USER6> I come to Hacker News to learn new things. I agree that it's amusing; I disagree that it's useful.

If I saw this on Digg, I would digg it. If I saw it on Reddit, I would grumble to myself about the direction Reddit has taken in the past year and ignore it. Instead, I see it on Hacker News, and I, too, want to downvote it.

If Hacker News is really "stuff, plus anything that has to do with the internet," it might as well not exist.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Erf

The reason that I think it is actually useful is that although joe six pack may think that facebook, myspace, friendster and second life are all social networks and therefore the same type of product, it is clear that small differences in product management have led to big differences in the real world outcomes.

For example: facebook/myspace (real names/screennames) second life / facebook /friendster (imagined identity vs real identity) myspace/facebook (self expression through profile hacks and bling/facebook apps)

In addition, I think that the actual products when verbalised, sound quite ridiculous. However, they have been enormously successful. There is a lesson there.

Finally, the video showed me how fragile the social network space really is as the cycles of innovation change. My perspective has shifted from that of a facebook fanboy to a FB hater a la Matt Maroon, and I now think that facebook is much more vulnerable that anyone would have thought 12 months ago. This video reinforced that for me.

Apologies to those who felt antagonistic towards seeing this here. I think that it eloquently sums up what is often discussed on blogs like Matt's, but in a much more visual way.

<comment><USER3> See also

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=173159></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Revise an Email so People Will Actually Read It - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/5214861/revise-an-email-so-people-will-actually-read-it

<comment><USER2> A link to the original was posted here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=562447>

This article specifically quotes the first point:

      > Delete redundancies. Say it once. That's enough.
      > If you're repetitive, the reader will stop reading
      > and start skimming. (Like you probably just did.)

As I said in that first submission, I stopped reading at this point because it's blatently wrong. Intelligent geeks hate things repeated, but I've found that in the business world if you don't say something at least 6 times it won't get heard.

Know your audience. Decide whether repetition is required. Don't follow overly broad advice blindly.</comment>


Difficult Times at Our Credit Union - <AUTHOR> https://blog.archive.org/2015/11/24/difficult-times-at-our-credit-union/ <comment><USER2> The related NYT article is at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10626210](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10626210). The latter thread had many comments but we merged them here.

</comment><comment><USER3> My guess is that, given the choice, practically everyone would prefer to bank with a member-owned cooperative, i.e. a credit union, than a for-profit bank owned by outside shareholders. I mean, think about it: sneaky fees and outrageous surcharges are anathema, because it's more important for members to be satisfied with their experience than to wring out every nickel and dime of profit at the expense of customer satisfaction. And credit unions have been around a long time, so we know the model works.

What's stopping credit unions from being competitive against traditional banks are the regulatory hurdles. For instance, all credit unions' members must have some common affiliation, such as a small geographic area, or a common employer or alma mater. So you can't just create a credit union that competes with the likes of Capital One 360 or other online banks, even though it would be beneficial for that to happen, because the law says it can't be open to just anyone.

Although credit unions are perhaps the most successful and widespread example of cooperative businesses in the U.S., we Americans have not really embraced cooperatives, and that's a shame. Look at the U.K., where one of the most popular grocery chains is a co-op, or at Mondragon in Spain. Wouldn't it be awesome to have something like Walmart, but entirely member-owned? Instead of all those profits going to a relatively few wealthy shareholders, they'd go back to the members in the form of lower prices.

Technology has made it easier to gather like-minded people to start cooperatives. I would love to see a Kickstarter-like service take it to the next level.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash These "regulatory hurdles" that prevent credit unions from competing with banks were not created in a vacuum, they were created by the banks. No amount of Kickstarting will solve the problem of our political system's fetish for financial domination. The cause is obvious: as a for-profit institution, a bank has the money to lobby for preferable laws, let alone the laws they write themselves. If people began switching from banks to credit unions en masse, the banks would probably calculate that it would be cheaper and easier to manipulate the regulatory environment to inhibit credit unions than to compete on honest terms.

The fact is, as long as the financial system controls the political system, regulation will favor the banks. The only way for this system to be fixed starts at the ballot box.

<comment><USER4> The "banks writing the laws" narrative is misplaced in this context. Credit unions are tax-exempt. If you remove the mutuality restrictions applicable to them, they would not be "compet[ing] on honest terms" with commercial banks-- they would have a major competitive advantage on the basis of their tax status.

<comment><USER5> What major advantage exactly does being tax-exempt offer a Credit Union? A bank pays taxes on profits, sure, but a credit union doesn't have profits, so they still wouldn't pay much income tax (no income to tax) even if they weren't tax exempt! They may have to pay more property tax (not sure if they are exempt from that or not) or other taxes, but surely a well ran credit union would not have a significant tax burden if it were not tax exempt. (Paper work might be an issue... but banks and credit unions alike have to do plenty of that anyway!)

<comment><USER4> > A bank pays taxes on profits, sure, but a credit union doesn't have profits

A credit union doesn't have "profits" because it is tax-exempt. Like banks they can, and do, run surpluses, which they return to members in the form of above-market interest rates on deposits or as dividends. If they lost tax- exempt status, they would have to pay taxes on the surplus before returning it to members, like banks do on profits before returning it to shareholders.

<comment><USER6> > A credit union doesn't have "profits" because it is tax-exempt. They can, > and do, run surpluses, which they return to members in the form of above- > market interest rates on deposits or as dividends.

Interest paid is tax deductible for banks, and dividends paid to demand deposit accounts (the way most credit unions distribute them) are deductible for mutual savings banks (the banks most similar credit unions without tax exempt status), so this tax treatment isn't as special as it seems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The regulatory burden facing credit unions from the NCUA is not near as bad as what banks face from the FDIC. Right now the FDIC regulators take the stance that your bank is "guilty until proven innocent."

One bank was getting examined to determine if it was engaging in unfair lending practices. The regulators pulled 6 loans at random from the bank's portfolio. 3 loans were to men, 3 to women. Then they looked at the average interest rate on the loans to the men, the 3 on the loans to women. They found a .5% difference between the male and female averages (the men had the lower rate).

The regulators fined the bank several thousand dollars and required it to adopt new processes to ensure that future loans were "fair."

Had the regulators looked closer, they would have noticed that the three random loans to men all went to older men with high credit scores...and each male was in a white collar job (doctor, lawyer, etc.). The loans to women, which were pulled at random, were each to younger women, just starting their careers. These were auto loans to a first time car buyer, etc.

The regulators didn't care about the details and punished the bank anyway. You are guilty until proven innocent, and they don't expend a lot of effort trying to prove you innocent.

In this day and age of big data, a bank or credit union's best bet is to use the power of business intelligence to continually prove that it is lending fairly in the community and climate that it dwells.

<comment><USER8> Could you provide a source for your anecdote? I find it hard to believe that the FDIC would look at a mere six loans when their own guidelines [1] call for at least eight, and that's with a population of a mere ten loans. For a higher level of precision on any decent loan portfolio the sample size will be at least 50.

Furthermore, having dealt with regulators before, there's always an opportunity to provide written responses with requests for data or an appeal process. Not hard for a bank to argue that a sample size of six isn't representative of their overall lending practices.

[1] (Warning: PDF) [https://www.fdic.gov/regulations/compliance/manual/11/XI-10....](https://www.fdic.gov/regulations/compliance/manual/11/XI-10.1.pdf)

<comment><USER7> It was an anecdote from Bill Goedken at the 2015 CUNA CFO Conference. It was from the session "Mining Gold – New Trends and Discoveries in 'Big Data' That Will Help Your Credit Union Compete". I've linked to the slides ([1]) but there was no mention of the anecdote in them.

[1] - [http://www.cunacouncils.org/cuna/assets/files/144820_Goedken...](http://www.cunacouncils.org/cuna/assets/files/144820_Goedken_cfo2015.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's often a lot cheaper, at least in the Netherlands, to buy an unused banking license than to actually jump through all the hoops to get a new license. Reading this, this regulator seems to have a lot of leeway to propose arbitrary restrictions thus hampering business in the interest of protecting customers. It's hard to do a cost-benefit on this type of customer protection by the regulator.

Related reads:

* Rule of Law in the Regulatory State by John Cochrane [1]

* WebMD versus FTC [2]

[1] [http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.nl/2015/08/rule-of-law-in- regu...](http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.nl/2015/08/rule-of-law-in-regulatory- state.html) [2] [http://www.scmagazine.com/dismissed-labmd-case-could- impact-...](http://www.scmagazine.com/dismissed-labmd-case-could-impact-ftc- authority/article/454278/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Whenever people push for more unbound regulation, this is what happens.

The big players can hire another lawyer and get the regulators for a tennis match at that fancy club while the small players drown in paper.

Ah, and also this: ". As an engineer, when I looked at how the transaction systems work, I was shocked to see few technological safeguards. I imagine there is major fraud activity. Ironically, the bankers and regulators need exactly the technologists that they are pushing away."

<comment><USER11> because 2008 made out clear that no oversight works just fine.

those are laws to protect laws placed to protect banks et al long before. the original laws give some state insurance for a very cheap price, which can easily be abused if someone start a bank/union, give lots of loans to a partner and then crash said bank/union. ... which is exactly what the 2008 was about if you stop believing all banks were surprised by the crash...

edit: and yes, they fail mostly at bribes. nobody does business with any government without bribes. maybe he is not such an accomplished banker as he believed if he never got to that part. i know in construction you won't get far without it.

<comment><USER12> I keep hearing this argument, 'no oversight', and I have yet to see proof of it. Finance remains the most heavily regulated industry, as it has for decades.

<comment><USER13> Both things are true. Finance is heavily regulated by at least a dozen agencies, but the coverage of those agencies has gaps, and significant overlaps where it's not clear who is supposed to be holding the ball.

To name two examples from the financial meltdown:

\- Lending practices at banks are regulated by the Federal Reserve. Lending practices by mortgage brokers financed by i-banks and hedge funds were essentially unregulated. Those are where a lot of the bad loans and securities started.

\- Derivatives are normally regulated by the CFTC, but credit default swaps were specifically exempted from that regulation in 2000, on the assumption that other federal regulators would cover the downstream risks under their purview (they did not).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have checking and savings accounts at the Internet Credit Union but I don't use them.

\- I'm in NYC. ATMs that don't take a surcharge are few and far between. There are two near my house, at a McDonald's and a bodega. According to the locator, only one ATM in all of Manhattan takes check deposits. An iPhone app called CU24 ATMs can find them (be sure to switch the filter to "surcharge-free ATMs" because by default it shows _all_ ATMs), which is nice.

\- Online banking is done through a website called It's Me 247 ([https://obc.itsme247.com/237/](https://obc.itsme247.com/237/)). It's frustrating to use — to log in you enter your account number, password, and the answer to a security question (it can't remember your browser). There are no mobile apps, and it doesn't work with Mint. There is a mobile site, but like the desktop site you have to log in with your account number, password, and a security question every time you use it.

\- Their main website is actively broken on my phone (it's locked to 1x zoom and you can't scroll horizontally) due to an incorrectly-used <meta> tag. Jordan himself wrote back to my email after a few days to say that he was working on mobile support, but the website was never fixed. (This was >1 year ago.)

\- I can't direct deposit into my savings account because it shares an account number with my checking account.

\- There's no way to pay bills or send checks online.

\- I called to order checks when I signed up. I never heard back and never got any checks.

In the end, I was never able to switch from Chase, which has clearly-marked ATMs all over the city (most of which accept checks) and a nice mobile app. If I were going to use another bank, it'd probably be Simple, which prides itself on being easy to use.

I wanted to love the IAFCU but day-to-day banking was too frustrating.

On the other hand, I had no idea they had all of these regulatory difficulties, and their mission to provide banking to the under-served sounds an order of magnitude more important than keeping people like me happy.

<comment><USER15> This kind of stuff is why I'm with Bank of America. I tried switching to First Tech Credit Union (besides being a CU they also have chip-and-pin credit cards that work well in Europe). Their website is just terrible. The last straw was when I found out I can't pay my First Tech credit card with anything but a First Tech checking or savings account.

I wasn't able to use Simple either, as I'm married and even after all these years they don't support joint accounts: [https://www.simple.com/help/articles/account-info/shared- acc...](https://www.simple.com/help/articles/account-info/shared-accounts)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I am a member of a credit union and support them whole-heartedly.

And I think it's great that we scrutinize new wanna-be banks and make sure they aren't a pump-and-dump fraud scheme. Because in the absence of such regulation, something like 100.0% of new banks would be pump-and-dump fraud schemes.

Which one is more likely, assuming you know nothing about Kahle: that Kahle is trying to make an honest buck serving an underserved market, or that he's trying to copy what this guy is doing:

[http://business.financialpost.com/news/fp-street/the- russian...](http://business.financialpost.com/news/fp-street/the-russian-ex- convicts-viral-financial-scheme-that-might-be-behind-bitcoins-surge)

"People are falling over themselves to sign up."

If you aren't prepared to get your ass ridden by regulators, _you aren 't prepared to be a bank_. You aren't good enough to offer banking services to the public.

</comment><comment><USER17> Am I missing something? They say they have "$1 million in donations spent ... and $1 million in the bank to back any bad loans". For a bank/CU this sounds like pocket change. Later they say they have "almost unlimited capital". What gives?

<comment><USER18> That's my first reaction as well; NCUA is first, foremost and entirely concerned with solvency and capital adequacy requirements, so it's no surprise that they weren't jazzed about a tiny CU taking on high-risk and expensive products. I haven't done a CAMEL score on them (and haven't touched CU finances for several years so I'm reaching back into my memories here), but you can get their financial performance and analysis data at [1], charter number 24846.

These guys obviously had the best of intentions and a real desire to make a better world. I wish they could have found a way to clear that path, but I don't think that a CU was the right institutional form.

[1] [http://fpr.ncua.gov/OnlineFPR.aspx?cu_number=24846](http://fpr.ncua.gov/OnlineFPR.aspx?cu_number=24846)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm sympathetic to his concerns, and I applaud him for putting his money where his mouth is. Some comments:

> an under-documented local Rutgers student...We sought an exception from the > NCUA, but they said no.

I don't know why he would expect to lend money to an illegal alien, nor why he expects the government to let him deal with someone whose very presence is a violation of the law. I should be surprised that a state university admits someone who has not been admitted to the state which owns that university, but I'm not.

> We were stunned to find we were the first full service credit union > chartered in New Jersey since the NCUA was formed 1970.

I'm not all that surprised: New England is a particularly corrupt and regulation-bound part of the country. It's amazing to me that anyone would do business there or California.

I'm not surprised, although I _am_ saddened, at the failure of their Bitcoin effort. I'm fairly certain than NCUA was concerned about the possibility of money laundering (never mind that it shouldn't be a crime, nor should it be something the regulatory system cares about: it is and it does, and that has consequences).

> I see a system as unhealthy if regulators put 200 to 300 institutions out of > business every year for decades on end while only allowing a few to start.

Are those 200-300 healthy or not? Are the ones allowed healthy? Are the ones disallowed unhealthy?

This is the problem with regulation: it's in the regulators' interest to be as strict as possible, because any failure will be harshly punished (in the press, in the civil service, and in the courts), while success has no reward.

Kahle has had an unpleasant introduction to the real world. Regulation has costs, typically hidden from idealists; they are revealed to him, because he tried to do something new.

<comment><USER20> >>I don't know why he would expect to lend money to an illegal alien, nor why he expects the government to let him deal with someone whose very presence is a violation of the law.

This type of banking is a specialization that is referred to as "low documentation" by bankers. It exists in areas with large migrant worker communities like California and Washington.

It is innovative and profiable, but extremely difficult in the post 2008 regulatory climate. I know bankers who work in this industry. The commentary I have heard is that the regulatory burdens are severe.

If you don't have the endurance for being incorrectly threatened with fines and crimes which you have to successfully prove wrong, you won't survive.

It sounds like gambling with stakes that exceed my risk tolerance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Not sure this is an aside or not, but I see a lot of big bank versus credit union in the comments, and that's just not really the case here in my opinion. I work for a large regional bank and I see a lot of similarities in this story to my own company, especially in the number of audits being requested and the rules they are having to follow (Bitcoin for one). I'll agree that a large part of the rules we have in place are self inflicted: some we asked for and some we caused in the aftermath of the financial crisis. These constant audits we've been faced with since the 2008 time period just chew up enormous amounts of time that we could better spend with innovattion and making the customer experience better overall. It's really unfortunate that his idea of creating a financial institution with real innovation is being stopped by bureaucracy that is probably 80℅ unnecessary regulation.

<comment><USER22> Would you say the customer experience was that much better before the regulations in 2008? Cause that hasn't been my experience personally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why was this "a new kind" of credit union? It seems like it was an ordinary credit union that briefly toyed with the idea of BitCoin.

<comment><USER24> The article doesn't go into much detail, but since they wanted to 'help non- profit workers and the poor' my guess is that they wanted to offer loans to high risk people and the regulators said "NOPE!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Can I say that this is all actually my fault? My company was the first Bitcoin company offered services by IAFCU. I made the mistake of speaking to a reporter at WIRED about it. Within hours regulators had the noose set. Had I not opened my mouth, IAFCU could have built up enough strength to tackle its opponents.

The polices and structures in this country are not oriented toward mutual benefit or utility, they are oriented toward entrenched interests.

</comment><comment><USER26> Banks don't like competition or new ideas. Regulators have an easier time attacking small potatoes than for example JP Morgan, which can generally do whatever they want.

<comment><USER27> J.P. Morgan Adds $2.6 Billion to Its $25 Billion Plus Tally of Recent Settlements

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-MBB-14229](http://www.wsj.com/articles/BL- MBB-14229)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> There is a more nuanced story here. Blaming NCUA for the decline in small credit unions doesn't really tell the story.

Credit unions generally weren't underwriters of mortgages -- they were small savings institutions serving a community that wrote mostly small consumer loans with easier underwriting standards.

Nowadays, getting consumer financing is pretty trivial. So I don't need a CU to underwrite Christmas.

Also, the definition of "community" is watered down as to be meaningless. The credit union that I'm a member of is open to anyone living in like 9 counties in my area and is the 4th largest bank in terms of assets in the region.

So why would I join or start the "BigCo Helpdesk employees CU" when I can get most of the customer benefits and more services from a bigger CU?

I think the expectations here that these guys would suddenly appear and be writing mortgages in a short period of time is an unrealistic goal, and probably damaged their credibility with the regulators. The same regulators are easy scapegoats because they can't talk back.

</comment><comment><USER29> Can someone explain what was the idea to serve the under-served that archive.org should do this?

<comment><USER11> just someone who has a great idea to help the world having another one.

<comment><USER30> It would probably be a good thing to keep archive.org and this credit union thing separate. Right now this could easily be taken as things not going well financially for archive.org.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The system is so broken it's not even funny.

<comment><USER32> It's not broken at all.

It's running exactly the way the entrenched players want it to run, squashing competition with heavy-handed regulators and killing innovation at pretty much every turn.

<comment><USER33> _Looks around to see if anybody will catch the joke, does it anyway._

The Aristocrats!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Brewster and Jordan are good folks; idealistic and willing to put their money and time where their mouth(s) are.

As far as I can tell, the reality is pretty much as they describe: there is negative appetite for new banking institutions of any sort in America.

This is a top-down perspective from regulatory and law enforcement -- large centralized banks make enforcement (legal and regulatory) much easier.

I'm sure that of the 5,000+ changes requested by the NCUA most were bullshit. But, there are many, many standards that modern banks adhere to -- and groups like the NCUA do tier out responsibility to credit unions based on their size, and how 'bank-like' their operations are. A small credit union is just going to look 'amateurish' to these examiners, and they have a fundamental duty to make sure that depositors are safe.

What Brewster and Jordan seem to have discovered, and I think this is an important thing to know, is that the burden imposed means that it's impossible to bootstrap a financial institution like this in the current environment, even if there are millions of dollars of funding available.

This is super sad.

</comment><comment><USER35> The number of US credit unions thrown around is a fairly misleading. The majority of decreases in this number are mergers, not CUs being "shut down". A more useful number may be the total number of US credit union members over the same period of time.

The credit union that disappears form the official count usually doesn't see much more than a name change, and adding new services & members. This usually results in better service for both original CUs members; a combination of branch locations, ATMs, and services from both of the original CUs.

I've also never heard of "force them to merge their assets into bigger credit unions". Would be very interesting to hear more specifics about this, if it actually means something more than 'hassle them so much that they find a larger CU to merge into, on their own, just to escape'.

</comment><comment><USER36> The bureaucracy seems to be just a Façade to prevent competition (and consequently innovation).

I'm not an economist but the more and more I read up on the matter following the cracks that showed up after the crisis of '07-'08, the more disillusioned I become.

There was a lot of optimism regarding Bitcoin being a deflationary currency affecting change from outside the system but it's going down the same route. The big players (Conbase/Circle) in this field are just being absorbed by the existing system and will loose their outsider advantage.

<comment><USER37> This is probably more often the case than not. Regulation is drafted to protect entrenched players and establish permanent streams of income. Most organizations really don't like having a dynamic environment that could make them obsolete on short time scales.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Before the 1980's mortgage lending was limited to the credit unions and other member owned institutions like S&Ls. This regulation had been put in place after the Great Depression of 1929, in order to limit speculation in housing. This regulation had largely worked, and housing prices were largely flat in that era. Regan deregulated the banks and this led directly to the failures in the S&L's later in the 80's. It also led to the wild boom & bust cycles we have seen in the housing markets.

</comment><comment><USER39> George Orwell noted in 1984 that to _really_ control a population, you control their language - eliminate the words that describe the behaviors and views you disagree with.

Economically, businesses provide "words", degrees of freedom that people exercise when they spend or act. Banking is ugly because there are some "words" we don't want people to use, like derivatives, or over-leveraging. But the banks themselves then use this safety mechanism to eliminate or weaken the words that would threaten them, like cooperative banks.

In the end, it boils down to Congress. The Executive has a lot to say about it too. Perhaps as technology improves we can install a Panopticon in Wall Street and Washington, reducing the cost and risk of regulatory enforcement. And if they protest we can say: well, what do you have to hide?

</comment><comment><USER40> Sounds like kind of a nightmare. But on the other hand, a depository bank / credit union is a tough area to try to innovate. It's not like a hedge fund, where all the participants have to be wealthy enough in the first place to take the risk that it goes south. I wish there were a better answer, but I want both innovation and a high degree of safety.

</comment><comment><USER11> i think the first step here, since they accepted defeat at some level, is to start releasing names of everyone signing those letters or visiting them. giving names that newspapers can go after and get names higher up is always helpful.

<comment><USER41> I think you missed the issue. It's not about individuals - it's a systemic problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Elizabeth Warren needs to see this!

</comment><comment><USER43> If you want to set up a subprime loan shop (which it seems he did) just do it. Don't hide it as a community benefit

<comment><USER44> don't understand this comment. what about current accounts, checking, transfers?

<comment><USER43> The primary motivation was lending, as mentioned several times in the article.

<comment><USER45> He mentioned that he _didn 't_ want to start a predatory subprime loan shop.

He wanted to offer non-predatory lower interest loans to higher risk clients, in concert with banking services that are difficult to provide to higher risk immigrant clients like checking and savings accounts and debit cards.

But the NCUA wouldn't allow him to set interest rates lower or offer checking/debit accounts.

<comment><USER46> Sorry but this is playing with words.

If you are making loans to high risk clients, this is predatory lending. There's a reason they are high-risk: they are less likely to be able to pay the loans, or have demonstrated prior poor handling of debt. Don't be misled by "low interest" either: the "predatory lenders" in the last housing bubble were not for the most part charging exorbitant interest rates, rather they were lending far too much money to people with almost no qualifications.

If you make credit easy to get for people who can't handle it, they will end up bankrupt and the creditors will end up holding the bag.

<comment><USER47> Lending to high risk clients, on its own, is _not_ predatory lending. If I'm willing to accept the risk, I could loan $5k to someone with a poor credit history and frequent unemployment at a low interest rate. I have to be somewhat altruistic to do this, and most banks and lenders aren't. I have to be willing to write it off. It sounded like this was the market they wanted to be in. Poor people needing money, instead of getting payday loans or high- interest CC debt, could get _low_ interest loans from this credit union. It's the opposite of predatory.

I'm not sure it's viable or sustainable, but it is a noble goal, at least.

<comment><USER48> The issue is that you are using your customer deposits to make the loans. When the loans default and they aren't paying a high interest rate to compensate you for the higher default rates, you don't have the money to redeem those deposits at face value, and then the NCUSIF (FDIC for credit unions) will have to step it. The regulators would rather prevent that in the first place.

<comment><USER47> Right, I understand _why_ they couldn't make the loans (regulators not allowing it). But if someone were to establish themselves in a way that _could_ make the sorts of loans this credit union wanted to, _they wouldnot be predatory_.

> If you are making loans to high risk clients, this is predatory lending.

What I was specifically replying to. High risk loans are not predatory loans. Predatory loans are high risk, high interest, unfavorable terms (short repayment periods, high-value collateral for low-value loans, aggressive collection tactics, etc.). We have to be clear when we talk about a topic to not mix the terms in a way that skews our discussion from the actual circumstances. That way lies miscommunication and misrepresentation of those involved.

<comment><USER43> A bank has to be self sustaining, its deposits must cover portions of its debts. It can't work if it is based on the changeable altruism of an individual. As actually even happened in this case, hewasn't prepared to endlessly indemnify the loans, which is something he could do as a private lender.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


On Hiding a Plaintext Length by Preencryption (2011) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/166704/files/lengthhiding-corrected.pdf <comment><USER2> So this is like the Britney spears recent news?</comment>


High finance is wrecking the economy and the planet—but it won't reform itself - <AUTHOR> https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/high-finance-is-wrecking-the-economy-and-the-planet-but-it-wont-reform-itself-banking-wall-street-city-of-london <comment></comment>


Bitcoin Price Drops Below $3,500 - <AUTHOR> https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-price-drops-3500-relief-rally-sight/ <comment><USER2> this just in: volatile, experimental things fluctuate in "value" all the time</comment>


React: it's technically backwards compatible! - <AUTHOR> http://jamesknelson.com/react-its-technically-backwards-compatible/ <comment><USER2> Interesting that you compare them to mixins, which the react team considered harmful and removed.

What problems do hooks solve better than composition or hoc?

I really haven't kept up with react, when I last used it 6 months ago I started with the same boilerplate I made in 2017. Could it be things are being added to react that are unnecessary for most small and medium sized apps? I got that feeling when I saw react router 4. At least v6 is moving back towards a simplier api.

<comment><USER3> Before hooks, it was really common to write container / component pairs. The wrapper would have to be a class component with state and lifecycle hooks, and the inner component would only concern itself with presentation. IIRC, this was recommended in the react docs, although I've seen more than a few people misunderstand this pattern.

Hooks allow a way to abstract all that logic that used to require a component to house it. Components should still only really care about JSX, any logic more complex than an IF statement can live in functions or hooks.

<comment><USER3> I should also mention, you can access hooks in class components via HOCs. It's just one tiny extra step.</comment></comment></comment>


Siberia: 18,000-year-old frozen 'dog' stumps scientists - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50586508 <comment><USER2> Calling it "Dogor" as both meaning Friend in a local language and a play on "dog or wolf" is the kind of word play humor we deserve.

<comment><USER3> Somehow reminded me of Google's StatusOr C++ type :)

<comment><USER4> That seems like a missed opportunity for a "ErrOr" pun.

<comment><USER5> ErrOr<string> even makes more sense than StatusOr<string>!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interview with one of the professors in evolutionary genetics involved:

> _Dalén was working in Russia in 2018 when he got a call that local tusk > hunters — people searching for mammoth tusk — had found the specimen near > Yakutsk in eastern Siberia._

* [https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/scientists-don-t-know-i...](https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/scientists-don-t-know-if-this-18-000-year-old-frozen-puppy-is-a-wolf-or-a-dog-1.5375610)

* Transcript: [https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-wednesday...](https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-wednesday-edition-1.5375300/november-29-2019-episode-transcript-1.5377222)

</comment><comment><USER7> I have to say this is the most impressive preserved animal I've ever seen. Looks like it died a few days ago at best.

<comment><USER8> You might be on to something, sir...

<comment><USER9> > Radiocarbon dating was able to determine the age of the puppy when it died > and how long it has been frozen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder what preservation will be from this point out. I'm sure they'll take tons of photos, videos and fur samples they'll preserve, but can they keep this specimen in tact? Are there ways to preserve it with the fur and whiskers and maybe even keep it on display as it is, or will it need to be taxidermeried?

Edit: also those teeth! Do any other types of wolves/dogs have that crazy pattern?

<comment><USER11> What blows me away is that are able to peel his lips back to display the teeth. I don't understand how 18K year old flesh could still be pliable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Reminds me of that forbidden experiment in Siberian Soviet Russia concerning breeding. What they were trying to do is breed a dog based on wolves. All they were doing to achieve that, was choosing the most friendliest wolves. Lo and behold, after a few generations they succeeded already. Selective breeding is a form of genetic modification in itself. Which is a reason to not be (at least _pur sang_ ) against gentech / genetic modification. Knowingly or not, we've already been doing it for ages.

[EDIT]Foxes indeed; not wolves.[/EDIT]

<comment><USER13> I know of the tame silver _fox_ experiment[0] (not wolf), and it wasn't forbidden. Are you referring to a different one?

[0] [http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160912-a-soviet- scientist-c...](http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160912-a-soviet-scientist- created-the-only-tame-foxes-in-the-world)

<comment><USER12> My bad, it was a fox experiment, indeed.

Regarding "banned", the article mentions:

> The study of genetics had been essentially banned in the USSR, as the > country's dictator Joseph Stalin sought to discredit the genetic principles > set out by Gregor Mendel. Stalin's death in 1953 gave scientists more > freedom, but in the early years Belyaev nevertheless worked under the cover > that he was breeding foxes to make better fur coats.

Also, it mentions 50 generations:

> "The fox farm experiment was crucial, in that it told us that domestication > can happen relatively quickly in the right circumstances," he says. "The > fact that in fifty generations, they were wagging their tails and barking, > this is really incredible."

<comment><USER14> They 'culled' (which means killed) the animals that were not tame enough. And continued doing it for 40 years, it seems.

this is a kind of experiment I would have prohibited totally.

"... Only those foxes that showed tolerance for the nearness of people were selected and bred to produce the next generation, while fearful or aggressive animals were culled. ..."

[https://slate.com/technology/2012/03/domesticated-foxes- in-s...](https://slate.com/technology/2012/03/domesticated-foxes-in-siberia- an-experiment-in-peril.html)

<comment> saiya-jin Hiding the research as breeding 'better' foxes for fur is fine with you? That's what those culled have been used for.

Now we can discuss whether such an approach is immoral on its own, but we should probably get off our high modern horses and judge things from perspective of given era. And breeding animals for fur was totally acceptable. In fact, it still is in all countries on earth and for some time will be.

Btw are you vegan to have at least some grounds to claim any moral superiority to that research?

<comment><USER14> So.. I have to say, I think you are right.

I do eat meat. And I understand where it comes from.

I should not be judging hunters, live stock growers, or breeders culling unsuccessful breeds, or wale hunters...

I guess part of me was thinking why could not they just relocate the other foxes like 500 miles away and let them live. Russia (even without USSR) still has like 11 time zones of land. It is enormous.

Perhaps, for a moment, I assumed that I had a know-how and was asked to be a 'moral authority', 'ethics luminary' and a re-born principles activist (especially when it affects others, but not me)

I am probably not the only one who fell into that mind set, even momentarily.

But @saya-jin you are right,

there is nothing that indicated that animals were tortured, and I should not have judged how they were 'culled'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder why Homo Erectuses and especially Neanderthals never domesticated wolves. They co-existed with wolves for hundreds of thousands of years and were social hominids that were, judging by their brain size, technology and culture, quite intelligent.

EDIT: apparently there's some evidence of wolf domestication stretching back hundreds of thousands of years.

</comment><comment><USER16> Isn't this dangerous in terms of virus and bacteria re-activation?

<comment><USER17> It would have to be a zoonotic pathogen and those tend to be rare.

<comment><USER18> Why? The thing could just have trapped human hostile pathogens in its fur, etc.

<comment><USER17> Viruses and bacteria tend to be super specialized for their hosts temperature, humidity, and cellular ranges and die soon after being abandoned into the cold uncaring world. Except for when they're in bio-films. Then, recent research suggests, they can live for much longer.

Fungal spores, however, can live forever even in deep space.

Valley fever, caused by Coccidioides immitis is a danger to Archeologists (and ATV enthusiasts) as it lives in the soil and if its spores are breathed in it can cause some symptoms.

So, there's some danger, but not much. And the people doing this work will likely know the details.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It would be amazing to clone it. I wonder if the DNA is preserved well enough to do that.

<comment><USER20> About 3-4 years ago there was a study showing that the half-life of DNA was much shorter... like around 500 years.

[https://scitechdaily.com/researchers-calculate-that-dna- has-...](https://scitechdaily.com/researchers-calculate-that-dna- has-a-521-year-half-life/)

However, I've always wondered if it would be possible to reassemble the whole DNA via aligning overlapping segments by indexing MASSIVE amounts of DNA.

IT would be VERY expensive to do now with today's tech but might be posssible in 10-20 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It is insane how well preserved these remains are

<comment><USER22> When in 1901 Soviet researchers discovered woolly mammoth on the banks of Berezovka River in Siberia, they could smell its carcass and supposedly scavengers had been feeding on thousands of years old meat![1]

[1][https://youtu.be/fr0Ifw8TJVw](https://youtu.be/fr0Ifw8TJVw)

<comment><USER23> Huh? the Soviet Union did not exist in 1901.

<comment><USER22> Thank you, my bad. They were Russian scientists from St. Petersburg.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Has no-one seen The Thing?

Why are they even allowing it to exist?

Burn it.

</comment><comment><USER25> Doesn't look a day over 10,000.

</comment><comment><USER26> Maybe the dog waited at the same spot everyday of his life for his owner to return until it finally died from the cold.

<comment><USER27> I realize this is a well known reference, but for anybody that wants to cry today:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrVR-01w-4w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrVR-01w-4w)

<comment><USER28> That part of that episode is actually a reference itself, to Hachiko [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hachik%C5%8D](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hachik%C5%8D)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Siberia was warmer 18,000 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is clearly the unfound dog from the movie "Encino Man".

</comment><comment><USER31> I wonder if that smells bad?</comment>


The iTunes Expanding Album Effect in CSS & JS - <AUTHOR> http://thomaspark.me/2012/12/the-itunes-expanding-album-effect-in-css-js/ <comment><USER2> Definitely a good implementation. I wonder if it could be further improved to use a linear gradient (dark to light), instead of a solid color fill.</comment>


Ask HN: How should I proceed with my mobile app side project? - <AUTHOR>

About a year ago I started a side project in which I created an Android app for a national restaurant chain. They have a loyalty program which I participate in, but is incredibly difficult to keep track of using their supplied methods. The app was created on my own time and without funding from the company and released to the public for free where it has received very positive feedback from other customers.<p>The restaurant chain has since taken interest in the app and tracked me down to talk about further development and an iPhone version. I'm turning to ask HN, because at this point I don't know what to do. I don't want to sell the code I've created outright as I have enjoyed working on this project and would like to continue to do so. In a perfect world I would love to continue development and retain rights to the code, but also receive some revenue from the company for development, maintenance, and support of the app. Have any of you been involved in an agreement like this before or have any suggestions for how I should proceed? <comment><USER2> You are in an interesting position...they want to work with you. You have a product, users and serve the needs of this national chain. It sounds like you are asking for help finding a business model.

You will first have to answer some questions about your goals. Do you want this to be a full-time project or stay a side project? In most cases, you're probably thinking, "I want it to be full-time, so long as I can comfortably transition without affecting my lifestyle too much." That's probably not going to happen, but it might.

When negotiating from your position, you should be honest with them. If your goal is to build a system that supports loyalty programs for lots of restaurants, say so. If that's the case, you probably don't want to build out specific features for this client alone. Possible sources of revenue could be:

1) targeted adds - your app can either serve ads / push notifications to users (if you want to get fancy, you can use a geo-fencing tool to trigger offers). Everyone wants another point of contact with their users and they'll pay to get it.

2) License them the code and allow them to re-release it as a branded app...think of your current product as a white label. You can keep your app going and allow them to market their white labelled version and acquire their own users. This can include an upfront fee and annual payments based on the size of the user-base.

3) Sell them the whole thing...which they probably won't want to do.

Unfortunately, there are no standard terms in any of these sorts of deals. They want to work with you and that probably puts you in an advantageous position. However, it might not all that much in terms of what you can get. The person interested in incorporating you into the fold (somehow), probably can't swing a bigger budget than they have to work with and you're impact might not be big enough to warrant significant time and effort to hammer out non-standard terms.

Some things you'll want to ask for...and there is never any harm in asking are: ability / license to use their company name / logo / testimonials for your own promotional purposes, access to data w/ rights to use (in generic form), support agreement (x hours of custom work / integration baked in, with above and beyond as billable, but this depends on what kinda deal you strike) and...you get the picture.

Note, they came to you. Always start the conversation with, "Why are you reaching out / what type of deal were you looking for?" They'll lead and you'll follow.

I hope that helps. My email is in my profile, feel free to reach out.</comment>


Thoughts on Algolia vs. Solr and Elasticsearch - <AUTHOR> http://opensourceconnections.com/blog/2016/06/01/thoughts-on-algolia/ <comment><USER3> I remember a previous employer asked me to talk to one of the authors because I have NLP and search engine design experience (I forgot which author). I remember he kept saying they don't do big data and that most NLP stuff other search engines use are irrelevant because their product works with the type of search they do. I asked a couple of complex questions which they disregarded as not important for their product.

This was probably 3 years ago or less so the product might have changed, but what I got out of that chat was that Algolia is for websites that want to add a search functionality with a nice UI without much hassle.

But if you are doing something complex it's does not compare to Solr or Elasticsearch

Again this was a while ago.

<comment><USER4> My experience has been that if search isn't critical to the core of your business, you should use Algolia. What I mean is that good search is hard and expensive to build, and if your product will not suffer from good enough search then it will be an order of magnitude cheaper. I use it to search over a list of 25k ish items that can be ordered broken into 4 categories. The users are domain experts and know what they're searching for. Algolia took me 45 minutes to set up and it returns results almost as fast as I can type, it was a no brainer.

However, if I had users that needed to lean on search to find things they didn't know about I would want to look into something that could infer meaning from the text input.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> (Author here) Case in point where Elasticsearch shines is one of yesterday's hacker news articles

[http://sujitpal.blogspot.com/2016/05/elasticsearch-based- ima...](http://sujitpal.blogspot.com/2016/05/elasticsearch-based-image-search- using.html?m=1)

Here Elasticsearch is used as a framework where "search" really means some kind of distributed feature similarity. But even text search where your incorporating a lot of data science, external signals, or semantic awareness can fall more into the category of distributed feature similarity.

Algolias strength is in a simpler path to straightforward and easily understood search. I'm not sure it's the path to amazing and deeply customized search (or search-driven features). Algolia gets far more right out of the box at a configuration level many need when they can't put a team around building an amazing Solr/ES experience.

My hope is Solr/ES can learn a thing or two in the ease of use dept with relevance!

<comment><AUTHOR> If you like this article don't forget to listen to us chat with Algolia CTO on our podcast Search Disco

[http://opensourceconnections.com/blog/2016/05/31/algolia- sea...](http://opensourceconnections.com/blog/2016/05/31/algolia-search/)

It's like the liner notes for the blog article...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've had great experiences with algolia. I've used it on numerous client projects, and my own product [https://appapp.io](https://appapp.io) .

It is great as an out of the box search solution that will probably fit 90% of cases. It is blindingly fast and my clients love it.

I expect there are some cases where elastic or solr will be a better fit; but these are most definitely edge cases for very specific search requirements. Algolia is a killer app for generic 'good' search.

</comment><comment><USER6> In my experience, Algolia is OK for toy sites but not for anything even moderately complex. Even on HN it's often a challenge to find the right results. They seem to have gone with the philosophy that speed is more important than relevance. Keyword matching is only one small aspect of a good search experience.

<comment><USER7> For me Medium, Product Hunt, Digital Ocean or even Twitch are not "toy sites".

<comment><USER6> Haven't tried the others, but Product Hunt's search is also extremely poor. Just today I searched for "mac voice control" (unquoted) and besides being very sluggish because of all the refreshing it does while I type, it returned _0 results_. What I was looking for was Lacona [1] which was just featured a couple days ago and has a description containing two of the words from my query (1/3 of the description!).

[1] [https://www.producthunt.com/tech/lacona](https://www.producthunt.com/tech/lacona)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is actually a great example that shows where Algolia doesn't shine.

Algolia is great a known-item searches. Searches that are like looking up a contact in your phone list. This is a common use case with search, but one of only many.

Your use case is closer to grasping at straws because you don't know the language to use. You can't quite remember the name for something. This is also very common, and not handled well with purely string matching. Another example is in this blog article[1] where I talk about searching for "manual lawn mower" not realizing the right terminology is a "reel mower." Mapping vernacular is a hard problem, and I feel like Solr/ES while harder are better equipped for the problem.

(I also often find instant search distracting)

[1][http://opensourceconnections.com/blog/2014/06/10/what-is- sea...](http://opensourceconnections.com/blog/2014/06/10/what-is-search- relevancy/)

<comment><USER8> > Algolia is great at known-item searches

I have not used Algolia much but that's not a particularly compelling selling point, most search engines tend to get it right if you know exactly what to query. The problem is this is, like, 1% of the difficulty of making a good search engine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I recently had to build a product search functionality. I was able to pick up nearly all important features of Elasticsearch in about 2 days and had live- indexing and search up and running within 2 more days. Of course, this wasn't production level scalable code. But it was fairly easy to hook a Logical Decoding Output Plugin on Postgres, which would stream database mutations (in form of JSON) to a Kafka cluster, from where the Elasticsearch layer will ingest the data and index/update it appropriately.

<comment><USER10> what logical decoder?

<comment><USER9> Postgres 9.4+ lets you use the write-ahead log and "replication slots" using which you can create streams of database changes that can be replayed to a client in the order they were made on the origin server [1]

EDIT: In case the question was which library did I use, I used BottledWater and it's worked great for me so far [2]

[1] [https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/static/logicaldecoding-e...](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/static/logicaldecoding- explanation.html)

[2] [https://github.com/confluentinc/bottledwater- pg](https://github.com/confluentinc/bottledwater-pg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One of the least talked about search engines is NodeChef Cloud Search. Anybody using any language could use it insofar as they have a mongodb driver. Anyone who used it could comment on it? [https://nodechef.com/nodechef-search-and- sql-analytics](https://nodechef.com/nodechef-search-and-sql-analytics)

<comment><USER12> Whats your referral code?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Of course, if you like what Doug has to say and are building your own search functionality on top of Solr or Elasticsearch, you'll want to buy his book:

[https://www.manning.com/books/relevant- search](https://www.manning.com/books/relevant-search)

</comment><comment><USER14> Why would one use Algolia over Postgres's built in text search features? Ex: [http://rachbelaid.com/postgres-full-text-search-is-good- enou...](http://rachbelaid.com/postgres-full-text-search-is-good-enough/)

I already have Postgres search queries running on the order of 1-3ms for large queries, basically faster than Algolia, with seemingly the same feature sets.

I don't understand the value proposition over something like Postgres, for sites that already have Postgres databases. (And I'm sure other databases might offer similar built-in search capabilities, I just don't know those other RDBMSs)

<comment><USER15> > Why would one use Algolia over Postgres's built in text search features? Ex: > [http://rachbelaid.com/postgres-full-text-search-is-good- > enou...](http://rachbelaid.com/postgres-full-text-search-is-good-enou..).

Postgres built-in search features are really for large document searching -- we've tried using it for indexing e.g. an array of tags for auto-complete and the search times were in the ~500ms+ range, as a matter of fact the non- indexed regex search was only slightly slower. I thought the later was rather surprising - but asking on the mailing-lists, I was told that this was basically working as intended.

edit: I don't fully understand the value-proposition of Algolia either, most of the trouble with going outside of your production database for search - <USER2> the problem of keeping your data in sync and current with the production database; compared to that setting up an Elasticsearch cluster really isn't such a big deal, there are also half-way solutions, for example Amazon has an Elasticsearch-service.

<comment><USER16> I would recommend to read this post to have an idea: [https://blog.algolia.com/inside-the-algolia-engine- part-3-qu...](https://blog.algolia.com/inside-the-algolia-engine-part-3-query- processing/)

Textual relevance is a very complex domain and the Postgres's built in text search features is a simple keyword matching engine compared to Algolia engine that contains a lot of alternative matching. The mesure of textual relevance is also very different of what you have in the Postgres text search.

At the end, this is not only about speed but mainly about relevance</comment></comment></comment>


Computer Furniture Sucks - <AUTHOR> http://thecodist.com/article/computer_furniture_sucks

<comment><USER2> Though I agree with the authors feelings that the designs he shows are crap, he is missing out on what I believe are two trends.

Firstly, he states himself that he uses a 'desk' a flat surface with lots of space, like most desks. Yet he is looking for a 'computer desk'. Why does such a thing exist? What is missing from the original desk that makes him want to have a 'computer desk' that is more like is regular desk?

Secondly, I think there is a growing trend toward stand-up desks, and that is likely where some more innovations may appear, because there are some slightly different design requirements when standing.

But really, it is tough to beat the original large flat space for putting anything on...</comment>


The 47 Sins of Isaac Newton, as Recorded by Himself (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://longstreet.typepad.com/thesciencebookstore/2011/05/the-47-sins-of-isaac-newton-as-recorded-by-himself.html

<comment><USER2> What does "Falling out with the servants" mean....?

<comment><USER3> falling-out = argument

[http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/falling-out](http://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/falling-out)</comment></comment>


This has got to be the coolest iPhone app yet.  - <AUTHOR> http://hexler.net/touchosc

<comment><USER2> Too complicated and really no reason to use it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Its not complicated at all, an there are a host of reasons to use it. How about your read the site and watch the videos before making a statement like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> really cool!! , but dependent on Wi-Fi network :(</comment>