Ask HN: I'm a first time freelancer with some questions? - <AUTHOR> I am a web developer freelancer and just got my first client, and I feel very in the dark about a lot of things.  Does anyone have advice or links to resources that would help me?  Some of my main questions are:
 - How does a copyright work?  I have heard that I should copyright my work and only transfer the copyright upon completion of payment, but I don't know anything about how to do register the copyright myself OR transfer one.
 - How should I value my time?  This is my first time so I'm inclined to start lower than others, but I don't really have any idea how to do that.  Is my time worth $20 an hour? $40? Less? More?
 - I know I should write a contract between my client and me, and I've found several examples online, but how can I make it officially binding?  Anyone can forge a signature so how can I make it so the contract would hold up in a court, if, for example, they refused me payment?
 - Is there anything else I should know?<p>I'm sure many of you have been in my same situation, so any advice would be wonderful!! Thank you! <comment><USER2> There is a good chance you will (initially) undervalue your time.

You are paid to know things and to find out how to learn things you do not know. You have to stay in constant training and re-learning. You are an expert in your field. Something you learned two or three years ago? You have to forget that and learn some other thing.

You have to own hardware and software. You have to buy health insurance. You have to save for a rainy day. You have to save for retirement. You want to go out to eat like normal people. You want to buy a house. You have to do billing. Not every client will pay. You have to hire an accountant. You have to pay taxes. You need to file papers with the county and form an LLC.

Are you going to work 8 hours a day 5 days a week? No, you will probably "work" 12 hours a day 7 days a week. Someone calls with work? Are you available? You have to get paid for being available.

Still think $40 an hour?

A few things I have learned (solo since about 1996 but spent the recession years 2007-2011 in a corporate job):

You are not a freelancer. Banish the word from your vocabulary. You are X. X being whatever it is you do/are. You are a company. You are a professional. That's just the work part. You are also a salesperson, a bookkeeper, a marketer, etc.

You will need some steady clients. Clients that call enough during the year(s) to provide some stability. You can't hustle for every single job. Relationships matter. How much stability you need, I can't say, but, ideally, you already have a jump-off client or two already.

You will have to do the numbers on your rate, but, I promise you, it is more than you think and more than you may be comfortable asking for, initially. Remember, your rate covers your availability, your expertise, your equipment, insurance, retirement, etc. If your salary is $75,000 that is not close to how much it really cost to put you in an office, with a computer, health insurance, matching 401k, etc. A company that hires the solo you is also paying for the flexibility to release you back to the wild at the end of a project without having had to hire you or fire you.

Value your time, your skills and yourself. You are a professional.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wrote a post that answers some of your questions right this morning:

[http://jacquesmattheij.com/the-army-of-the-new- independents](http://jacquesmattheij.com/the-army-of-the-new-independents)

Best of luck!

<comment><USER4> I charge $100/hour and I had extremely hard time finding work for last two years. Primarily because most client's think I charge way too much. I live in Los Angeles! Last year I worked at a mid-size multinational tech company as iOS developer at a $700/Day rate. The manager probably told me 100 times that I am very expensive and they have to let me go after project is over. I am not sure if companies are spoiled by offshore low rates or something else is going on. If Plumbers are making $100/hour, why do they think Software Developers should be cheaper than that!

As a freelancer , after making 1/4 of what I can make as Full-time developer I am going back to the full-time Job.

<comment><USER5> I've always wondered why freelance developers compare to plumbers/electricians. You will hire the plumber for 3-4 hours of work and that's it - he'll be on his way. But we will be there for days/weeks/months.

I agree in charging as much as you want if you can solve a problem noone else can. In ~2002 a company had serious database issues with reporting queries running for over 24 hours. So they hired 2 people who charged 600 pounds each an hour. They both worked on the problem for 2 days and brought down the execution time to 3 minutes. In that case yeah, I think they can charge as much as they want.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a developer as well and I know the difference between a 40/h and a 80/h developer. But I believe an hourly rate must depend on how long you'll be working on that project, what you'll be doing as well and how critical it is.

<comment><USER4> Did you read the blog the original commenter wrote ? I was responding to that blog.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > How should I value my time?

Under-pricing my work cost me a lot during my freelancing days, so I'll comment on that directly here.

The best advice I got was from my uncle who worked in the tech industry in the 80's, which is to take your normal hourly rate and multiply it by 3. Or, take what you would be making full time, pro-rate it, and do the same.

This might sound high, but the easiest way to think about it is as follows:

\- The first 1x is for your normal salary, as if you had a full time job. You are producing a product, or your time costs money, and this is the price.

\- The second 2x is for "backoffice" or "cost of doing business" expenses. This is everything from accountants to lawyers, gasoline for trips, software licenses, hardware costs, office rent, etc. This stuff adds up and you should remember to account for it.

\- The third 3x is for profit. You're running a business, you're shouldering risk, and should profit from that risk. Also more practically, there will be boom times and bust times, and you need to weather the bust times with float.

All of the above is to say: If you are negotiating a price, especially if you are not used to negotiating prices, think of the highest price you can say with a straight face. It's often more right than you think.

As a final note, having been in a position of hiring freelancers in the past, don't forget that the value you put on money it often completely different than the client who hires you. For you, that money is your dinner. For a company, your cost is nothing if it gets them another advantage, such as a key BD contract or a stronger foothold in a 20m market. I believe the negotiating term is "trading things of unequal value".

<comment><USER7> Add in a fourth X for taxes/social security/retirement/whatever - depends on your country, but as a freelancer or consultant, you'll carry 100% of this burden/investment, while in 'normal employment' that'd come out of money that's not included in your listed salary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _How does a copyright work?_

In practice it's simple - if you're paid to build a thing for someone, that someone owns the thing. It's known as a "work for hire". That's what your customer will expect, anyway. I mean, would you pay someone to build a thing for you and think didn't own the copyright on the thing?

 _how can I make it so the contract would hold up in a court, if, for example, they refused me payment?_

You know what's better than a contract? Getting paid in advance. Whether it's 10%, 30%, 50% or 100%. You should work your ass off for your customers. But if they haven't paid you, they aren't really a customer, are they?

If you didn't get any upfront payment, ask for something once you have any deliverable to show. Show proof of work and a reasonable client should be willing to send money your way. Worried about getting paid? Establish that they will pay as soon as possible.

Also, a contract that holds up in court and results in a judgement in your favor is no guarantee of payment. A judgement means you can send a debt to collections. But the collections agency will extract a hefty fee and it may take months or years to collect.

It seems like you're focusing on what can go wrong. Ignore that stuff. Focus on building trust and rapport with your clients.

 _How should I value my time?_

 _Is my time worth $20 an hour? $40? Less? More?_

Abandon the concept of time. Think instead of services. What services are you providing? What are these services worth to your customer? Approach this from their point of view, find out what they're willing to pay, not the minimum you're willing to charge.

Start out high. Charge a rate that seems too high. If the customer says "no" find out why. It may not be the price, but some other concern. If the price is too high tell them you're open to negotiate, ask for them for a counter-offer.

<comment><USER9> "In practice it's simple - if you're paid to build a thing for someone, that someone owns the thing. It's known as a "work for hire". That's what your customer will expect, anyway. I mean, would you pay someone to build a thing for you and think didn't own the copyright on the thing?"

I don't think that this is true, at least in the US; the default is not work- for-hire, the default is that creators own works. While it is possible that I'm mistaken, I'd imagine that it is jus the case that you're generally working in situations where it isn't an issue (for instance, you don't want to reuse the code, the folks you're working with don't specifically care, or something).

Otherwise, I agree with you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The best tip I ever learned is don't price by the hour, price by the job. You can use an estimate for the number of hours you think it will take as the basis, but don't tell the client your estimate, just say, "This job will cost $X, and here is what I will deliver."

The reason this works well is because it benefits everyone. It benefits you because you know what you are going to make, you don't have to worry about the client saying "oh can we make this one change it will just be an extra hour right?".

They benefit because they know the cost upfront and don't have to worry about overruns, and they know exactly what they are getting from the detailed spec that is required to make this work.

<comment><USER3> If you want to start doing fixed price jobs I would suggest that you do the following first to avoid learning some very expensive lessons about your ability to estimate jobs:

(1) read the spec for a job that you're going to do on an hourly rate basis

(2) make a very detailed layout of how long you think you will spend implementing each part of the spec

(3) total it all up, write down the number and multiply by two, then multiply by your hourly rate

(4) write down the resulting number as what you could have quoted your customer with a huge safety margin of 50%.

(5) next, proceed to do the job as you planned, hourly rate

(6) keep track of your time (you need to do that anyway, but do it in a bit more detail, what part of the spec took how long)

(7) add that all up, multiply by your hourly rate, compare with the number you got in step (4).

If you end up 20% below or further than the number you got in step (4) you are more or less ready to try (small!) fixed price jobs.

Keep in mind that it only takes _one_ big fixed price job to sink your reputation or to totally eat up the profits of many otherwise successful jobs. It took me a really long time to get good at this.

<comment><USER11> _Keep in mind that it only takes one big fixed price job to sink your reputation or to totally eat up the profits of many otherwise successful jobs. It took me a really long time to get good at this._

Do you mean sink your reputation because you underbid and then can't afford to finish the project, or something to that effect?

<comment><USER3> Depending on how bad you get it wrong it might actually get to that. If you're lucky you will lower your margins, if your less lucky than that you'll eat into your savings, if you're very unlucky then you might have to tell your customer there is no way to deliver at the agreed upon price.

And that can get very ugly, especially if you cause bad things to happen to your customer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hey. I've been freelancing for about 5 years more or less. (Disclaimer: I did recently accept a job as an employee, but not for any reason that should discourage you. I think freelancing is awesome and expect to do it again at some point in my life.)

Copyright - Maybe a lawyer can speak to this issue, but my understanding is that you own the copyright to any work you produce until you indicate otherwise. In the context of freelancing, that means that you should have a clause in your contracts that gives your client the copyright to the work once you're paid in full. No explicit transfer needs to be made and nothing needs to be filed (unlike trademarks and patents).

Value of time - You should value your time according to the value you can produce and what you will be happy with. This is tricky, and others have written a lot about this (and have said it better than I could) so search Google for "hn increase freelance rates" and you'll get enough material to keep you busy for a while. Just one warning to add: Don't undervalue yourself! It'll kill your motivation and put you in a vicious cycle of unproductivity. Chances are the lessons you learn here will be learned the hard way (speaking from experience).

Contract - Rather than thinking of this as a legally binding document, you should think of it as an outline of the process you're about to enter into with your client. Use it beforehand to make sure you're on the same page about your relationship, rather than afterwards to try to protect your ass. How/how much/when will you be paid? What are you expect to deliver, and when? How are you going to handle disagreements or unforeseen problems with your client? How much availability should the client expect of you, and vice versa (just as important!). The answer to all of these questions should minimize the risks to both parties and set you up for success. ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8976924](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8976924) is on the front page as I write this and should get you started).

I could write about this for days, but I'll stop there for now :). If you have any other questions though I'd be glad to answer as well as I can.

</comment><comment><USER13> What level of development skill should I have before I start freelancing? What kinda of project should I be able to code to show clients I am experienced enough with PHP/JS/CSS to be worth there time?

<comment><USER14> At a minimum, you should be able to put a complete site together using a popular CMS/framework like Wordpress, Drupal, or Laravel. This should include basic (but common) features, like: editable pages with images, blog, contact form, search, homepage with editable content and at least one or two custom features which will be specific to each business. The site should be responsive, with every feature styled and functional in at least mobile and desktop sizes.

There are also non-development skills that you will need. You will need to gather requirements, possibly even produce wireframes. You'll need to be organised around tasks and deadlines. I suggest using a task-tracking tool that both you and the client have access to. Your clients may need design. If you're not capable of doing this yourself, you'll need to find them someone who is, or at a minimum give them a set of options of pre-built themes from a paid theme site, which you're skilled enough to adapt to their requirements.

Also don't forget that you'll be deploying their site to the hosting, which you may need to purchase and/or set up. I would also recommend a staging environment (even if it's on the same server as live) for testing and previewing changes and new features to the client before they are pushed to live.

Development sometimes ends up being less than half of the time you spend on the project. When you're a freelancer, there is no one else to do those tasks but you! It's all valuable experience though, even if you take a corporate dev job later in life, it will give you insight into the business decisions that get made around your "strictly development" tasks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been freelancing for the last five years. I do web dev, so it might be different if you're a write or graphics designer or game programmer or whatever.

Really, however you and the folks you work with want to structure your work is how it is. There are things that are worse for you and things that are better for you, but it's a question of what you and your clients what more than anything.

As to the stability of contracts, they are only as good as the person signing them; generally if someone has given you money as a deposit, then there isn't a question about if the signature is binding, but rather what different parts of the contract might mean... the meaning of "functions in most browsers" or "has an easy to use method for adding XYZ" is really where you should be sweating.

That's typically the issue: usually the people I work with want things to be working well and done correctly, on a predictable schedule. Delaying delivery until payment is made is one strategy. A better strategy is to work with people and businesses you can trust... if you have a contract and there is no question about the quality of the work, generally enforcing a contract isn't something that requires lawyers.

The facts about negotiation apply to your rate: if your client will pay you $500/hr, then that is what your time is worth. Instead of worrying about what it is worth, worry about what you have to make in order to do the things you need to do (or, if you prefer, what your rate needs to be so you don't have to go get a job).

Generally, clients (end users, not, for instance, agencies) don't like hourly pricing for the same reason that I like it: it transfers the liability for additional changes or unforeseen troubles with the agreement.

So you might find that you're better off with fixed pricing, which involves knowing what your hourly rate needs to be and how many hours you expect will take to do the work, plus the cost of acquiring the client, plus a hedge for unforeseen work that will need to be done without issuing a change order. Multiply that time three, and then you'll probably not get too screwed by a contract :D

</comment><comment><USER15> Pick a client that seems trustworthy or comes via a friend recommendation. Ask for 1/4 or 1/2 the money up front. Don't worry about copyright, and often clients themselves will have standard contracts they use.

If you are concerned with the complexity, start out using a platform like oDesk which will take care of much of the payment and legal risk. Be sure to bill hourly not fixed amount.

I've written and signed many contracts, but ultimately for casual contracting it's most important to just find people you trust to work for/with.

<comment><USER16> Yes!

Adding to this, try not to reinvent the wheel. If you're trying to code something which is already there and open-sourced, go for it; include it in the project and work on it.

Ask for 1/2 of the fixed amount / working hours upfront. This will ensure that your client is actually interested and won't easily dump the project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Find medium to large sized businesses if you can - you want a client who has expectations inline with your professional services and may support a higher billable rate.

Smaller companies may have less savvy owners/managers who don't have an understanding of what you're doing, leading to scope creep (why can you "just" change this?) and miscommunication in time, quality (etc) expectations.

Set expectations clearly, especially ones that seem painful to bring up (especially time, budget constraints).

</comment><comment><USER18> You will probably want to track your time, so I suggest an automatic time tracker like [https://wakatime.com](https://wakatime.com)

</comment><comment><USER19> It's always easier to complete work on a per-job basis rather than hourly, and in my experience clients like this structure as well. A lot of good suggestions in this thread. One addition I would make is to check out MotivApp.com, really useful freemium tools freelancing.

</comment><comment><USER20> I was considering going freelance myself and these are questions I also considered. I hope someone with experience replies and we can turn this into a very useful post.

</comment><comment><USER21> baseline for freelance work is take your current (previous) salary and div by 1000 . 50K a year before? $50 an hour freelance.In reality you need more, but its a good "minimum" .

It actually may be more accurate to look at total comp: $50k a year + $12k in health benefits + $3k in equip + $4k in vacation + $1k in retirement benefits ~= $70/hr.

<comment><USER22> Please don't base your freelance rate off your salary. You'll grossly undercut yourself.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7850335](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7850335)

A per-day rate equivalent to $100..200 per hour is the cheap side of things. Don't cut yourself too short. Businesses have deeper pockets than most individuals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Copyright: You own the copyright by default, and only license further use of your work. This license can be very permissive, e.g. MIT, BSD, viral like GPL, proprietary, or even insane. Its your choice, and one of the questions you should decide before talking to a customer. E.g. I prefer double license GPL+proprietary for my work. But miles may vary.

Contract: The most important points in the contract are naming stepstones, milestones, budget, payment at each milestone, payment terms. An agreement is only good, as long as you agree. It often becomes toilet paper if disputed, especially as lawsuits might be more expensive then the value of the contract, and as contracts are difficult to enforce over international borders for a freelancer. So there is no need to pay a lawyer to create a legal bullet proof contract, as you can not enforce it anyway. Better write one that a human understand. Thats not more complicated then selling your car. One of my "tricks" is to offer 2% discount, if payment is within 7 days after invoice. Any customer who can count money, and has no big cashflow problem will pay instant. Drop those who are late payers. They are often problem customers in other terms also.

Time vs money, 1st: The curse of any coder are infinite ideas vs. limited lifetime to execute them. Applying the law of diminishing returns on this, and new ideas receive a negative value. The same sooner or later shadows over the value of money, as people start to throw more money at you to solve their problems, then you ever need.

Time vs money, 2nd: I advise against selling time for money at all. Time for money does not scale, as you have only a limited lifetime, but there is unlimited money around. Selling time for money is typical for employed workers, but a professional should sell solutions for money.

Picking customers: Often customers pick you. You are lucky, you got your first client. Do a good job, and he will tell others. At first you will likely take any job that comes. But take care, that there are problem customers, who will leach your time, never pay the full amount, and claim they want more work for the money you agreed. Drop them, to concentrate on good customers.

Pick the good customers and convince them to sign a maintenance contract. I'm old and saturated now, have a semi passive income from maintenance contracts, and I'm dropping more then 80% of potential customers, often just because of a gut feeling during the first talks, before signing any paper. Signing a NDA is often the end of the talk, as ideas have a negative value for me.

Build a portfolio of skills where you are better then the average, as you already know the tools or the topic. You can offer fixed prices once you have this tools, skills, and knowledge. Fixed prices to solve problem will make much more money then selling time for money, as the value of the problem is much higher then the value of a contractor. There are basically two types of problems: Problems where you reduce the running cost of something, and problems where you increase sales. Estimate how much a solution is worth within a year, and ask for a good fraction of this for the prototype, and a smaller fraction for the maintenance contract.

<comment><USER24> Can you go a little more in depth about the maintenance contracts you have with customers? Does that mean they get a fixed number of hours of your time every month? What if they go over that time? Does it mean being on call? Thanks.

<comment><USER23> I avoid selling hours. Instead a maintenance contract should sell a solution, e.g. \- they have an actual contact address \- you send them new versions of your software (nothing in GPL forces you to publish new versions), \- you send them database updates necessary to reflect legal changes of the software \- you help with database migrations, when new software version require them \- you might also sell hosting, including the above service, backups, security updates, ...

Create a nice pile of things that have a good value for the customer, and either are easy to automate (like hosting), or likely don't eat to many hours. You'll lose the ability to invoice your customer for the 10 minutes mail or phone help, but you would need more then 10 minutes for book keeping and invoicing of those small things. So better sum them up, if you want to keep contact to a good customer. As funny as it sounds. The annual maintenance invoice was often the starting point for a custom asking me to solve a total different problem.

<comment><USER24> Thanks for your reply kephra! That's good info to know.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook Investors Cash Out - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444375104577593711737087098.html

<comment><USER2> Employee morale could be improved quickly by approximately doubling everyone's equity stake, to match IPO valuation, financed by Zuck and others, to better match the insider sell-off price and the rank-and-file equity value expectations.</comment>


Copy and paste the real world with your phone using augmented reality - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/4/21246386/augmented-reality-ar-copy-cut-paste-real-world-photoshop-demo <comment><USER2> Weirdly just saw this elsewhere, looks interesting.</comment>


Silicon Valley MUST DISRUPT Wall Street for the Sake of Our Country - <AUTHOR> http://wallstcheatsheet.com/stocks/silicon-valley-must-disrupt-wall-street-for-the-sake-of-our-country.html/

<comment><AUTHOR> Who is going to go after the biggest prize of them all??</comment>


Alexa, Alex, or Al? 3 Suggestions to Fight Gender Biases in AI Assistants - <AUTHOR> https://towardsdatascience.com/alexa-alex-or-al-7a7e28fb4736 <comment><USER2> Everyone agrees that female voices sounds more pleasant / male voices more authoritative (and it's backed by science, according to this article), yet it's still sexist to use the appropriate voice in the appropriate context ?

Should we all go through mandatory government sponsored surgical operations to make our brain perceive female voices as less pleasant and male voices as less authoritative ?

It's not like all of a sudden we can "decide" that a deep manly voice isn't authoritative and a cute woman voice isn't pleasant. Just like you can't see "blue" as "red" or feel "pain" as "pleasure" by pure will.

There is no winning move in the "everything is sexist" game. Fix the obvious issues like "I'd blush if I could" and move on. They make people believe these assistants are "smart and ""AI"" while they're just plain dumb ML, they're not sexist or racist, we are, and they feed on our patterns. You don't fix such a deep issue by treating the symptoms.</comment>


Milwaukee Police News - <AUTHOR> http://www.milwaukeepolicenews.com/ <comment><USER3> It's militaristic, it's alienating, it's fetishistic, it's hostile, it insidiously portrays class and ethnic conflict as an everyday battle worth fighting, and it panders to the worst in Americans who already endorse the myriad excesses and injustices of an ever-growing quasi-private law and order machine that has ruined the lives of millions.

But awesome job on the scrollbars, yo.

<comment><USER4> I live in Melbourne Australia and I have got to say, this is the first reaction I had as well. The imagery used on their website was frankly shocking. My first response was "WTF! Is this really how Americans see their police? Is their job to charge round shooting people?"

Compare and contrast the pictures used on the 'about' page of the Victoria police website:

<http://www.police.vic.gov.au/content.asp?Document_ID=3>

With the images on the same section of the Milwaukee police website:

<http://www.milwaukeepolicenews.com/#menu=about-page>

What do the two different pictures say about how the police view themselves and their job? Looking at the images how do you think the two police departments relate to the community they serve? What type of potential recruits would be attracted to the Victoria police VS Milwaukee police?

<comment><USER5> _"WTF! Is this really how Americans see their police?_

I live in Wisconsin, in a small town of 20,000.

Our police department has an armored car, with a mount for a water cannon. We've got a TAC [1] team. Our cops carry rifles in the trunks of their patrol cars.

Elsewhere you can find comparable sized police departments that have .50 machine guns, armored personel carriers.

So .. yeah. That's not how we see the police.

It's how they are.

[1] A TAC team is not a SWAT team, although the only difference I can see is our TAC team is only a part-time deal for the officers.

<comment><USER6> I live in a small Pennsylvania borough with an operating budget of about $1 mil/year (this includes all services for the entire borough of 3-4 precincts).

Our police department is 8 full-time officers and 3 part-time officers with I believe 2 full-time admin/support staff in the office. We have 5 cruisers, 4 SUVs and at the last borough council meeting the council approved the purchase of a 6th brand new cruiser and a new fleet of AR-15 style rifles for the officers.

Because America.

<comment><USER5> _Because America._

Well .. because politics, because 9/11, because War On Drugs.

 _new fleet of AR-15 style rifles_

Most police officers are better armed and equipped for patrol than I was when I was on sentry duty at Marine Barracks in the 80s.

Something is amiss here.

<comment><USER7> During all your years on sentry duty, how often did you find yourself in situations where you needed to shoot someone? Do the police find themselves in that situation more frequently (or are they significantly more likely to)?

Also, in the event that you did, how far away was your nearest armed support? Sixty seconds? Less?

<comment><USER5> 'Needed' might be the wrong word.

Three times in 2 3/4 years I had a weapon drawn, round in the chamber.

Twice I did not have a target. Once, I did but he obligingly put his hands up when ordered.

 _how far away was your nearest armed support? Sixty seconds? Less?_

Depended on the sentry post, other factors. Sometimes right behind me. Other times minutes away, at best.

If your point is that police are more likely to encounter bad guys than a Marine guarding strategic assets .. maybe.

How does the police department owning a armored personnel carrier help a patrol officer at a traffic stop? How often does your average Mayberry police department encounter bad guys who can only be overcome by a SWAT team?

<comment><USER7> "How does the police department owning a armored personnel carrier help a patrol officer at a traffic stop?"

And how does the USN carrying nuclear weapons help you check passes at the gate?

That aside, yes, my suggestion was that the police are more likely to need the firepower than you were, and were more likely to have to get by on their own for longer before support turned up.

<comment><USER5> Supposedly most cops will go through their careers never drawing their weapons on duty. Don't know if it's true, but I've read it.

I've had 'most' cops beat by the time I was 21 and I wasn't even trying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Kudos for breaking the mold and I love the design from a "this is new and fun" perspective, but I completely disagree from a functional perspective. It looks really neat (if a little over-testosteroned), but if I'm visiting the police's web page then I might want to do one of the following (there are plenty more, these are just an example):

      - Find the non-emergency number for the police;
      - Report a crime;
      - Find my car that has been towed;
      - Pay a fine, citation, traffic ticket, etc;
      - Find the nearest police station (to get fingerprints, etc);
      - Apply for a job;
      - View a map or statistics about crime.

To do any of those, I have to start at the picture of cops, scroll all the way to the bottom of the page (past lots of press releases), click on "about" and then start navigating. Or notice the tiny box on the far right side of the screen, click "about" (why click "about" if I want to find my car? I dunno), then start navigating. Some of these links are also in a PDF [1] just in case I haven't gotten my "Acrobat Reader wants to update itself" message for the day.

I'd say this is at least 25% less functional than some other (probably much cheaper) very plain sites I've seen for similarly-sized cities. [2]

In other words: if you aren't in the business of user experience, think twice before presenting a novel user experience. The business of police should be policing, not looking cool online. There is a zero chance that a technophobe would be likely to solve their problems using this site, thus increasing the burden on (already depleted) staff at stations.

[1] [http://www.milwaukeepolicenews.com/wp- content/themes/milwauk...](http://www.milwaukeepolicenews.com/wp- content/themes/milwaukeepolice/MPD-FAQs.pdf)

[2] E.g., <http://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/police/>

<comment><USER9> That's a rather impressive rant to write without apparently ever considering whether this site is _intended_ to be used for any of that stuff.

<comment><USER10> Clearly it _is_ intended for those use cases, because, as grandparent said, the links to find the answers are there, it's just not that easily available.

I'm not sure exactly what issue you're taking up here, because grandparent clearly states some very straightforward and common user scenarios that any police website should be expecting to handle, and handle efficiently.

This site loads like a dog on my machine. Or perhaps that's a shout out to the K9 unit.

<comment><USER9> Except it's not the police web site. It's an auxiliary site intended for news. Go search for "Milwaukee police" and see what the #1 hit is and what the official web site is. It's not this one.

<comment><USER10> "Official" or not, it's a public-facing website for the Milwaukee police force. What it was "intended" for, and how the public is going to see it, are two different perceptions that are clearly not aligned.

<comment><USER9> I don't see how they're clearly not aligned. As far as I can tell, you got confused because you saw a direct link that was not well labeled and didn't notice the "news" in the URL. Do you have any reason to believe that the average person who goes looking for the information you describe will find and attempt to use this site?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> To be clear, this is NOT the official website, thank God. It is their PR site that was designed pro bono by an ad agency. They still have a standard website, ugly, but with actual information and not just visuals.

[http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/milwaukee-unveils-worlds- best-...](http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/milwaukee-unveils-worlds-best-looking- police-website-143535)

<comment><USER12> good info, but tangentially...since when are cop's having PR websites?!

<comment><USER13> Since they realized they got a bigger budget only by spending all their previous budget.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you want your city to be perceived as a war zone, this is the website for you.

<comment><USER15> I'm here, it is.

At least certain parts are. There's about a 4sqmi area that almost certainly someone will be murdered in this weekend. Maybe a few. Shootings almost every day. If they're even reported.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The militarization of police departments, including professional propaganda, is scary.

</comment><comment><USER17> This looks as if it had been done by the Yes Men, but the WHOIS record tells that it is official.

Seriously, the job of the police is to uphold the law, not to look catch criminals or look cool in their paramilitary gear.

Here's the scary bit: the police relies on the support of the community and yet puts forth that image of itself. If they think that looking that way improves their image one will be better off staying far away both from the citizens of Milwaukee and its police department.

<comment><USER18> The _really_ scary bit is that most people still support the police, and will probably continue to do so no matter what the police do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I... appreciate that they're using modern technologies. That's awesome. I also really like that they're topically focusing what they want to present. That's also awesome.

But that was a painful experience to go through, and it felt like my browser was crying. To me, in terms of UX, this is pretty much one step short of the blink tag. It's glitz for the sake of glitz, to the detriment of utility.

</comment><comment><USER20> I despise sites like this, they are _painful_ to use and the transfer of actual information is nearly zero. I spend more time trying to get the content to line up than I do consuming it. It comes off as a tech demonstration put together without a single thought given to the usability or business goals of the site. Another example of this type of design: <http://www.sugarloaf2020.com/>

Please stop designing sites like this.

<comment><USER21> What's wrong with the sugarloaf website? If you click on the links on the left the content automatically lines up.

<comment><USER20> If you scroll the experience is terribly broken and scrolling is a deeply ingrained interaction paradigm for web sites. Its particularly annoying on a mac trackpad due to inertial scroll.

Saying "don't scroll, use the buttons" to get a non broken experience is like saying "don't click the big red button" to avoid the server throwing a 500.

<comment><USER21> Well I personally don't find the experience terribly broken, or broken at all. I don't see why anything on that page even has to perfectly line up. I mean on Pinterest you don't expect everything to perfectly line up when infinite scrolling, and you don't really lose any information if the image doesn't line up on this page.

However, I can see how it can really annoy some obsessive type personalities (who consider it horribly broken if the page doesn't line up perfectly)... no offense. It might be painful, but that pain's probably not due to you being able to get info from the page.

I've also disabled inertial scrolling. I can see how that would make it impossible to line up the page, but the page has clearly been designed to be used even if the images and elements aren't perfectly in place.

In my opinion, inertial scrolling on a desktop computer is the actual useless embellishment here. It makes sense on a small screened mobile device because there is no scroll bar, and because normal desktop-sized web pages will end up super long on a small screen. But on a desktop few pages will be large and long enough to require you to do a flick to go down.

<comment><USER20> > I don't see why anything on that page even has to perfectly line up.

The timeline page is basically unusable unless it lines up really well. Additionally it took me 4-5 times through to realize the years on that page were click actions (except 2013 which looks identical to the others???). Partially because of the annoyance of lining stuff up took me out of the mindset of 'what should i click on' and partially due to the inversion of focus. Generally actions the user can make should be clearly defined and stand out. In this case the current year stands out and the other years are very muted. In most interaction cases the elements that are muted are 'inactive'.

While you can read the content on the other pages with them out of alignment, the stiff breaks in the image background are very distracting.

All I can say to get to the real point is that if I hadn't grown up riding that mountain 30+ days a winter I never would have stuck around long enough to glean anything useful about it.

For what its worth the general feedback I've heard from other Sugarloafers indicates its not just me or my personality type that hates this site, it's a wide range of folks whose response has been "yuck".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A nitpick about the website: It completely breaks the back button. Back un- scrolls?! WTF.

And now for the sad commentary on the social state: The vehicle in the picture says "Rescue" on it in large, friendly letters. The vehicle is a tank festooned with gun ports.

<comment><USER5> _The vehicle is a tank festooned with gun ports._

You're being needlessly alarming.

The vehicle is a wheeled armored personell carrier. Totally not a tank - <USER2> aren't any caterpillar tracks.

Go back to bed, nothing to see, no worries, Citizen.

<comment><USER22> My mistake. By the by, when should we expect the armor and weapon upgrades on the fire trucks to be complete?

<comment><USER23> They are already there. Firehoses and ladders are weapons against fire, just as guns are weapons against criminals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Not only was this site posted just 16 days ago,[1] but as I commented at the time, scrolling the site causes 100% usage of one of my CPU's cores. This is still the case.

The fact that so many people consider sites such as this to be "awesome" is one of the many reasons I'm glad I no longer work for clients.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4436366>

<comment><USER25> The performance is terrible. Have the developers ever heard of smooth scrolling? How can any self respecting developer release this?

</comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands As a piece of propaganda, I'd say it's pretty nice considering I can count the sites using good Parallax effects on one hand.

Unfortunately, the selection of images doesn't help their cause. Considering their history, I would think there would be more pictures of Cops helping kids and old folks as opposed to images of urban attack vehicles and cops in SWAT gear.

</comment><comment><USER26> Why are the Milwaukee police more heavily armed than the soldiers in Afghanistan?

<comment><USER27> The lead guy has what appears to be a Benelli M2 shotgun with a bunch of crap added (rail, light, and some kind of red dot sight). The other guy has what might be some kind of AR15/M4.

Yes, they're wearing black, and have a lot of random junk attached to them, but they're not necessarily much more heavily armed than a CA CHP car with a shotgun and an AR-15 or M16A1 inside.

The APC, yeah, that's a bit over the top.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I grew up in on the east side of Milwaukee, moved to Chicago and now live in NYC. With each move the police grew progressively more militarized. I always felt it, but obvious when I was travelling in Italy over the summer. I noted how unassuming and calm the Italian police were.

Parts of Milwaukee, can be very rough but I don't think the police looking and acting like paratroopers is the answer to staving social unrest and anxiety. No matter where I am in the US it seems the message of "protect and serve" gets lost in translation.

America is a very fear riden place and I would guess that when a fearful people vote and elect representatives, they elect people who assure safety of the people by more and more aggressive stances.

<comment><USER13> Well put. Yes it's sad that half of Americans think the best response to most offenses is shoot-to-kill, ask questions later. My city has a professional police force; I don't think it's a big coincidence that we also have a relatively low crime rate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's almost impossible to scroll using the trackpad on my MBP.

I think it's the inertial scrolling that causes problems... the slightest touch sends it down three or four pages.

<comment><USER30> The scroll also snaps back to the top when I resize my window.

Also, I think it's detecting my screen resolution and assuming that my browser is maximized. My browser is typically 1/2 the width of my screen, so everything's all garbled up :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> From the Hot Fuzz school of policing..

</comment><comment><USER32> The site beaks the back-button.

The parallax scrolling looks cool, but there's too much momentum, making the desired content scroll out of view.

The visual language is 1984. This sends chills down my spine and I'd never go for an image like that for a public service. Maybe this image is reassuring to the Milwaukee Police Dept, but that shouldn't play a role in designing a "customer-facing" website.

</comment><comment><USER33> As cool and interesting as it is, as a citizen, the information I am actually interested in is all the way down at the bottom. Even then, if what you're looking for isn't in the FAQ, you have to open a PDF just to see more links (what?). There isn't even a phone number listed for non-emergency calls.

Very nice page, but a poor website

</comment><comment><USER34> Excellent looking site (Takes ages to load although that might be HN bashing it)

About the only thing I don't like about it is the preponderance of images featuring gun-toting SWAT members, armoured cars etc, seems a bit hollywood.

</comment><comment><USER35> Great photos, but scrolling with my magic mouse got me angry pretty quick when I couldn't read anything even near the edge of the top or bottom or each section without an over-scroll happening.

</comment><comment><USER36> Our police rides around on bicycles. But hey, I live in Holland. Short video: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBOnGuK7D0o>

</comment><comment><USER37> Actually the design is innovative and very good in breaking the mold. As with anything new there might be some shortcomings, like being performance hog on the browser.

Kudos for trying something new.

</comment><comment><USER38> Looks pretty, but is not very usable.

</comment><comment><USER39> There is about a 750ms delay for scrolling on my lastgen macbook air. I am going to upgrade my machine for this site.

edit: Actually it's more like a 50ms delay followed by some mollasses

<comment><USER40> don't worry. i have the macbook retina with a gig of video ram and the latest and fastest i7 processor and it's scrolls like crap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Missing MOST WANTED page...? <http://www.milwaukeepolicenews.com/most-wanted- page>

</comment><comment><USER42> I've been very annoyed at/interested in non-obvious menu item labels lately. For example, on this site we have "The Source" and "The Stats"–I would have no guesses as to what those mean.

I see this with my own website customers as well. Instead of "Pricing", they use "Investment" and instead of "Contact", they use "Hello" or "Inquiries".

Does anyone have links explaining if/why this is bad?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP, here. I agree with much of the criticism, and I have nothing to do with Milwaukee, their PD or this website. I just thought it was quite different from normal municipal websites, and would be worth discussion.

Perhaps they should take the idea of interesting and different design and decouple it from the militaristic attitude, and they'd be on to something.

</comment><comment><USER43> I like it. The site has a Hill Street Blues quality to it, but tougher and darker. That's okay. The cops need to look tough because they are tough.

I think the more communication the better. Is it propoganda? Maybe, but I wouldn't work my brain into a lather about that.

Overall, I'd say it's cool. If my town had a site like this I'd read it.

</comment><comment><USER44> A perfect example of design that complete overshoots and denigrates its usability and usefulness. I wouldn't even expect this amount of slickness from a web app that dispenses froyo from my cd-rom drive. The Mobile experience should be the desktop experience, as well; for something like a police blotter.

</comment><comment><USER45> If you didn't tell me this was a police website, I'd have thought it was a tabloid, with that huge font.

I guess it's a modern theme, but is this the image they want to portray? Looks more like a movie or magazine website rather than a professional police force.

</comment><comment><USER46> Looks great until you click on something like "pay for a parking ticket" <https://step1.caledoncard.com/citations/milwaukee.html>

</comment><comment><USER47> If only discussing the usability issue. 1. Spacebar doesn't work, and 2. It lags even on a rMacBook. and 3. scrolling using the MacBook trackpad makes the site feel slippery.

</comment><comment><USER48> Yes, we live in a police state over here. Please send help.

</comment><comment><USER49> One site for which I'm definitely not enabling Javascript.

</comment><comment><USER50> Mmmm, all I see is a beautiful site, I guess I'm brain washed.

</comment><comment><USER51> > WARNING: We have detected that you currently have Javascript disabled.

> This website requires the use of Javascript, for the best possible viewing > experience we highly recommend that you enable Javascript via your browser's > options.

Do I really need to elaborate here? For the record, the site works (to some extent) in Lynx.

But in Firefox without Javascript, they actually took the time to make it completely useless _and_ they have that little block of text on top. Why did they waste their time doing that?

If they don't support non-Javascript browsers, fine. I actually don't care about that. But to... _anti-support_ them. To actively work to make the page useless to them. _That_ is what I don't get. I would appreciate some insight into their thoughts here.

<comment><USER52> They don't want to support non-Javascript browsers, but they don't want users who've turned off Javascript to think their site is broken. So they put a warning box up to explain the situation. Seems fair enough, as long as it's just a passive warning rather than blocking the actual site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Android gets a simple mobile site with boring self-congratulatory text reports of the great job cops are doing. Apparently 20th century computers get all the fun on this one.</comment>


What document format for resumes do you (demand) from potential employees? - <AUTHOR>

It seems to me one should accept formats such as PDF, HTML, text, RTF, etc. but not word processer-specific formats. Yes, no? <comment><USER2> The problem is most of the people that filter through the resumes are HR folks, in one case I heard of one dropping a resume because the IT candidate didnt' have "TCP/IP experience" on their resume, so the format matters less than the content in this case. Still, .doc is the standard, I write mine in Open Office, but test it in MS Office since that's what they'll open it with. I always have a PDF on hand as well, but when you're searching for a job you don't want to be the one sub'ing a resume in a format they're not expecting.

Of course when I review resumes I prefer text, with extra credit if it was written with vi!

<comment><USER3> The reason many recruiters want .doc is so they can "reformat" it into the "house style". The CV you see may not much resemble what they wrote!

Ultimately the only solution to the HR problem is for the technical staff to do the entire screening process, but that won't happen (in large companies anyway) as why should the technical people be recruited differently to the marketing folks? What are they SPECIAL or something? Well, exactly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you expect decent computer skills, and you're just having humans read them, you shouldn't need to specify. If the candidate can't figure out to send you something you can be reasonably expected to read (sorry, MS Word.doc is included, but .docx isn't), that's good enough reason to disqualify them (from all directions - .docx, TeX, etc).

If they're good enough that you'd ignore that, you probably don't need the resume anyway.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's all PDF, Doc or plain text from my experience. Would be cool to see more requests for HTML resumes so markup-obsessive web developers could use microformats, etc.

</comment><comment><USER6> Plain text in the body of an email is my preference since it makes the content easily searchable in my inbox.</comment>


Airbnb Employees Speak Out About Bullying and 'Toxic' Work Environment - <AUTHOR> http://brokeassstuart.com/blog/2017/05/25/airbnb-employees-speak-out-about-company-bullying-tactics/ <comment><USER2> Large companies have enough disgruntled employees that even the laziest journalists can find a few to generate some outrage, which drives views/clicks to their site. Since AirBNB is a well-known name, people on HN will tend to upvote it and commenters will self-select for people who want to rant about AirBNB.

That's 3 selection biases here: Visibility on HN(selects for an "interesting" story, not truth), disgruntled employees, comments will want to rant about AirBNB. It's almost certainly a mistake to judge them negatively based on this story.

> In 2015, Glassdoor ranked the company as the #1 place to work, in 2017 that > ranking dropped to 35th, and many employees are speaking out.

35th "best place to work" and "people are treated like cattle"? Somebody's giving you misleading statistics: Either it's Glassdoor.com, or the managing editor of "broke-ass stuart".

I don't think there's a single company above 10,000 employees that you couldn't force a similar framing on.

<comment><USER3> > It's almost certainly a mistake to judge them negatively based on this > story.

Logically speaking, it would also be a mistake to dismiss every report of poor employee treatment where those selection biases apply.

<comment><USER4> > Logically speaking, it would also be a mistake to dismiss every report of > poor employee treatment where those selection biases apply.

Remarkable claims require remarkable evidence, claims that are made without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.

If a handful of people complain out of thousands and there is no hard evidence, then I see no reason not to just dismiss it.

<comment><USER3> On what grounds do you consider a claim "remarkable"?

This also isn't a standard of admittance that would work terribly well for minorities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It makes sense, if you compare it to the conditions of the hosts. I got people for a year and this is remarkable:

— Not host, nor guests are legally related to AirBnB. Hence, none of the parties is really protected, even if ABnB talks about "insurance".

— Not even the help desk is AirBnB. As they call them, they are "community helpers", and their help is not legally linked to AirBnB.

— They changed the conditions just because, and they place them as you go in for you to accept them. If you disagree, you have to remove yourself from the platform via email.

— They promise a plan of prizes for good hosts. It seems that most of your ratings should be high. It turns statistically impossible once your go into the real conditions: must be evaluated by +80% of your hosts, and +80% of your score must be five stars (or similar).

— They don't pay your social security, welcoming time, help, and after all anything we call "added value".

— Nevertheless, they added surreptitious-yet-public evaluation for things nobody is paying for, like being the tourist guide of someone who is getting a room for 10€/night.

— They do not care about hosts opinions, in spite they are the ones putting the real value on the platform, paying taxes for it, doing the face-to-face with the end client, etc. If your guests arrive 8 hours early and they complain you didn't received them, the bad scoring is on you (happened). If your hosts leave a mess behind, AirBnB evaluates if they should cover it for the shake of their public image, or if they rather claim that according to the rules that is not covered.

Everybody is free to do whatever, but after my experience I trust hotels more than anything.

<comment><USER6> > They promise a plan of prizes for good hosts....[You] must be evaluated by > +80% of your hosts.

> If your hosts leave a mess behind, AirBnB evaluates if they should cover it > for the shake of their public image

It seems like the word "host" is being used for both "host" and "guest" in a few places, and I'm having trouble parsing a lot of trouble fully understanding this comment because of it.

<comment><USER5> My apologies. I'm not a native speaker and switched the words as I spoke. You are right:

> [You] must be evaluated by +80% of your GUESTS."

> If your GUESTS leave a mess behind, AirBnB evaluates if they should cover it > for the shake of their public image.

<comment><USER6> No worries! Thanks for clarifying

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> * Headcount: 2368 people* * Hired in 2015: 1160 people [https://www.quora.com/How-many-employees-does-Airbnb-have-1](https://www.quora.com/How-many-employees-does-Airbnb-have-1)

I worked in a company with similar growing speed. And things went from good to bad.

Everything starts with the size of the company. Upper management stops being related with what most of their employees do. So they start to take bad decisions promoting the wrong people. That didn't happen when the company was 500 people, as upper management knew most of them and knew personally the people that they were promoting. That is lost way before getting to the 2000 employees mark.

First-time managers promoted ad-hoc to fill the ranks are not able to deal with the company complexity.

So now you have employees used to voice their concerns, to be pro-active, and demanding explanations from management decisions. But management is now mediocre and is not able to attend the needs of high performing employees. The company tries to play cool, but the people that believed in that way of working is long gone.

Silos start to pop up everywhere. Departments try to protect themselves from the chaos.

The first to leave is the leaders of the company. Those people were the ones- to-go when you had a problem, they maybe never became managers and just wanted to mind their business. For them is easy to find new jobs and they are tired of fighting the new bureaucracy.

I don't know what happens next. The company I left is at this stage. Maybe things get better, maybe they just fail. But I guess that this "best company to work" just becomes a normal big company, and that's all.

</comment><comment><USER8> Take caution with this kind of hyperbole.

AirBnB has grown enough that it is now an organization of organizations. Top- down culture is subordinated by the culture of the immediate group. It's entirely possible that these negative experiences happen within some but not all of the groups in the company. So, it's incorrect to draw an assumption that the entire company consists of toxic practices.

<comment><USER9> Do you feel the same way about Uber?

<comment><USER8> This article is about AirBnB, right? Stick to the subject. This isn't Reddit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Heard similar stuff from a friend who used to work at AirBnb. He was an ex- Facebook engineer who quit AirBnB even before his stocks vested because we was so unhappy at this company.

I am really surprised. Things are going well for them as a company. Why do they want to screw it up for themselves?

<comment><USER11> Did he say why he was unhappy?

Just look at the Frightful Five. At least two of them are renowned for having brutal, sometimes abusive, corporate cultures. Three if you include stack ranking-era Microsoft. Having an awful culture doesn't preclude business success.

<comment><USER12> I only hear bad stuff about Amazon, they churn through fresh graduates. Apple has this whole secrecy stick, but people stay long term there, even when (especiall when?) working for Jobs. I dont recall any negative stuff about Facebook. Google would frighten me personally, because everyone is smarter than me and I would sink as a rock. Microsofts stack ranking seemed like institutional crippling.

<comment><USER11> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9342994](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9342994)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12502336](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12502336)

[https://mic.com/articles/154788/apple-employees-say-their- me...](https://mic.com/articles/154788/apple-employees-say-their-mental- health-issues-came-from-alleged-hostile-work-environment)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've often heard that it's extremely difficult to maintain any real culture or ethos beyond the amount of employees the CEO can personally manage, and that number is around 40-50. AirBnB is _far_ beyond that, so it's no wonder.

The larger the company, the more it's going to decay and suck. The degree to which it does is a function of management style and org structure.

Of course, Kool-Aid doesn't help matters—especially at scale where it rings hollow.

<comment><USER14> I dont know where you heard that from.. certainly not anyone with a background in management.

There are companies that have wildly different cultures.. Google vs Walmart for example.

Culture creation/management is taught in business school... the culture the management creates is there to serve the purpose of the organization. In other words, Google tries to create a culture that encourages innovation.. versus Walmart's culture of ringing every last penny of costs out (which is done through strict adherence to rules and procedures). It is not possible to operate Walmart with Google's culture. The company would be bankrupt tomorrow.

There's a post a bit higher up with "you can't operate a business designed to evade regulation without that attitude eventually permeating its entire corporate culture"... and that is absolutely true. It's impossible for management to hire and encourage people to break rules, and then say their own rules are sacrosanct.

<comment><USER15> You really can't compare companies in different industries. Most Google employees are "knowledge" workers with some barrier to replacement. Most Walmart employees are performing mundane service work that is largely replaceable with any other person.

<comment><USER16> Well no, you're forgetting there's a very big Walmart 'Head Office' that would have its own culture.

<comment><USER13> Walmart Labs is likely a subculture within what you describe.

If I had to guess, unlike their masters they probably find adorning their office walls in the stuffed trophies of union-organizing retail employees to simply be poor taste.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> One data point does not make a whole lot but let me point this out: [https://www.airbnb.ca/rooms/8618464](https://www.airbnb.ca/rooms/8618464) this here is a shit road side motel. I cancelled it when I realized and I reported it but it's still there more than a year later. It's trivial to check what it is: there are no houses at the junction. [https://goo.gl/maps/WsPwXxa22ho](https://goo.gl/maps/WsPwXxa22ho)

If you check the hosts' reviews it turns out he is airbnb'ing out the hotel rooms of his father all over Israel. This is blatantly visible and yet Airbnb lets it. Samples: "The staff at the hotel" "The place is more like a cheap hotel or a hostel (not a "home" like other Airbnb places I've rented in the past). "

My trip was awesome nonetheless, brief report [http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/25981843-post8.html](http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/25981843-post8.html) here.

<comment><USER5> I quit AirBnB as they pushed me to accept the new terms or either chase them on the email to cancel my property offer.

It happened that some people came by saying they had just reserved, and I told them I had nothing to offer. It's been +2 months and my room is still there. I am talking about foreign people finding they have no place to sleep.

AirBnB doesn't care, as long as they have stock to bait.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I see this as a recurring problem with companies that publish a culture deck. It seems like the companies with culture problems are the ones that arr emphasizing culture with these so called decks on freedom, autonomy and bean bags.

</comment><comment><USER19> If you are good at your job and you are treated as trash then its simple: move elsewhere.

As a former project in chief, i found that the worst employees was the first one to complain for everything. However, i never fired somebody, i just let them go ;-) (a fancy way to say the same)

<comment><USER20> > i found that the worst employees was the first one to complain for > everything

This sounds like a great way to dismiss any complaint you don't want to hear.

<comment><USER21> Not at all. The parent was talking about a pattern of behavior, not an isolated incident. I've had the same experience; some people just want to make a problem out of everything instead of chosing their battles wisely and finding workable solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Whether its illegal sublets or unlicensed minicabs, you can't operate a business designed to evade regulation without that attitude eventually permeating its entire corporate culture. Welcome to "disruption".

<comment><USER23> What about arbitrary regulations that were designed to artificially limit supply and increase prices on customers and the fact that these regulations won't go away because too few people know about them and there's a lobby giving millions to law makers to make sure they won't go away? How is that not corruption in anything but in name? How can Airbnb and others fight against these corrupt regulations when they were design to keep new comers and innovators out and incumbents in? It's a dirty game and if you want to play, or change things, you have to get dirty too. I'm glad they're doing it. Same as when you prohibit drug or alcool, it's still going to happen but way more dirty. Who's to blame though? Willing adults who want to partake peacefully in their preferred activities or regulators armed with guns trying to prevent from doing these peaceful things? Hm...

<comment><USER24> Airbnb is a profit-seeking corporation, not a public interest group. They're not out to fight the good fight against "arbitrary regulation" any more than hotels are being evil by supporting it.

If you don't like the law, you can vote, run for office, volunteer, donate to a candidate or nonprofit, or bother your elected officials. I'm no fan of lobbying ("corruption in anything but name"—sweetheart gigs for sympathetic representatives once they get out of office), but it's legal for AirBnb to do this too.

<comment><USER25> _If you don 't like the law, you can vote, run for office, volunteer, donate to a candidate or nonprofit, or bother your elected officials._

In reality, you can do two things about it;

1\. Like it

2\. Absolutely nothing

This myth that an honest individual with good intentions can somehow influence the system is harmful and needs to die. If you're not a huge corporation or lobby group, your chances of getting a law changed is for all intents and purposes zero.

<comment><USER26> An individual can most definitely influence the system, but it involves doing unappealing things like participating in open comment periods, political organizing, labor organizing, attending meetings, making phone calls, interacting with bureaucracies, pouring your life into standards bodies, running for local office, and persevering in the face of indifference and tedium.

It's a high bar to clear (I certainly haven't cleared it), but to pretend it's impossible is the definition of cynisicm.

<comment><USER27> [http://www.upworthy.com/20-years-of-data-reveals-that- congre...](http://www.upworthy.com/20-years-of-data-reveals-that-congress- doesnt-care-what-you-think)

Step 1: Read article

Step 2: Resume cynicism

<comment><USER28> You understand that wherever you live has city, county councils. Schools boards and conservation and fire districts. Your state has a legislature.

Aside: I hate South Park. The smug self righteous cynicism it engenders is just another cult, but for apathy.

<comment><USER27> Sure, let's talk about my city. The mayor is on the board of the company that manages our toll roads, so we'll never get good public transportation. At a zoning board meeting the head chair literally said out loud, in response to complaints, that she was impervious against any campaign against her because alphabetically she showed up first on the ballot. Oh yeah, our governor's wife is on the board of some medical group... I forget the details but they bilked millions out of our senior citizens... and got re-elected.

Aside response: I don't watch South Park, so I don't know what you're even referring to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm going to be honest here and tell you guys that I didn't read most of the article. The more I come across these headlines the more I start to feel maybe these people that are complaining are feeling a little bit to entitled. I wonder how they would feel if they were working at a small publicly owned company out in Indiana. Fix the contrast bias and maybe you wouldn't feel so bad about where you work.

<comment><USER30> Yes. After the things I've had to do and the people I've had to put up during working career it's hard not to think "self entitled whiner!" when seeing these types of headlines.

Which might not be the case in this instance, but it's definitely the first thought that comes to mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> All complaints that this article quoted are too generic. For example, what specifically, does "people are treated like cattle" mean?

</comment><comment><USER32> Can't wait to see Brian Chesky arguing with a troubled landlord at one's property.

</comment><comment><USER33> Are our standards for "toxic" and "terrible management" too low, when the only company without these is Etsy? Is their level of pampering the only acceptable environment now?

<comment><USER11> Stripe is renowned for having a good corporate culture.

<comment><USER34> Stripe is a lot smaller than Airbnb (by headcount, but also financials probably). But it's growing quickly, and things have already started to degrade.

So, it's coming. On the other hand, they are very savvy about branding and comms, so they should be able to defy reality for a while ;)

Seriously, they don't get credit for how good they are at this. And they probably wouldn't want that credit if they got it!

(You know that piece about FB's "far-reaching tentacles" from the other day? I wonder why we haven't seen anything similar about Stripe yet. Hmmmm...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> So is this the beginning of the next internet mob to take take down another Silicon Valley darling?

</comment><comment><USER36> I keep hearing the phrase "evade regulations" with regards to Airbnb, Uber, et al.

Why not "increase efficiency", "increase consumer choice", "reduce prices", or something more positive? As a user of both services (on both sides for Airbnb) I've been quite happy.

"Evade regulations" \- let's have some context here people. Think about all the ridiculous things that used to be illegal due to regulations. And all the things that currently are, and are hampering small businesses [0].

We should aim to reduce regulations on transactions between private parties, especially when these transactions leave both parties better off.

[0] - [http://www.businessinsider.com/ridiculous-regulations-big- go...](http://www.businessinsider.com/ridiculous-regulations-big- government-2010-11)

<comment><USER37> Those are huge companies which employ plenty of marketing & PR people. Why should anyone else spin on their behalf without getting paid?

Similarly, while not everything the government does is perfect or the best way to accomplish a particular goal but it's really important to remember that there's a huge industry pushing outrageous stories to get public support for gutting regulations which really matter. We've seen this with e.g. Steven Milloy (the junkscience.com operator) who got his start shilling for the tobacco companies and is a reliable anti-science voice anywhere a large company is trying to halt or reverse regulations. He was one of the leading voices in a quixotic-seeming DDT crusade which turned out to be an attempt to discredit the WHO in Africa when their anti-smoking campaign was cutting into profits[1].

Any time you read one of these outrageous law stories, the first thing you want to check is what it actually says, followed very closely by asking who benefits from you getting outraged by that story or becoming primed to overreact to the concept in general.

Going with that BI story, note that the only source for the first claim is a right-wing activist group. The actual statute very clearly shows that they're misrepresenting the law because it actually applies only to forensics work collecting evidence for a court:

[http://www.legis.state.tx.us/tlodocs/80R/billtext/html/HB028...](http://www.legis.state.tx.us/tlodocs/80R/billtext/html/HB02833F.htm)

Since that story was based on the Institute for Justice's claims and that's full of lawyers, it seems quite unlikely that this is an innocent mistake caused by ignorance of the law rather than a blatant propaganda effort relying on the fact that most people hit forward without checking the sources.

1\. [http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/rehabilitatingcar...](http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/rehabilitatingcarson)

<comment><USER37> … and for anyone who isn't familiar with IJ, they're a Koch- funded institution with corporate libertarian bent:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Justice](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Justice)

The author of that blog post, well, look at that page and ask how reliable a source he is: [http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/](http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/)</comment></comment></comment>


This Plastic Can Heal Itself in 30 Minutes - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2012/11/12/plastic-heal-itself-stanford-30-minutes/

<comment><USER2> The original (more detailed) article: [http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/november/healing- plastic-...](http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/november/healing-plastic- skin-111112.html)</comment>


Some questions about HTML 5 video - <AUTHOR> http://theflashblog.com/?p=1710

<comment><USER2> Shouldn't an Adobe evangelist be up on the details of his biggest competitor? Makes it seem like concern trolling.

<comment><USER3> Lee does a lot of travel and presentations, working on sample files, blogging, customer interaction.

The frothiness of the "'HTML5' VIDEO" talk requires a significant amount of research to determine the reality-of-the-week.

<comment><USER2> There are amateur frothers on both sides, as on any divisive issue. Lee's a professional evangelist posting on a corporate blog.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, I'll bite.

Adobe: Is there a definitive reference for both the video tag and the JS API used to communicate with it?

The HTML5 draft is extremely well defined (that's the point) albeit constantly evolving (hence draft).

Adobe: My assumption is that each browser provides a default set of controls. Can these be modified or do you need to start from scratch?

You can't modify the browser's implementation but you make your own with HTML5, or use one of many open source starting points.

Adobe: How do you do true streaming with the video tag (i.e. not progressive download)?

I don't think this is possible.

Adobe: Is it possible to provide some form of DRM protection for video in HTML 5?

No.

Adobe: Is there a tool that is optimal for encoding Ogg videos for Firefox?

Not sure.

Adobe: I remember reading that you can seek to any part of a video even if it hasn't been downloaded yet. Is that true and if so, how is that achieved?

Not sure.

Adobe: Is there no hope for IE ever supporting the video tag?

There is hope.</comment>


Depressing Thoughts About Groupon's Model - <AUTHOR> http://bostonvcblog.typepad.com/vc/2010/12/depressing-thoughts-about-groupons-model.html

<comment><USER2> agree with many of the doubts jeff expresses. as with almost any social network (not named facebook), i'm just not convinced these are sustainable headcounts/models.

related to discount space, solutions like this have been around forever. groupon has had excellent timing & execution, but i just don't know that they can keep it up.

the space is getting further crowded by the day, and the fad will wear off at some point. for one, my entire family has already distanced itself from groupon when similar models like scoutmob require no money down.

with all that said, i wouldn't be surprised at all to see them with an IPO in Q2-Q3 of 2011 to take advantage of their current stature. (catch news of amazon's CFO joining? <http://ht.ly/3smDF> )</comment>


Show HN: A Node.js Framework that runs in the browser - scott-b [Fabrix](https://github.com/fabrix-app/fabrix) is a strongly typed modern web framework that just did something a little new and very interesting.  At its heart, Fabrix is simply a [tuple space](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuple_space) engine running on JavaScript's event emitter.  It acts like a linux kernal loading libraries of code into a well defined API that give it all of its functionality which are called "spools". This makes Fabrix very lightweight and can boot incredibly fast. On top of being a very capable framework for "serverless" computing, Fabrix can now be bundled with Webpack to bring its simplicity to browsers!
Many of Fabrix's spools are specific to Node.js, but now with added browser support, we could see some interesting new spools driven for the client side or even Isomorphic applications.  Check it out on [Github](https://github.com/fabrix-app) or say hello in the Fabrix [Gitter Channel](https://gitter.im/fabrix-app/Lobby)
EDIT: Typo, also wish Hackernews supported markdown. <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link: [https://github.com/fabrix- app/fabrix](https://github.com/fabrix-app/fabrix)</comment>


Japan 'to build 20GW of coal-fired capacity over next decade' (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://www.energylivenews.com/2019/06/20/japan-to-build-20gw-of-coal-fired-capacity-over-next-decade/ <comment><USER3> This is really saddening.

I am baffled by world leaders repeatedly suspending, cancelling, or shutting down nuclear reactors. Even after Fukushima Daiichi, nuclear energy remains in Japan and worldwide the (1) safest by far [deaths/kWh], (2) lowest emissions on average, (3) most reliable source of energy generation.

Every plant shut down / suspended / whatever you want to call it effectively increases the number of people who die in accidents each year because the production is offset by increased coal/solar/gas/hydro generation, and usually it's coal, which is the worst by far - which also means more air pollution, more deaths due to air pollution (already a gargantuan problem in Asia), and more greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere (for which it is also the worst by far, even 4x worse than natural gas).

Every politician or leader who moves to build more coal plants instead of nuclear or at least renewables (which are much much safer and cleaner than coal) or natural gas (which is also safer and cleaner) should be criticized by their people.

If you can build ANYTHING that isn't coal, you're saving lives and reducing the climate change problem. Coal is the worst.

Also, if you're under the impression coal is "cheaper" \- forget about unit cost, and look at the real world data. German electricity is about 2x the price of French electricity - a coal / renewables mix vs. a nuclear majority. Ontario electricity ranges from 5-10x cheaper than German electricity as well - also a nuclear majority grid.

This isn't even including the significant externalized costs that the air pollution and GHG emissions from coal plants place on society, or the costs of the thousands of people who die due to coal power accidents.

<comment><USER4> Here's a source for your claim that nuclear is cleaner than (just about) everything else:

[https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5...](https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5_annex- iii.pdf)

if anyone wants. It blew my mind that nuclear is more than three times cleaner than solar, and on par with wind. (This was posted elsewhere here on HN.)

Those numbers don't include batteries, which afaik is an unsolved problem anyway, so if you include those then nuclear becomes cleaner than everything else.

<comment><USER3> Thankyou! These are some really great points.

I think it's always important to look at the full supply chain life cycle effects of energy sources - keeping in mind that they need to be built from processed materials, potentially repaired, and decommissioned after a lifetime.

Once you account for the emissions of material throughput in building power plants and renewables, the sheer volumetric density of nuclear energy compared to all other sources pushes it far ahead in terms of cleanliness. You need a lot less concrete and steel per kWh generated.

Also your point about batteries is really important, because we would need to scale production many (many) orders of magnitude in order to reliably power a modern grid with majority renewable energy, and we don't really understand how that supply chain is going to look.

Unlike processing and manufacturing industries which generally have positive economies of scale, the problem with resource extraction (esp. with metals) is that the cost to extract has a negative forcing function driven by our prioritization of the most profitable reserves.

If you mine all the cheap reserves first, you will eventually be left with only the expensive ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I understand that Japan doesn't have a huge amount of land available, but they do have a ton of sea coastline.

I would have thought that offshore wind generation would deliver far more capacity than they need at an equal or lower price than coal (which they'd have to import).

Distributing wind generation over larger areas would compensate for local variances in capacity.

There's typhoons, earthquakes and the occasional tsunami to deal with - <USER2> surely not unsolvable issues.

<comment><USER6> It could be a security issue. Wikipedia says that Japan and China frequently have disputes, including over territory. Building a coal power plant will probably be easier to keep safe than offshore power generation methods, considering how close they are to China.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China- Japan_relations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China-Japan_relations)

<comment><USER7> Why? To stop offshore power they'd have to bomb thousands of rotors

To stop coal, they bomb three powerplants

<comment><USER8> Furthermore, Japan imports most of its coal.

If relations between China and Japan deteriorated to the point that China was attacking Japanese wind farms, almost all of which would be within 20 miles of Japan's main islands and hundreds of miles from any disputed territory, then its probably to the point that ships carrying the coal imports would not be safe either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> We're going to waste another decade using mostly fossil fuels to generate electricity, refuse to use nuclear, and have a plan to be carbon neutral within 20 years?

<comment><USER10> It's sad, but as nuclear isn't happening, the only hope we have is the continued scaling of battery production for renewable grid.

<comment><USER11> Battery production isn't set to be anywhere near the scale required. Current production is 300GWh per year globally [1]. Production is projected to reach 2TWh per year at ~2030. How much capacity is needed for a country to be powered by intermittent sources varies, but most estimates are 2-3 days worth of energy consumption depending on the breakdown between wind and solar. For reference, the US uses 10TWh of electricity daily. Hydroelectric or pumped air storage have better capacities, but those are geographically limited. Some have drawn up theoretical plans around using the Sabatier process to create methane, but that has unsolved issues of how to effectively capture CO2 from the exhaust of gas turbines as well as round trip efficiencies of ~35%.

I foresee countries saturating daytime energy generation with solar, and then twiddling around their thumbs for a few decades before either adopting nuclear power or just saying screw it and keep burning fossil fuels.

1 [https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/14/global-lithium-ion- batt...](https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/14/global-lithium-ion-battery- planned-capacity-update-9-growth-in-a-single-month-march-charts/)

<comment><USER10> 10 year projections are mostly off by an order of magnitude.

Wright's law ([https://ark-invest.com/research/wrights-law-predicts- teslas-...](https://ark-invest.com/research/wrights-law-predicts-teslas-gross- margin) [https://ark-invest.com/research/wrights-law-2](https://ark- invest.com/research/wrights-law-2) ) predicts that as electric cars get competitive with gasoline cars in a few years, production will accerelate in the middle of the decade. As batteries get cheaper by about 18%/year, production can ramp up by 30-50%/year

If you use 30%/year for battery production increase, you arrive at 4TWh/year at ~2030. For 50%/year production increase you get 17TWh/year.

There's a reason why I'm really excited for Tesla's battery day, as they clearly want to get closer to 50%/year and not 30%/year production increase.

<comment><USER11> Price and global production capacity are two different figures. Global capacity is limited by things like raw materials. Regardless even if we go with your more optimistic projections, you're still talking about 5-7 years of _global_ battery production to fulfill the storage demands of a single country. Consider that a large part of this battery production will go towards electric cars and electronics, it'll likely take the better part of a century to produce enough storage to power the globe on intermittent sources.

<comment><USER10> ,,it'll likely take the better part of a century to produce enough storage to power the globe on intermittent sources''

We're talking about 20-30 years, and sure, I don't see the will from people (especially poor people who elect politicians, but can't afford renewable energy) for going faster.

<comment><USER11> We're not talking 20-30 years. Even by your more optimistic estimate of 4TWh of global battery production by 2030, it would still take 5-7 years worth of global battery production supply to fulfill _just_ the United States' storage needs. Currently the US accounts for ~17% of global energy consumption, but that share is going to be lower in the future as less developed countries expand their energy production capacity. And on top of that, we're not going to be dedicating the entirety of our battery production to energy storage because we'll still be building electronics and electric vehicles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I imagine they suffer from a similar problem the US has with oil refineries.

My friend who works in the oil industry as an engineer told me that it's hard to get approvals for more environmentally friendly oil refineries in the US. Older refineries are left to continue operating inefficiently and not as environmentally friendly. It's a double edge sword.

I assume Japan may have strict requirements or a lot of red tape to get efficient nuclear power in the country. Especially after Fukushima. I'm only guessing. So I assume it's cheaper and legal to still burn coal because they probably haven't forced coal regulations.

I'm just guessing this is why they're going backwards. Nothing is really stopping them because it's not illegal.

</comment><comment><USER13> Going backwards.</comment>