All these Brilliant People at Facebook Make Me Sad - <AUTHOR> http://hueniverse.com/2010/11/all-these-brilliant-people-at-facebook-make-me-sad/ <comment><USER2> My mother, who was disabled by a stroke some years ago, relies on no non- medical technology as much as she relies on Facebook. It is how she keeps up with the family, who are scattered across the country (and, er, world), without which she would never get to talk to aunts/uncles/cousins since they see each other only at events/reunions and she often isn't well enough to travel.

I respect that folks don't find a lot of value in FB. It isn't quite my cup of tea either. But don't make the engineer's mistake of assuming "Since I don't use it, nobody uses it" or "Nobody's use of this is important to them."

Also, one shouldn't let one's position in the tech echo chamber cause one to overestimate how much resources Facebook really gets from society. Their annual operating budget is, what, the size of the school districts in one midsize US city or the IT department of a single large bank? Don't worry, we will still have brains to spare after someone does an A/B test on poking.

<comment><USER3> To be fair to the OP, their argument isn't "since I don't use it, nobody uses it".

Their argument was a (totally defensible IMHO) personal expression of disappointment about all the brain work going into something whose impact seems to have peaked (in that those who want it already have it, and the rest of us don't have a problem it can solve).

Sure, Facebook is a utility to millions or even billions of people, but so is electricity. I think the analogy is if thousands of brilliant engineers were working for a fossil-fuel power company - it would be a natural reaction to say "Gee I wish all those boffins were working on renewable energy instead".

You might not agree with it, but it is a legitimate sentiment.

<comment><USER4> I know three very bright, young graduates who have decided to enter the Financial industry (i.e. Algorithmic Trading). One has a Bachelor's in Physics & CS, another a Bachelor's in Physics & Math, and the other is finishing a PhD in Astrophysics. They view the Financial industry as an intellectually stimulating game (I don't disagree), and an opportunity to make 6-figures in their early 20s.

This really disappoints me. Sure, _somebody_ needs to work in Finance for the sake of liquidity and other things I don't understand. But, 35% or so of my social group that are pursuing degrees in Physics are headed to Finance instead of research. I'd much rather seem them expand human knowledge than profit and live an easy life.

My perspective is that of a Junior CS & Physics major reaching towards grad school and some sort of research be it academia or elsewhere.

<comment><USER5> >This really disappoints me. Sure, somebody needs to work in Finance for the sake of liquidity and other things I don't understand. But, 35% or so of my social group that are pursuing degrees in Physics are headed to Finance instead of research.

Every cloud has a silver lining, and this one is as bright as it gets. Until the rise of e.g. finance and actuarial science, getting a physics or math degree meant just going into academia. Now, with more demand for math or physics majors, there will be more demand for physics or math professors, which ultimately means more money going into math and physics research.

The existence of the medical and legal professions contributes vastly to the funding of schools of medicine and law, and this is no different. It's good, not bad, that there are other things you can do with a degree in advanced mathematics besides "teach grad students advanced mathematics and vie for increasingly-scarce federal grant money".

>I'd much rather seem them expand human knowledge than profit and live an easy life.

It's too bad we don't live in a country full of self-sacrificing saints, huh?

<comment><USER6> But, but, but... thanks to modern technology, aren't there so many _better_ options for seriously smart folks with physics and math degrees?

The "other" option isn't dusty academia and obscure research anymore. It also doesn't involve being a self-sacrificing saint and giving up any chance of ever having a nice car, though finance may still pay better in some cases than a high-math-content tech career.

<comment><USER5> >But, but, but... thanks to modern technology, aren't there so many better options for seriously smart folks with physics and math degrees?

If people want to pursue money, who are you to judge?

See, I don't think you quite get how much this sentiment pisses me off. I'm 19. I just got a bachelor's in physics. I've done research in a bunch of fields. And I'm going into graduate school next year.

People who think I'm somehow obligated to pursue anything beyond money can go blow a goat. Am I? You're _goddamn_ right I am. I'm looking at tenure track or something similar because I love the people in academia, and because I love the work that I do. I love the people in academia because _they don't think like this_. They aren't generally judgmental pricks who will fault someone for pursuing their own interests. "generally".

I've dealt with so much shit from people who treat me like some sort of fucking alien for being good at goddamn math. Every-fucking-body else in this fucking country is more self-centered than a gyroscope. If I could reach you, right now, I'd strangle you. Seriously. God-fucking-damnit.

It's bad enough that I get to watch the ivory tower crumble around me. It's worse when people act like I'm obligated to live there.

In conclusion, go fuck yourself. You have no ground to stand on being 'disappointed' in me or any of my peers.

<comment><USER7> Sure, spend your life working on whatever you want, even something selfish. It does decrease what you could do elsewhere and as such has opportunity costs, but as you say it's your choice.

But "finance" means theft these days. It's only wildly profitable because our economic/justice system is fundamentally flawed and nobody is allowed to stop playing.

That would be disappointing to see a useful person seduced by. Not because your skills make you a national resource or anything, but because the job is a net negative to society. We'd be better off if you took up mugging.

<comment><USER5> >But "finance" means theft these days. It's only wildly profitable because our economic/justice system is fundamentally flawed and nobody is allowed to stop playing.

'tis the _voters'_ fault, though, isn't it? The quants didn't ask for the system to be the way it is.

If anything, they, by exploiting this flaw, act to expose it, making it more visible and more likely to be fixed. Imagine if more grad students did this. You'd drive the stock market to collapse so many times -- at least in theory, 'cuz you're basically _draining_ it like a pool, and it's a finite pool -- the government would be -forced- to give up on its newfound policy of Too Big to Fail.

Conversely, the fact that students continue to enter grad school despite the skyrocketing financial inadvisability therein, this only serves to swell what is apparently a labor excess even further. If universities had to compete for grad students on price, stipends would increase! Those who enter grad school out of some sense of altruism actually do their fellow students a disservice.

...so, having read that, what the fuck am I doing, you ask? Well, I'm just avoiding people I can't stand to be around. I like professors; I hate managers. My perceived-value-of-research is skewed. As an added bonus academics posess a level of freedom on par with the super-rich; if some University wants you to immigrate to a country in order to do research, you're waived right in. A PhD carries the sort of international mobility that's I think is kind of useful having been born in a sinking ship. In America it's called the O-1, but most countries have an analog. Paul Erdos was one of the only people who could cross the Iron Curtain unscathed. My aunt and uncle, who inspired me to go into physics, worked whatever hours they felt like and could wear t-shirts and sandals to work -- they were physicists working for the US Navy.

<comment><USER7> >> [broken economy, can't stop playing] > 'tis the voters' fault, though, isn't it? The quants didn't ask for the system to be the way it is.

Not the voters. Voting can't fix anything because politicians can't be held to their campaign promises.

But it is the citizens' fault in that we don't do something about the existing laws that cover this malfeasance that aren't being used to stop it, or more importantly, about how voting doesn't work.

> If anything, they, by exploiting this flaw, act to expose it, making it more > visible and more likely to be fixed.

That line of reasoning is only valid if those same quants would accept me emptying out their bank accounts by exploiting some bank vulnerability. (Such as your birthday and mother's maiden name always being used as the master identity check.)

> the government would be -forced- to give up on its newfound policy of Too > Big to Fail.

Reality based government. Sigh. That would be nice. I thought they always had that policy where banks were concerned though?

> Imagine if more grad students did this.

If they were trying to bring it down, like exploiting a security flaw to get it fixed, it would only take one.

> academics posess a level of freedom on par with the super-rich; if some > University wants you to immigrate to a country in order to do research, > you're waived right in.

Good point, freedom and a license for eccentricity in one package. Very helpful in a world quickly stuffing air-travelers into terrorist/not-terrorist boxes based on your sense of humor inside the airport, etc.

> A PhD carries the sort of international mobility that's I think is kind of > useful having been born in a sinking ship.

Makes me think of the Titanic, too big to sink!

Got any idea where to go? Start a hacker/scientist enclave in an abandoned mine?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Perhaps it should refer to all the brilliant people in %90 of web startups in general. The majority of Silicon Valley's (NYC perhaps even more so) recent output is fluff, stuff that impacts people's lives about the same as drugstore celebrity mags.

(But it's not a new trend, TV or advertising or law or finance are/were similar in that respect.)

<comment><USER9> The majority of everything has always been fluff. It's just we remember those parts of the past that _weren't_ fluff, and forget 97% of it. Otherwise our heads would be entirely fluff.

I vividly remember the fall of the Berlin Wall, just about the time I was getting married. Until this spring, I had a similar tendency to think that geopolitics "nowadays" was drab and boring. Evolutionary punctuation only just happens so often, but that doesn't mean evolution has come to a screeching halt. (Or rather, it _has_ \- just that it will continue with a screeching lurch when it's good and ready.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's easy to under-estimate the value web technologies provide their users, because it's hard to visualise large numbers of people. It's the well known "your brain doesn't naturally multiply" problem.

Let's say you have a technology product that does something pretty trivial, but has non-zero value. Let's say you do something that's worth about 30c per day of utility to each user. If you give this value to 10 million users, you're creating about $3 million of value every day --- or $1 billion of value a year.

That value doesn't seem nearly as real as the equivalent value deployed to a smaller group of people. But that's just because 10 million people is impossible to visualise. The value is still totally real though, despite your lack of intuition for it.

If you believe Facebook delivers little total value, then you must believe its value to individual users is almost totally nil, simply because of the enormous number of people who use the service daily.

Even if you don't like Facebook much, can you really argue that it's delivering _nothing_ to its average user? It's not delivering _any_ value to them at all?

Facebook has 500 million users, and 250 million daily unique logins. If logging on to Facebook delivers even a single cent of value, the total value delivered by each Facebook engineer is already going to be staggering.

1c is an enormous underestimate of what people actually get from the service, but let's run with this. At 1c per login, it's delivering $25 million per day. It has 2000 employees, so each employee is delivering an average of $12.5k per day. I'd actually put the value-per-login at over $1, which would take the average contribution to over $1 million per day.

People would be wise to think carefully before questioning the way markets are allocating capital and drawing in talent. There are certainly cases where the capital allocation is inefficient, but there are also cases where your mental heuristics give you blind-spots.

<comment><USER11> I am not comparing Facebook to meth, but I just want to point out that the same form of argument you just made would also apply to meth.

<comment><USER10> For an addict, each meth use is delivering an enormous amount of negative value. There's also the terrible negative value the addict may create for other people. The same argument about multiplication would suggest that your intuition under-estimates the total negative effects of meth on the world.

<comment><USER11> I was referring to the markets part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> They are doing useful things, they're helping create scalable technology that can serve 600 million people. Cassandra, HipHop, Thrift, etc are all products from those minds. In addition the kinds of problems they are solving, such as creating a platform for third party integration can be applied to many different other areas. So yeah they're working on a social network, but all the while all this good stuff is happening that we all can benefit from...without a facebook account (I don't have one).

<comment><USER13> Cassandra, ha ha ha.

Gotta love how inconsistent that thing is.

HipHop, have you tried it? I think that technology only works for them.

<comment><USER14> Care to elaborate on your dislike of Cassandra?

<comment><USER13> My dislike with cassandra is probably because of the user experience in facebook.

You post a comment or a picture and it's not consistent at all for all users. Comments will appear in the wrong order (responses before questions sometimes), or people won't see the pictures you posted until 4 to 5 hours later. With Google you just don't get that kind of things, ever.

Maybe it's only a problem for facebook due to its scale, maybe the replication rules they have set are a bit more strict and they will delay the process on purpose to avoid unnecessary writes (in case users want to delete content a few minutes later)

Then as a more psychotic/personal taste matter, I love the way MongoDB documentation is presented. Cassandra's documentation on MoinMoin looks so 2002 but that's something most people will live without any problems.

Please don't take my opinion about Cassandra seriously because I've not tried it at all. In our shop we tried Hadoop's HBase, then we tried MongoDB and since it worked for us we didn't keep trying (mostly because of what we think of Facebook as a technology company... php... their joke of an android api which made the news... our bad impression of hip hop [so long and so much resources to compile, at least when it came out], that when we saw Cassandra being used by facebook we just said no way, it's reputation was tainted by facebook in our eyes)

<comment><USER14> Cassandra is highly tuneable in terms of consistency and propagation, the vagaries of Facebook's particular(ly huge) deployment I can't speak to, but generally speaking you can make it have almost any properties you like.

MongoDB lacks that flexibility, but I like it too, for other reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was reminded of the following article when I read this blog posting:

<http://greaterseas.com/2011/05/the-future-of-innovation/>

There's a great quote by Jeff Hammerbacher (an ex-Facebooker) that is great:

"The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks."

<comment><USER16> The ads are a means to an end.

More correct: "The best minds of my generation are making huge amounts of money by solving really hard engineering problems and creating whole new industries. That's awesome".

It's hard to overstate the economic impact of FB, Google + Apple. These people are building the future of the internet. Ads just pay the bills.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for my Naivete, but I think that the world priorities must be peace, health and poverty.

<comment><USER16> Which one of those isn't furthered by the internet? It's not hard to argue the fundamental merit in people working on advancing communication across the globe.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that there are shorter ways to accomplish it beyond Internet communication.

<comment><USER17> Then I guess you know what your next project is going to be.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think I have the talent from that.

That's why the article is important, a lot of minds are spending time in lower priority items from a humanistic point of view.

<comment><USER17> It doesn't take a clever computer scientist to set out for world peace, ending poverty and increasing health.

If you really feel so strongly about it why not set up a fund that attempt to fund exactly those 3 areas.

Talent has nothing to do with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > I am in no way suggesting that almost 600 million people are wrong. The > massive and highly engaged Facebook user base clearly gets value and > satisfaction from the product. I am also in no way critical or judgmental > about those who find value there. Good for them! But for me, there are so > many other unsolved problems in the world, and they have little to do with > social.

Hot tip: whenever anybody writes "I am in no way suggesting <X>", the chance that they are suggesting <X> approaches 100%.

</comment><comment><USER16> Is it any worse than the reams of medical researchers working on giving old affluent men hard-ons and their hair back?

I doubt it...

<comment><USER19> I guess I get where you're trying to go with that statement, but you're wrong. Both of those afflictions cross socioeconomic boundaries. And the science behind each, while certainly exploited for it's obvious economic benefit, is nothing to laugh at. Talk to a patient with alopecia universalis (total baldness across entire epidermis, including eyelashes, etc.) or primary venogenic impotence (inability to get erection from birth due to leakage of veins in erectile tissue). These people would never see treatments due to the rarity of these clinical indications if there weren't more widespread need for such medications in less severe cases (male pattern baldness and ED, respectively). And there are literally hundreds of rare (orphan) indications and millions of patients, collectively, that may never see effective treatments. Solving the huge data problems that Facebook is working on (and to our benefit, open-sourcing in some cases) will allow future services to do incredible things. Achieving such scale and becoming not just a "social network," but a nearly integral part of society, is pretty astounding.

<comment><USER16> That the afflictions cross economic boundaries is obvious, but how about access to those treatments? The fact that pharma companies pursue these issues vs some more life-threatening is a pure profit calculation based on those with the means to pay for them.

But don't get me wrong, I'm a dyed in the wool free-market man so I have no issue with them applying their resources however they see fit, but let's dispense with the fake moralizing and pretending that they have some great motive beyond what will be the next cash-cow drug.

My argument all along is that the residual benefits in either case (medical or internet tech) is a fundamentally good thing and that the author is misguided in his criticism and misses the fact that it happens across all industries, some where the stakes are even higher (such as in the pharma example).

<comment><USER20> Whoa, hold on... I think medicine and biotech are misunderstood here.

First of all, Big Pharma != Academia or biotech startups. The former group concentrates on profitability and marketable drugs, whereas the latter two do the heavy lifting for a broad spectrum of diseases.

Secondly (and more importantly), we must realize that there are two issues at hand: the ease of developing an effective drug to combat a particular disease state, and the predominance of a given disease in the general population.

Big Pharma already claimed the "low hanging" fruit decades ago. Many of today's medical problems require a systems engineering methodology to approach them as the pathways and metabolomics are just too incredibly complicated to yield direct solutions. The search spaces are vast, multidimensional, and tedious.

To make matters worse, it's really difficult to commit to studying an orphan disease. A solution to a particular type of cancer, Alzheimer's, or HIV would have wide applicability and save many lives. Finding a solution to a rare genetic disorder, however, may help only a few thousand individuals. It's incredibly sad that there is such suffering from rare diseases, but we have so little mental capital to invest in fixing these problems. At present, biotech and medicine is nothing like programming where iteration and debugging yield fast results. Years of personal labor can become pointless if mistakes are made.

I don't know if it's justified for me to feel this way, but I wish more of the brilliant minds in programming would switch to a biotech/research profession. Computing is such a well-traversed and developed field and solution space. While it isn't glamorous, medicine and biotech really need you...

<comment><USER21> My take is that it's just too early in biotech. Back in 1973 it was certainly possible to envision Facebook and Twitter. For example, if you read Steven Levy's _Hackers_ you'll learn about the Community Memory project:

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

But computers and their associated tech like telecom were so expensive in 1973 that Community Memory was impractical at scale. There was no Facebook around to offer Lee Felsenstein an enormous salary and a potential IPO. The infrastructure wasn't yet built out, the audience wasn't yet there, and investor consciousness had not yet been raised. It took another twenty years of development to get from that point to the Web, and then another decade or so to get to Facebook.

Biotech is still stuck in the equivalent of 1973. We've identified many of the processes that need to become cheaper and more ubiquitous in order to conduct biotech research in your basement, but the tools are still large, expensive, and tedious to use. So at this point if you go into biotech you'll either spend 12 hours a day pipetting liquids by hand, waiting for the PCR machine, and pasting your data into Excel for analysis, or you'll spend 12 hours a day raising money to pay for the pipettes, the PCR machine, and the other scientists who are running them.

I've spent years as a biotech postdoc, and I've spent years as a programmer, and it's no mystery to me why people would rather be programmers, and would rather hire programmers. The day-to-day work is more pleasant, and the results have got such evident and immediate value that you can get good pay for them with relatively little effort or risk. Plus, you're part of a really big and freewheeling global culture, not only of web users but of web programmers.

<comment><USER22> And I know many many people who view programming as boring and love setting up experiments and assays. I was the only person in my group who looked at computers as anything more than a convenience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I see the value of Facebook (though I don't personally get a whole lot out of it), but at times I greatly sympathize with the author's broader point that brilliant minds are being put to use doing things I find empty.

I'm very into graphic design, and interaction design, but the fact that it all goes to selling soap and deodorant and candy makes it feel like such an empty pursuit for me. How many of the people coming with these things could instead be putting their talents toward more artistic or meaningful ends?

Of course, ultimately I'm a capitalist, and marketing does provide a valuable service to a capitalist society, and there are myriad reasons the people doing this kind of work _should_ be doing it. Sometimes, I take a step back though, and can't help but wonder if there's a better way. Ultimately, if I want to change things, it is incumbent on me to provide an alternative, and I just don't have one.

<comment><USER24> Arguably, soap, deodorant, and candy are a lot more important and useful than most art, appreciated only by a few.

<comment><USER25> It doesn't take a brilliant mind to sell them, though, so in that respect it's a waste.

You need brilliant people if you want to fan the flames of emotional need in your customers, pursue deliberate brand segmentation and diversification and other stuff like that which takes traditional commodity goods and mutates them into the Swiffer Max Wipes Mop Pack EX Refills or whatever but culturally soap on its own sells itself at this point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If it makes you feel any better, any truly brilliant people working at facebook will probably make enough money in the IPO to be able to retire and work on whatever brilliant stuff they might feel like. At least for a while.

<comment><USER27> Well if Google is any example, some portion will create opportunities as angel investors for the next round of entrepreneurs.

Its interesting to see how the various 'waves' in the valley seem to suck in everyone briefly. Farchild/Intel/Tandem/PARC/Apple/Sun/Netscape/AOL/Apple(again:-)/HP/Google/Facebook/...

It would be interesting to know if its similar in other places.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is completely naive... today Italy is voting for a referendum. After 35 years we are near to reach the quorum, and beat Berlusconi special protection laws, avoid water privatization, and so forth.

Part of this I bet is thanks to Facebook, as in the latest days there was a massive campaign to go voting, ran collectively by all the people that think this vote is important, on Facebook. For us "internet geeks" Facebook may be not so cool, but the reality is that he is making the _average_ person, a "connected person".

This is huge... and deserves the best minds in the world.

<comment><USER29> I really hope not. If we really need Facebook to go to referendums we have some serious issue. I think what really is moving people is the nuclear referendum and water privatization. Only a minority really cares about protection laws.

<comment><USER30> We do have serious issues. Anything that gets people to vote, and ideally to think about their vote, is a good thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> While I don't buy the "facebook is just games and noise" stuff, I do think we should be focusing a bit more in things like clean tech, space missions, etc.

Why does almost everybody want to go work for facebook instead of tesla or any other innovative company not primarily focused in "web" development?

And yeah, the big equity bucks, but I think those could be moving towards other tech fields too...

<comment><USER13> why? getting stock options and getting rich when it goes IPO, that's why.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Facebook's number of active users served per employee is very impressive. The ridiculous number of photos uploaded every second.

I've long ago figured out that I'd never be able to pass the screens for Facebook, Apple (and at one time, Microsoft). I do still dream of Apple, even after reading the $0.99 Fortune Kindle single on how 'it's not about getting hired at Apple, it's about being able to _stay_ '

What makes me happy however is creating apps that people use (and sometimes even enjoy using).

<comment><USER33> What makes you think that you'd not make it in? I'm a community college dropout. Research the company, check out some of the "easy" puzzles, etc. And send me an email if you are interested.

<comment><USER34> Just curious, how has your experience been getting jobs as a dropout? I dropped out of college a couple years ago as well, but found that a lot people wouldn't even talk to me simply because I didn't have a degree (or stopped talking once I told them), so I graduated eventually.

<comment><USER33> Lots of luck and some hard work. At the time (mid 90s) the job market was much better and everyone was hiring people to build ecommerce sites. It's harder in some ways now to get that entry level job. On the other hand it's phenomenally easier to start your own projects and get experience and attention. In the early 2000s I did a few open source projects which helped a lot. In 2007 or so I started writing articles on a regular basis, basically patching up holes in my education by taking on some subject and trying to explain it. If you lack one social signal ("he went to MIT") you can replace it with another ("he started the foobar project" or "he wrote that post about xyz").

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I very much have to agree. Perhaps I'm unsociable, perhaps it's because my interests long since diverged from those of most of my now-ex fellow students, but I really couldn't give a flying monkeys about most of their inane ramblings.

To use a sentence which at times gets posted all over Twitter: Facebook is where you meet old friends you don't really care about, Twitter is where you meet new friends. Fact is, it's true.

The one point I definitely do disagree with is that the focus on startups which aren't really that much about pushing humanity forward is so bad. Look at SpaceX - admittedly it came out of something which definitely did have intrinsic value, but 10 years down the line there might be an ex-Facebook biotech.

</comment><comment><USER36> If you want a specialized device like a digital camera, then Facebook is not the place to look for advice from high school buddies, but for advice on what phone to buy, it could be. I asked my FB friends for advice on that very topic, and it was very helpful - and knowing the people giving the advice helped greatly because I was able to decide whose opinions to give weight to, and they knew my circumstances - they advised me on which phones are robust enough to withstand a toddler at home without me explicitly asking about that.

Friend groups and the newsfeed do a good job of controlling awkward oversharing - I see updates mostly from people who I care about, and this seems to be constantly improving. This has added immensely to the value of Facebook for me, and a time saver. The effort Facebook puts into this is very valuable and certainly not a waste of resources.

</comment><comment><USER37> I think they were useful in egypt and tunisia to get people organized for the revolution that is still sweeping the middle east.

<comment><USER38> I still don't know how the American Revolution occured without Twitter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> The idea that Facebook employs all the smart people is silly, there are far more smart programmers in the world than you can imagine, they are not all at Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER40> There was another post similar to this a few days back. While this focuses specifically on Facebook (for seemingly hoarding intelligent people), the real issue is that there are little to no philanthropic movements in the tech industry. Reiterating my remarks from the aforementioned post, this is merely a result of "people" being bored and caring too much about themselves. For whatever reason, consumers have yet to be enlightened that there are others on the planet who may not be able to play farmville all day, let alone _eat_. This behavior is understandable, though, because we've developed pretty much everything with a narcissistic angle. Share _your_ photos, talk to _your_ friends, it's all about you, you, you. Until we abandon or differentiate between this attitude and a more caring/understanding one, then the intelligent folk are going to flock where the money is: narcissism.

</comment><comment><USER41>
      > Facebook doesn't provide me with anything useful.

If the site owner is reading this, here's how you can hide the "Share on Facebook" link that appears on the Apture bar at the top. Add this as a custom CSS rule:

      .aptureTMMShare a:first-child {
        visibility: hidden;
      }

You're welcome.

</comment><comment><USER42> This guy sounds like a very cliche anti-social geek. What does he do outside of work? What gallery openings? What gigs? What social walks? I'm guessing that if you're not sociable, then a social orientated website is of no value.

It could be said that there's a lot of rubbish out there on facebook, and sites like meetup.com, last.fm, eventful, flickr are much better, but they don't have anything that ties them all together like facebook actually does.

The solution is not to stick your head in the sand, and ignore human interactions. You can't convieniently go 'humans, do this. I don't like it. I'm going to ignore them all'

Anyways, I'm looking forward to seeing what the Diaspora approach evolves into: <https://joindiaspora.com>

</comment><comment><USER43> Well, better connecting people's mundane lives than figuring out how to 'financial engineer' something I guess.

</comment><comment><USER44> Just because you don't find it useful doesn't mean that other people don't have utility in facebook.

</comment><comment><USER45> It's interesting to see that most comments here focus on justifying Facebook's importance, rather than questioning the other half of the argument: are FB's employees really that brilliant?

It just seems that what they're doing is not that hard, compared to what people do in other engineering disciplines.

</comment><comment><USER46> True...but on the other hand FB is now the Internet for many people. What is more FB is just a begging of the communication revolution. It is so funny how many companies are now trying to get rid of the main role of email in business - to name just a few Chatter, Yammer, Discourse...

</comment><comment><USER47> There are almost 7 billion people on the planet. What is really sad is that most will never have the opportunity to contribute in any meaningful way. In reality we should be lamenting that we don't have 100 million more "brilliant" people working on the "important" problems.

</comment><comment><USER48> The site seems down for me, so here's a mirror (courtesy of the Coral Content Distribution Network).

[http://hueniverse.com.nyud.net/2010/11/all-these- brilliant-p...](http://hueniverse.com.nyud.net/2010/11/all-these-brilliant- people-at-facebook-make-me-sad/)

<comment><USER49> how about a mirror of the mirror?

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> The link is down for me. Ironic given that lots of the brilliant people at Facebook are working on ways to make websites stay up under heavy load.

</comment><comment><USER51> Facebook actually provides useful services. It provides many many pointless services as well, but it does have some redeeming value, particularly for staying in touch with people overseas.

What would be much worse is if all these talented engineers were working for a large advertising company with a poor human rights record and no respect for your privacy. Now _there's_ a nightmare scenario.

</comment><comment><USER52> I'm not the biggest fan of the present vision for facebook, but these brilliant people are enabling others through their open source contributions <http://developers.facebook.com/opensource/> to make things we find meaningful

</comment><comment><USER53> If you ask yourself "What's most important in my life?" the answer will probably be "the people and relationships in my life".

Can't think of any better thing to work on than ways to improve our relationships with the people in our lifes. I'm happy that the best talent dealing with it. I wish I did.

</comment><comment><USER54> " When it comes to content, I much rather rely on the editorial board of the New York Times for my news, than what my "friends" find interesting. "

Relying on strangers for information while deriding one's peers as a source of information doesn't strike me as a wise course of action.

</comment><comment><USER55> quote :"There are many reasons why engineers want to work for Facebook, from the potential windfall to learning just how they are able to ship so much technology so fast. It is an engineering dreamland."

What kinda innovations and technology is facebook shipping out so fast? To me, facebook is a streamlined and polished way to keep in touch with people and share information, which the internet already offered and was made for. Whats more to it than that?

Google, IBM, Intel, Research and development, etc would be some of the places which I would be interested in working, as I see them as innovators. Facebook, twitter etc are just "apps" for me

</comment><comment><USER56> Totally agree. The only problem about indicating 500 mil people could be wrong is that your voice gets drowned in the noise. Just wait it out and then send a post..."I told you so".

</comment><comment><USER57> Some days ago a friend asked me if I could work on Apple, Microsoft or Google, which one I would choose and I stopped for a while thinking. Then he said "oh and Facebook" and my answer got out in a microsecond. It's pretty much the only company in the world where you work with people (as a whole, their life) and not with a user or a buyer.

</comment><comment><USER58> A whining anti-FB rant from a single POV gets 250 upvotes? There was no value in this link.

</comment><comment><USER59> What are "useful" jobs?

<comment><USER60> Any job that someone's willing to pay to have done - by paying for the job, they indicate that it's worth that much money, and hence at least as useful as that money was.

<comment><USER61> Lawyers, drug dealers, assassins, politicians, bankers, managers, accountants, stock traders, to mention a few: all paid significant amounts but not really that worthy, are they?

<comment><USER60> They wouldn't be paid if they weren't worth the money they were getting; the customers would rather keep their money.

Lawyers: Do I really need to explain that they perform an important, valuable role?

Drug dealers: Can't say much here. Drugs are tricky, economists call them inelastic, and they can make people irrational.

Bankers: I sure like being able to invest my money and use it everywhere via EFTPOS

Accountants: It's a hell of a drag doing taxes. It's very valuable to have someone do this work for you (if it wasn't, everyone would do their own accounting).

Bottom line: determining value is a tricky economic/algorithmic question.

Luckily, we have a price system, where people can set prices. If the customers pay that price, that's a strong indicator that the service is worth that much. It's not perfect (see bubbles), but it works pretty well on average.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I take it the post refers specifically to the bright engineers who work at Facebook. I think he's right. Take Bret Taylor for example. This guy made Google Maps while at google, a tool that seriously changed a business. While at facebook do you know what he did? He converted their APIs to the (unfinished) oauth standard and in the process also deprecated a ton of features that were available to developers. They also released 4 _widgets_. ZERO innovation there , in fact the platform was more feature-rich 2 years ago. Taking a look at the documentation reveals how crippled and unfocused it is at this time.

On the other hand, there's twitter. Now _that_ 's a company that could use a few good engineers to stop the embarrassing downtimes.

</comment><comment><USER63> Random prediction: ten years from now, a student in China will connect with a student in Germany over Facebook (or whatever mass-appeal social site rises to power). A friendship will grow into a partnership, yielding some of the greatest advances in energy technology of the century.

<comment><USER64> Unless they start working out a universal translator (Actually if they aren't working on this then they are all newbs ;0p) then it's unlikely to happen. Other issues would be that Facebook isn't enough for collaborating on science projects.

<comment><USER63> English is the international language. Facebook in ten years won't be what it is now. Also, as I said, it would happen on whatever social platform is in power, which, in ten years, will probably ubiquitous to an extent that we cannot currently imagine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> It is sad that bright people end up working for many rather worthless companies, producing so many worthless products and services.

</comment><comment><USER66> Don't make me laugh, cool tech at farcebook... NOT.

Warmed over AOL training wheel walled garden bullcrap is not cutting edge. Whoop De Dooo, its got an API.

Sorry but I left AOL years ago, and guess what, no one cool ever worked for AOL or Farcebook.

</comment><comment><USER67> tl;dr: I am old. lol.

<comment><USER68> I don't know why you are getting voted down. That's actually a pretty good summary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> "The sheer strength of their [the Facebook team's] talent is almost unmatched in our industry, past and present."

I do not doubt that every employee at Facebook is a competent (or even fairly smart) person, but I kind of doubt they are the most talented people in the software industry. Most of them have not created anything mind-blowing, and many of them are simply employees because they are one or two degrees of separation from Zuckerberg or Harvard/Stanford alumni.

The fact that they are _employees_ is a dead give away - if they are really talented, they would not be working for someone else, especially for the trivial amount of (or lack of) stock that most of them are given.

<comment><USER70> Not everyone is willing and able to face the instability, stress, long hours, bad pay, etc. of a startup. Some that are willing and able are choosing not to do so right now but may sometime in the future.

Many, probably most, of the great contributions to our field have been made by _employees_. Being an employee, especially an employee at a company with a ton of very smart engineers working on the cutting edge, is a valid choice that many extremely talented people make.

<comment><USER71> 90-95% of FB's current employees didn't join "a startup", they already had masses of funding at that point.</comment></comment></comment>


Driver safety 'arms race' fuelling boom in gas-guzzling SUVs, says journalist - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-nov-1-2019-1.5344114/driver-safety-arms-race-fuelling-boom-in-gas-guzzling-suvs-says-journalist-1.5344145 <comment><USER2> This seems to miss the point that each of us can choose how safely we drive, and this matters far more to potential accident victims than the weight of our vehicles.

I drive a heavy minivan chosen to protect my family from poor drivers. But I drive in an exceedingly conscientious way. Would you really prefer someone driving a tiny Smart Car in a wreckless manner through your neighborhood?</comment>


And the Award for the Next HBO Goes to... - <AUTHOR> http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/201302/netflix-founder-reed-hastings-house-of-cards-arrested-development

<comment> jack-r-abbit > _Sarandos: The goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us._

Good plan.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. They're definitely preparing for the world that's coming faster than anyone else</comment></comment>


Max Klein's top secret private mailing list - <AUTHOR> http://maxkle.in/ <comment><USER2> I have neither requested nor received any emails from "Max Klein" these finding are a result of simple google searches.

Max Klein does not exist. He is an identity created by Mark Essien (www.essien.org).

Mark Essien has two companies registered in the UK one "Qubikle Development LTD" (www.qubikle.com)and a second "Feather & Moor, Ltd" (www.feathermoor.com).

The namesakes of Feather & Moor are Joel Feather and Tracy Moor. BOTH of these individuals don't exist, they are again creations of Mark Essien. The pictures used for Joel are taken from istockphoto ([http://www.istockphoto.com/stock- photo-1997908-waiting-for-y...](http://www.istockphoto.com/stock- photo-1997908-waiting-for-you.php))

whois results for maxkle.in and markessien.com have the same telephone number.

Feather & Moor, Ltd has approaching nearly 300 applications on the appstore. These apps are "cookie cutter" apps that contain pictures and simple text.

The signing identity on the applications names qubikle.

A cursory googling of the text in the screenshots of some of the applications reveals that text is taken from wikipedia and other pages without attribution.

OPINION:

I don't know what the contents of the "other" email was but looking at the apps from "feather & moor ltd" it doesn't strike me that these are wonderful apps of substance targeting niches but instead low quality keyword targeted cookie cutter apps using content without permission.

<comment><USER3> This is kind of cool, like the weird, dark underbelly of app store success. FREAKISH ANIMAL HYBRIDS, 99c: "Have you ever seen a dog with the head of a bird? Or a frog with the body of a shark?" FACEBOOK STATUSES YOUR FRIENDS WILL LIKE, 99c: "Do you wish to be a bit more interesting on facebook, and not just be the dude saying "I'm bored"? This app contains status messages that will amuse your friends, and that will definitely get you a lot of "likes" from the prettiest girls (or guys) in your friends list. Don't believe me? A friend of mine, Dave, has been using these messages, and at least 2 people have told how creative and funny Dave has become recently! Well, good for you Dave, now how about telling them it was all due to this app?"

It's like the ads in the back of old comic books for sneezing powder or pamphlets about how to be popular.

<comment><USER2> I just wonder what the reasoning is behind making up all these identities.

<comment><USER4> What, like "blackwoodHolt"?

<comment><USER2> I have presented controversial information, of course i'm going to use a throwaway account.

The fact remains, anyone can do the research i've done and see what i've seen, draw your own conclusions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seriously? What can this guy possibly share privately that he can't mention publicly? Is he really going to give some special insights that a reader can benefit from to his detriment? Or, does his altruism have some other, hidden agenda?

I, for one, think this guy is a master troll. I can't believe that many HNers are not cynical enough to call him out on his feigned success.

Specifically, Andrew Warner wants to interview him? For what? Why give him a platform if he has no apparent accomplishments worthy of such an audience?

<comment><USER6> Yes, a master troll. After numerous people have questioned Max Klein's questionable claims, he posted this to HN:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1345692>

So I bit, and sent this email:

        Hi Max,

        I'm one of the curious people who'd like to accept
        your offer to share more specific information about
        your current business and products.
        (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1345692)
        Thanks for your willingness to share this.

        Best regards,

        Walt Gordon Jones
        http://waltgordonjones.com/

And eventually got this canned response, which I assume everyone else whose email address he skimmed also received:

        Hi Guys,

        I'm facing some difficulty here. I have more than 120 requests to
        reveal my business secrets and this is a bit much, particularly with
        some shady looking email addresses (I'm talking about you
        hungry_for_money1987). But of course, I don't want to seem like a
        fraud, so what I've done is sent the details of my business to 20
        names who are people that I either already know or are working in some
        prominent startup. For the rest of you, you get to see the details in
        August. Add yourself to my mailing list at

        http://maxkle.in

Add to this the fact that Max Klein has boasted before about his ability to game HN'ers. (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1039080>)

So, Max Klein, here is my reply. I think you rate somewhere below 2/10 on the authenticity scale, and although your output is high on HN, the value you contribute pales in comparison to other visible members here. This will truly be a better place when you are discovered for who you are. Finally: No, my email response to your fake offer does not constitute permission to spam me with a solicitation for your email list.

<comment><USER7> Max sent me "the other" email, and I can verify that his claims (at least the claims of having many sales on the app store) are true.

Looking through the applications that he listed, I can see why he wasn't interested in sharing the details of his business with a bunch of strangers. Honestly, his success looks like it's the product of a ton of labor rather than luck or trickery.

If I had gotten the email you got, then I probably would have a similar opinion. I wasn't going to mention anything about it but I think it's only fair to Max that someone say that he's provided the data to back up his claims.

As an aside, please consider this from Max's perspective (and he tried to explain it in the email you got) - he makes his money from a replicable business model; and one that he ramped up in a few month's time. With a flood of people asking for the details on the business model, he opted to give himself some buffer time before explaining everything.

Additionally, in the email you received there was a short list of names that he told you he did send the information to; instead of besmirching him here, you could have emailed any one of them to verify his claims. I know it's frustrating to have incomplete information, but please try to maintain some civility.

I hope we can give the drama a rest for a little while; he's given up a lot more information than I think most people here would.

<comment><USER6> I appreciate your reply, and all the points you make. My issue is not with how much information he shares. We all have that right. My issue is with a very smart person who knowingly offers to share information he has no real intent to share. That's at least disingenuous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Max who?

<comment><USER4> Max _Klein_. It's in the title, Duh!

<comment><USER8> Well, yeah... but it's some dude I've never heard of who thinks he's somehow important enough that a significant subset of hackers should have heard of him. Cursory Googling shows he's "The cube of M" guy, and I couldn't care less.</comment></comment></comment>


Selfie – Tiny self-compiling C compiler, RISC-V emulator and hypervisor - <AUTHOR> http://selfie.cs.uni-salzburg.at/ <comment><USER2> A thread from 2017: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13778353](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13778353)

(Such links are for the curious. Reposts are ok after about a year: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html))

</comment><comment><USER3> @all Thanks a lot for your awesome comments and feedback.

Besides compiler, emulator, and hypervisor, there is a symbolic execution engine in selfie that we are working on and would love to get feedback from you. The goal is to teach, eventually, a more formal approach when reasoning about correctness already in undergraduate classes. But the engine is also a research vehicle, especially the bounded model checking part.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is such a cool educational tool! I got it to run on repl.it [https://repl.it/@amasad/selfie](https://repl.it/@amasad/selfie)

<comment><USER3> Thanks a lot, @amasad

I pulled your PR and even plan to use repl.it in the upcoming compiler class.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Beautiful, beautiful project. Containing the deepest twists of computation in a single file, and not a single #include. I only missed it including a text editor. Love it!

</comment><comment><USER6> I just looked into the project and the slides are incredible. It would be nice if more professors would put so much effort into creating slides and not just take over the previous one and present them.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think Oberon would be a better candidate for this than C. You could get a tiny and extremely fast compiler for a full-featured programming language.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm looking into self-hosting compilers, is there a good link for Oberons code that achieves this? Or you just are mentioning that Oberon would probably be able to if one were implemented?

<comment><USER8> Oberon is implemented in itself: [http://www.projectoberon.com](http://www.projectoberon.com)

The implementation includes the hardware too.

Taken together, the system including single-tasking OS, windowing system and Oberon takes about 9000 lines of code.

<comment><USER9> Even better, A2/bluebottle is multithreaded with a ZUI and runs faster than Linux:

[https://www.research- collection.ethz.ch/bitstream/handle/20....](https://www.research- collection.ethz.ch/bitstream/handle/20.500.11850/147091/eth-26082-02.pdf)

Also, following on from A2, Composita introduces a component architecture to allow managed memory without GC, and contextless switches (IMHO better than Rust):

[http://concurrency.ch/Content/publications/Blaeser_Component...](http://concurrency.ch/Content/publications/Blaeser_Component_Operating_System_PLOS_2007.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In particular, the code for this compiler doesn't use structs. It only works with offsets to memory blocks.

</comment><comment><USER11> The C subset it compiles is called C* but it appears unrelated to the language of the same name created for the Connection Machine hardware:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C*)

<comment><USER12> At least it's not mosdef C =P

<comment><USER13> Still doesn't shine a candle to Holy C.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Selfie, hypster, mipster, monster... these names are great.

</comment><comment><USER15> Student here, with a question. How does one maintain a 10,000 line source file?

<comment><USER16> I maintain several such files with emacs. Jump to definition or open it in two windows makes it trivial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wish there was something like this for WebAssembly

</comment><comment><USER18> No boolean operators?! That's an odd choice.

<comment><USER3> We chose not to include support of Boolean operators and instead ask the students to implement that as part of an assignment. We use a self-grader for that. There is an assignment for bitwise Boolean operators. The assignment for logical Boolean operators with lazy evaluation is work in progress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> What drivel. Make an artificial language which nobody uses, with a target architecture=X. Post it pretending that it is relevant. I Call BS on OP

<comment><USER3> The language is a strict subset of C modulo some small semantical differences that are relevant for bootstrapping, see [https://github.com/cksystemsteaching/selfie/blob/master/sema...](https://github.com/cksystemsteaching/selfie/blob/master/semantics.md)</comment></comment>


Waterloo Co-op: A Blessing and a Curse - <AUTHOR> http://joshuakalp.in/blog/2015/04/22/a-blessing-and-a-curse/ <comment><USER3> I did Waterloo engineering co-op as well and yes, it is a bit hectic, but at that age you can handle it. I wouldn't have traded it for anything. I had interesting jobs in a number of different countries. I invested my interest- free student loan in energy mutual funds which turned into a goldmine at that time and combined with my salary I finished university with lots of experience, no debt and a ton of money in my bank account. If that is a "curse" then please curse me some more.

<comment> rudi-c It seems like the use of the word "curse" is a bit suboptimal. As a UWaterloo co-op student myself, I agree with everything in the article. I just refer to the negative points of co-op as a "cost".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A recent Waterloo grad myself, this goes against what I've heard from my peer group. (Most consider it to be a blessing alone) I also think many of the downsides listed in this article have little to do with co-op.

Here's a summary of my pros and cons.

Pros:

\- Work experience (2 years)

\- Travel (Within Canada, the US and even Europe if you're up for it)

\- Money. Far more than we probably deserved at that age.

\- Ease of mind regarding future employment. (Speak to any peers who haven't interned or gained any work experience)

\- Break from school every four months.

\- Break from work every four months.

Cons:

\- Travelling can be annoying.

\- New cities can be lonely. (I spent a term in Ottawa where I knew literally no-one)

\- No summer break.

Other:

\- The issues with deadlines and stress mentioned in the article are not related to co-op.

\- The issues with stressful work terms are not related to co-op. It will likely be the same once you begin your fulltime work.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you've taken my words at being solely towards co-op, not a co-op program itself. Deadlines, school, and stress are part of being in a co-op program. Having a stressful work term, that is when you are supposed to be on break from school, is part of being in a co-op program.

It's hard, some handle it better than others, but it's naive to say that the downsides are trivial and have little to do with being in a co-op program.

<comment><USER5> > _I think you 've taken my words at being solely towards co-op, not a co-op > program itself. Deadlines, school, and stress are part of being in a co-op > program._

Deadlines, school, and stress are part of being in a program. Co-op or not.

<comment><USER6> I'd say moving and looking for employment are two very stressful things for any individual, and for Waterloo co-ops we have to do at least one of those things every 4 months. Never-mind the "deadlines and school".

<comment><USER7> As someone who went through Waterloo co-op, I consider those one of the greatest takeaways.

It's taken me a while since graduating to realize that most people - tech or otherwise - consider interviewing to be stressful and unpleasant. Waterloo ground that out of me early on, I _enjoy_ interviewing. Going into an interview room doesn't even begin to stress me out - and that's gotten me much further career-wise than anything else.

My interviewing and job-searching ability, and my _confidence_ in it, has given me insane leverage in the market.

I for one am glad that Waterloo's trial-by-fire job-hunt (find a job in your 1A term? sheesh) happened to me. Negotiating, interviewing, and networking are 3 skills that most people leave school knowing almost nothing about, but a Waterloo student can _easily_ rack up 70+ interviews by the time they walk out the door, and negotiated a dozen or so offers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I did software coop at UBC, and I can say without a doubt that the coop model is purely an invention of a highly conservative business culture. For those with the skills and the desire, I say skip it. The loss of community with the rest of your class is huge, and the extra time is not worth the money compared to a real post-graduation career.

Additionally, most post-college hiring here in the Bay Area, and elsewhere, is focused on your inherent personal skills, and not on some aspect of "I've done it before". In other words, a coop buys you not much on your first hire out of school, and little post that.

Now this is all bracketed as a computer science coop. If you are seeking to do civil engineering in Canada, by all means stick with coop. Canadian companies are extremely conservative and (typically) won't hire you for what you can do, but what you DID do.

<comment><USER3> Loss of community with the rest of your class? At Waterloo co-op in engineering is not optional. Your entire class is on the same 4-month school- workterm-school schedule.

<comment><USER9> Not in other faculties, though. The BMath/CS program for example.

<comment><USER10> You're close enough to being "on-stream" with at least half of your starting class. The bulk of your co-op schedule will be alternating between 4-month school and work terms, and you'll generally align close to the engineering "8-stream" or "4-stream" schedules, with some 8-month terms here and there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I want to point out that the experience of most of the commenters is in the software engineering field. The situation for co-ops in other programs, such as chemical engineering, is VASTLY different. If you look at the hiring rates there, it's rather abysmal. Talk to any of the chem eng, nano eng, or even some mech eng and you'll find that a whole bunch of them are doing unpaid volunteer positions to get their co-op hours, or working low paying, menial menial jobs - especially for the first few co-ops. It is by far NOT the same experience as software engineers have it.

Also, it's very very common for chem engs (hah, I guess you have figure it out, I'm a chem eng from waterloo) to graduate with significant debt. My first co-op paid 6k as I worked for a professor, my second paid 18$ an hour, third was 15$ an hour, 4th was 22$ an hour, then I got into oil and was paid around 33$ an hour for the last two co-ops. I think I got really lucky - I know many people who just took a term off because they couldn't find a job - and they were sociable and had pretty good marks!

just believe me. It's different in other programs.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Want to add some footnotes, comments, or whatever you want to call them.

1\. I wrote this about the program in general, not about co-op terms or internships.

2\. I used "curse" in the title because well, it fits in a writing sense (contrasts). Downsides, cons, whatever it is all the same.

3\. I understand that real life is working 8 hour days, but at the same time it isn't surrounded by constantly moving and school.

4\. Co-op is amazing. As I said I wouldn't trade it for anything, but you have no stability in life. When working full time you aren't moving your life every 4 months. Moving is hard enough as is.

Take my words as you want. This is my experience and how I've felt 4 years in and nothing more. Nothing in life comes without its warts and downsides (or curses if you may).

<comment><USER12> I move often (once a year for the past three years). Once in Kitchener, twice in Waterloo. I'm moving on the first of May. I've been a professional software developer for 10 years now. Moving and never being stable in life is a reality for me. It does not get easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Former Waterloo CS co-op (96-01) here.

I found that school kicked your ass hard, and work was relatively a break. I got very good at Quake GL, Quake 2, and Unreal Tournament on work terms. When I was at startups we worked long hours, but we also goofed off a lot. At IT shops, life was 9-5.

I understand the tiredness of working an 8 hour day and wanting to do nothing afterwards, but I don't think that's unique co-op, that's just learning how to work an 8+ hour shift. Took a few years to get used to that - I fell asleep at work some afternoons!.. your body needs time to adjust to the new pattern, and you need to learn to structure your meals to fit your needs (eg. breakfast might be mandatory or not, at lunch don't eat foods that put you to sleep at 3pm, carbs for some, protein for others, get some exercise in which actually gives you more end of day energy).

What I would recommend is to actually take a break if you need to, like if you're losing your grip. I.e. take a term or two off, or do an extended work term. You'll be out of sync with your school friends, but if they're you're friends, they'll be in touch. I stretched a 4 month work term into an 8 month term once without any problems - just switched streams.

Eventually I dropped out and didn't finish my degree to work on Wall Street, but that's another story.

</comment><comment><USER14> Part of this is that Co-Op terms are 16 weeks long. There are 52 weeks in a year, 16*3 eats up 48 weeks, if there are 2 or 3 weeks for Christmas it simply isn't possible to have more than a week or so between the winter and spring/summer and between the spring/summer and fall terms. I feel like 12 weeks is a better length for an internship, but I believe that the University Co-Op rules require that it be at least 16 weeks.

I feel that a lot of the packing and moving stress which the author describes is self-inflicted. If one is moving every four months it makes sense to pay the extra money for a furnished place rather than criss-cross the continent moving one's furniture and cookware around. If one is going from Waterloo across the continent, then it makes sense to take only stuff which one will be able to take on the plane. It might make sense to have a storage locker in Waterloo to throw excess stuff in (books and other entertainment-related things come to mind). The author claims to have done 3 co-op terms in the US, I would hope that he had this down to a science by now. At least some checklists or something to streamline the process. And given the number of Waterloo grads at this point, I would hope that even freshman have moving checklists.

</comment><comment><USER15> Co-op was a weirdly disorienting time for a lot of reasons, but I've done hundreds of interviews at PagerDuty, and UW co-ops are a lot better for it. I strongly prefer to hire them (Hiring! SF! Toronto! Yay! [http://l.euri.ca/1Htzmav](http://l.euri.ca/1Htzmav) ).

Working at 3+ places for 4-8 months isn't a perfect substitute for years of experience, but it's a huge improvement over school projects.

<comment><USER16> Slightly off-topic but PagerDuty is one of the company that make us very proud to be Waterloo students (alongside with Thalmic, Pebble etc...). Keep rockin' and thank you! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I didn't go to Waterloo, but I predominantly hire from them, and I work with their graduates on a daily basis.

Yes. They get the best work experience. They will have no problems finding a secure job in engineering.

A problem I see is their lack of "university experience" and social growth. For some people with natural social abilities this is not a problem, but for others, university is a once in a lifetime experience to cultivate all aspects of personal growth.

This is very important especially for engineers, where the majority of us are introverts. I was one myself, and I learned invaluable things in university not related to work or school.

These days, it's actually quite easy to find a good job in engineering, no matter what school you're from, as long as you're smart enough to pass technical interviews.

</comment><comment><USER18> I went to a university basically no one here has ever heard of but The engineering program has the same 4 month on/off schedule. I was a CS student and the CS department has a co-op/internship program that is a bit different, its a minimum 8 months and max 16 months continuous which is really nice. Actually helps you get settled in and accomplish something fairly substantial.

It also, allows you to organize it in a way that you can schedule it to start right before your last semester, so you can potentially start your co-op, complete it, do 1 semester in school then get out in the work force.

<comment><USER19> I went to school at the University of Regina, and did an engineering co-op 5 years ago. It was amazing to see how gradual it makes moving out from home if you go to school in the same city where you grew up.

My work terms were Regina (home) -> Saskatoon (3 hrs away) -> Waterloo (28 hrs away) -> India (really far) and definitely was able to grow in experience each time.

I'd say it was invaluable for learning what was important and what wasn't with respect to the class materials.

Now I'm at Twitter and often look back to the wide experience I gained at companies where I could leave after 4 months and have no negative repercussions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I didn't go to Waterloo, but I was a 5 session co-op student at Purdue. What this guy says is pretty much true, but I don't think we highlighted some of the benefits.

I basically lived out of car for 5 years. If it didn't fit in the car, I couldn't take it with me. So it forced me to choose what actually mattered. It also forces you to make friends quickly because you'll be leaving again in a few months. I'm pretty introverted, so this was good experience.

It does prevent you from establishing long term relationships with students not on a co-op rotation. I'd come back to school from working, and I'd always have to catch up on inside jokes, who's dating who, and other silly things that glue groups of people together.

The biggest benefit was the opportunity to work on actual engineering projects with a team of professional engineers and to be mentored. practically one on one. And, of course, I was able to get my foot in the door at a good company and have my career accelerated.

At school, the biggest benefit was that I had a better context for what we were learning in class. I was able to ask really good questions because I had a better understanding of how each topic fit into a larger picture.

Co-oping doesn't give you the typical, Hollywood version of what college is supposed to be like. But who cares? It gives you something much more practical.

</comment><comment><USER21> Here's where my situation might be a bit different then this guy's. I lived in Vancouver with my parents while going to school at UBC which makes things a lot easier. Family time was most nights for dinner, unless I was at school late. On weekends I was able hang out with my family and friends. This was true during school and co-op. My mom and dad made dinner every night and often threw my laundry in with theirs. I didn't have to do grocery shopping or any of that crap. I did do one co-op away from home (in Ottawa) and it was awesome and I was lucky to have lots of Waterloo students that I met and hung out with. :-) I also did 2 years at Waterloo for a Masters so I know what going to school away from home is like. Like he said, it's good and bad.

In Ontario, it's quite common for kids to be living away from home. That's at least true for almost all the kids at Western Ontario and Waterloo since those towns don't have the population to support the school by locals alone.

So I'm wondering how much of this guy's experience has to do with him being away from his childhood "home"? I wonder how he'd feel going to school at UoT and living at home and doing is co-op terms somewhere else? It depends on your parents I guess...

(I'm old now, so I can call 18-22 year old university students "kids")

</comment><comment><USER22> I would be interested to see what others have to say about the different co-op program running at the University of Toronto: instead of the multiple 4/8-month co-op terms we have a single 16-month co-op term between 3rd and 4th year. You're encouraged to find your own internships after 1st and 2nd year, but the career centre provides (basically) no aid. If you do however find work those two summers you end up with the same amount of work experience in the end, but with several of those terms (potentially) at the same company back- to-back. I personally chose UofT over Waterloo because I accepted the line of 'companies are more open to hiring students available for a longer time because they get more out of training, so you'll have better opportunities available' at the time. However, I can see many arguments for and against both co-op systems. It's hard for me to be objective about it as I've yet to see the long-term consequences, and I've managed to get pretty great internships every summer plus my coming 16-month term. I'd really like to hear other opinions of people who may never have heard of such a program (both in what's better for the student and what's better for companies who run internship programs)!

</comment><comment><USER23> Having done co-op myself, one thing most students don't seriously consider is taking extra time to get your degree - also doable for international students like I was.

Don't take a full course load if you feel overloaded and stressed, especially in the upper years. In my case, I used the extra time on multiple side projects and sports, and lived with my SO and cat. My upper years at university were fantastic.

<comment><USER24> If you're in engineering at Waterloo, you don't have a choice about course load - you must have a full course load at all times.

<comment><USER23> That's unfortunate. I hope the option is added for the sake of the students' health.

<comment><USER25> There is an unofficial option. Failing a term or two. We have a saying that engineering can be the worst five years of your life or the best seven.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> UWindsor student here. I did one of my co-ops in Waterloo at BlackBerry so I got to know the local students fairly well. The problem with Waterloo co-op is how rigid the system is to 4 month only terms.

Four months is barely enough time to get a good grounding of what work is like at that company, and the company itself looses out on training someone and then having them leave after a short period of time. For large companies, that works fine because it's an investment into whether you would be a good full- time hire. But it's not universally helpful.

I've found that 8 month co-ops are the most ideal. Less running around, you spend a good stable 6 months doing work (depending on the company) as a full- time employee would, and the company benefits from it as well.

Co-ops in general though teach you how to pack light and not carry unnecessary baggage. I've always grown up on the move so it was easy for me to adapt, but it helpful for those who don't do it often.

<comment><USER27> UWaterloo is generally pretty receptive to 8 month coop terms. It's not too difficult to arrange. In programs with one stream however (SoftEng was one stream while I was there), it's more difficult because you essentially end up having to join the next year's class.

<comment><USER28> Yes. I'm in CS class of 2017. We have 4 streams, so basically everyone is everywhere all the time. You can do whatever you want whenever you want.

Halfway through my first co-op term, I was asked to stay another four months. I was able to say "yes" on the spot. It only took about 20 minutes of work to arrange it with UW. I just had to fill out a form and email it to the right co-op advisor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> 4 months seems a bit short for this continuous cycle. I go to Northeastern University and they do 6 month cycles of work/school. They also start off with a year and a half to two years of classes on a traditional schedule when you first enroll in college. This seems less relentless than the 4 month schedule described at Waterloo.

<comment><USER30> At Guelph, we do two full years of academics and a summer off before any co-op work term (so we have one less work term overall), and have two 8-month work terms and a 4-month as part of our schedule[1]. I think that's a much more workable schedule, and I think Waterloo even has a similar scheduling option in terms of term duration (at least for CS) as I've worked with a student from there for the same 8-months. As long as you stay with the same employer for 8-months (many seem willing if you ask) or the same town for both placements, it works out fairly well.

[1]: [https://www.uoguelph.ca/registrar/calendars/undergraduate/cu...](https://www.uoguelph.ca/registrar/calendars/undergraduate/current/c10/c10bcomp- seng-c.shtml)

<comment><USER31> Another Gryphon! I think you might be the first I've seen on HN. A few of my friends did Nanoscience co-op and I've pretty much only heard good things (I did the non co-op stream though since I didn't want to take the extra year to finish).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The most stressful part is preparing for anywhere from 10-20 technical interviews during midterms. There is nothing worst than knowing you have to balance your University degree with future Job prospects. I'm glad I had to go through it because there is no way I would be ready for it in the real world otherwise. Technical interviews are tough and all of the best companies do them. The rewards however, are a blessing indeed:

[http://betabeat.com/2014/11/heres-what-tech-companies-pay- th...](http://betabeat.com/2014/11/heres-what-tech-companies-pay-their- interns-prepare-to-cry/)

</comment><comment><USER33> Personally, I don't think I would have learned much if it wasn't for co-op. I paid my way through university and gained a lot of valuable experience that helped me land my first job.

</comment><comment><USER34> What amazes me is how strongly the Waterloo folks do in every field. I bumped into quite a few that excelled at Finance too. Combination of solid skills and humility.

</comment><comment><USER35> I also have a Waterloo Co-Op degree (biochemistry & math), and can say without a doubt that doing co-op was one of the best decisions of my early professional life.

Many, many years later... through academia and industry jobs, and as someone who hires now, a good co-op program is a phenomenal plus to helping you figure out who you are, professionally speaking.

And it lets you see where the blend between application and theory really lies, with respect to your own personal values.

</comment><comment><USER36> Kettering University does something similar but it is 3 months school 3 months work for the entirety of your schooling. It is very hectic but if you like things fast paced and the ability to work in your field of study its pretty awesome.

</comment><comment><USER37> It seems that the author has overlooked the option of staying in Waterloo and working for one of the many companies that are actively looking for talented students.

Edit: I was a UW co-op student and did all my terms in Waterloo.

<comment><USER3> I couldn't wait to get away from Waterloo for my work terms. Winters in Waterloo are extremely unpleasant! My last two work terms were in Brazil and I actually ended up working for this Brazilian company after I graduated but like most of my peers I could have called on any of my former work term companies and instantly gotten a job without putting my resume in amongst the pile of unknown new-grad resumes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Anyone else thought this will be about co-operative shop around London Waterloo station area?

</comment><comment><USER39> I did electrical engineering at UVic (University of Victoria), which uses the same schedule as Waterloo. (As it happens, I actually went on to do a Master's at Waterloo, so although I didn't do co-op there, I'm familiar with their program as well.)

For me, co-op was an unequivocally positive experience. For one thing, as the OP says, school is stressful. More stressful than all but the worst full-time jobs. With a co-op program, you're only in school for four months at a time rather than eight, which really helps; it's a (relatively) short burst of intense focus, rather than a near-year-long slog. Yes you're moving every four months, but the trick there is just to not have too much stuff! For a four month visit somewhere, all you really need are some clothes (generally for only one season, so not your entire wardrobe) and toiletries, a laptop, and maybe a few odds and ends - chess board, deck of cards, whatever, and your phone. That's about it, really. You rent rooms in furnished houses, and just hold off on collecting too much "stuff" until you graduate. (Of course, you still do need somewhere to leave the stuff you don't cart around with you. Parents are generally willing to hold onto it, but if not, a storage unit would suffice.) I've done several work terms with only what I could fit in my suitcase.

I've also found co-op terms to be a fantastic opportunity to meet new people. Ideally there are other co-op students working at the same company - <USER2> who are in the same situation as you, transplanted into a new city, looking for new friends. Even if not, there are often meetups for co-op students and that sort of thing where you can meet others from other companies. Especially in cities like Seattle and San Francisco! And sure you don't get paid vacation days, but... I don't know about you, but at least for me, coming from a term of engineering, even having weekends off without a mountain of homework to tackle was like paradise. It was absolutely a break. (And it's not like you wouldn't be working on your off terms without co-op! You'd just be doing it at Burger King or something.)

I was certainly lucky in some ways. My parents lived in Victoria, so I had a convenient place to leave my stuff when I left for work terms. And most of the companies I worked at had large groups of co-op students, so I generally had a good group of people to spend time with. But I think with the right outlook, putting in some effort, it would be possible to have a similarly good experience without those advantages. And then of course, there's this:

> The breadth and depth of the experiences, both academic and life, that I've > had on co-op would never have happened if I was in a regular program.

Nothing compares to trying a new job in a new city every other four months. You're not necessarily knowledgeable enough through most of your degree (at least in hardware, as I was) to get a lot of _technical_ experience from most work terms - although of course you get some - but what you get a ton of is experience with different types of companies and working environments. It really helped me to figure out what kind of company I wanted to work for, and eventually what kind of company I wanted to run.</comment>


Printer Tracking Dots Back in the News - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/06/printer-tracking-dots-back-news <comment><USER2> Particularly noteable: the EFF are among the chief sources of information on this topic. _The Intercept_ 's Micah Lee is also an EFF staff member.</comment>


TIL Jobs often went to his biological dad's restaurant without knowing of him - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/a04jrc/til_that_steve_jobs_often_went_to_his_biological/ <comment><AUTHOR> From Wikipedia[0]:

 _Jobs told his official biographer that after meeting Simpson, he wanted to become involved in her ongoing search for their father. When Jandali was found working in Sacramento, Jobs decided that only Simpson would meet him. Jandali and Simpson spoke for several hours at which point he told her that he had left teaching to join the restaurant business. He also said that he and Schieble had given another child away for adoption but that "we'll never see that baby again. That baby's gone." (Simpson did not mention that she had met Jobs). Jandali further told Simpson that he once managed a Mediterranean restaurant near San Jose and that "all of the successful technology people used to come there. Even Steve Jobs... oh yeah, he used to come in, and he was a sweet guy, and a big tipper." After hearing about the visit, Jobs recalled that "it was amazing... I had been to that restaurant a few times and I remember meeting the owner. He was Syrian. Balding. We shook hands."_

0: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Simpson#Personal_life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Simpson#Personal_life)</comment>


Lee Berger has a knack for finding fossils his own way (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/30/identity/the-man-who-used-facebook-to-find-an-extinct-human-species <comment><USER2> The guy to Berger's left in the photo is Professor John Hawkes, who pops up frequently in various PBS shows (like _Nature_ ) on prehistoric and archaic humans.</comment>


Practical Product Management Framework for SaaS (With Templates) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/infinitypm/the-practical-product-management-framework-for-saas-with-templates-11cff9e8fd4b <comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, we've just created this practical product management framework which will help you to build the right products and build it right.

The framework includes: guide with 22 articles with theoretical knowledge, templates to apply the knowledge and a tool to execute this framework

The goal of the framework is to help you:

Create Product Strategy and Vision Have a clear idea of what you're building and why.

Define Long Term Goals And Short Term Initiatives Define what your product needs to achieve and how to get there.

Build A Flexible Product Roadmap Determine and prioritize the most important features to build next.

Define And Manage Backlog Turn the vision into actionable work and prioritize what's important.

Plan And Manage Sprints Define who, when and what needs to be done today to achieve the long-term goals.

I'd love to hear your feedback and how we can improve this resource.</comment>


Lost flight home on my bday so I finished the framework demo at the airport cafe - <AUTHOR> http://skidding.github.io/cosmos/

<comment><AUTHOR> The demo page might be a bit too subtle. Basically you get the text after you complete the first Tetris line. I'd appreciate any feedback I can get, skip the demo if that's not your thing: [https://github.com/skidding/cosmos](https://github.com/skidding/cosmos)</comment>


Hiring in a Startup - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/swlh/making-the-first-hires-in-a-startup-the-hard-truth-fa7dbf37160f <comment><USER2> Was recently aggressively recruited by a startup, who needs both my deep industry knowledge as well as tech skills. They proceeded to give me some generic algorithm challenge take home, taking 4 hours.

<comment><USER3> Did you do it? :)

<comment><USER2> Nope

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a prospect, I'd be dismayed by the fact that the author didn't even bother to include a link to his Careers or even Contact page... or even make a link out of the company name in the opening paragraph. (Or, do they even _have_ a web presence outside of a sparse LinkedIn page?)

</comment><comment><USER5> Had this experience recently, got a call about a startup producing cash register software. The idea the founder was pitching sounded interesting, but I feel the delivery of his pitch and showed he lacked the confidence and leadership to persuade the level of talent he wanted to leave their well paying, stable jobs.</comment>