Seeking Inspiration? - <AUTHOR> http://sivers.org/io <comment><USER2> I've noticed that ever since I've started reading HN (which I think is fairly intellectually stimulating for me), the rate at which I independently think up new ideas for projects has greatly reduced. I don't know if they are actually correlated. Maybe reading a site like this and reading about other people achieving and inventing things lubricates that part of my brain that gives me satisfaction for making things myself.

Or that I now have so many ideas from others whirring around in my head, that it is difficult to separate my own personal desires from the experiences and projects I read about in blogs and discussions, so I emerge without really knowing any of my own dreams and dispositions.

<comment><USER3> Maybe unrelated, but as my awareness of what other folks have made musically has increased, my desire to write and create new compositions has decreased... I suspect because I'm aware that a lot of the things I would like to see created have already been created.

However, this hasn't stemmed my desire to get better at making music... quite the opposite... but I have been a lot more systematic in my practicing and a lot more willing to be confident that performing work other people have performed is a legitimate practice.

I have felt similarly in my own programming practice: most every thing that I really need to do has functionally been done in other contexts, and my task is to figure out the best ways to bring those previous works to bear on my own context... so I feel less "creative" but more effective.

<comment><USER4> I think it's because you gained criticism on your work by being aware of what are doing others. It can be considered as an improvment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Author Confuses inspiration and resassurance.

We may flock to TED and Hacker News to read about what others are doing, but not for inspiration in the sense that we will be inspired to do things, but rather we seek reassurance that people are doing things, things that we feel we could do if we tried.

We want to see people we can relate to doing great things so that we can feel that those things are with in our ability.

When you watch Nascar you think you can drive fast. When you watch TED you think you can change the world. You aren't inspired by Nascar, you are envigorated, excited, but not inspired.

TED and Hacker News is nascar for geeks.

<comment><USER6> I don't disagree, but I do find myself having moments of clarity when I look up from work and come check out HN. Often it's just a brief comment just resonates, and clarifies something I'd been chewing on for the past few days/weeks. In that way, I guess it's a precursor to what the author labels as true 'inspiration.'

In any case, I like dropping in on smart people debating stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My rule of thumb is inspiration declines exponentially. And as someone famous once said - inspiration doesn't do anything - irritation has more to do with it.

e.g. at the conference/lecture/business meeting/serendipitous coffee, your excitement level is 110%

To truly do something, you must continue working when you are not inspired.

a day later, 70%

a week later, 20%

Three birds sat on a railing. One decided to fly off. How many birds are there now?

</comment><comment><USER8> I must point on one thing, take this example most of us, have experienced many times of some smart guy, giving a smart talk in your high school/college, and you walk out and say to your friend "woah, that was a good lecture/speech, that guy was awesome" .. after few days you go on with your normal business, but somewhere inside you, you feel the guilt of not applying, what you learned during that lecture. Well you are not always right, our brain is only as much capable of seeing our own improvement, to a limit, going from 18-25, you see a lot of changes, and you don't see a lot of changes, so the point is, that its not necessary for you to always apply, what you just learned immediately. Yes, try to use it soon, but its not necessary to apply, what you heard from that smart guy, starting tomorrow, because his circumstances are way different than yours, and he would know a lot of contingencies related what he said, of course.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm one of the afflicted; always looking for more information. One other thing I've noticed in myself after beginning to do a little mediation is a pervading and constant sense of "I should be"...

* I should be building my own business

* I should be better at this

* I should be earning more

* I should be living a 4 hour workweek

I've realised that these are caustic feelings that cause a low level pervasive feeling of stress, and worse distort the lens that I observe myself through.

I'm far from unsuccessful: I'm a self taught programmer and I'm good at what I do. Financially I'm up near the top in terms of earnings, despite only programming professionally for 5 years or so. Partly I'm successful due to that thirst for knowledge I guess.

So it's a difficult balance between healthy inquisitiveness and a desire to expose oneself to new ideas for their own sake, and getting stuck in a negative consumption/inhalation loop with no corresponding fulfilment/exhalation phase.

</comment><comment><USER10> There is a difference between seeking inspiration and simply reading or watching something intellectually stimulating for entertainment (nor are they mutually exclusive).

Reading Hacker News, for example, can be done for entertainment.

And there is nothing wrong with that.

<comment><USER11> Yea, and in addition to that, it can also be read to keep up with news-worthy events.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I agree. I sometimes (rarely) have moments when I want to punch into the air, or raise my hands above my head to claim victory, or slap my desk with vigor, when I just achieved something (generally small) on the task I am intently working at. Then I look around somewhat abashed, but I can't share it with too many people because it will be hard to explain my accomplishment to them. That is true joy. I think that's what the article is talking about.

</comment><comment><USER13> This article really made me think. How often do we forget to actually DO something with what we have learned or witnessed.

</comment><comment><USER14> I believe it's Einstein who said that knowledge is only knowledge when it is applied.</comment>


Did AT&T just create a pay-for-play mobile Internet? - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/01/06/did-att-just-create-a-pay-for-play-mobile-internet/

<comment><USER2> No, because you'll be locked down to the company's domain like when you take a Southwest flight.

"The company that connects you to the Internet should not be in a position to control what you do on the Internet," said Michael Weinberg, acting co- president of the consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge.</comment>


Interview with Wayne Ratliff, author of dBASE (1986) - <AUTHOR> http://www.foxprohistory.org/interview_wayne_ratliff.htm <comment><USER2> This is wonderful to read, and brings back so many memories. I made my living off of dBASEIII+ for several years, starting around the time of this article. I was just thinking about it this past week so it's a great coincidence to see this come up.

        @ 3,3 say "Enter choice: " get ch picture "!"
        read

I wrote some very involved data entry screens and report generating software with it. My company's billing and payroll ran off of it for many years. I had inherited the initial versions of it, produced by a third party consultant at great expense, too much so to have them continue to maintain it. I eventually would rewrite nearly all of it, and attempted rewriting it in dBASE 5 several times but it was too much work for one person. I was the only "computer guy" in the company at the time. So we continued with the db3 version for several years, eventually adding parts in Topaz for Turbo Pascal, output to PCL for fancy laser printed payroll sheets (to be sent to the main office to be reentered by hand because they didn't trust data transfer yet!), and many other crutches.

You could write extensions in Assembler to provide whatever unique capabilities you might want, such as coloring or scrolling a block of characters on the screen, or hiding and showing the text cursor. And I remember the feeling of amazement the first time I was able to run a command window and a separate dBase window in Windows 3.11, as well as The Semware Editor and LIST, all at the same time! I no longer had to exit dBase and get back into the editor and vice versa!

I still have a working copy of it on an external drive. Time to go give it a spin!

<comment><USER3> Me too. Still a superior development experience in many ways.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's amazing to me how different things are now in the particulars (e.g., computers are probably a million times faster, and you can get a much better and more featured database like Postgres/SQLite for free rather than pay hundreds of dollars for a commercial one) and yet how similar they are in a general sense. You still have people like Wayne out there creating software, motivated by the same kinds of reasons and with the same tastes and proclivities. You still have the same conflict between productive technologists torn between technical work and management as their company scales. And the startup grind he describes is obviously still relevant.

It's a good thing that he stuck with the database rather than quickly turning his attention to natural language processing, since that is only starting to advance in meaningful ways in the last decade now that we have the required data and compute resources-- he would have been very frustrated!

</comment><comment><USER4> > _I took the JPLDIS concept, cut back on the specs, and wrote Vulcan. JPLDIS > would handle two hundred fields, but I thought sixteen was plenty. I got it > working and a little over a year after I started, I did my taxes on it. So, > I figured Vulcan had some commercial potential, and I began to polish it up > and get it to a sellable stage. In October 1979, I went to market and put my > first ad for Vulcan in BYTE magazine, and I ran a quarter-page ad for four > or five months thereafter. I got much more response than I could handle._

Here's the ad:

[https://archive.org/details/byte- magazine-1979-10-rescan/pag...](https://archive.org/details/byte- magazine-1979-10-rescan/page/n165/mode/1up)

Only $490, or the equivalent of $1860 today.

Lots of other great old ads and articles in these BYTE Magazines! archive.org has a bunch of them.

</comment><comment><USER5> I started out with dBASE III+ but never really got it. Borland had a far superior product in Paradox (which they bought from Ansa). Paradox 3.5 helped me understand the power of relational databases -- the Paradox Application Language (PAL) was an amazing language and so was Query-By-Example (QBE).

But Borland also decided to buy Ashton-Tate so for a while they owned both dBASE and Paradox. dBASE became the red-headed stepchild in the Borland world, but still consumed Borland resources to develop and maintain. It was a weird time in the industry.

</comment><comment><USER6> This brings back memories, I was introduced to xBase via dBASE III+, then we got to learn Clipper Summer '87, and I jumped into Clipper 5 for some projects freelancing outside school (Hurray OOP support!).

So it was basically Turbo Pascal / Assembly for general purpose programming and Clipper for anything DB related.

Still remember how hard it was to initially understand RDMS, given how much I happened to use xBase, thus I was kind of attached to its DB model.

</comment><comment><USER7> dBase II, III+ and (ugh) IV developer here... Nice to see some of these earlier interviews with the likes of C. Wayne Ratliff and Anders Heljsberg etc. I remember one of my favourite interviews back in the day was reading a Wayne Ratliff one in what I think was 'Byte' magazine.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> For those curious about dBASE, this video from 1984 gives a good (and amusing) overview:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0ng2Tp01Hc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0ng2Tp01Hc)

</comment><comment><USER8> This offhand comment took me back:

"Now you can buy an AT, with a hard disk, complete and ready to roll for $6,000."

I couldn't afford an AT when I got my first computer; I spent $1,200 on a Leading Edge Model D, an 8088 with 512K of RAM, no hard drive, and two 360K floppies. Then I had to figure out how to have it set up a RAM disk on every boot for commonly used programs since loading them from the floppy drive was so slow. But even a 10 MB hard drive was beyond my means at the time.

</comment><comment><USER9> > I went out and bought lots of books on natural language and artificial > intelligence. I kept getting drawn from one place to another, and I did lots > of experiments.

It's amazing how some things in computer programming never change.

</comment><comment> Arcanum-XIII What I remember the most with dBase is the immediate feedback loop you got: start the exe and you were set to work. I miss quite often this feeling, especially when trying to explore ideas. The second thing I miss is the integration you got: it was so easy to switch from ´developing' to using the stuff you wrote.

So now I can do so much more, but even for simple problem the setup is laughably complex. I wish we could have both.

</comment><comment><USER10> > Ted Glasser, who has a number of patents and is a very senior person in the > computing industry, and is in Who's Who, once told people that the biggest > team he could manage was one that could drive out to get pizza in a > Volkswagen. Since then he's changed his tune--it's now a regular-size > American car. I wholeheartedly agree with that.

And that's how we got to 2 pizza teams I guess.

</comment><comment><USER11> "After more than fifteen years in the computer industry"

It must be more than that. Maybe 50?

<comment><USER12> The interview is from 34 years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Anybody remember Framework ???. I developed some apps in it , rather interesting for it's time.

</comment><comment><USER14> 1986 computing: solving real-life problems for a reasonable price

2020 computing: extracting sensitive information from and selling digital cornfields to morons

I posit that the latest "value-add" to come out of internet-age computing has been primarily eugenic in nature--thus necessitating sprawling mothership full-service complexes to keep nerds from mixing with their marks, and possibly developing some sympathy/mercy toward them.</comment>


Install Ubuntu On Your Chromebook - <AUTHOR> http://greenido.wordpress.com/2013/08/08/chromebook-for-developers-and-hackers/

<comment><USER2> All of these "install ... on Chromebook" articles fail to mention that on recent Chromebooks without a physical developer mode switch (Samsung's ARM- based one, Pixel) you have to press a specific hidden keyboard combination and endure the big scary "developer mode" warning _on each boot_. In my view that makes it practically useless for day-to-day use as a general purpose laptop.

You can flash the first stage bootloader to remove that warning, but that is not documented well (if you can call several contradictory forum threads documentation), involves taking the laptop apart and gives you exactly one try: it either works or bricks the device permanently.

In addition to that, at least Samsung's Chromebooks are not very well designed and can be seriously damaged from userspace when running a general-purpose distribution (Google for burning speakers on ARM Chromebook for instance)

<comment><USER3> On regular laptops, you open the lid and press the "On" button.

On my Chromebook, it boots as soon as you open the lid, and so I press Ctrl-D instead of the "On" button. I thought it'd be a pain, but it doesn't bother me at all, and you say that makes it "practically useless"?

<comment><USER4> He exaggerated to make a point but Ctrl D every single time you boot is kinda annoying.

<comment><USER5> One more finger annoying than the power button which is what you would do on any other laptop. There is not a desktop Linux user alive who has not put up with more annoying things than hitting two keys to boot.

<comment><USER2> Incidentally, I'm a desktop Linux user for more than 10 years. I don't mind having to do annoying things once or twice to set things up.

I do mind having to do them each and every time I pick up the computer, especially when I have bought it believing that I won't have to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Lots of other distros work on the Chromebook (and have for longer). Here's for example Fedora 19 and Arch Linux instructions:

[https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM/F19/Remixes...](https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM/F19/Remixes#Samsung_Exynos_5_Dual_Core_Cortex_A15) [http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv7/samsung/samsung- chro...](http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv7/samsung/samsung-chromebook)

The next challenge is getting KVM working. The Chromebook has an A15 chip which has hardware assisted virtualization. Unfortunately the firmware disables HYP mode, but the Xen guys managed to workaround this in their bootloader so it should be possible for KVM too.

Another note about the Chromebook is it is _not_ possible to boot it from an external hard drive. You have to boot it from USB flash although after boot you can of course use a real hard drive as the root filesystem.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I'm running Debian Wheezy on a Pixel and, besides building my own more current kernels, there is nothing special going on here.

<comment><USER6> However the Pixel has an Intel chip doesn't it?

<comment><USER7> It does, though most people seem to suggest the same crouton stuff for it. I tried that for a weekend and think that advice is misguided.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Tried Crouton on my Acer C7 Chromebook a few months back, and it was buggy as hell. Switched to the Chrubuntu script, and it's been a dream. I'm surprised it's not mentioned at all.

[http://chromeos-cr48.blogspot.com/2013/05/chrubuntu-one- scri...](http://chromeos-cr48.blogspot.com/2013/05/chrubuntu-one-script-to- rule-them-all_31.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> Is it not possible without "virtualizing" Ubuntu on top of the host OS with crouton?

<comment><USER3> Yes it is, Chrubuntu boots directly.

[http://chromeos-cr48.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/chrubuntu- one-s...](http://chromeos-cr48.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/chrubuntu-one-script- to-rule-them-all_31.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Running X on Y! Man, I am telling you no one is happy with what they have ;-)

<comment><USER11> Could be worse - you can't to that on a Surface RT.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Finally was motivated to try this out. Totally happy. Honestly, all I really wanted was python and a nice shell, but having a full OS is great.

</comment><comment><USER13> Personally, I wish for an ARM notebook market to come out of the Chromebook, with different configurations for Chrome OS and Ubuntu etc.

<comment><USER14> I keep being surprised that there is no real ARM netbook (samsung's chromebook and asus transformer come closest).

I think the reason is because ARM is significantly less performant than x86. You don't notice it on a phone/tablet, because the stack is optimised (it has to be!) the special-purpose OS, lots of stuff in silicon (esp video), games and (mobile) webpages are written for the platform. But for general computation - e.g. compiling - it's much slower.

ARM has optimised power consumption for decades; x86 has optimised performance for decades, so I shouldn't be surprised.

PS: doesn't ubuntu have an ARM laptop in the works? (along the lines of their EDGE phone)?

<comment><USER15> How about the Surface RT? Even comes with file manager and two command lines.

<comment><USER11> There's a pool of sarcasm under your post

<comment><USER6> Presumably MSFT will be having a firesale now they've realized that Windows RT was a bad idea. All we need is someone to work out how to root them, and then cheap A9-based quad-core laptops for running Linux.

<comment><USER11> The hardware seems quite good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Have had Ubuntu on my ARM chromebook since late last year. Only issue so far is that the version of Slim dm that is available for it from the 12.04 repos is b0rked and doesn't speak to consolekit properly, resulting in all sorts of hard to diagnose fun with reboot and other permissions.

</comment><comment><USER17> I just did this last night on my Samsung Chromebook. One problem I immediately ran into was the difficulty of getting programs to run in Ubuntu because of my ARM processor. Any suggestions?

<comment><USER16> What programs?

If you're trying x86/wine then forget it. But the usual suspects are available from the ubuntu repos just fine.

<comment><USER17> Ah, okay. I'm wondering if I should ditch this one and pick up an Intel-based Chromebook instead.

I actually just need a cheap solution to program in this year, and I'd love to step away from Windows and start using Linux (since OS X is outside of my price point). Any suggestions?

<comment><USER16> Far as I'm concerned you can do pretty much anything FOSS, so it's a perfectly good platform for linux development.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Things seem better now. I remember bricking the original beta google chromebook that google gave out for testing because of following murky instructions.

</comment><comment><USER19> This makes me wonder, despite pricing, what are the reasons to buy a chromebook instead of any other laptop on the market?

<comment><USER16> Me, I have a long running ARM fetish ever since debian-ising my NSLU2 back in the day. Also for some sick reason I like to repurpose stuff.

All that said - it turns out ChromeOS with developer access enabled (so I can get a proper shell and a normal ssh client) covers about 80% of my needs in a client machine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does this work for ARM ChromeBooks too?

<comment><USER21> Yep, Crouton was originally made for the ARM Chromebook from what I understand.

<comment><AUTHOR> True. We did it on pixel as well.

<comment><USER21> Yes you did! Posted from a Crouton'd Chromebook Pixel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is there a way to press a "super" button on chromebooks?

<comment><USER3> It's the former "Caps Lock" key</comment></comment>


Life of an Implementer: If you're good at it, don't do it for someone else - <AUTHOR> http://undev.wordpress.com/2011/06/11/life-of-an-implementer/

<comment><USER2> I don't understand articles like this. There's the assumptions that all coding is alike and that when I code for myself I get to solve the same problems that I can solve when coding for others.

In reality, this simply isn't true. Case in hand: I like distributed databases. However, I alone, have absolutely no use for one. Nor can I (simultaneously) work on every single aspect of a distributed database: data replication and MVCC, network layer, B+Tree implementation, monitoring, configuration, bindings to other programming languages.

When I program on my own (and every programmer should) and for myself, I typically write much simpler programs: tools and utilities (and that's typically the products that "micro-ISVs" sell), conceptual programmings (e.g., I am curious about a certain algorithm, so I'll go and implement a toy version of it) or programming for fun or mind expansion (e.g., re-inventing the wheel, but using OCaml and Lwt), or for career development (e.g., practicing C++ on my own as I primarily program in Java at work).

Only a limited kind of programming that I do on my own (concept programming, mind expansion or "career development") is as technically fulfilling as the programming I do at work. There's no way I could do this kind of programming for a living: I am not delivering a usable product. Paxos algorithm is the prime example of it: I can implement a toy version in a weekend, but it would need months of further development and testing and years in production before being mature (and even then, I guarantee, there will be bugs in it). It would need a real world use case for the algorithm (that I, as an individual don't have), it would need operations engineers to deploy it to production, it would need other programmers to build systems on top of.

The other approach is to develop products that I, as an individual, can build on my own. There's wide variety of this kind of software: project management tools, productivity tools, business applications. There's plenty of people who want to use these kind of systems and there are many micro-ISVs who continually build this. However, while this might (or might not) pay better, it simply won't be (at least for me) challenging enough to be interesting. There are some for who _are_ able to find a niche where both "sufficient challenge" and "ability to do it myself" intersect, but I am not one of them. Not to mention, I would be spending at least 1/2th of my time doing book- keeping and accounting, technical support, marketing and the like. No thanks.

Finally, I could take an "easy" job doing something other than programming that gives me time to do work in the evening. Problem with that approach is, again, it's going yield LOWER happiness than what I have: I am spending a huge chunk of my waking hours doing something I don't enjoy, then when I go home I do something I enjoy, but which (almost never) sees the light of day. In addition in order to spend my time doing something that is a "meaningful leisure", I have to give up time that I could be spending traveling, working out, pursuing other "meaning leisures" (reading, photography) or being with my girlfriend, parents or friends. That sounds like a surefire recipe to develop at least a mild kind of depression. Indeed, individuals who have a deep passion to do X (but where X has a manageable career route), but are unable to find a job doing X, are some of the least happy people I've known (janitors who spend or nightclub bouncers who their time doing physics and mathematics makes for feature films or chapters in Malcolm Gladwell books, but it's a painful way to live).

Let's consider the more conventional role: working for a company (big one _or_ a startup) as a programmer. In this case, I spend a much larger chunk of my time programming (yes, I also spend time in meetings, spend time dealing with operational issues -- but that chunk would be much larger if I were "my own" software company); after this I go home and can choose to either program or go out and do something else (depending on my mood). This way I am spending most of my day doing activities that I find to be a meaningful leisure.

Suppose I do start my own company: I can go two ways. I can go the "micro-ISV" route and work for myself, or I can start a company that's expected to grow. Again, I'd much rather choose the second route: it's much harder, much more prone to failure, but I'll be able to build something that will scale sufficiently to allow me to focus on elements that I find more rewarding (while employees I would hire are able to focus on elements _they_ find more rewarding).

Edit: just as a clarification, I am not saying that all "micro-ISV" work is boring. I just haven't found anything that I could (reasonably) build into a product, such that working on that problem would be (to me) more rewarding than working for somebody else. This could still exist, but it's much harder to find.

<comment><USER3> When I read pieces like this I think 'young and inexperienced.' Not in a negative way, just in a haven't learned enough about stuff to put the various pieces in perspective yet.

People always start out at implementors (or at least they should in my opinion) and as they implement they develop a 'style' and an aesthetic for how things should be done. Sometimes that comes from learning the hard way, sometimes it come from re-implementing or re-working the same code for several different uses, sometimes from reading an insightful paper on a similar problem. After a while, they will have more ideas than they can meaningfully implement in a lifetime, but with the help of other implementors they can make wonderful things.

So they begin teaming up with other implementors, some not as experienced as they and perhaps others with different histories. The build bigger things faster, and begin to appreciate that working in parallel is faster but not more efficient if at integration time everyone has to rewrite what they wrote. So they start spending time thinking about how the pieces of this bigger project should fit together, they keep this complex inter-relationship in their head as they work with various team members who are working on other bits. At some point the part of the implementation they own is falling behind because they are constantly on the move, talking, listening, advising, questioning, deciding, on various bits about the project. As they weave and integrate more and more bits they begin to discover the subtleties of a thousand different things about how stuff is put together and recognize the benefit of finding people for whom that particular part of the implementation space has fascinated them for years and they know inside and out.

They will find themselves giving advice on how something should be done to an implementer who is doing the work and wondering _why_ it should be done that way when they could do it more easily some other way. They may find themselves recounting trying it different ways, the advantages and disadvantages of each, and the outside influences that perhaps this particular implementer isn't aware of which have guided the opinion of how it should be done. They may find that the implementer dismisses them as 'out of touch' because they aren't doing the implementation themselves. They might chuckle at that, or if they have had a long day and they aren't looking forward to the unsatisfying 'when you've done this longer you'll understand' conversation they might be a bit short with them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think this, like many of the implementor vs. idea person pieces lately, focuses on the wrong question. If you want to be an implementer, the big question is how do you implement the best damn software you can. Sometimes the answer to that will be to go work for a big company with a large support system, and sometimes the answer will be to strike off on your own. The best implementers I know have done both, and often have financial rewards from both phases of their lives. There's no one unique answer that will apply to all points in your career; if you believe there is one, you're artificially limiting yourself.

Don't worry about what other people do or how they're rewarded for it. Focus on doing what you do as well as you can do it, and seizing the opportunities where it'll have the most impact, and the rest will come naturally.

<comment><USER5> Nice contribution. I'm sure the people who wrote the STL are happy they did so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> To summarize

      #1. A great developer is worth much more than
          they gets paid in an organization

      #2. A great developer could create much more value
          for themselves if they worked for themselves

      #3.  If you can't go work for yourself now, take
           a non-developer position to leave yourself
           energy at night for developing your own project

I think #1 is very true - a great developer is worth much more than is politically possible to pay them in any organization I have been in. (edit: edw519 has given good examples where he saved the company many hundreds of $k in a few weeks, and got an 'attaboy' in return)

#2 is more of a stretch - you need other skills to start your own business and capitalize on your strengths (edit: the reason many of us follow this site).

#3 is an interesting idea that I haven't seen expressed elsewhere.

<comment><USER7> "#3 is an interesting idea that I haven't seen expressed elsewhere."

It's actually a pretty old idea. The world is full of aspiring actors waiting tables, aspiring writers working at Starbucks, etc.

<comment><USER8> I don't think your analogy is quite the same. A better one would be that a journalist or sports writer should take a job as an editor. That would allow him the ability to think about writing all day without actually writing anything, so that he can go home and work on his novel in the evenings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What a surprise that an implementor would think implementors are the most important people in the world.

Of course, in most cases management has the exact opposite view -- implementation is an unfortunate cost of doing business, maybe we can get some people in India or Russia to do it on the cheap, while the important functions of business (marketing and sales) are done here.

IMO, if you call yourself an "implementor" then you have already lost the battle against being commodified.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're basically right. On the other hand (as should be apparent on HN), "implementors" don't always need management. Business _does_ always require some sort of product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This makes the assumption that a good implementor is also a good idea-person, manager, etc etc. Some people are best off working for someone else and just doing the implementing. Others -prefer- it for their own reasons.

Anyone who can (and wants to) do it on their own, will. In their good time. There's no point in telling them to do it.

<comment><USER11> It's also a great way to begin. For someone new, it's going to be incredibly more difficult to balance ideas, manage projects, and market them than to focus on implementation alone. You offer your strengths and pick up more skills along the way. Then as you become more experienced and well-rounded, you can follow your interests and try handling other responsibilities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> These types of articles are are dangerous if they serve as collective ego strokes for somewhat talented developers. If you are one of those rare multi- talented first-class developer/designer/entrepreneurs, more power to you but implementation is both under-rated and over-rated. You will still accomplish an order of magnitude more by finding the right team.

Steve Jobs is not an implementer. Wozniak was one of the most brilliant. With the collective talent at Apple, surely they could stop "working for the man" and live their dreams.

Bad or slow implementation can kill the best of ideas but a great implementation of a mediocre product will go nowhere.

It's more about assessing your true strengths and weaknesses, finding a team where your talents are a good fit but get a stretched enough that you're always growing at a healthy pace.

If you feel under-rated maybe it's more about your communication than being under-appreciated as an implementer.

</comment><comment><USER13> If most of this is true, you're working at the wrong place.

Needing medical insurance will change most peoples' perception of this argument (assuming they live in the US).

</comment><comment><USER14> Which leg of the stool is most important?

<comment><USER5> Why does this egotistical viewpoint keep coming up on HN frontpage? Do most programmers think they're the only important member of a team?

Is everyone frothing to themselves at their desks, muttering that they could do better on their own and should quit to start their own business?

<comment><USER15> Not sure why you got down-voted for this, maybe you touched a nerve. I up- voted you for having a realistic perspective. Obviously (good) programmers are some of the most valuable employees around--but what about sales, support, etc? One can't be successful on their own just by coding. At a minimum one has to also sell, document and support software for it to really create value.

<comment><USER5> Maybe because it sounded like I was disagreeing with dctoedt, who is obviously right. See Poeisis' comment below.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I agree that implementers are undervalued in their own organizations. Unfortunately this happens because the implementer is too busy to play the "political game" to move up the ladder. It really is a lot of hard work to implement something. It will be in your mind all the time. While other people who are not implementing have a lot more time to play the political game and to refine their social skills to continue climbing ladders.

Of course, there is also the implementers that want to do nothing but implement and would not want to play political games even if they had the time.

</comment><comment><USER17> Touché! ... I would say I sadly fall into this category, but as you I share the same opinion, and am enthusiasticallymoving forward.

</comment><comment><USER18> As an aside, at the few companies I've worked at, much to the chagrin of other departments, tech has consistently been the highest paid part of the company, at least at my (lower end) of the hierarchy.

</comment><comment><USER19> Reminds me of this from a while back:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2131550>

</comment><comment><USER20> This isn't the right reason to start a startup.</comment>


iRobot introduces gutter-cleaning robot - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=202103841

<comment><USER2> I happen to know a bit about this bot. Ask any questions you like.

The more exciting new robot is the ConnectR. Wifi streaming of video from a mobile platform you can control through the internet.

There are many possibilities that opens up. There is simple no other platform with a history of openness that allows for remote mobile video/2-way-audio at this price.

That said, an "er"->"R" for the name ConnectR is a tired idea.

<comment><USER3> Hey Ivan!

Quick question about the design process... how the heck did you guys come to an idea for making a gutter (among all other applications) robot?! Is gutter cleaning that big of a market?

Also, how long does it take to test this bot? How many real gutters did you try?

Thanks.

<comment><USER2> Hmm. I don't want to step on any toes, so I'm just going to answer somewhat generally.

There are many smart people at iRobot, and most of em have many crazy ideas. Because the Home Robots side doesn't get government funding, iRobot needs to invest a fair amount into a product before it sees a customer. That means that the market potential needs to be vetted before proceeding. All of this is pretty intuitive.

They've turned around this product really fast. That's what iRobot is good at: making something that actually works, really quickly.

Like many companies, employees are early testers of the products.

One VERY smart guy at the company once quipped: "robotics is the study of the failure modes of connectors".

It's sad because it's so true.</comment></comment></comment>


Memolane Launches Its Personalized Internet Time Machine To The Public - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/08/memolane-launches-its-personalized-internet-time-machine-to-the-public/ <comment><USER2> It's pretty cool, although I see limited value in it for me. What I really would love instead is a service that holds all of the articles and blog posts that I read and liked and all of the notes I made on any subject, so that I could later search for them. This plus what Memolane does could be something truly useful. So far it seems to me more like a toy.</comment>


If You Drive Less Than 10,000 Miles a Year, You Probably Shouldn't Own a Car - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/10/if-you-drive-less-than-10000-miles-a-year-you-probably-shouldnt-own-a-car/542988/ <comment><USER2> I drive about 1500 miles a year. Our car gets used mainly on weekends. We have a small maintenance budget for it, and we figure as long as it doesn't exceed that budget, we're good. But when it finally dies, it won't be worth replacing. We'll probably use Zipcar instead.</comment>


Single Tweet Sends Apple Shares Soaring - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/business/2013/08/single-tweet-sends-apple-shares-soaring/

<comment><USER2> Icahn wouldn't be above sending a tweet like that to raise the price before unloading shares. His goal is to maximize _his_ return, not that of his twitter followers.

<comment><USER3> I kind of doubt blowing his credibility with a pump-and-dump is part of his long-term plan for maximizing his return.

<comment><USER2> I'm not saying it's a pump-and-dump. What I _am_ saying is that Icahn (and others like him) are very careful to hide their purchases from the market _while they are still purchasing_ , in order to prevent their own purchases from unduly raising the price.

If anything, Icahn's tweet signals that he is no longer purchasing AAPL in quantity. Now he wants the market to "catch up" to his value appraisal so he can realize a gain.

<comment><USER4> So... it's a pump-and-dump.

<comment><USER5> It's more likely to be a pump-and-keep, given his history.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Technically, the single tweet did not send the shares soaring. A significant investment from successful active investor Icahn did. The tweet just revealed the investment to public.

Take Elon Musk's tweet that Tesla was being profitable for the first time as an example. The tweet lead to soaring stock price but the cause was excellent execution by Tesla team, not the tweet itself.

<comment><USER7> In this case you're probably right, but lots of HFT algorithms do use Twitter as a feed to inform trading strategies. Tweets can literally send stocks soaring or sinking.

<comment><USER8> That's why Warren Buffet gets every time Anne Hathaway makes a movie.

[http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/03/does-a...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/03/does- anne-hathaway-news-drive-berkshire-hathaways-stock/72661/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "But tweeting about a private meeting with the chief executive of a publicly traded company not your own doesn't feel like the use case the agency anticipated."

Shouldn't this be the headline? Why isn't this considered as illegal insider trading if the contents of the meeting are not disclosed?

<comment><USER10> Investors have meetings with management all the time. Unless Tim Cook gave him material non-public information about the company, it isn't illegal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just out of interest, does anyone know how long it took between the time the tweet was published and how long it took for an identifiable/linked rise in share price? The article does mention "Less than two hours later" but I'm interested to know how quickly people react to a tweet like this.

Edit: Google Finance seems to suggest less than one minute. I'm not sure if any data is freely available that would allow me to see this jump in the seconds range.

<comment><USER12> The initial response was within seconds. But the surge continued for minutes. Well, the surge hasn't really stopped yet depending on how you look at it.

Looking at just one data stream.... The 21 seconds between 14:21:10 and 14:21:31 there were 23 trades. In the next SECOND at 14:21:32 there were 105 shares traded. And the price jumped, in that one second, more than the entire previous minute. So I'd say 14:21:32 is when the market started reacting. Not sure exactly when the tweet went out.

A search for nasdaq time and sales will get you the second by second data.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for this, I find that amazing

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Another proof of how emotional markets are (or rather people behind the markets).

<comment><USER14> Icahn saying that a company is undervalued isn't meant as idle chatter. He has in the past repeatedly tried to buy out companies that he has thought to be undervalued. It seems shockingly unlikely that he'd try to LBO Apple, but if there is one person who could do it, it'd be him. A buyout offer can drive stock prices up 25% - 50+%.

The fact that the message came through Twitter rather than a press release doesn't matter: the markets moved because Icahn is buying up Apple stock.

<comment><USER13> The reason I would still call that an emotional, rather than logical response is that these Tweets don't have much to base a valuation on. For example, what is a "large" position or "larger" buyback in actual dollars? You have to estimate and guess.

At the end of the day, Cook and Icahn may not agree on anything concrete and all of this would have been vapor.

That said, it doesn't mean you cannot be opportunistic and make some money on the ups and downs this thing generates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sounds like a good time to pull out A Random Walk Down Wall Street again, for the uninitiated: [http://www.amazon.com/Random-Walk-Down-Wall- Street/dp/039333...](http://www.amazon.com/Random-Walk-Down-Wall- Street/dp/0393330338)

I wonder how well tulip bulbs are doing these days.

<comment><USER10> The investing success of value investors of all kind would not be possible if the premise of his book, the efficient-market hypothesis, was correct. Warren Buffett's track record is a repudiation of it.

<comment><USER16> Not necessarily. Warren Buffett's track record is helped by two major factors.

The first is that, being Warren Buffett, he gets opportunities that regular investors don't. For instance look at the 2008 sweetheart deal he got on Goldman Sachs. Any smart investor would have leaped at it, but the value to them of saying, "Warren Buffett believes in us" was why he was offered the deal instead of someone else.

The second is that Warren Buffett is a big fan of buying and holding companies. Which leaves him in charge. By all accounts from the CEOs who continue to work for him, he is a phenomenal manager. Therefore the fact of his investing creates long-term improved returns.

When you move away from Warren Buffett, who else has been able to demonstrate long-term returns above what mere chance says is likely for someone to achieve by luck? In one study that I saw, there was only one other, Peter Lynch. The odds that someone anywhere in the mutual fund industry would match him by chance were under 5%. So there you have evidence that it is possible to beat the market for the right person.

But what advice does Peter Lynch himself give investors these days? If you want to invest in the stock market, buy and hold an indexed mutual fund!

Nobody seriously believes that the efficient market hypothesis is literally true. However your odds of being able to identify and exploit such inefficiencies in the broader market are sufficiently low that you are best off acting as if it is.

<comment><USER17> Anyone ascribing to efficient market hypothesis doesn't watch the market very much. Was Apple really worth several hundred billion more last year than it is now? Either it was extremely overvalued then, or it was extremely undervalued at < 400\. Or both. There is nothing efficient about the market. It is volatile and driven very much by emotion on a day to day basis.

Regarding Buffett, he doesn't take over everything. He buys and sells a lot of stock where he doesn't take control, and he does very well doing that as well. Also, he's being doing it for a long long time. This isn't simply flipping 20 heads in a row when you've been doing it for 60+ years

<comment><USER16> _Anyone ascribing to efficient market hypothesis doesn 't watch the market very much._

Considering that the efficient market hypothesis came out of academics studying the market, and has been tested in many ways, your hypothesis is somewhat suspect.

 _Was Apple really worth several hundred billion more last year than it is now? Either it was extremely overvalued then, or it was extremely undervalued at < 400\. Or both. There is nothing efficient about the market. It is volatile and driven very much by emotion on a day to day basis._

It appears that you do not actually understand the hypothesis that you reject out of hand. The hypothesis is not that the market knows the true value of the company, it does not. It is that the best available information on what the price of the company should be is already integrated into the current company price.

As information shifts just slightly about likely long-term prospects, the best estimate of its price can move a lot. This is not news. Nor is the fact that unavailable future information will change the price. Nor is volatility.

Now if you disbelieve the efficient market hypothesis, then fine. However any inefficiency that you discover, once it becomes known, will naturally stop working. I've seen this happen with several that I knew about. Over time the efficient market hypothesis tends to work better and better.

<comment><USER17> >It is that the best available information on what the price of the company should be is already integrated into the current company price.

My point is that there hasn't been any news in the last year big enough to warrant a several hundred billion dollar swing. There simply hasn't been. Just changing emotions.

<comment><USER16> There hasn't?

The theory under which Apple justifies an insane valuation is the one where they continue a constant stream of innovation, defining new products, keeping everyone else guessing.

The simple fact that in the last year Apple has not delivered evidence that they can continue to do that should justifiably weaken belief in that theory. Which means that our best estimate of its future returns is far worse than this optimistic scenario. Which means that we should give less weight to that possibility, and therefore our best estimate of Apple's correct price is less than it was.

Because of this where you see evidence that the market is not pricing efficiently, I see evidence that you are not as smart as the market about finding what price signals to pay attention to.

<comment><USER17> >The theory under which Apple justifies an insane valuation...

Let's stop there. They have a PE of 7 ex cash. At the top, they had a PE of about 15. Amazon has an insane valuation. Apple does not, and they didn't at the peak. It was merely higher than it is now.

<comment><USER16> Let's not stop there.

Apple now has declining marketshare in existing business lines, and there is some evidence that they don't know how to generate new profitable product lines. A year ago neither was true, but there were worries about what the lack of Steve Jobs would mean. So their valuation a year ago was high. Their valuation now fits with a company that the market expects to decline.

Amazon by contrast has strong marketshare, increasing numbers of lines of profitable business, and the market understands that they are not generating profit because they keep starting up new potential lines of business that lose money in the short run. They could become very profitable tomorrow if they wanted.

I am not saying that the market's theory about either company is correct. Just that these are theories that are widely held, which justify the stock prices that you claim are simply wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've honestly been surprised by how long the market's dislocation has been on this one. It's not common for a large cap stock that is highly covered by analysts and watched by investors. But the market's fears about Apple are my gain, and has become nearly 75% of my portfolio after tanking for the past ~9 months.

Value investors all saw the opportunity in AAPL, but it's nice to have a media celebrity investor like Icahn act as the catalyst to reach fair value quicker.

<comment><USER18> Wow, 75% of your portfolio in one stock? I am more of a chicken investor: hugely diversified over the US and International markets.

<comment><USER10> Whenever this comes up I share this quote from Seth Klarman:

"Diversification for its own sake is not sensible. This is the index fund mentality: if you can't beat the market, be the market. Advocates of extreme diversification — which I think of as overdiversification — live in fear of company - specific risks; their view is that if no single position is large, losses from unanticipated events cannot be great. My view is that an investor is better off knowing a lot about a few investments than knowing only a little about each of a great many holdings. One's very best ideas are likely to generate higher returns for a given level of risk than one's hundredth or thousandth best idea."

<comment><USER17> While I totally agree, 75% is still pushing it. One might not have a hundred or a thousand good ideas, but 5-10 doesn't seem out of the question. Apple is also my biggest holding, but it is 1 of 10 and only 25%.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Harsh Realities From 500 Startups Founders - <AUTHOR> http://blog.500startups.com/2010/11/04/harsh-realities-from-500-startups-founders/

<comment><USER2> I blinked when I got to this remark: " _...my prior seven figure personal net worth had been reduced to $30,000, which I had stocked away_ in cash _in a safety deposit box._ "

To me the idea of having $3k in cash is unthinkable (retail businesses and other circumstances where there is an _operational_ need for cash excepted, of course), never mind $30k in cash. It brings to mind drug dealers and money laundering.

Is having such large amounts of cash more commonplace in the US, or were other readers similarly startled?

</comment><comment><USER3> This one really made me think:

You Can't Do It All Yourself

 _After getting rejected by Y Combinator in 2008, my soon-to-be co-founders couldn't take on the risk. I decided to do it myself, and ran out of steam (and moral support) after about 12 months and decided to fold._ (Sid Viswanathan, CardMunch)</comment>


How do we read code? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.theincredibleholk.org/blog/2012/12/18/how-do-we-read-code/ <comment><USER2> Program comprehension is a fascinating (and IMHO very enlightening) field.

For anyone curious, I wrote up some of what I learned while exploring the research a few years ago: <http://www.clarityincode.com/readability/> (I apologise for the less than stellar formatting; I haven't updated that page for some time. I also apologise to the actual researchers I cited, if I've dumbed down their work too much in aiming for a non-expert audience.)

For the eye tracking reported here, I wonder whether the early emphasis on the top part was a combination of trying to figure out the data flow in the between() function and then its significance to the wider program.

I think it would be interesting to compare the results with a similar eye track of a program written with more emphasis on data flow rather than control flow, e.g.,

        def between(numbers, low, high):
            return [n for n in numbers if low < n < high]

        def common(list1, list2):
            return [i for i in list1 if i in list2]

        x = [2, 8, 7, 9, -5, 0, 2]
        x_btwn = between(x, 2, 10)
        print x_btwn

        y = [1, -3, 10, 0, 8, 9, 1]
        y_btwn = between(y, -2, 9)
        print y_btwn

        xy_common = common(x, y)
        print xy_common

It might also be interesting to compare the results with a functional programming language that expresses those ideas more concisely and/or with tools like between() and common() as part of the standard library that programmers would probably be familiar with.

Final thought: How much does the absence of a clearly marked starting point (like a main() function in C) affect how a reader approaches unknown code in Python? If this had been a C program, would the reader have aimed straight for main() and then worked down from there to functions like between() and common()?

<comment><USER3> I think it is very important to use code from real-life applications, rather then synthetic examples like that, or like ones presented in the original article.

Otherwise the results of that research would be biased towards comprehension of meaningless chunks of code, rather that of a real thing.

<comment><USER2> I agree, but isn't this the curse of most experimental research in programming techniques?

Ideally, we'd compare like-against-like using industrial scale applications, implemented by professional practitioners, controlling for everything except what we're trying to investigate. Finding opportunities to do that _in practice_ is rather harder, because obviously most real software development projects don't get implemented twice by identical teams making exactly one significant change in their approach.

What I thought was interesting here was that even though it is only a toy program, there were still some patterns to how the reader explored it that might suggest more general trends. As long as we understand the limitations of the experiment and don't overgeneralise any conclusions, isn't some data still better than random conjecture?

<comment><USER3> Yes, but why can't some regular code (from an open sourced project) be used in the experiments? I'm sure there should be a way to do that.

It is just, that this synthetic code is broken. It doesn't read. There is no flow in it. It just looks _from the first glance_ , like a non-interesting, unimportant piece, that doesn't do anything, so there is no point in reading it.

Does that sound convincing enough, that there is a big difference between reading synthetic examples and actual code?

<comment><USER4> Yes, it does. There was a study of how well people could remember positions of chess pieces on a board. The general public did equally badly for both random arrangements and those that could actually appear in a game, but skilled chess players did well remembering arrangements that could appear in a game, but were no better than the general public on random configurations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "One of the things that stood out to me in watching the video was how much my mind seems to work like a computer."

One of the things that stood out to _me_ in watching the video was how much his mind seemed _emphatically not_ to work like a computer at all. His process gave the appearance of a network self-training for a little while, then simultaneously training and producing output. The more times an area of the program was visited, the better the training, and consequently the longer it could be retained. Notice how the results of calculations are "picked up" from the source and "dropped" almost immediately into the output, as though they're heavy and difficult to hold on to!

</comment><comment><USER6> It's awesome to see that people are interested in my research! I've made a blog post with another video and a few more details: <http://synesthesiam.com/?p=218>

</comment><comment><USER7> I'll be very interested in findings on the terseness of code and its effects on readability by experienced coders.

For example, the ternary operator is consider by many to be an elegant solution to simple if statements but from a comprehension (and therefore bug- finding) standpoint, is it superior? Also, how does this effect change as the size of the codebase grows from a single page (as depicted in the video) to a more complex class file.

      value = test ? (some_value * multiple) : false_value

      # vs

      if (test) {
        value = some_value * multiple
      } else {
        value = false_value
      }

<comment><USER8> since you asked for my opinion, i think that ? : syntax is a failure. languages where everything is an expression (usually functional languages) have a much better implementation:

        value = if (test) {some_value * multiple} else {false_value}

<comment><USER9> How is this "much better"? Once you understand the syntax of the ternary operator it's easy to read and easy to use.

<comment><USER3> Actually, it is much worse. Extra symbols certainly contribute to clutter and reduce readability.

More to that, in my opinion, "code flow" in functional languages is completely broken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Language has to be an important factor here. If I re-write this in APL --and you know APL-- reading the solution is pretty linear:

        R ← data BETWEEN limits
        R ← ((data>limits[1])∧(data<limits[2]))/data

        R ← a COMMON b
        R ← (∨/a ∘.= b)/a

        x ← 2 8 7 9 ¯5 0 2
        y ← 1 ¯3 10 0 8 9 1

        x_btwn ← x BETWEEN 2 10
        y_btwn ← y BETWEEN ¯2 9
        xy_common ← x_btwn COMMON y_btwn

If you know APL the above pretty much reads like the palm of your hand.

Since APL is unknown to most, here's a quick explanation.

        R ← data BETWEEN limits

Dyadic function declaration. Takes two arguments.

        R ← ((data>limits[1])∧(data<limits[2]))/data

Let's break this up:

        (data>limits[1])

Takes the "data" vector and compares it to the first element in "limits", which happens to be the "low" limit. You get a binary vector as the result with a "1" anywhere the comparison is true and "0" otherwise.

If "limits" is 2 10:

        0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0

Now:

        (data<limits[2])

Does the same thing with the upper limit:

        1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

Then:

        0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 ∧ 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

Performs a logical AND of the two binary vectors, resulting in a new vector:

        0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0

Finally:

        R ← 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0/data

Selects elements from the "data" vector based on the values in the binary vector and returns the result vector:

        8 7 9

Anyhow, that's why I think that language is important. If I wrote this in Forth the pattern would be very different and the thought process required to understand it more convoluted. Probably true as well for assembly.

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't think eye tracking and do any good, because recognizing of familiar shapes and then mapping them to a familiar constructs and "structures" comes first.

So, reading a code with familiar shape is one thing (that why Lisp has such emphasis on the form of an expression, and Python put that into extreme), while reading long.chains.of.unfamiliar.methods.is.another.)

Then comes recognition of a familiar zones (areas) of an expression, expecting particular kind of sub-expressions here and there. Then match what you have seen with known whole things.

Lets say it is a recursive process of reduction to something already known by examining shapes, forms, and details.

So, shape matters. Small procedures, around ten lines matters. Naming matters, and, especially, using one-letter, non-confusing (no meaning) names for just a placeholders matters.

Let say that this solved in Lambda Calculus (by a naming strategy), and then in Lisp (by shapping strategy) by accident.)

<comment><USER12> I find it rather amusing, given the context, that I spent a long time (more than 30 seconds) trying to figure out the match for your unbalanced parenthesis. I don't think I would have done that if it hadn't been a paragraph about Lisp: I kept going back thinking "Wait, I didn't realize I was in a parenthetical expression... does this change the interpretation of what is being said?".

<comment><USER13> Seconded. Surprising how distracting something so trivial is given recent (unrelated) context. My mind immediately sprang to the conclusion that perhaps this sentence is partially applied - a legacy of an evening spent writing some interesting functional code for treating MIDI as observable sequences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> One of the things I noticed from the Eye Tracking was that this is very similar to how we were trained to work through programming problems in high school level computer science competitions. Some competition problems involve tracing through code and determining output (of usually recursive functions) but the 'proper' method we were taught is almost exactly how he describes his thought process.

</comment><comment><USER15> 100 times more frequently I read code I already read (or wrote) before. It works differently. I page through, scanning the code, noting its "shape" as I go without actually reading any lines.

Once I've found the place the problem might be, I start hand-executing (or eye-executing?) for problems.

Does it really matter much how we read new code? We read many tims faster than we write; re-reading is the norm.

</comment><comment><USER16> Funny, i mentioned this a few days ago. I was going to do some googling on other interesting code quality/dev productivity/language metrics, but, uh, never got around to it.

It seems to me that in the first few passes on-sighting or sight reading code (as climbers and pianists call it), you're looking for easy to comprehend structures, and blocking off difficult to decipher, simultaneously, so maybe a bimodal distributions at work here

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4926313>

</comment><comment><USER17> > In programming language terms, I seem to be doing some kind of just-in-time > compilation

Seems a lot more like abstract interpretation to me ! Would be a lot more logical too :)

</comment><comment><USER18> Would it be possible for you to open source the eye tracking piece of this ? I'm interested in doing this for photographs or paintings ...

<comment><USER19> Eye tracker hardware is tricky and therefore usually expensive, but on the software side there are good tools. I've used VisionEgg[0] with an Eyelink II system and found it quite easy to deal with.

[0] <http://www.visionegg.org/>

<comment><USER3> Not that expensive. For a couple of hundred dollars you can build very nice 60-90fps IR eye tracking system. You'll need IR camera, IR tele lens (very important), couple of IR sources and open source tracking software. See <http://www.gazegroup.org/develop/>

There is also alternative approach. If you are just recording and don't need interactivity - all you need, is a regular camera with zoom and a small tripod. You can record on an SD card and synchronize the stream stream time in post-processing. Just flash the monitor screen couple of times at the start and the end of the recording, and play tracking alignment sequence.

Here's an attempt to do just that: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJqKRL9D2qY>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Great post. Very relevant to this audience and very interesting research may come from it. I look forward to seeing follow ups.

</comment><comment><USER21> "One of the things that stood out to me in watching the video was how much my mind seems to work like a computer."

A more accurate way of thinking about this is: how much the computer works like our mind. Not surprising considering that people build things based on how we understand everything else. Whether it was done consciously or subconsciously.

<comment><USER22> I read somewhere once that we tend to think of our mind in terms of whatever the current most complex technology is. At one point we thought of the brain as a fantastically complicated plumbing system, and later as a telephone switchboard. I wonder if in another decade or so will the idea that our brains work like computers seem as wrong as the idea that they work like plumbing systems.

<comment><USER19> I think that decade is now. Brains work nothing like computers. Well, as much as they do like plumbing systems ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm surprised no one pointed out that the answer given in the video is wrong. The second line should be "10 0 8 1" and the third "8 9 0". The author writes "10 0 9 1" and "9".

Perhaps it's not relevant to the experiment, but it seems worthy of mention at least. Following along, I was second-guessing myself because my answer didn't match...

</comment><comment><USER24> From <http://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/138586> :

 _... that modern languages, such as Scala, offer advantages as human communication mediums. I describe an experiment, using an eye-tracking device, that measures the performance of code comprehension._

</comment><comment><USER25> That code is jarring to my eye because of the variable name, my eye tracking would keep going back to 'winners'.

Why winners? What a bizarre variable name, to me anyway. Does anyone else use that? I always go with `matches`, `retVals` or `returnValues` depending on the language/IDE I'm using.

<comment><USER6> I went back and forth over what to name this variable. I wanted it to convey some meaning (winners are the items that passed or "won" the test), but not give away too much.

Several people have commented on this, however, so I may just change the name to "matches" or something. Thanks for the suggestion :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is very interesting. Have they considered using multiple languages (functional, oo) as well as including 'garbage' languages (brainfuck) to track differences? I'd also be curious to see how it compares to a standard word problem (two trains leaving chicago etc).

<comment><USER6> Here's an interesting paper where they compare their language (Quorum), Perl, and a language with random ASCII tokens: [http://ecs.victoria.ac.nz/twiki/pub/Events/PLATEAU/Program/p...](http://ecs.victoria.ac.nz/twiki/pub/Events/PLATEAU/Program/plateau2011-stefik.pdf)

(Spoiler alert: Perl doesn't fair much better than the random language!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Makes me wonder if future languages will be designed to be read in serial. Perhaps that will decrease the amount of time we need to look at code to understand what it does.

<comment><USER28> I would be interesting to do a similar study on some Factor code.

<comment><USER5> I would expect similar results. Factor and other stack-based languages are not particularly linear, thanks to, well, factoring. Sure, data flow generally runs from left to right and top to bottom, but word and tuple definitions are just as scattered about as in any procedural language.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Interesting how he starts from the components and then rolls up to the main logic, whereas I would start at the main logic then drill down into the routines it uses.

</comment><comment><USER30> This video seems incorrect to me, I read code line by line one at a time most of the time. The video seems to be showing that the eye is jumping all around.

<comment><USER31> Your eyes jump around a lot more than you think they do, no matter what you're looking at. Your brain compensates for the effect somewhat, so it's impossible to notice the full extent of the movement on a conscious level.

Some quick reading on the phenomenon: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccade>

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Didn't this guy get it wrong? I think the answer should be, right ?

8 7 9

1 0 8 1

8</comment>


How to hire an idiot  - <AUTHOR> http://nukemanbill.blogspot.com/2008_07_01_archive.html <comment><USER2> Wow a similar thing happened to a friend of mine in what he calls the "flying dragon" story.

About 5 years ago my friend Bob (not his real name - real name is Andrew) started an entertainment business to do shows like Cirque du Soleil.

He advertised on websites looking for acts. A man came in saying he was an agent that represented a flying dragon. Bob was incredulous. He asked to see the dragon. The agent told him the dragon would only come out for performances.

Bob paid the agent $1000 up front and spent another $3000 on marketing for the dragon's first performance. On the night of the performance, the agent called Bob and told him the dragon was sick but that he could definitely do a better, bigger show the following week.

Bob paid another $1000 but the dragon didn't show up again. Three weeks later the agent told Bob that the dragon died but had already spent the $2000 on his lair.

Bob now says, "Make them show you the dragon," as advice for almost any situation.

<comment><USER3> > _Bob (not his real name - real name is Andrew)_

Uh. What?

<comment><USER4> I've identified this as a form of humor. _Homines sapientes_ react to it like this: Ho! Ho!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The hiring process and possibly placing too much trust in a new employee can be dangerous without the proper due diligence. However I think there is something else that has to do with technical people running their businesses that is worth mentioning.

Being a technical person in sales can be bloody scary, I run a software company and at the beginning I was scared to death about both sales and marketing. So much so that I would avoid it, and only do it when absolutely necessary. Which lead to basically working on whatever came along. Not ideal, and I was basically working for myself, with no real growth.

While working at a co-working space I met a fellow entrepreneur who had a sales and marketing company mainly focused on lead generation and online marketing. I hired his company to help with new messaging for our company. However this engagement quickly turned into sales coaching 101: how to build a sales funnel, effective proposal writing, understanding buying signals, targeting ideal customers, the whole works.

The whole time we worked through this process I was learning and understanding, and becoming less and less scared. One of the books that he recommended to me was 'Customer Centric Selling', it's a good read and I think is ideally suited to technical folks finding themselves in sales roles. It talks about sales as a process, and not a "who you know" connections mystical black box. you know.. Like the VP of the 100 million dollar company wanted to do. Connections always help, but the process is there to make sure that the optimism that the sales people will undoubtedly assign to each deal can be measured and verified. I find you don't get into these situations where a sales person feeds you a loaded forecast with nothing to back it up.

As the founder you need to know what works for your business, and don't hire a sales person hoping they will have magical powers and be instantly able to sell your product/service. Learn and create the process yourself, then hire a sales person and have them execute and refine your process. You know your business best. Others can help, but at the end of the day it's on you!

</comment><comment><USER6> There is an art to checking references. Even if a company has a policy of giving bare minimum information, find out a TELEPHONE NUMBER of someone in that company who knows your candidate and start a conversation. I was given a specific script of questions to ask back in the 1990s when I was a community volunteer for my local public school district, doing reference checks on superintendent candidates. A consultant advised the school district (and through the district, me) on how to do this. If you talk to someone directly by voice, and have a good list of specific questions to ask about the candidate, you will be AMAZED at what people say, policy or no policy. Company policies don't keep people from sharing stories with curious listeners. The key is to learn what questions are legal to ask and reveal the most interesting stories about the person you are thinking of hiring. There are consultants who can advise you about checking references, and, as several comments here say, they are a lot less expensive than making a wrong hiring decision, and once you've learned the questions, you know what to ask.

I've just asked my consultant Google, and he suggests several sets of useful questions to ask when checking references:

[http://hiring.monster.com/hr/hr-best-practices/recruiting- hi...](http://hiring.monster.com/hr/hr-best-practices/recruiting-hiring- advice/job-screening-techniques/reference-checking-questions.aspx)

<http://www.drgnyc.com/list_serve/Jan24_2005.htm>

[http://www.acadweb.wwu.edu/hr/Employment/InfoForHiringOffici...](http://www.acadweb.wwu.edu/hr/Employment/InfoForHiringOfficials/HiringPersonnel/Exempt/TelephoneReferenceChecks.pdf)

[http://www.best-job-interview.com/reference-check- questions....](http://www.best-job-interview.com/reference-check- questions.html)

<http://www.k-state.edu/hr/employment/referencecheck.htm>

[http://pbsbo.ucsc.edu/personnel_payroll/staff/recruit/ref_ch...](http://pbsbo.ucsc.edu/personnel_payroll/staff/recruit/ref_check.html)

[http://www.bridgestar.org/Library/HiringToolkit/ReferenceChe...](http://www.bridgestar.org/Library/HiringToolkit/ReferenceCheck.aspx)

[http://jobsearch.about.com/od/referencesrecommendations/a/re...](http://jobsearch.about.com/od/referencesrecommendations/a/refercheck.htm)

<comment><USER7> Also, our own Peroni (IIRC) mentioned that "is $candidate eligible for rehire by your organization" will be answered by nearly all employers. And it's quite useful.

[I have no personal experience, just passing this along.]

<comment><USER8> I would be careful with that question. I worked at one company where they were very much against re-hiring anyone that left based on where they went/were going.

Another factor is personal differences can lead to that same false positives (negatives?) about that person.

I guess I'm simply trying to say: that question is not always answered based on work ethic or product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Comments from a previous time this was posted (three years ago): <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=263599>

"How do you find a good salesperson?": <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=264282>

<comment><USER10> Thank you. After the 4th paragraph I was hit by deja vu. Had to scroll to the top to check if it was stolen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The more important lesson to learn is that if you're confident, likable, and remember people's names you can be VP of a $100 million dollar company. Now if you're competent as well, imagine how far you could go...

<comment><USER12> Reminds me of this guy:

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

At a company in SF we interviewed him and I can only imagine what would have happened if he was hired. Luckily everyone who talked to him thought he was nuts. Cramer talks about him in his book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think you can still do this: "-- Hire people smarter than myself, who get things done! \-- Trust them to do their job, let them do their job and give them enough resources to do it! \-- Pay them WELL and offer great benefits! Work at home! Sure, why not? \-- Give people second chances! Don't throw out resumes because of lack of buzzwords! Or disjointed writing! Or lack of education! It's all about Smart People who Get Things Done, not interviews or resumes or formalities! Have an open mind!"

You just need a way to check if they can get things done, like looking at past apps they've coded. Nothing like that was done here. Really, if he _just_ did an interview, one thing from that list of things he didn't want to do, this probably wouldn't have happened.

<comment><USER14> The problem is that he took "VP of a $100M company" to be stuff having been done and other people thinking the ex-VP was smart. He never verified it though. He took a secondary indicator of ability to make a sale (VP status) and used it to infer a bunch of primary indicators (stuff done, intelligence, actual ability to close a sale) without actually checking any of that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> So he was a highschool dropout. How do you not notice something like that on a resume?

College degrees are _always_ listed on resumes, and while they aren't that important in most cases, it should at least be brought up as an interview conversation point if it's missing entirely (and from there, launch into a discussion of how a person gained their skills, which would have completely unveiled this guy).

<comment><USER16> The point was he didn't have a resume nor did he do any background checks because he was obsessed with the fact that this guy must be good because he was a former vp of a $100m company.

<comment><USER17> VP of sales is the worst proxy for start-up skills you can think of. Firstly, a salesman in a big company might be good at reading off a script, or writing a highly polished script for worker bees to read off; but they aren't necessarily a good all-rounder. Second, it's common practice to give a VP position to _anyone_ who asks for it, because it helps them convince customers that they are a mover and shaker in the company:

"Look, I'll ask the engineers to put it in the next patch." ... "Well, I'm a VP - they should listen."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The moral of this story, which virtually every startup founder in the history of the universe has heard or told a variant of, is:

CHECK. REFERENCES.

<comment><USER19> Further, "check references" needs to be deeper than just asking if the guy actually worked there. Ask about his role and responsibilities. Ask how he helped the company's bottom line. Ask real questions.

<comment><USER20> The problem is a lot of places will not make any further comment beyond confirming the employee worked there and perhaps the circumstances of their departure (resignation/laid off/fired). This is often for legal reasons.

<comment><USER21> I've posted about this before, but I wanted to again bring it up as a note of caution for people who might be looking for work.

My present employer (who I've finally decided to try and make my former) has a policy forbidding any employee from serving as a reference to any former employee. They are literally not allowed to comment in any way, but are told to forward all inquiries to a phone number which will verify employment (a number that no one actually seems to know).

Ostensibly, this is to protect the corporation from potential lawsuits; but it has a chilling effect on employees who are looking to leave.

So I'd warn anyone to be careful about working at a place like this, as it can make leaving much more difficult. A policy like this isn't something you'd generally think to ask about while interviewing, so I don't know how you'd find out about it ahead of time, but it's probably worth asking about.

I've had companies ask me if I could violate the policy and provide them references anyway, which I'm not a big fan of. As anti-employee as I consider the policy, I think it's important to follow the stuff you've agreed to (and I'm not sure what it says about a company who is that willing to have you violate the policies at your existing company).

<comment><USER18> I understand how the company arrived at it, but that's a horrible, damaging rule.

<comment><USER21> As I've now been discovering lately. I don't think it's very common (I haven't heard of any other companies that do it, for instance), but I'd really hate for other people to wind up in the same situation.

<comment><USER22> Ericsson has this policy as well

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The lesson here is to never rely on someone else's hiring process to do your screening. Big Corps VP can easily become your douchebag if you aren't on the ball.

This is a great startup story - I think the original poster got off easy. For the price of some pens, a dinner and a whole bunch of wasted time (and perhaps a small hit on credibility) the truth was found. I've seen situations much, much worse.

This is _exactly_ why hiring is described as the most important thing a manager/executive/founder can do.

</comment><comment><USER24> Everyone pay attention, this seems to be one of those lessons everyone learns the hard way.

I'd made a similar mistakes with my first hire. Basically I hired the first guy who said he was awesome at php. Great I said. Do this, this and this. You can do some work from home, set your own hours at the office etc. He stopped coming into the office to work from home instead. I was so over capacity that i didn't check on his work for about 2 months (fool is me). When I finally did I discovered a horrible horrible mess. The app was completely useless and the 'awesome php dude' was completely incompetent. Lessons learned:

1\. Do your own investigation into a potential hire to see if they are actually capable.

2\. Watch new hires carefully

3\. It costs more to fix hiring mistakes than to prevent them from happening.

Actually my second hire was pretty shit too. This time I made sure the dude was technically competent but he didn't fit the company culture I wanted. I don't like egos or office politics.

After those few bad mistakes my subsequent hires were great.

<comment><USER25> I'll second the "watch new hires carefully".

You can save yourself a lot of problems if you just keep an eye on your new people for the first month. Obviously you don't need to be overbearing, but at the end of that first month you should do a detailed work evaluation (code review if a programmer). If the employee shows signs of producing crap in their first month, get rid of her/him then. Do not wait unless there is a really, really good reason to.

<comment><USER26> Yep, I have been very surprised in recent weeks at how bold people will be in their lies about their professional capabilities and/or history.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The author, Bill, answered questions about this on Joel on Software:

[http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.665091.3...](http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.665091.31)

Key comment:

 _"[..] when you're in your spare bedroom alone slaving away for 5-6 years, then someone comes along with deep connections to the industry (proven from asking around), who everybody in the niche knows, and who was 'part of a team' responsible for booking $100 million in sales in a single year... it is easy to not go through all that due dilligence and just accept someone like that at face value."_

</comment><comment><USER28> Titles are bullshit. At some companies almost every salesperson is a VP of Sales, Western Antarctica (or whatever) -- it's a free way to make customers feel important.

<comment><USER29> Likewise, I've been cold-called or cold-emailed by many a "senior recruiter", but never a "junior recruiter" or even simply a "recruiter".

<comment><USER30> Job-title inflation is real. A decade or two ago, titles were more modest.

<comment><USER31> Everyone at staff level in financial sector has been a VP since as long as I have known the financial sector existed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The reason you get head nods when you relate this experience, in my opinion, is that versions of this sort of thing are all too common when hiring sales people. Sorry to be biased, but I'll go as far as saying that there's a certain separate species in the sales world. By now I recognize a lot of the signs, but it cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars and a lot of lost business to get there. Just ask fellow entrepreneurs "What's the secret to hiring a sales person?" and watch as the first reaction is eyes rolling.

If business where easy everyone would be doing it. Don't give up, you'll figure it out.

<comment><USER18> EVERYBODY HAS THIS PROBLEM HIRING DIRECT ENTERPRISE SALES PEOPLE.

 _Everyone_.

It's hard to hire good direct sales people into a new sales organization for the same reason that it's hard to find an effective SEO consultant on the open market: the people that have this skill can make it rain money and are not looking for jobs. So you can safely assume that almost everyone you're talking to for your first sales hire is a product of adverse selection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Unfortunately I have encountered those "sales" people quite a few time during my long career (in financial industry.) They sell themselves very well, they're very good at with people, they make a lot of jokes, laugh a lot, they use their own families (dinner parties etc.) for getting closer to people and, dresses very very well for all occasions. They play politics in the office very well as well. When it comes to deliver something, you always see delays, they quickly offload responsibility to those who can actually do it (and they are very good with them as well). They suck up, but when it comes down to it, they kick down hard especially those who helped them in the past. They all disliked me, since I was very blunt to them. It is easy to detect them, since if he is really someone to deliver he will do it very soon, otherwise they play endless delay tactics.

</comment><comment><USER34> A founder should not be delegating sales to a hire, and if you have multiple cofounders, it is moronic to have only one of them aware of sales (with 3 people, you could maybe get away with 2 people knowing about most of the clients, or a different subset of 2 for each client, but even then).

</comment><comment><USER35> As a hiring manager, I always try to either (a) hire 90 day contract to full- time; or (b) hire under a 90-day trial or probationary period. At the end of the period I ask myself if I would still hire that person. If my instinct is "no", I trust my instinct. It's good for morale when everyone knows that the 90 days is a meaningful evaluation period.

As a job-seeker, I always make sure that I contact my references and give them a heads-up that the call is coming in, along with a copy of the resume I submitted for the job and the job posting. It's out of courtesy to the person I'm asking to provide me with a reference.

</comment><comment><USER36> Excellent post. Mirrors my own experience a lot. How many life-savings and great business ideas have been burnt beyond repair by doofus business losers only god can imagine.

</comment><comment><USER37> What I'm taking away from this is that it really is important to check up on the background and specific accomplishments of new hires, regardless of prior accolade or title.

</comment><comment><USER38> This is exactly what happened to me with Etude and why I ended up selling when I did.

</comment><comment><USER39> Have you met Frank? <http://businessofsoftware.org/video_10_pkenny.aspx>

</comment><comment><USER40> Maybe the rule is "don't be embarrassed about asking questions when your business/reputation is on the line." Kind of easy to get starstruck, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER41> I don't think anyone gets it right the first time. My first two "hires" were horrific. I ended up learning from the experience and better shaping what I wanted, what I needed to do differently, etc.

Most recent hire has been a much better fit into that mould, but still not perfect. HR isn't at all my specialty, and I know it will be years before I perfect it.

Glad to hear that the company recovered - one of mine didn't.

</comment><comment><USER42> It's a shame OP had to learn the hard way given that he stated he was not going to buy into resume hype and ended up doing so anyways albeit in a less formal fashion.

While stories like this would any employer cringe, the very opposite scenario occurs as well. I've personally been part of the receiving and giving end of that type of scenario.

</comment><comment><USER43> It's funny how the boss actually was the idiot for buying that guy. Even his goals in the beginning were stupid. I can only learn from this article that my goals are probably shit, too. At least as long as I don't have some experience as people manager.

</comment><comment><USER44> Number one rule of hiring: take up references

<comment><USER34> I'm curious how people feel about (criminal, credit) background checks. Our lawyers suggested that both those and drug tests are sometimes done, but might not be appropriate in silicon valley. We're pretty anti drug-tests, but especially for an infosec company or someone with access to sensitive customer data, running at least a criminal check and possibly credit check makes sense. I wouldn't say having previous convictions necessarily excludes someone, but refusing to disclose and being unable to explain something is probably a big problem.

<comment><USER45> I've turned down job offers over required background checks, for a variety of reasons. I could see how they would be appropriate if someone were involved in handling money or deals or some such, but for a plain dev, it's silly.

I'd _consider_ just a plain criminal background check, but for the rest of it, my credit is none of anybody's damn business. The demand to call all my previous employers and verify salaries is similarly horseshit -- my previous salaries don't matter a damn, all that matters is our agreement on what an employer is going to pay me. The weird thing is companies get indignant if you turn them down for this reason, and pissy when you characterize the demand for such a check as a lack of trust. Particularly since my previous 3 bosses are references. While I suppose someone could fake references, it's hard to do with linkedin, especially since someone doing a reference call to an arbitrary phone number could just ask for a verification email from corporate email.

<comment><USER34> I think the purpose with credit checks is to catch "irresponsible behavior", like a huge mountain of credit card debt, because it could make someone willing to steal.

It never really made a whole lot of sense to me, since most people in the tech industry in debt got that way through a failed startup, or maybe a divorce, or medical expenses, or something like that; none of which makes you a less good candidate. Maybe a lot of charge-offs would be an issue for a CFO.

My general philosophy on references is they only really count if they're strong mutually known parties; a random manager at IBM vouching for someone is pretty meaningless to me. The first circle is founders' personal contacts, then people introduced by their contacts, and people who are introduced by people known to early employees. That scales pretty far if you're hiring in a specific domain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> People like this who know a lot of folks and who get along and are likeable can be a huge asset. You may not want them selling for you, but you certainly want them to mingle, talk to potential clients and take them to dinner, etc.

They aren't _idiots_ , they are very valuable employees when used appropriately. He would make an excellent client relations manager.

</comment><comment><USER47> Alternative title: How to hire like an idiot

</comment><comment><USER48> No time for any of them - called out the sales director for being a bullshitter and amazingly kept my job for several years. Sold nothing, was like watching a galaxy imploding into a black hole. Stayed for the entertainment. Was well worth it.

</comment><comment><USER49> Dude was a psychopath. I've been tricked by them before, cost me at least $20k. They lie. Straight to your face. They are often terrible at spelling, grammar, and just general "this document should look right" skills.

<comment><USER50> Does that mean he was also faking his regret when he finally got "caught" so he could get off scot-free?

<comment><USER51> Of course he was.

The whole story about how he was into drugs and crime and turned his life around and worked his way up from the bottom, maybe that happened and maybe it didn't- but the story about how he's just a simple mook from Circumstances was calculated to gain sympathy and shift the blame away from himself.

>Well, at least he was honest. He wasn't trying to deceive me, and he really thought he could do it, he explained. No hard feelings.

And it worked!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> This is one if the things that could happen when you try to compensate for a cofounder with an employee/contractor.

</comment><comment><USER53> "business executives are sometimes just full of shit!"

not just business executives.

</comment><comment><USER54> "Every time I relate this experience, I get a lot of head nods."

o.O is what you get from me. Is everyone you relate this story to you a half- wit? Quite simply, who hires without adequate research? (apparently many more people than I realized)

</comment><comment><USER55> Anyone who will work for free may not be worth the price.

</comment><comment><USER56> I think I've worked with that guy before...

</comment><comment><USER57> Anyone know who this is, or his company?

</comment><comment><USER58> He should of at least Googled the guy!

</comment><comment><USER59> As an idiot I take offence

</comment><comment><USER60> The author fails to mention how much his own greed played into this.

</comment><comment><USER61> I cringed every time this came up in every paragraph.

But... he was the VP of a $100 million company, after all!

</comment><comment><USER62> The Bozo Explosion, and how to prevent it: [http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/02/how_to_prevent_.html#axz...](http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/02/how_to_prevent_.html#axzz1bgeuuSk4)

</comment><comment><USER63> "Sadly, I could have found out all of that by simply asking him before offering him the deal."

Wow. Really?</comment>


Graphene transistors could mean computers that are 1,000 times faster - <AUTHOR> http://www.futuretimeline.net/blog/2017/06/20.htm <comment><AUTHOR> Would carbon-based make computer more like Human?</comment>