Much of what investment bankers do is socially worthless (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/11/29/101129fa_fact_cassidy?currentPage=all <comment><USER3> I find the whole banking world to be fascinating, much in the same way that I find the topic of cancer to be fascinating. Both are extremely complex and yet fundamentally simple. Don't get me wrong, I'd much rather have a bank than have cancer, I'm just saying that I love learning about how these complex systems work, how they work with (and against) other systems, and so forth.

In the case of international finance, I think it's really cool how an institution can help another institution raise capital, move debt, and mitigate losses. Like any system that involves independent actors, banking can (and usually is) diseased by those who are able (both intellectually and financially) to game it for their own gain and to the detriment of the system as a whole.

Banking, it seems, is almost aware of how self-destructive it is. These entities take on complex risks that the smartest people in the world can barely understand and they hope that everything will "just work" or, when things don't work, they rely on their overall value to the system - we can't let banks fail.

Still, I don't think all bankers are socially worthless. They help to create confidence in the banking system and in finance in general. It's only the "bad" bankers that are worthless, and even then they are only worthless to those who stand to lose if they fail.

<comment><USER4> Banks can do whatever they want. It's the Bail-Out part that bothers me. But the Bail-In (The Cyprus Template' where the saver's money is confiscated) that's even more scarier. Check out this Bloomberg chart: [http://imgur.com/mjkOn1W](http://imgur.com/mjkOn1W) If I understand correcly my savings are noted as 'an investment in the bank'. Nice...

<comment><USER5> So student loans can't be written off, but savings accounts can? Weird world we live in...

<comment><USER4> Ah yes, the student-loans. Incredible world indeed. Personal debt that enslaves people for live is okay, but writing off big bets by big banks (or entire countries!) is no problem. On a side note: the more a student can borrow, the more the cost of education rises... This is made possible by governement as well as banks by the way. I feel Iceland did it right: let the banks go bust and even write off personal debt of people's morgage.

<comment><USER6> >> the more a student can borrow, the more the cost of education rises...

Yeah, it's like house prices. Houses inflate to whatever people can afford. So when the price of houses goes out of reach of a lot of people (like here in the UK) the _obvious_ solution is for the government to demand people get easier access to debt, and to start pumping public money into the housing market. Because that totally won't just inflate the prices further...

<comment><USER4> Oh yeah, it's the same thing overhere. I used to love watching the BBC's program where people "flipped" houses. Nowadays the reruns come with a official warning, ha ha!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article seems to be making quite a few implicit assumptions that should be made more explicit:

 _Meanwhile, big banks also utilize many kinds of trading that aren't in the service of their traditional clients. One is proprietary trading...There's no social defense for this practice..._

Implicit assumption: speculation is socially worthless.

 _"You mean to tell me your work as a [fill in the blank here] is worth more to society than a firefighter? An elementary school teacher?..."_

Implicit assumption: pay is or should be proportional to gross utility rather than marginal utility.

Apart from this it's typical economist claptrap - thousands of words, no real point. Why is it here?

<comment><USER8> _Implicit assumption: speculation is socially worthless._

And a further assumption that jobs that are deemed "socially worthless" ought not to be done, or ought to be prohibited. In which case professional poker is on the chopping block, or professional athletics is banned because it is deemed to have less "social value" than its compensation level.

 _Implicit assumption: pay is or should be proportional to gross utility rather than marginal utility._

Or that pay needs to be determined by some official, 'blessed', committee of professional economists who publish a list every year of salaries, based on how much social and economic value is provided by each field of work.

(Sounds kind of Soviet, actually.)

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure the argument is that jobs which are not useful should be prohibited, but perhaps it is interesting to try and figure out what it is about our current system that disproportionately rewards the people that juggle with money over and above (for instance) people that teach our children.

I'm not arguing for a centrally defined salary committee, but surely you have to wonder if there is a better way?

<comment><USER7> _try and figure out what it is about our current system that disproportionately rewards the people that juggle with money over and above (for instance) people that teach our children._

This has been well studied. The answer is that compensation is proportional to _marginal_ productivity rather than mean productivity.

I.e., consider a very important profession, say superhero. Having one superhero to stop the Joker is worth $1M. Having two superheros is worth $1.1M - Batman is sufficient to stop the very dangerous Joker, but two superheros can stop both the Joker and the far less dangerous Harleyquinn. The _marginal_ productivity of an extra superhero is $100k even if the _mean_ productivity is $550k. As a result, superheros get paid $100k because if any superhero quits, society loses only $100k rather than $550k.

An extra banker produces a lot of value. An extra teacher produces very little. Hence, teacher pay is lower than banker pay.

(As a proponent of the signalling theory of education, I'd also argue that the value of a lot of education is actually negative.)

<comment><USER9> > An extra banker produces a lot of value.

For some value of "value".

(Also, the example of two superheros isn't a good one - they will probably collude and get something much closer to their full value)

<comment><USER10> In context, value for the bank paying the banker.

It's also the case that marginal arguments are very clear when the examples use small numbers. It has the side effect of making them sound silly. But I guess there are not 2 of very many real professions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm afraid if we will start measuring people by their "social worthiness" we'd very quickly arrive to conclusions which most readers of the New Yorker would be very reluctant to support. At least I hope they would.

<comment><USER12> Will we also get to these horrible terrible conclusions if we start measuring _jobs_ by their social worthiness?

<comment><USER11> Probably. If you want to be a history scholar but the society decides it'd be better off if you dug trenches or picked apples - would that be horrible terrible for you or just fine?

<comment><USER12> It would be horrible terrible if society ordered me to go dig trenches, yeah. But if society merely stopped paying me 500K a year to be a history scholar, I think that might be acceptable. That is, if being a history scholar were as worthless to society as the things investment bankers allegedly do.

<comment><USER11> Society does not pay any banker 500K. Their clients and employers might. If you want to prevent it because you think it's bad for the society - it is the same idea as sending you to dig trenches because society thinks it's better for you to be this way. If the society can remove the banker from his job - <USER2> can remove you from yours.

<comment><USER13> Actually, it's the other way around: investment bankers conned society into giving them cushy jobs. When you look at the bulk of those accounts, what so you see? Pension funds. How much control do average people have over their pension funds? Almost none, because there are all kinds of rules and regulations "to protect the public" \-- except that they don't, so the cycles of haphazard investment and bailouts repeat themselves.

<comment><USER11> >>> because there are all kinds of rules and regulations "to protect the public"

So what you need to fix this? Of course, more rules and regulations. Because there's no problem with rules and regulations that can not be fixed by more rules and regulations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Most criticisms of banking as a whole are largely about the moral hazard issues. Seeking out and creating lopsided risk that can be partially offloaded onto the public while the rewards to those risks can be captured by the bank.

There is a fantastic web series called the " _Gervais Principle: The Office According to The Office._ (1)" The central thesis is that organizations have three types of employees: Sociopaths at the top. Clueless in the middle. Losers on the bottom. The defining characteristic of the Sociopaths elite is ' _the basic heads-I-win-tails-you-lose pattern behind all Sociopath machinations._ '

Strangely, this fun piece changed how I look at moral hazard. Before, I thought of it mostly as an inevitable consequence of badly designed systems. Similar to employee reward schemes that employees learn to manipulate in a way that is detrimental to the business or cobra bounties intended to reduce the number of snakes in a city leading to backyard cobra farms. I thought it was less of a problem in emergent, evolved human systems. After reading this piece, I think of it differently. It's a human psychology thing. Human systems have assumptions about fair play built into them. Psychologically perverse human (sociopaths) can take advantage of these assumptions.

I knew a guy from Uni. He was doing a Research Masters, badly. He failed. Resubmitted. Appealed. Rewrote. Appealed, and eventually got a pass. He wasn't really smart enough and he never understood the subject. But, universities (especially graduate programs) don't really fail students. Students drop out, especially the ones who struggle. Persistence can substitute for smarts and he walked away with Masters from a top uni. I later learned that he got into the Uni in the fist place with some hack. He applied to a second tier uni, and used some clever clauses to transfer to the better one without having to go through the front door admissions process.

We then proceeded to hound every big name in the field for references. None of them wanted to read this pile of crap but again persistence can substitute for quality and he eventually got some nice references and quotes. He used these along with a professionally written resume and application letters ($450) to land a sought after graduate job. Big government body that takes at least 12 months to fire someone. Excellent entry into the world of public policy research. Before that happened, he had found a recruiter who specializes in these guys. He moves jobs every 6-12 months which means a recurring bounty for the recruiter and a raise for the sociopath. On getting a job they immediately started planning for the next one, like a heist. He was so confident. It took a remarkably long time for bosses & coworkers to figure out exactly how completely useless he was. These people are rare. The systems assume they don't exist and sociopaths take advantage of that weakness.

Around the same time I was hearing the story of a largish company (~$0.5b) bought by a hedge fund and placed in the hands of an 'A-Player' team of senior executives. I knew a manager and long term (20yrs) employee there who narrated the story for me over a couple of years. Outsiders to the company and industry, making salaries an order of magnitude higher than the previous executive team. They proceeded to ruin the company. But, they managed to conceal a lot of that. Milking or liquidating assets. SUing something like a leveraged buyout to raise massive funds to acquire companies. The owners eventually figured it out. The abysmal CEO and his team of executives were paid to leave and every one landed a CEO/COO job at an even bigger company. If they had happened on a win, I'm sure they would have done even better.

After reading 'The Gervais Principle' I saw a bunch of examples of these 'sociopathic machinations' that are much more available to the average person. Just about any mid level manager at any company can take big risks. Draw up massive plans for expensive expansions. Pitch advertising campaigns. Offer to take on impossible product development. Propose to open a new office in another country. Promise huge benefits and demand huge resources. Say you are 100% sure it will work. You might get what you ask for. If you get it, it starts. If you don't, whats the worst that can happen? Maybe your proposals get shot down by a sane senior. That might hurt your status marginally. No big deal. You're more likely to walk away with a small win for initiative. If you get the resources and proceed to balls up your project, you can always quit. If you are in a position to find a similar job, thats not a big loss. If you hit the eject button at the appropriate time and still walk away with a win. You can time it so you are negotiating to be poached while running this doomed program. If it all works out, you are the author of a coup.

A normal company is not resilient to this type of attack because its pretty rare and it's not usually identified if it does happen. Companies are based on an assumption that people aren't like that. The normal deal is that the company takes on the relatively small risk of employees being unproductive. In exchange they take all the upside. A sociopath flips it, taking on massive risk the company is on the hook for and capture some of the rewards. They're own risk is capped at a pretty low level so the more reward the better, regardless of risk. In an extreme case they might lose their job and take a reputation hit, but most likely they'll just leave and get a higher salary elsewhere. It's like taking money out of a company account to the casino. If you double it, you keep the profit. The moral hazard is always there. Most people just aren't corrupted by it.

Moral hazard is the right word for this. Morality is what prevents it in normal circumstances. Sociopath is a bad word for it, because it implies some sort of born pathology. That probably exists, but more often it is a learned behavior. Human morality is absorbed from the environment. If you get a bunch of these sociopaths together, they will rub off on other people. That's how sociopaths breed. It's like a cancerous meme.

I don't have suggestions for dealing with it.

(1) [http://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais- principle/](http://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/)

<comment><USER15> Found this quote on HN a while back:

I divide my officers into four groups. There are clever, diligent, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and diligent -- their place is the General Staff. The next lot are stupid and lazy -- they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the intellectual clarity and the composure necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is stupid and diligent -- he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always cause only mischief.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein- Equord](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein-Equord)

<comment><USER16> A similar quote is commonly (mis?)attributed to Rommel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Money follows profits in the same way that water follows gravity - it flows into every nook and cranny it can find. The rules and regulations governing financial services are like the tanks and pipes through which water flows. If there's a (loop)hole, it will find it and drip through. If the rules that govern money are too weak, they will be eroded, in the same way that flowing water erodes a riverbank.

Loopholes will always be exploited. If a financial institution decides not to exploit a potentially profitable opportunity, someone else will (and reap the rewards). After a while, your shareholders are going to be asking pointed questions about why your competitors are more profitable. Eventually, you're likely to be fired and replaced, or your company will be acquired by one of your more profitable competitors. Thus, in a Darwinistic fashion, those who exploit the loopholes prosper, while those to stand on their principles are eclipsed and, ultimately, perish.

Risk and reward are inextricably linked. You can't have one without the other. So, wherever you have the potential for profit (i.e. reward), you have the risk of failure. The fact that some banks were allowed to become too big to fail is a regulatory failure, and the regulators get their marching orders from Congress, which is elected by the People.

It's also worth bearing in mind that the US government looks set to make a handsome profit on its "bail-outs" (many of which were actually investments into, or loans to companies, which have yielded dividend or interest returns): [http://projects.propublica.org/bailout/](http://projects.propublica.org/bailout/)

<comment><USER18> "Don't hate the player, hate the game."

<comment><USER19> Why not both?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Ever tried writing an NSF grant? The people who take 50% of the grant to help you write a quality proposal also do something that is completely socially worthless and in fact halves how much taxpayer money ultimately makes it back into society. And no, that's not a form of "job creation" since it brings no utility to society.

<comment><USER7> Or for that matter, ever tried teaching a class? The people who consume your services generally forget nearly everything a few months after the final, yet still earn a hefty premium over their peers who did not take sufficiently many college classes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> A lot of technology and software companies are also socially worthless. What a load of drivel.

<comment><USER22> Arguably socially counterproductive. Smartphones are nice, but so was near- full-employment in the 50s and 60s.

<comment><USER8> Why is that an either-or thing?

<comment><USER23> Not smartphones themselves, but the technology which enables smartphones also enables automation of lots of jobs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Fortunately for investment bankers, much of what they do is not commercially worthless.

Perhaps that's unfortunate depending on one's point of view and/or political leanings but that's how the free market works.

<comment><USER25> _...but that 's how the free market works._

It genuinely baffles me that people might think of something's being socially worthless, but commercially valuable as a _feature_.

<comment><USER24> I guess you attach some positive connotation to the word "feature"? e.g. Apple products have a lot of features that I find stupid, but that doesn't mean they're not features.

Socially worthless or not, that's how the world works. I'm not trying to be a corporate cheerleader. It is what it is.

<comment><USER26> We, as a polity, control the rules of the system in which all this stuff happens. If the system we've built exhibits behaviors that we find undesirable, then we can change the rules.

For example, pollution is an activity which is often commercially valuable (in that polluting can help a factory produce a given product without paying the costs of mitigating the pollution). But it's socially undesirable, and we restrict it. We don't just throw up our hands and say, "well, it's commercially valuable, that's how the free market works, I guess we just have to breathe brown air".

<comment><USER11> No we do not control the rules. Quoting Antoine de Saint-Exupéry:

"If I ordered a general to fly from one flower to another like a butterfly, or to write a tragic drama, or to change himself into a sea bird, and if the general did not carry out the order that he had received, which one of us would be in the wrong?" the king demanded. "The general, or myself?"

You can not just wish any rules and laws of human or physical nature. You can tell people to fly like butterflies, but when they do not, your anger at them would be misdirected. If you try to act as if there are no rules except ones you invent, you, not unlike many socialists that imagine they can ignore the laws of nature, are in for a lot of unpleasant surprises. You can blame the evil capitalists - just like Venezuelan government, having mismanaged the country for years to the point they have now shortage of toilet paper (why is it always the toilet paper? that basic thing has some very bad luck with socialists) now blames the capitalists and hidden enemies. But that won't do you any good, as it doesn't do any good for them. Until you recognize the rules of the system is not purely under your control, you won't get very far.

<comment><USER27> So the economy, as it is currently constituted, is the one, single way in which things could be arranged and if they were arranged in any other fashion the whole society would implode and we'd run out of toilet paper? Is that your contention?

Because if it isn't, then you have to admit that we _can_ make _some_ changes to the system. Reasonable people might disagree as to the type and extent of changes that would "work", but they would all agree that _some sort of changes_ would improve things. In other words, there are things the general could be ordered to do that would not be absurd or impossible for a general to accomplish, like marching around in shiny shoes, or invading another country.

Quoting a French dude doesn't make your argument better, it just helps illustrate how little you thought about your words before hitting "reply".

<comment><USER11> >>> Is that your contention?

No, it's not. Repeating for those who TLDR the pervious comment: you can not just invent any rules you like. There exist rules that are there regardless of your desires. I hope you see the difference between this and "is the one, single way in which things could be arranged".

>>> we can make some changes to the system

Of course we can. We just need to understand we can not make _any_ changes but just _some_ and in _certain ways_ , and those _some_ changes have to be done right. People can fly. You just need to follow certain rules and do certain tricks. If you try to fly without following those rules, you may die or be badly hurt. So may a society if it tries to make changes without following the rules.

>>> Quoting a French dude doesn't make your argument better,

I would advise you to familiarize yourself with who the "French dude" is. That would make your life richer and your understanding of the world fuller. It would also hopefully make you understand why I quoted him.

<comment><USER27> The comment to which you responded never said we can make up any arbitrary rules we like, just that we can change the rules if they aren't to our liking...

> We, as a polity, control the rules of the system in > which all this stuff > happens. If the system we've > built exhibits behaviors that we find > undesirable, > then we can change the rules.

Your comment, as you have explained it, is therefore completely pointless. You were arguing with a straw man more or less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Why make the implicit assumption that investment banking is at most socially worthless? The scale doesn't end at 0 here. When evaluating the utility of things (could also be technology) than the cumulative effect can be negative as well.

</comment><comment><USER6> Of course it's worthless. They're effectively a parasite class, they exist to direct money to themselves under the guise of directing it where it's needed. They are so far removed from any/all productive work that the whole thing's laughable.

<comment><USER29> You don't know much about the finance industry I take it?

<comment><USER6> Depends if by "know much about" you mean "love unquestioningly".

In which case no, I don't "know much about" the finance industry.

<comment><USER29> Parasite class lends me to believe you think the finance industry holds no value whatsoever.

If you're ever in the position to run a large corporation and need to raise money publicly, you're free to sidestep the banks and do it yourself. You'll probably get a sense of the value they offer at that point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> most of the things which most people do are socially worthless.

<comment><USER31> You should surround yourself with different people.

<comment><USER30> and here I was thinking I was the bitter cynic :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Still more worthy than freemium games.

</comment><comment><USER33> The article is a long-winded piece of piffle that says nothing in particular. I would say it was even planted by the banks themselves. After all it easy to use soft criticisms to divert attention from the harsher ones that will receive more attention in the absence of such mild diversionary ones.

Readers don't understanding the sheer duplicitous nature of the media, even the liberal ones who appear critical towards the banks. They simply don't explain the facts that would result in the public asking for bank chiefs to be summarily executed like they occasionally do in China. It makes you wonder whether the writer is a shill, whether the editor chose the most clueless reporter to write about the issue, deliberately or otherwise. I never understood why Max Keiser repeatedly called for the bankers to be hanged until I read _Griftopia_ by Matt Taibbi. Its such an eye opener. I can't even understand most of the instruments involved I see enough to understand why Max Keiser called for their hanging.

Turner's viewpoint _caused consternation in the City of London, the world's largest financial market_? Is the writer serious? That is the City sounding like Brer Rabbit asking not to be thrown in the briar patch.

Let us take US for instance. $1.4 trillion would have been enough to pay of the all subprime mortgages which were _allegedly_ at the heart of the crisis. Why then will the bailout cost $15 trillion? Who then incurred the additional $14 trillion in debt taxpayers, their grandchildren and their great grandchildren are saddled with?

Turner's statement that what investment bankers do is socially worthless must be the understatement of the millennium.

</comment><comment><USER34> Could online peer-to-peer banking replace this whole mess someday?

<comment><USER35> Maybe one day, but not while wealth and political power are so concentrated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> So many words to say that people in finance prefer short term investments that are more profitable than long term investments, no matter what the consequences of the short term investments are.

</comment><comment><USER37> This article is from 2010. It is relevant today as well, albeit differently.

</comment><comment><USER38> Who is John Galt?</comment>


The pleasure of keeping – and rereading – diaries - <AUTHOR> http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/06/the-pleasure-of-keeping-and-rereading-diaries/ <comment><USER2> Diary is one of the best ways for self-reflection. One can also follow own mind-changing over time.

It is also some kind of self-development where one can improve self-expression and ability how to express own thoughts. Its very important in various nowadays job positions. Especialy in creative one.</comment>


Running low on toilet paper? Download more here 🧻 - <AUTHOR> https://downloadmoretoiletpaper.com <comment><USER2> Reminds me of the good ol' days when you could download additional RAM.</comment>


Brooks: America's brightest minds have been abandoning technical enterprise - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/10/opinion/10brooks.html?_r=1&hp

<comment><USER2> The Founding Fathers were aware of this. In fact John Adams saw it as an aspiration:

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."

<comment><USER3> I love that quote because his son went on to study politics and war anyways: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Quincy_Adams>

<comment><USER4> Not to pick on you because 90% of the time people say anyways. Anyway, my point is don't say anyways.

<http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/anyway-or-anyways.aspx>

<comment><USER3> Despite the down votes from others, I appreciate the correction. I didn't know that it's anyway, not anyways. I appreciate the help. Thanks.

<comment><USER4> I used to say it too. Roommate in college broke my habit. As a former addict I notice people saying it all the time. :-)

<comment><USER4> Anyways...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have to say Brooks' ability of denial is quite impressive. He is so good at not seeing the elephant in the room, it is no wonder he has a prestigious job with the NYT.

He wrote an entire article about how Americans are "abandoning" manufacturing without ever mentioning offshoring. If you read his article you would think that the American decline in manufacturing has something to do with some weird pretentiousness of the American workers and nothing to do with the millions of manufacturing jobs leaving the country.

<comment><USER6> The "American decline in manufacturing" is a myth. American manufacturing output has been on a continued uptick, the peak of output for the US was... 2006, and will likely exceed that shortly as the economy recovers. The US contributes fully 1/5th of the world's entire manufacturing output. What has changed is that US manufacturing has grown much more efficient, so there are far fewer manufacturing jobs than there used to be. Also, the US has grown much richer so we continue to import more and more goods.

<comment><USER7> Which of your possessions are manufactured in the US? Not many of mine are. No electronics I can think of, and not my cars or my furniture or 95% of my clothes.

When economic measures seem out of whack with observed reality, one should question what the numbers really mean.

<comment><USER8> You're forgetting intermediate goods - the fact that your computer monitor is made in China does not imply that all of its internal components are also made there.

You're also forgetting that consumer products are but a portion of total manufacturing output - industrial goods are also an extremely large segment of the market, and one where we have not yet lost the lead to the Chinese.

<comment><USER9> Though perhaps `lost' to the Germans. They sell lots of capital goods.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> During the industrial revolution you had an explosion in manufacturing. Prior to that most people were employed in agriculture. I wonder if we looked at editorials from the time we'd find pundits bemoaning the loss of agricultural jobs/industry, or that the "best and brightest" weren't interested in animal husbandry.

The relative cost of turning a lump of metal into a car has only gone down over the years. This is the case with most manufacturing. The marginal value of "building stuff" decreases. This makes answering the higher level questions more valuable.

Perfect example would be YC. They could have made another technology startup with their various talents, but instead they produce more value by consulting and acting as the middle man between skilled kids that need funding and people with piles of money that don't know how to pick winners.

</comment><comment><USER11> "Most people who lived in the year 1800 were scarcely richer than people who lived in the year 100,000 B.C."

From the perspective of a well-paid NYT journalist, maybe. But I doubt the average 18th century farmer would have traded his iron tools, draft animals and brick-built house for the flint axes and caves of his ancestors.

</comment><comment><USER12> This topic seems to come up quite often. I personally don't know whether an investment banker contributes more to society than a motor engineer. However the expected income for the i-banker seems to be higher. I.e. this is an incentive problem. People can talk all they want about the intrinsic satisfaction in producing actual goods, but at the end of the day we all need to pay rent, eat, pay back student loans, and spring for the occasional round of drinks.

</comment><comment><USER13> I work in quantitative finance, and I think that Brooks is working with slightly out-of-date statistics. The financial crisis has been very rough on the headcount and morale of most financial institutions, and has impacted quant funds particularly roughly.

It was fairly easy to view finance as a safe and socially acceptable career in 2007, and that was reflected in the recruiting numbers at the time. The past 3 years have disabused many of us of that impression, and the effects are being seen right now in the career decisions top students and people already in finance are making.

20% of the people in my little corner of quant finance have left for tech jobs or startups in the last 4 months, and I'm hoping to follow them as soon as I get enough traction on my side project. I hope for their sake that current students have also figured out that the game has changed and are directing their ambitions toward tech.

<comment><USER14> "quantitative finance" is a technical specialty. What you describe is a typical situation of tech people, quants in this case, trapped by unfavorable turn of economic conditions in their, over saturated during boom-times, corner . That is exactly the kind of trap the brightest minds are avoiding by not going into tech.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The answer to this is pretty clear.

You can make billions of dollars in the business (particularly in finance), screw people over with little or no consequence, and you can't do that as easily as an engineer.

But i disagree that our best and brightest aren't trying. There are still engineers, and there are still people going out and becoming doctors, regardless of the difficulties in their fields.

The problem is that to do interesting and innovative things in tech, you have to go up against the regulatory and entrenched business interests in the US. The Obama Administration is having to contend with this, and Google has tried and failed to contend with this (look at the Nexus One experiment, and their whitespace wireless efforts).

It sucks to try and disrupt in the US.

<comment><USER16> That's silly. The vast majority of technological innovations still come out of the US. So whatever it is you're doing poorly, the rest of the world is clearly doing that much worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Upvoted because its a good starting point for discussion, but I don't know if I necessarily agree with the premise. Why should anyone go into a productive industry (by which it sounds like he means anything in which there is an end product) as we move into a service economy and production continues to be off- shored? Or maybe I'm misunderstanding/missing the point. It seems like people at all levels should go where the money and jobs are.

<comment><USER18> When it's finally explained how service economy can be sustainable long-term, I suspect many people would have no problem with outsourcing production whatsoever.

<comment><USER9> You sell investment banking advice, software and self-help books to the Chinese, the Chinese sell you cars and dish washers. What's not self- sustaining about this?

(Of course, the USA still produces lots of stuff you can kick. Don't worry.)

<comment><USER18> How many Americans are fit for working as investment bankers? OK, you would also need a handful of plumbers, hairdressers and real estate agents to accommodate for the needs of Wall st. Is that it?

Also, where the confidence that Chinese would continue to need American investment advice comes from? If they get the majority of capital and trade along with industrial base, wouldn't these jobs simply follow the money? Americans certainly didn't need any external help back in the day.

<comment><USER9> Investment banking was just a silly example.

America did use lots of foreign help back in the day. The British helped finance the railways. But America did not rely on foreign finance forever. After the First World War there were the greatest creditor nation.

The rise of America has not dented the European standard of living. And neither should the rise of China curb the American living standards. Relative decline is not absolute decline.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Mike Rowe spoke on this during his TED talk. [http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs.htm...](http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs.html)

</comment><comment><USER20> Wait. When did making more and more stuff become a gauge of national production? Just because something is intangible doesn't mean that it isn't wealth.

Moreover, the 1800 Britain he talks about in which technology roamed free was a horrifying place to live in if you didn't belong in the right categories. It was a time when the world of Charles Dickens wasn't a fantasy.

The problem over here isn't the fact that the USA is moving from technology or innovation. It's just that the shape of it has changed. Instead of dashing off a patent for a new harvest machine. Today, people apply themselves in creating digital enterprises(not just software, this includes algorithms, hardware, AI, media, etc). Yet, the metrics that plug those super policies don't take this into account; if there was a measure of the total lines of code written in the USA then they might start taking things differently.

<comment><USER21> No, a country without a solid manufacturing base cannot stay dominant in the world forever. Manufacturing is not low tech; it is high tech, and requires extreme amounts of innovation in technologies like robotics, chemistry, automation, etc.

You can say everything will be digital and that's fine, but until we have nano machines replicating material goods, who's going to make the things we use every day, or the things that store all those digital bits?

<comment><USER22> This is slightly toungue-in-cheek but why can't all of the actual manufacturing be outsourced? Why not? Corporations do it successfully, why can't countries specialize in design just like they used to specialize in certain crops?

<comment><USER23> Designs are easily copied, physical widgets are not (until we get nano- replicators anyway).

Innovations in design and manufacturing tend to dovetail and drive each other. Doing both under one roof reaps more of a benefit from that dynamic.

There is also a historical argument. The most prosperous, successful countries have had a large industrial base. That doesn't necessarily mean one requires the other, but it does suggest a strong linkage.

<comment><USER24> _"Innovations in design and manufacturing tend to dovetail and drive each other."_

That's Andy Grove's current argument too. I would have thought it to be obvious, self-evident even, but apparently not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The MBAs get to lay off the engineers. The engineers' kids figure this out.

</comment><comment><USER26> >> How did this growth start? In his book "The Enlightened Economy," Joel Mokyr of Northwestern University argues that the crucial change happened in people's minds.

Or you could just say that they invented and started using steam engine that removed the cap on physical work output of any given population. They just needed to dig some coal, so they did. Rest is history.

</comment><comment><USER27> Is it irony that we have a guy whose degree is in history writing about the rest of us not going into technical fields?

<comment><USER28> Well, at least _he_ has a job....

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Jesus you can't make a buck in this market, the country's goin' to hell faster than when that son of a bitch Roosevelt was in charge. Too much cheap money sloshing around the world. The worst mistake we ever made was letting Nixon get off the gold standard.

<comment><USER30> What? Is this a "Watchmen" quote?

<comment><USER14> Shame on you for not knowing classic :) It is a "Wall Street", the first one. Should be taught to 6-graders together with Special Relativity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> well, women do like lawyers, doctors, VPs, CEOs, etc much more than say plumbers or programmers.

</comment><comment><USER31> Define "brightest minds." I don't agree with their implied definition.

<comment><USER32> Agree. He goes from "elite" to "Ivy League" to "Harvard" and stops there. I'd like to see numbers from a broader spectrum of universities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Hey, you can't post a link to Hacker News starting with "Brooks:" when it's not Fred Brooks. Seriously! Who is this David?

</comment><comment><USER34> Pure link bait; the actual article does not say anything of the sort. The article is, in fact making the point Americans as a whole no longer "make things", and are avoiding getting their hands dirty.I'm not sure if the premise is true - it would be nice to see some hard data to back it up.

<comment><USER35> It's a direct quote from the article, "America's brightest minds have been abandoning industry and technical enterprise in favor of more prestigious but less productive fields like law, finance, consulting and nonprofit activism."

Btw, he should have added "pundit" to the list of non-productive fields. ;)</comment></comment>


Is it possible that some people are just not cut out to program? - <AUTHOR> I'm not talking about not being able to write FizzBuzz here; what are some traits or learned behaviors other than sheer programming ability individuals might have that make them less (or more) suited to working as software engineers? <comment><USER2> I strongly believe that everyone could write useful, nontrivial programs:

\- in a domain that they understand

\- if given suitable tools

I've seen musicians do things I couldn't begin to draft an implementation of, thanks to domain-specific environments like Max/MSP. Their understanding of audio mixing, musical timing, and signal processing mapped to the development environment _and_ workflow intuitively.

It's humbling when you struggle through basic DSP, then a guitarist shows you a complex algorithm and shrugs it of with "its just like lil effects boxes, dude."

Watching him debug was eye opening too. As if tracing a buzz on his guitar's signal path, he patched in after each node to confirm the output at each step, like I'd do with a debugger on each line of my code.

His context was so beyond my understanding though, picking up on issues further down the signal chain by noticing frequencies that would feedback, clip or cause phase issues. It really showed me that an understanding of the domain and context of what you're trying to achieve trumps nearly everything else.

<comment><USER3> >> in a domain that they understand

That could/should be the future of programming. Every interaction with a domain expert where he shows what the app should have done makes me think "Damn, what if I as an engineer was writing tools that enable the domain experts to write the apps?".

We as engineers will be spending time writing tools with powerful toolkits that enable domain experts to write apps. Will that also lead to a shrinking of the number of software engineers really required? ARE we in a BUBBLE?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes of course and don't believe the politically-correct or politically- motivated nonsense of "everyone can program".

If you have paid any attention to the society you can see the different classes of personalities. Some of them, naturally, are polar opposites.

For lack of a better word the "artsy" types are generally not "cut out to program".

The people that are cut out to program are generally in a small subset of the "thinking" types.

I know I'm generalising but that's the point, you can almost never state something about a large population and have it hold true or false in all cases so exceptions exist but they are negligible.

Try explaining binary to that kid in your school that loved ballet dancing and theater. You can see a part of them die in their eyes in the first 15 seconds.

Try it with that other nerdy kid that keeps to himself and you see his eyes shine as he has the ah-ha moment. Chances are he doesn't see "the point" of dancing, too.

These differences exist and they are everywhere all around us from a young age to adulthood. Denying it doesn't help anybody.

<comment><USER5> Some of the best programmers I know are also musicians. I think you carry some assumptions that should be challenged.

<comment><USER4> Sure, I do too. As I said exceptions exist. Existence of exceptions doesn't invalidate the broader pattern.

Which group would you say is more likely to have more (current or one-day-to- be) programmers in it? A group of loud extroverted cheer leaders or the folks from the chess club?

Virtually everyone would say the folks from the chess club. Except those who are self-conscious about being politically correct. Those would say they have NO IDEA! It's completely random. Maybe a few Linus Torvalds would come out of the cheer leading team.

Look, I'm not arguing about specific cases and exceptions. I'm talking about the GENERAL pattern which exists and is the basis for the myriad of stereotypes that everyone is aware of.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The problem is that many people drop out of high school or college without getting the required math and computer classes to understand how they work. Some people don't study computer science at all but want to get rich quick.

Those of us who learned in high school and college have the passion for programming that drives us to succeed. Not everyone has that passion.

To be honest a lot of people have problems learning how to program. I worked in a college computer lab back in the DOS and Novell Netware days. I've seen people struggle with trying to program or debug. The process is very stressful unless people know how to handle stress.

HN claims fake it till you make it. In a way this is true as you learn and practice programming. It keeps your confidence up and the more you do it the better you get.

<comment><USER7> > Those of us who learned in high school and college have the passion for > programming that drives us to succeed. Not everyone has that passion.

I feel like this implies that those of us who learned programming outside of a traditional classroom are not "passionate". If so, that's just not true.

Almost every programmer I speak with who has a CS degree or who took at least one class in college has told me they both did not enjoy the structure of their courses and learned the skills they actually use after college.

My experience in the few courses I did take on programming, they're just not structured very well and are unfortunately tied to a course catalog or curriculum.

Your point on stress, or rather failure, is more poignant. I think that it comes down to an individual's ability to accept incremental victories and to think critically, or problem solve as it's often called.

Also, I feel like a programmer's ability to read documentation and examples and project them onto his/her own software can make or break a career.

<comment><USER6> I think I made a typo or something. I didn't mean to imply that people learning programming outside of the classroom don't have a passion for it. I taught myself before I went to high school with a Commodore 64 and developed a passion for programming and got into programming by switching to a better high school that focused on math and science.

Without that passion, programming kind of sucks. When I programmed it was like an art form and a science all in one. I would try to solve a problem with my program, make mistakes, get errors, get the wrong results, and had to keep editing, deleting, and rewriting code until I got it to do what it is supposed to do.

I worked with people who didn't go to college and had no degree and had a passion for learning and read books to get good at programming.

Without that passion, it is kind of hard to stick to keep trying until you make a program that does what you want it to do. People give up sometimes and all they need is a little help with another set of eyes looking over their code.

I had a good college and good professors who encouraged me to keep learning and getting better and develop that passion. Other colleges didn't have that as sometimes the professors didn't know enough about the language to write a program or help students. I once had to help my friend's mother at a college because nobody at that college could help her learn how to debug her Visual Basic programs I spent a few hours in their computer lab and helped her debug like 10 different programs.

I've also seen MOOCs where they try to tell students to use an integer to store PI.

const int pi = 3.14159

Instead of using math.pi or something else. The constant pi is an integer so it equals 3.

I've seen all sorts of stuff.

<comment><USER7> Right on, I appreciate the clarification.

Ah, honestly, I envy that time you had before the internet/javascript/SPAs/etc became so ubiquitous. I bet it was loads of fun figuring it all out and hacking your way to a solution?

You're right, programming really is a drag. I know it's different, but just like with athletes and training versus playing, writers toiling away on manuscripts and outlines, and someone like my father, a construction worker, who labored on bits and pieces of a project before ever realizing the satisfaction of a completed project; you have to endure the suck and find satisfaction in it. SMALL VICTORIES.

Your story reminds me of the passages on Bill Gates in Malcolm Gladwell's The Outliers that talked about Gates teaching himself programming and spending time in the school's library to use the one computer, eventually consulting at an extremely young age.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> At my college, CS 101 was an intro to the C language and it was required for all engineering students, not just comp sci majors. I tutored a lot of guys on my dorm floor so they could pass it, but most of them couldn't wrap their heads around any of it. Not even FizzBuzz. And these aren't stupid people, either. Most of them went on to do well in aeronautical and civil engineering disciplines.

Programming requires a certain amount of abstract thought that not everybody is capable of. As far as I can tell, there's a direct trade-off between spatial reasoning and abstract reasoning.

</comment><comment><USER9> Can everyone learn to play an instrument if given enough time and practice?

The answer to your question and the music one is YES. Not everyone is going to be A Mozart or a Torvalds, and thats OK because it takes all stripes to get things done.

All it takes is motivation, dedication and practice to master programing (or an instrument).

</comment><comment><USER10> Of course. Just as not everybody is cut out to be an athlete or a musician, not everybody has the abilities to make them a (semi-)competent programmer.

Programming requires very abstract, logical thinking - not everyone's brain works like that. Learning programming also requires a ton of patience and determination (chasing all those bugs) as well as the ability to learn large amounts of arcane syntax by heart.

Not everybody has these skills, or the grit necessary to put in the required hours of training. And why should they? I don't see this as any kind of huge societal problem... After all, we don't go around demanding that everybody should be able to work as a carpenter, or a lawyer, or a surgeon. You do what you do best, and that's all there is to it.

</comment><comment><USER11> I want to say yes, but then I think about people who have an IQ of 60 and it pains me to say that they are not cut out to program, unfortunately. I want them to be able to reach for the moon, but in that sense, I don't think they can. Likewise, I'm not the best fit for becoming a yoga instructor.

Looking at the extremes makes it easy to find examples of people who aren't cut out for it.

</comment><comment><USER12> The short answer: Yes, of course.</comment>


Turn your iPad into a 3D controller - <AUTHOR> http://www.maideinc.com Currently Windows only with support for Google SketchUp and Rhino. Mac support coming in the next week.
Here's some promo codes for the App Store:
96K9347XTTFK 9TFJM7Y6EWK3 ATYRLFRLXRFW M7WFMKYR6743 XJWAKAK6YJA3 <comment><USER2> As someone who uses the Unity game engine extensively, using my iPad for even the most basic zooming, panning, and orbiting would be useful. I look forward to support for additional 3D environments. I have yet to use an input system where movement in 3D space doesn't feel clunky; any alternative to the current mouse/keyboard combo is welcome.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the feedback, we worked really hard on making the movement very smooth. Everyone's been giving us awesome responses so far. What 3D programs are on the top of your list?

<comment><USER2> I rarely do 3D modelling, so admittedly the applications I'd like supported are probably outside your initial target market, but here's the top three I want to pair Maide with:

\- Apple Motion

\- Unity

\- Google Earth (I realize there's an iPad version and it's awesome, but Google Earth + projector + Maide would be incredible)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Awesome! What other software are you guys planning to support

</comment><comment><USER5> That looks goddamn awesome, great to see so much good stuff coming out of the Velocity program in Waterloo!

</comment><comment><USER6> Very clever.

Wonder if an iPad on the other side of a keyboard to the mouse could be useful in Photoshop too (somehow) - colour palette, brush selector, etc. While I'm at a computer, my iPad is sitting there doing nothing.

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't do 3D work but I almost want to start because of the video on your site. Seriously, that was a great presentation of what appears to be a great product.</comment>


Just Enough MBA to Be a Programmer - <AUTHOR> http://www.moserware.com/2009/07/just-enough-mba-to-be-programmer.html

<comment><USER2> As an MBA graduate I'd say these Cliff notes are well said. There is a lot more that goes into an MBA program, but programmers, engineers and other "non- business" people should understand what the business is all about. Saying that, it's also important for us MBAers to understand what programmers and engineers do.

<comment><USER3> Could you elaborate on what goes into an MBA program that isn't covered by 10 Day MBA? Case studies, exercises, networking oppos, what else? Thanks!

<comment><USER4> Hmmm...

Obviously there's a lot more to learn about finance, both market finance (the various types of securities, how they work, how to value them, how to do arbitrage on them...) and corporate finance (financial analysis, stock analysis, stock buybacks, LBOs, mergers and acquisitions, generally how a corporation is/should finance itself, especially debt vs. equity, all that fun stuff...)

Financial controlling: ie how each unit reports its costs and revenues and how to control those and establish budgets and targets. Something which is quite dull when you're sitting in a classroom but is actually fantastically important to running any reasonably large company (50+ employees). It's particularly important because it's tied up into all manners of human resources and corporate culture: how you measure someone's performance impacts how you will reward it, which in turns impacts how people behave, what kind of culture you have, etc.

You might also have supply chain courses (God how I hated those): inventory management, supplier management, etc.

There might be some legal courses as well depending on your program.

Also, the main takeaway of a business course is that they're course- and discussion- based. The post gives a good idea of the theoretical takeaway from business classes, but you learn about those from reading and performing case studies as groups and discussing them with the professor, which also gives you a great sense of what can be done and what can't.

<comment><USER3> Cool, thanks. I think it would be interesting to compile an online free resource which covered all of this material. There are plenty of free course videos online...I feel a side project coming on...

<comment><USER4> Absolutely. Really the main benefit of a business program is the people, and spending two years with really smart people who have wildly different experiences and are passionate about business. Seth Godin had a great post about this. That said, I believe there are a few things they teach you in business school -- the basics of finance and accounting, some business strategy... -- that everyone should know. A business OCW would be a great public service project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ten Day MBA is a great little book. I bought a bunch of copies for the engineers here and we ran a discussion group, chapter-by-chapter over a few weeks. The exercise really improved the quantity and quality of business ideas and useful input into strategy from the engineers.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Economics is the magic that allows me to write software in exchange for steak burritos."

</comment><comment><USER6> Watch out!

That equation for the macroeconomy (Quantity Theory of Money) went out of style in the 80s when people realized velocity wasn't a fixed constant, i.e., it only appeared attractive given the small set of data at the time.

</comment><comment><USER7> "Ethics seems easy to understand: Do to others as you would have them do to you."

"Do not do unto others as you would expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same." - George Bernard Shaw.

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice review of the book and the concepts. I have just finished reading the same book, although I read it just as a primer because I am starting a part- time program at NYU in the fall. Although not a programmer, I plan to try and keep my technical knowledge up-to-date, it should help with the management and work with the engineers/developers.</comment>


How I sold my company to Google ($80million) - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/video/2011/01/19/silicon-valley-startup-how-i-sold-my-company-to-google-80million/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+TheNextWeb+(The+Next+Web+All+Stories) <comment><USER2> Tell HN: Don't waste your time watching this like I did. It's a two-minute video with a sexy headline and no insight.

Can anyone recommend a few useful post-acquisition interviews? Thanks.

<comment><USER3> What would make an interview "useful" in your opinion?

<comment><USER4> Substance. Whatever that may involve, but it won't fit into a 2min video.

<comment><USER3> Fair enough.

But in their defense, neither of them were expecting to do this interview. Hermione was there (i/o ventures in SF) filming some other interviews, and Scott just happened to be in the building at the same time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'll save you some time. This guy made a company that helps businesses with advertisements. Since Google sells ads he makes them a lot of money and they took notice and bought his company. In the future he plans to start more companies.

That's literally about all the information you'll get from the two minute video.

</comment><comment><USER6> Here's how they really sold their company to Google: they raised less money than their competitors (just $4MM, I believe) from VCs who'd be happier with smaller exits (like First Round) so when Google decided they needed a DSP, Invite Media was the best option that could actually sell for less than $100MM. Everyone else was targeting mammoth Right-Media-style exits, on the assumption that they'd happen when the market was a little more mature.

More interesting to me is how a couple of college students started a company doing pretty leading-edge things in ad technology, when most people have to work in the industry for a few years just to figure out what the hell's going on. As I heard it (perhaps distorted), they initially had an experienced mentor who spent a lot of time with them, only to later compete aggressively with the same mentor when their business was off the ground.

</comment><comment><USER7> This interview lacks substance, but you can still learn from it if you read between the lines. A few takeaways:

-Google is investing continuously in the display ad marketplace -A sure way to get acquired is to build relationships with businesses that want to give your potential acquirer money (see also Groupon) -Unique technology(like their predictive algorithms) may be more important to an acquirer than market share

<comment><USER8> worthless interview - as you say no substance, 2 minutes and not one question really about the title

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> eh... the blonde was cute

<comment><USER10> Oh, but Mr. Kevruger, we're not allowed to say such things!

<comment><USER11> When the topic is a lost cause, we make do with what we can.

<comment><USER12> It looks like the interview was at the Summit (780 Valencia).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would like to read what they did... a story doesn't need video to be conveyed. This story would certainly be interesting in an article format.

</comment><comment><USER14> Probably the title raised a lot of expectations about learning the 'how'. So people expected a long and detailed video.

I would say for a 2 min video, it was good. Hey, TC did not cover an $80 million exit by a 23yr old.

<comment><USER15> [http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/02/google-reportedly- acquiring...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/02/google-reportedly-acquiring- invite-media-for-approximately-70-million/)</comment></comment>


Tesla stock plunged after Elon Musk tweeted it was "too high" - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/tesla-stock-elon-musk-tweet-e6f9d9a5-b90e-439d-9467-38a3aaa134f5.html <comment><USER2> Just the other day I was defending EM that he has the freedom to express himself. Today I deplore him for making the tweet that impact the stock price and hence financial well being of shareholders, without sufficient explanation. Why is the stock price too high? Or are you just kidding? How should we be interpreting this riddle?

<comment><USER3> He said it was his opinion.

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately as CEO of a public company, I don't believe he can make stock moving statements casually, without backing it by information. It can't be left as an exercise for the reader - if it's opinion, why does he think so? Or maybe he is j/k. How should we decode this information?

<comment><USER3> Kidding is hard to differentiate from lying. Opinions are opinions, by definition truthful and subjective.

<comment><USER4> Not all opinions are honest.

en.wiktionary.org/wiki/in_my_honest_opinion

en.wiktionary.org/wiki/concern_troll

<comment><USER3> Dishonest opinions are really lies about the true opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Calling your stock over valued is not unprecedented. Even Mr. Buffet has done so in the past. What is a little unusual is to announce this in the middle of the trading day.

<comment><USER2> Interesting. In case of Buffet, did he provide additional information to back up his claim? I case of EM, I have no idea if he is kidding or serious. This leads to confusion, loss of value - potentially unnecessarily.

<comment><USER5> To be honest I don't think anyone can value Tesla with any accuracy, not even Musk. The prudent valuation is to value it as a straight up auto company. But then, what about the tera batteries, the solar roofs, the cybertruck (which seems to have caught on beyond anyone's expectation), the self driving software, the industrial batteries, the domestic batteries and the utility batteries? Throw in implied insurance on the downside due to Musk's equity in SpaceX. What does all this speculation add up to? A lot less than you would think if someone else patents a break through battery that can scale. What are the chances? No one has a clue. For sure though, right now, it's worth more than a straight up auto company and the market reflects that.

<comment><USER2> It's not a question so much that Tesla and SpaceX are amazing. It's just that why does EM have to make stock influencing statements like this. It hurts people financially. Just watch out for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I feel like this is the sort of statement that the SEC (not to mention the board) would frown on.

<comment><USER7> Yes, I look forward to their settlement, I'm sure it'll be something like "We'll frown in your direction if you do this again for the 18th time".

Honestly, why are we talking about the SEC as if they have anything to do with anything.

<comment><USER8> Well, can't Tesla/Elon be sued by shareholders independently of the SEC?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So, do the buyers and sellers actually know what they are doing?

The stock market seems to be running on emotions, more than analysis, which, it always seems to be.

</comment><comment><USER10> Do you think he's getting dementia? Three decades of no sleep and stress make Jack a dull boy...

</comment><comment><USER11> either he's having a nervous breakdown or he knows something we dont...

<comment><USER12> It's Musk, he has whiny meltdowns on Twitter all the time. The best thing SpaceX and Tesla could do is rid themselves of him.

<comment><USER13> what do you tweet to your following? expressing emotion isn't a "meltdown".

<comment><USER14> A CEO (and a leader of a country, I should add) have a power with their words that requires them to speak with a different voice. If that's not possible, resigning is an option.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> also after the rest of the market tanked ...

<comment><USER14> The market is down about 2.5% today. Bad, but hardly "tanked". (it had fallen less than that at the time of his tweets)

TSLA is down almost 9% (was 12% at one point).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not the only thing too high...

</comment><comment><USER17> He may be in a financial bind. It's not inconceivable that he could be shorting Tesla through third parties. The other nonsensical tweets could be camouflage.

Or, yeah, maybe _he 's_ just a little too high.

</comment><comment><USER18> No, it tanked because we're in a bear market and there is a massive recession in progress. Who's gonna buy a Tesla?

<comment><USER19> The massive plunge in share price coinciding exactly with the timing of the Tweet begs to differ.

<comment><USER18> The auto industry has been imploding in general. You were a fool if you longed TSLA. I didn't and am very bearish on it.

<comment><USER20> Your original comment is incorrect though, it did tank 10% immediately after his tweet, it was literally the catalyst.

<comment><USER21> Cue something about correlation vs. causation...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tarsnap pricing change - <AUTHOR> http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2018-04-01-tarsnap-pricing-change.html <comment><USER2> > so making this change on the Tarsnap website brings it in line with the > reality of the billing system

Seems hard to argue against this.

> The topic of picodollars has become something of an ongoing debate between > us, with Patrick insisting that they communicate a fundamental lack of > seriousness and sabotage Tarsnap's success as a business, and me insisting > that using they communicate exactly what I want to communicate, and attract > precisely the customer base I want to have.

This is the most important line from the post IMO. (Small typo btw.)

I admire and am envious of Colin. He's making a good living doing something he likes that he built himself, selling a service that has real value, and without sacrificing his integrity in some way.

I think wealth can be a sort of drug where people want more and more and will do anything to get it -- whether it's selling user data, manipulating people with dopamine rushes, lying, making money off of nazis, or whatever. It doesn't have to be that way.

<comment><AUTHOR> _without sacrificing his integrity_

Just to be clear, I don't think that pricing Tarsnap in picodollars is a matter of _integrity_. Nobody would suffer if I got rid of picodollars.

It's one part whimsy and about nine parts branding. Just like how Stripe launched with a curl command line _on the front page of their website_ , the presence of the word "picodollars" is a shibboleth which says "we're geeks, just like you".

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is exactly the right mix of nerdy and petty, hard to guess if it's just an April Fools' or not.

<comment><AUTHOR> It makes me sad that you think I'm petty.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, that's probably the wrong word for it. I meant the vibe of "Patrick really wanted me to change this, so I did, but not quite how he had envisioned".

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe you're looking for the word "trolling"? I mean, that's kind of the essence of April Fool's jokes.

<comment><USER4> Gentle ribbing is how I'd put it.

I'm a very happy customer, btw. Thanks for your work!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> barry-cotter Wait, was there a $/gigabyte day pricing thing before? Because if it was quoted solely in picodollars per byte before non technical people who weren't willing to google would have no idea. With the change whimsy is preserved and legibility increased. Normal consumers know gigabyte and day.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Wait, was there a $ /gigabyte day pricing thing before?_

I can't remember if it was there at the very beginning; but the $/GB translation has been there for years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Since the per byte cost is below my rounding threshold and looks like either zero or maxint, I suggest we simplify the model and charge every user the rand (0, 1) throw of zero or maxint dollars irrespective of how much data they store.</comment>


Stop writing custom code - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@zmh/stop-writing-custom-code-86ba188b0f30

<comment><USER2> I think the author is confused.

> Writing cool code in obscure languages or rewriting industry-accepted > libraries is great as a hackathon project or when you're at Facebook-scale, > but it's dumb and dangerous otherwise.

On the face value, this is quite agreeable. But what is "cool" code? What if someone just writes "a code" in an obscure language - because that language happens to be the best for the code? As for "industry-accepted libraries", those libraries can't be considered the word of almighty while everybody else agrees we have a crisis in the area of software engineering.

On the other hand,

> There's a time and a place for innovative custom-written code that advances > the edges of engineering and computer science.

Again, well said - but what is "innovative"? Solving the same problem for the hundredth time - but doing it well while explaining why - can or cannot be innovative, depending on the definition. Yes, there is time and place for that - so should it be thrown away in a young startup just because it should concentrate its efforts elsewhere?

The whole idea of the article is great - the code is written over and over, with small variations because of platforms, infinitisimal changes in requirements etc. Indeed, engineers first learn to produce linked lists, then taylor them for their particular problems - it's like an art of pottery, when the next customer has slightly different requirement because, say, his shelves have different width. But the blame seems to be put to the wrong place.

</comment><comment><USER3> Industry accepted libraries tend to get bigger and bigger and slower and buggier with lots of dependencies on other libraries with their own set of dependencies.</comment>


Ask HN: IT Directors and VP's – how do you manage your time and projects? - <AUTHOR> Over the course of my career I've been fortunate to have able to develop as an engineer and sysadmin, and did very well at tackling the projects and tasks that came with those roles.  With success in those roles, I found pleasure in managing people and technology, and worked to get promoted to manager, and later director and VP roles in my organizations.   The challenge I have faced the further up in the org I go is in changing my work style, tactics and approaches to be more effective.  I often find myself overwhelmed with tasks, while projects also need attention.  The question for HN is:  How do senior level technology managers, directors and VP's manage their time, projects and tasks to be effective at those levels? <comment><USER2> You need to stop doing your old job and start doing your new job. That sounds obvious, but I see a lot of people get promoted and keep doing their old job, the one that they were so good at it and came so naturally. Even if the new person in your old job is only 25% as good as you are at, let/make them do it.

Related, if you can see a better way to do it, strongly consider _keeping your mouth shut_ if that way is only 5% better. If you improve the project by a few percent and sap your report's motivation and confidence by 50%, you're probably not making things better for your company. Save your insights for times where you think your way is 50+% better.

In short, if you are overwhelmed, make sure you're doing your executive job. If you're not, consider still spending more time on reading and thinking rather than defaulting to pitching in on a project deliverable if it isn't written in English prose (feel free to work on a project high level summary, objectives, and key results document).

<comment><USER3> This is exactly the problem I see with my division's supervisor. He was a developer, and is now a program manager, but he wants to directly influence every single project instead of delegating. What is an effective way to encourage him to do his new job?

This is impacting the team b/c he takes away lower level decision making responsibility, while not spending the time he needs to spend planning out and setting top level vision.

<comment><USER4> Well you have a few options. You'll have to gauge your own situation to see what you can get away with.

1) Ask him for his deliverables to you frequently. If he's a program manager, presumably part of his job is to fill you in on context and the goings on outside of your group. Ask him for those regularly. Ask him to present the planning and top level vision.

2) Be direct and tell him what you just wrote -- that you expect him to delegate and trust and not dictate now that he's been promoted.

<comment><USER3> I've done #2 a number of times, and #1 is a great idea, too. If I keep him focused on #1, it'll be harder for him to hop the line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'll steal a quote from Pittsburgh Penguins (American professional hockey) head coach Mike Sullivan: "Play the game the right way".

Just do the right thing. Always. If you're not sure what that is, figure it out however you can, and do it. This time. Every time. Always.

Once you start doing that, all the other BS melts away.

A few personal thoughts of what "the right way" means in IT:

      - Treat everyone else like you want to be treated. No "talking down".
      - Got Business Requirements? Are they any good? That may be your problem.
      - Same thing for Technical Specifications.
      - Same thing for Test Plans.
      - Is everyone working on their most important thing? Why not?
      - Will it affect the annual report? Yes? It's an issue. No? It's a detail.
      - Keep the process that's needed. It helps.
      - Ditch the process that's not needed. It hurts.
      - Go with your gut. That's what got you here.
      - If it needs changed, change it. If you don't, it'll change itself some other way.
      - Correlation != Causation.
      - Know the Critical Path.
      - Keep your finger on the pulse of everything you can.
      - Programmers produce. Everyone else must support them. (Never forget this!)
      - If it's not written down, it's not.
      - Relax and have fun. Can't? Find another career.

<comment><USER6> List for mobile:

> Treat everyone else like you want to be treated. No "talking down".

> Got Business Requirements? Are they any good? That may be your problem.

> Same thing for Technical Specifications.

> Same thing for Test Plans.

> Is everyone working on their most important thing? Why not?

> Will it affect the annual report? Yes? It's an issue. No? It's a detail.

> Keep the process that's needed. It helps.

> Ditch the process that's not needed. It hurts.

> Go with your gut. That's what got you here.

> If it needs changed, change it. If you don't, it'll change itself some other > way. > Correlation != Causation.

> Know the Critical Path.

> Keep your finger on the pulse of everything you can.

> Programmers produce. Everyone else must support them. (Never forget this!)

> If it's not written down, it's not.

> Relax and have fun. Can't? Find another career.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is not about time management at all. Many new execs mess this up -- it's not that you need to get more organized (or mostly not); you need to build a system that doesn't require you to intervene all the time.

What this requires is

\- people you can trust

\- you actually trusting them

\- being able to identify relatively self-contained tasks you can delegate

\- being able to accept that you'll get less competent in things you're delegating

Ofc. there's much more to this, there are plenty of books, courses, schools about leadership and management, but I think the core issue is that you should concentrate of make yourself not required.

<comment><USER8> I think this is an excellent way to look at the situation.

From a psychological POV (e.g. ego & identity), this aspect was particularly significant to me as I moved from developer to manager to CTO and then CIO:

> \- being able to accept that you'll get less competent in things you're > delegating

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I highly recommend reading "The Manager's Path" by Camille Fournier. It's a great overview of the different things to consider while working your way up the ladder (specifically in engineering management).

[http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920056843.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920056843.do)

<comment><USER10> I've upvoted this, but want to underline that this book is truly excellent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've watched many people in these roles, and had them at various times.

One of my takeaways was this. Everybody has a system, but it's not that important what the system is. What is telling is what happens in a "challenging situation". Is your system what you rely on to get you through it, or is it what you abandon when the chips are down - only to pick up again when things cool down? In my experience, the people in the former category perform much better, with fewer surprises. If that isn't you, ask why.

I've seen people do this well using everything from a fully manual system (engineering notebook/journal) to total commitment to something like omnifocus to a sort of personal wiki to one based on emacs .org mode. I think the key is to find (and customize) a system that is comfortable for you and you trust - and make it very easy to use. Simpler is probably better.

Another thing to note, the first time you have an EA you'll have to adjust your patterns to make both of your time more effective.

One last thing - how effective do you feel you are at delegating? The bigger the group under you, the more you have to let go of details to keep your focus where it matters. Communication trumps almost everything else.

</comment><comment><USER12> More meetings seems like a bad cliché, but it's really the most impactful activity.

Meetings with customers (internal and external). They need to trust that you: a) understand their problems b) will commit to a service level agreement c) will convey the needs to your team

Meetings with team. 1:1 with each member at least once every 2 weeks.

Make sure to understand their personal situation. SO's name, kids, anything going on that might risk churn.

Make sure they are aligned with customers needs. Empower them to meet with customers directly and form their own solutions.

Follow-up on their concerns and "surprise" them with actions that show you were really listening.

Pipeline Always be recruiting, refining job descriptions, interviewing, and hiring.

Technical Strategy It's the thing technologists love most. But at Sr Management level you're empowering teams to choose frameworks/languages, building alignment, and helping them make decisions to move forward.

Note that I don't mention _politics_ in any of the above. If you gain the trust of customers and employees in 1:1 meetings above, this should preemptively mitigate politics.

</comment><comment><USER13> Check out Will Larson's post on time management.

[https://lethain.com/time-management/](https://lethain.com/time-management/)

He has a lot of great posts on leadership and management; here's a collection of some of them- [https://lethain.com/rails-for-engineering- leadership/](https://lethain.com/rails-for-engineering-leadership/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Huge value here - great to see another tech->mgr telling their story about how they got better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> You can't directly manage more than a half dozen people, up or down. If you're in a place with heavy management, that's something you need to work with.

Your key objective is to get people in place to operate independently. You need empower your people so they are managing the projects.

If you're doing a lot of heroic tasks, especially in a bigger org, you're approaching the ceiling in terms of advancement and ultimately doing a disservice to your people.

</comment><comment><USER15> That's a conundrum that most developers who climb the chain face and the best article I've read so far that comes close to answer it is this one:

[http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html)

Probably posted a billion times here since y combinator is just one of the things that derived form the work of the master Paul Graham.

</comment><comment><USER16> Here's a lens I use to think about my job that might make sense to someone with an engineering background:

\- I'm in charge of architecting and building the team. the team is a system, of people and processes

\- the team has various functional and nonfunctional requirements which i product manage

\- I surface how the team works in general to our stakeholders, and our team strategy mainly deals with adjusting our "interface" and performance

\- I also surface our team's current plan and how we're tracking, to the appropriate stakeholders, to give them context if we want to adjust how the "system" works

\- I don't do any tasks other than those that relate to the above

\- I don't try to heroically post-process or supplement the machine's performance through my personal efforts unless it's just really high leverage in that situation. (would have to be live or die almost, otherwise not worth it in the long run). I spend my efforts on adjusting the characteristics of the machine.

</comment><comment><USER17> My job changed from doing all the things to (a) picking which things should be done and (b) making sure that all those things get done.

We use a ticketing system that enforces a minimum amount of process and otherwise stays out of our way (RequestTracker, highly recommended). I keep the master project list in a text file. We have a weekly status meeting where the master project list is 80% of the agenda. The meeting usually lasts about 30 minutes unless we have something particularly deep to discuss, design or dispute.

We keep in close contact with our chat system, email, and in-person meetings when people feel like they need them.

Every morning I review:

\- tickets generated by alerts. Did they get handled properly?

\- new tickets from users. Have they been picked up?

\- master project list. Does anything need _my_ expertise?

Throughout the day I look for signs that I should help people with their tickets or projects. Occasionally that means solving the problem for them, but usually it means pointing them to the right documentation or acting as their rubber duck.

Another chunk of my time is spent in diplomacy with other people in the company and sometimes with customers.

</comment><comment><USER18> The path towards management means less coding, especially the higher you are. VP/CTO/Director shouldn't be coding at all. Your job is managing the people and tech, guiding, mentoring, hiring...

Startups, especially early ones, throw this all out of the water of course. But once you hit 100+ employees the "real world management" starts to come into play.

</comment><comment><USER19> Are the people who work for you busy as well? I'm great at taking in all the extra work and not delegating. Often its because the people under me dont know how to do something - they should be able to figure it out, I'm just not good at forcing them do it.

If they are busy you should focus on getting more resources - as well as improving the productivity of the team.

</comment><comment><USER20> Would you classify someone like Linus Torvalds as a manager _and_ an individual contributor? I see a lot of obsession with pigeonholing and defining roles with zero degrees of freedom. "A manager needs to stop doing ____ and needs to start doing ___". Who's making these definitions? I know plenty of small business owners who are quite successful at wearing both hats. I personally don't have a problem if someone out there decided that in order to be an effective leader they have to abandon their previous responsibilities entirely, but I don't see how that becomes a universal rule. Just because everyone else is doing it doesn't make it right and no longer worth looking at.

<comment><USER21> About Linus: no; he's an architect.

The small business owner very likely has to wear more than one hat due to the size of his staff. This discussion is in the context of an organization likely much bigger than most small businesses of the kind you describe. The organization is inside a company that is in turn bigger. I don't think that a direct comparison useful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed - my situation is currently a team of 20, but previously up to 75 in my org. I work for a mid-sized company that's ~2500 people in total.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What made you successful in the past may not make you successful today.

When I started to prioritize, delegate and only focus on key details, it was a big shift in mindset but also a big boost in my effectiveness as a VP.

Know when to say things and when not to say things. Let go and think big picture. You're in the business of delivering through your team and your role is about giving direction to your team so their work is meaningful to them and to the organization.

Not everything will need your attention - you mostly only need to know when the project will be completed, help your team unblock roadblocks (in terms of tech, process, people) and align all projects to the overall strategy.

</comment><comment><USER23> Delegate is the keyword. You have to trust and not worry about the details. You can't be solving all the problems. I've had my reporting team come to me seeking a solution, I tell them to go solve it and come with the solution. I can review the solution and give a fast feedback if they still have concerns. More often than not, when they think about it, they come up with what works. The more responsibility I give to them, they more they step up to the plate and start filling in those big shoes. Just 1on1s, business partner, vendor meetings & daily status update is enough to fill my entire week.

</comment><comment><USER24> Cool question.

Basically, you don't manage your time. You use it. What are you trying to accomplish, how many resources do you have?

There are goals, you set, and there are bottom-up driven innovations.

The feeling of being overwhelmed is a good one as long as drowning in ideas not trouble. ;)

I try to have a decent team around me to help me get my goals done. The rest is hard work, there is no happy path to leadership/management. Dealing with VUCA is the price you pay. This is part of accepting being a manager. I read a lot of good business books, talk to trusted colleagues and set timt to focus on strategic topics.

Enjoy your career, learn and have fun with the people!

</comment><comment><USER25> I think the Peter principle, the idea that people are promoted to until they are incompetent in their roles, comes into play.

What worked for you to get to the job isn't necessarily going to work for you to succeed in the job, I agree with others saying that it's not a time management issue, it's a change in perspective that's require, you no longer have the ability to do everything for everyone, you now have to lead people you can trust to fulfill those tasks better than you could, as your responsibilities grow, the rest of your team doesn't stay static, they also grow with you.

</comment><comment><USER26> 1\. Your calendar is your new todo list, if it doesn't fit, get rid of it. You're negotiating about your time. Review your calendar at the end of the week to ensure you're putting in time on the projects you need to.

2\. You'll start to see why GTD got so popular, you need a list of things you can do. GTD's Agendas & WaitingFor lists are for you.

3\. If you don't have an ea/admin you trust, you need to get on that. The best chief of staffs I've ever worked with started as EAs. They should be able to grow into HR, Finance, or Program Management, or chief of staff.

<comment><AUTHOR> Diving in on GTD and have thus far really been converted. Having a system - _any_ system, is critical. It became clear pretty quickly that my "system" was just me using my head and brute-forcing my way through things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It sounds like you're not delegating enough. This is key when you're managing, especially at a senior level. And not just technology-related stuff.

Pick two thresholds:

\- Maximum amount of time you're willing to allocate to a specific task. (Example: 1h. FYI, David Allen of GTD fame recommends 5min for very senior execs.) Try to delegate anything above that number.

\- Amount of time you'll take you to get it done vs amount of time it'll take one of your directs or skips to get something done. (Example: a task that you could do in 1h will require 10 man-hours if done downstream.) Pick a number and try to delegate anything that requires less downstream effort.

When it comes to delegating, remember: back when you were an engineer or a new manager, you sucked at what your boss was delegating to you, but you managed to produce something that was good enough and you became better at it with time. Your directs and your skips will learn too.

Also:

\- Learn how to hire. If you're managing managers you absolutely want dependable directs who you trust will get done whatever stuff you delegate to them. And frankly, the same holds when you're managing engineers. (As an aside, a common mistake in early stage startups is to let the founders or HR hire for you; you're going to be the one managing whoever gets hired, so push back if you've no say over who gets hired.)

\- Put a weekly 30min 1:1 with all of your directs in your calendar if you're not doing so already. It'll save you lots of interruptions because your directs will know they've some time allocated for less urgent stuff, and it'll allow you to surface incoming problems before they blow up in your face.

\- Ax the time you spend on email to free up your calendar. Pick 2 or 3 time slots during your day. (Example: early morning upon arriving, before or after lunch, and before leaving.) Block those slots in your calendar. Only do email during those time slots. (Close your Email client and turn off notifications. If anything's actually urgent, your phone will ring.) Also, create filters to surface what's important and what's not. (Anything cc'd to you or not sent to your email directly probably isn't high priority; stuff sent by your boss or by your directs probably is.)

\- Block a few hours in your calendar to actually get your own work done. Part of your job arguably is to be available, but if your calendar is wide open it invites your coworkers to swamp you with meetings. And be picky with meetings. Unless it's coming from your boss, refuse to join meetings that don't have a clear agenda. (Send one of your directs instead.)

\- Build good-will and political capital in your organization. At senior levels, I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine tends to count a lot. So don't hesitate to spend a half hour every so often with other managers that deal with stuff your teams have interaction with to catch up. (There's no point in building a new product if the heads of marketing and sales don't both think there's a market.) Don't confuse this with schmoozing, else your weekly or fortnightly meeting will be first to get binned when calendar time is scarce. But work on those relationships.

<comment><USER28> > Build good-will and political capital in your organization.

It's very easy to overlook relationship building. Even just stopping by, saying a quick hello, and giving a smile to execs in different departments can make a world of a difference in how well your departments can work together. This can make a big difference at whatever level you're at in your career but is especially impactful the higher you go up the ladder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Your tasks and projects are now high level politics and people management. Give up thinking of technology, at all, you now have to maximise the value of Your department to the business and the perception of your VP counterparts. I found similar issues rising thru management and (I'm mid-career) have changed roles to focus on what I enjoy rather than politics.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to everyone who took the time to add something to this thread. Lots of valuable stuff in here, and I've got some rearranging to do with my perspective, and how I think about my time and tasks. I'm sure I'll have more questions, but for now I've got work to do to get better at this.

</comment><comment><USER10> Delegate ruthlessly. Get a 2IC/COO to deal with running operations, concentrate on strategy, people, ensuring your organisation is the right shape, value add.

<comment><USER30> When I was a direct report for a CIO of a fairly large multinational (40+ countries) my boss spent most of his time on the road travelling - he had a gruelling job. He was completely hands off when to technology - although he was actually fairly technical.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Background Check – Job title mismatch - <AUTHOR> I got an job offer and final stage is background check via third party.
In my second job, my official job title is C# Developer while in my resume I wrote C# Tech Lead.
I wrote C# Tech Lead because during last year in my second job, I was mentoring 3 juniors and responsible for tech stack architecture.
However, I am afraid that my potential employee will rescind job offer because of job title mismatch.
What I think is explain to potential employee when they decided rescind job offer.
Any better advice? <comment><USER2> If they rescind the offer over that, that's just the way risk/reward works. Whether it matters depends on the industry and the culture of the company and the general culture of the geographic location. A lot of time it won't and the further in the past it is, the less likely it is to matter.

Keep in mind that the background check is just to give the company an excuse to change its mind. If it rescinds the offer over the difference in job titles then it probably had already decided to do so.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> Next time be honest</comment>