Ask HN: What do you look for in a startup job? - <AUTHOR>

I've been working on an alpha version of my product for a few months, and I'm planning on hiring my first developer in the next month or two.  With that in mind, I'm curious to find out what you look for in a startup job.  How much of a concern is a pre-funding company?  Does the specific technology platform make a big difference?  What do you look for in terms of culture and personality fit?  What kind of tradeoffs do you look for between cash comp and more equity?  What are red flags for a wanker whose "work for equity" means "work for free for my doomed company?"  Other stuff that's top of mind? <comment><USER2> For your situation, I'd:

Look at you, most of all. Your character, and savy in things technical, business, etc. Experience (which can be traded off for willingness to listen (my first startup was in 1982)). Etc.

Pre-funding is probably going to be an individual thing, you'll not be able attract some people without it, but you can make the deal sweet enough to attract others (some of whom might not have other good options at the moment).

Technology makes a _big_ difference. If it's something that I find unpleasant to use for the requirements I wouldn't take the job unless desperate. (Perl is about the only thing I've decided is in that category for almost all requirements, after a decade of using it every once in a while.) This also shows if you're savy in technology.

Culture and personality have to be a "works well with others" sort of thing. I look for reasonably professional and tolerant types. I'm also politically conservative and libertarian; if the workplace environment is uncomfortable for people like me, well, obviously I wouldn't find it desirable (one reason I left the field of biology).

Cash is king, stock is pie in the sky. I'll maybe believe that you can pay my salary, but there are so many unknowns WRT to equity that I'd only look for a fair deal and then forget about it. (This was true long before the 2001 technology crash, after which the prospects for equity payouts became pretty grim.)

Mostly: will you pay me (enough and often enough (I'm willing to work for a while without a paycheck I can cash)), do you look like you've got a fair chance of succeeding, will the work have _enough_ fun and challenge (I also expect to sweep floors, do backups, do some of this technology generation's COBOL ... whatever is needed, it's a startup), etc.

Good luck!</comment>


This Is the New Gizmodo - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/#!5752428/this-is-the-new-gizmodo

<comment><AUTHOR> John Gruber does not approve.

<http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/02/07/gizmodo-redesign></comment>


Constant factors: constantly foiling you - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ksplice.com/2010/05/constant-factors-constantly-foiling-you/

<comment><USER2> Depending on 1) The storage engine you're using, and, 2) What other queries you run against this table

You could cluster the table on the 'time' column. That would store the data in the table in the same order as it appears in the index, and make time-based range queries a lot faster.

<comment><USER3> Shouldn't matter, this query shouldn't hit the data file. Clustering would just make fragmentation worse. I'd like to see the OP verify that it's only hitting the index file though (see my other post).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have to admit that I'm still a little puzzled here. Why does MySQL need to retrieve the actual rows from disk at all? Since the query is just returning count(*), can't it be answered entirely from the index? Does the index not reflect deletions or something like that?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good question, and one I'm not entirely sure about. My guess is that the index itself is also scattered across the disk, since it gets added to at the same time as the rows get added. So in the real query, where we are reading actual data, and not just counting the number of rows, there are actually two seek costs --- seeking to finding the correct part of the index to read, and then seeking to find the row it points to.

<comment><USER3> When you insert in sorted order into a b-tree (as you do with timestamps), later inserts will be more likely to be all in one block, and also more likely to be near the top of the tree.

Since b-trees have the guarantee that no root-to-leaf path is more than a constant factor longer than any other, you are probably hitting the very edge of that constant, and since disk seeks are the designated hitter of the performance team, you're getting hit pretty hard.

So, effectively, even your index is growing fragmented the more you use it.

To verify the fact that you're not hitting the data file though, maybe you could strace it and watch for reads on the index and the data file.

<comment><USER4> Typically, one expects a b-tree lookup to require at most 1 disk seek (for the leaf-nodes), and ideally your indices are fully in memory. So, color me skeptical that fragmentation of the index itself is to blame here.

<comment><USER3> Inserting in sorted order is not a typical case, and I strongly doubt your "at most 1 disk seek" claim but my memory is fuzzy so you may be correct.

You're definitely right that the cache should be hot though, so I am now also a skeptical hue.

<comment><USER4> One of the primary virtues of b-trees is that they make efficient use of disk. Even if the full data structure is too large to fit in memory, because of the large branching factor you can usually fit all the interior nodes in memory. So, in a lookup, only the final access of the leaf node requires a disk access. Of course, traversal may require additional seeks and reads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hmmm...let's think outside the schema for a moment.

OP is benchmarking two instances of COUNTs against a relational database, each looking for the total number of rows in a 3 day period, right?

I'm going to make a guess that this is historical data and that "time" is stamped and _never changes again_...

Why not just pre-answer the question by incrementing a field (based on date) in another table every time you add a record. Then instead of COUNTing millions of records in seconds, you can read 3 records in micro-seconds.

I know what you're thinking: this will "slow down" your transaction processing time. That's true, but only by microseconds. I'd rather wait a few microseconds several times per day than 61 seconds when I really needed to know something.

Just because a DBMS has lots of capabilities (SQL, indexing, triggers, stored procedures) doesn't necessarily mean that's the best way to deploy something. Sometimes a little thinking and some extra functionality in your app can leapfrog mountains.

[Aside: I have implemented this exact solution many times, often reducing historical reporting run times by 95% or more. No one ever noticed any latency at transaction update time.]

<comment><AUTHOR> You are totally right, if all I wanted to do was figure out how many total rows there were, and needed to do this often, it would make much more sense to store that number in a separate table. Unfortunately, those particular queries were just simple examples illustrating the problem --- the real program actually needed to read and use the real data. :-)</comment></comment>


NBC tries to make up with Apple - <AUTHOR> http://valleywag.com/tech/online-video/nbc-tries-to-make-up-with-apple-297139.php

<comment><USER2> I can just hear the suits convincing each other that consumers would pay "as much as $4.95" for NBC's shows, getting pumped up about how great their future in downloadable content is looking.

And then when this number gets mentioned to Apple and comes out in the media to universal ridicule, everyone is like "what are they smoking?" and they feel really awkward and hurt about it.</comment>


Why foreign YC founders chose to start their companies in Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2011/08/29/why-foreign-y-combinator-founders-chose-to-start-or-grow-their-companies-in-silicon-valley/

<comment><USER2> I can't imagine why anyone would not want to make the visa process for people like these as streamlined as possible.</comment>


Ask HN: What should I learn over the summer? (computer science student) - <AUTHOR>

	I'm a computer science major. Soon I'll be done with my freshman year of college, and I'll have three months of free time. After this year, I will have learned C++ fairly decently (topics up to polymorphism, linked lists, and templates). Also, from hobbyist programming before college, I know Python to a decent level. In the fall, I'll be taking two CS classes (data structures, and intro to computer systems).
My question is, what would be a good use of my time over the summer to still be learning CS topics at a decent pace?
The idea I had was making a good-looking website where users can play some small video game, and create an account so that they can log in and see their previous scores. Would this be a feasible idea? I figured it would help me learn web design (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) and I would try to make the game (whatever it is) from scratch, so I'd learn Java (or whatever is best for the job) too. If this seems like a good idea, what order should I go in? Any other suggestions? Thank you! <comment><USER2> If I were you, I would learn something practical, fun to do, and have visible accomplishment. One such example is mobile device (android/iOS) programming. It will not only give you an edge over your classmates, but also you may earn extra bucks as well. If you own macbook+iphone/ipad, swift [[https://developer.apple.com/swift/](https://developer.apple.com/swift/)] is a fun language to learn. And Professor Paul Hegarty has made iOS programming much more fun to learn over the years [[https://itunes.apple.com/us/course/developing-ios-8-apps- swi...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/course/developing-ios-8-apps- swift/id961180099)] [[http://cs193p.stanford.edu/](http://cs193p.stanford.edu/)]. For android programming, you can start from learning java and then jump in to Google's android course [[https://www.udacity.com/course/developing-android-apps-- ud85...](https://www.udacity.com/course/developing-android-apps--ud853)].

You may experiment with arduino or any other embedded systems. You will learn a lot about electronics, and basic computer structure. Embedded systems are integral parts of IoT.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, that is one thing I forgot to mention. I have some Arduino experience from a tech project I had senior year of high school. Of course, I did it with my very very rudimentary (at the time) C++ knowledge, but I still have all the boards and wires and stuff. I'll try to come up with something to do with that also.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you wan't to build a website where users can log in and store their scores, you'll need to learn a web backend language too. I would recommend this Udacity course ([https://www.udacity.com/course/developing-scalable-apps- in-j...](https://www.udacity.com/course/developing-scalable-apps-in-java-- ud859)) since you plan to learn Java anyways.

This would be intimidating at the beginning, but you seem motivated enough to survive it. :)

Overall, I feel like you are on the right track. Building projects/games/websites would lead to better learning.

</comment><comment><USER4> By the sounds of things building the site you described is well within the realm of doable. If you are looking at web games (as opposed to android which I think is what you were getting at with Java) there is a lot of cool stuff happening with canvas and js. Some tutorials here: [http://www.canvasdemos.com/type/games/](http://www.canvasdemos.com/type/games/)

I'm looking forward to seeing your project!</comment>


The jQuery Project launched - <AUTHOR> http://jquery.org/ <comment><USER2> While I find jQuery to be a delight to use, jQuery UI, is nowhere near what I would want/need it to be to build pure JS applications. The widgets it provides (accordion, datepicker, dialog, progressbar, slider and tabs) are not sufficient to define all of the UI in JavaScript in a clean way. No matter what you do you still have to define a lot of stuff using pure HTML.

Contrast this with ExtJS, where you can lay out the UI in pure JavaScript. Is anybody aware of anything like this built on top of jQuery?

<comment><USER3> Our team tried both. Originally we had a real JS guru on the team, and he wrote a ton of code against ExtJS. It was good stuff, but very difficult for anyone else to understand. He ended up leaving the company, and I inherited the front end code base. The project got put on hold for a while, and we decided to take a fresh start. I went with Jquery UI rather than ExtJS, because it just felt too much like you had to drink the kool-aid with ExtJS. Our team was more comfortable with a hybrid approach.

Every form we write is in bare bones partial HTML, and we use some juiced up JQuery UI Dialog code to display the forms as modal pop-ups. Additionally, we use the UI themes and their css classes even for non-JQuery Ui components, that way when we switch themes, all the elements change, not just the JQuery UI ones. There are only a couple of palatable themes available, but on the whole, it's been nice.

<comment><USER2> Your situation sounds strangely familiar :)... My opinion is that if I am going to design a form that is going to run in a JavaScript app, I should be able to do so in pure JavaScript. For example:

      form = new UberUI.form();
      form.append( new UberUI.input( {type: "text", name: "login", label: "Login:", validator: myValidatorFunction} ) );
      ...
      form.show();

On a different note, jQueryUI is much more theme'able than ExtJS, which is great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm always impressed by how many excellent products John and the jQuery team produce.

Out of curiosity, how does John earn a living?

I saw him speak at the Philly Emerging Tech conference last year and his talk convinced me to switch over to jQuery from Prototype (those were the days). Do the speakers get paid much for their presentations?

<comment><USER5> I was reading this just yesterday: [http://oreilly.com/social- media/excerpts/9780596802004/why-s...](http://oreilly.com/social- media/excerpts/9780596802004/why-speakers-earn-30k-an-hour.html)

It's a chapter from the latest book by Scott Berkun (the author of "Making Things Happen") about public speaking and it mentions some numbers for how much speakers can get paid. At the very bottom, he writes that he's averaging $100k a year right now, from books and presentations. Just a few data points.

<comment><USER6> Ok, that's absolutely not true in the tech world. I was chatting with some friends that also speak frequently to developer-centric audiences and we were all commiserating how hard it is to get basic necessities when speaking - it's a challenge finding conferences that will pay for a hotel room, let alone actually pay you to speak at the conference. Really the only time you can ever expect to get paid to speak is if you're doing training or a workshop - conferences are a complete wash.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> graceful degradation FAIL

<comment> joe-mccann Ditto</comment></comment>


BlackBerry Dead by 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://brooksreview.net/2011/05/blackdeath/ <comment><USER2> I disagree with the author:

The BlackBerry market is made up of corporate users who write emails that go on for miles. What makes the device unique is they physical keyboard, which makes it easy to write those monster emails. And in my experience of hanging out with Blackberry users that's really what they use the device for — the ability to make a phone call seems secondary (and the ability to look at the web isn't even there).

While the other brands appeal to the consumer market, corporations still love their BlackBerry in the way they love Windows. If RIM was smart they'd get acquired by Microsoft, Oracle, Dell or IBM — someone who is a top tier player in the corporate space.

<comment><USER3> That argument doesn't hold much water anymore. I have friends who work at some of the top investment banks - JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank are two of which I know are offering the iPhone as a choice instead of the blackberry.

Also, a lawyer friend at a top tier law firm was offered the iPhone as an alternative as well - granted he didn't take it. A decision he regrets.

It's only a matter of time - no one wants to carry 2 devices and their employers are keen to it.

<comment><USER4> Here is another data point, my finance, who's in sales and a Droid user for a year, recently got a Blackberry for work. She didn't like it at all. Blackberry is not going away anytime soon due long enterprise sales cycle. But like fertel said, it's only a matter of time.

<comment><USER5> That's an interesting typo... Do you lavish a lot of money on her? ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> And Microsoft was suppose to be dead by 2010, or was that 200x or 201x?

Declining from King status? Probably

Dead? I put that right up there with world is ending in 2012.

PS: I am an iPhone user... no fan of Blackberry... but I find it a bit nuts when people make broadstroked arguements without any real support.

</comment><comment><USER7> Why does the author pick 2012, as opposed to 2011 or 2013? There's no explanation on the timeline, which is so prominent in the headline, just two pictures. This is a pretty pointless article to make it onto HN's front page.

<comment><USER8> It's just two pictures, and it _ignores_ the rest of the Blackberry line-up, which includes touch-only devices and slide-outs. I was expecting some announcement from RIM based on the title, and was disappointed to find this content-free article by an iPhone platform-bigot. (Disclaimer: I'm not using or a fan of either device.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just had a phone upgrade at my work. Got to choose from Iphone and Blackberry.

Went with Blackberry. Many people thought my decision was crazy.

Except, I actually work from my Blackberry. I write emails, and ssh with it. I need an actual real keypad, and not a toy.

For people like me, an Iphone is worthless.

<comment><USER10> Have you used an iphone for more than 5 minutes? I email, ssh, irc, twitter, facebook, etc. with it all damn day. It's not a toy. You may like it better, which is fine, and a personal decision. Your conclusion that the iphone is worthless for 'people like you' is pretty far from the demonstrated truth though.

<comment><USER8> I have a work-issued iPhone, but use my personal phone anyway. Not to say that the iPhone is useless, but it irks me if I have to look at my phone to do things with it, like staring at the keyboard (and missing its autocomplete mis-fires) or looking at it to change songs while driving. So, not to speak for the person you're replying to, but the iPhone does happen to be useless for people like me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> BlackBerry might be dead by next month for all I know, but the author of this blog post has shown no particular insight or knowledge that gives me any reason to think his understanding of RIM's prospects is any better than my own (which is nonexistent). I don't like articles like this, they're just shallow regurgitations of prevailing groupthink (in this guy's circles); if they're right, it's by accident.

</comment><comment><USER12> Blackberry is struggling, its true. But then like an individual too there are ups and downs in the life of an organization too. Yes, organizations die too but their resilience is pretty strong they don't die easy.

Blackberry is not bring disruptive innovations instead they chose iterative development that is because their customers need that kind of thing.

Besides RIM is positioning itself well in the emerging markets like India where blackberry seems to be a new craze. IMO before writing off RIM we need to wait for at least 5 more years to see how it performs. Also, it's supposedly bad performances must be reflected in the balance-sheet as well which is not the case currently.

Playbook is beating both Galaxy and Xoom to get the second position which is not bad at all.

</comment><comment><USER13> Another thing the author fails to see is that Blackberry users are EXTREMELY loyal. They love their devices and do an awesome job keeping with their fan base. Its just like a cult movie. The user base stays loyal and the blackberry will stay to be cult and only grow in popularity.

</comment><comment><USER14> The product feels like it's lacking innovation, and among a crowd of hackers & builders, it makes sense that this article would gain traction. I've heard rumors that RIM will be adopting Android in the coming months. Regardless of this claim, a company with as much money and momentum can't be discounted so easily. It is foolish to claim that a Goliath is dead until you have his head in your hands.

Let's think for a moment about other tech giants: HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and certainly Apple --whose resurrection story is legend.

</comment><comment><USER15> The author is saying that they won't be relevant and doesn't give any context. I believe they won't be relevant in the consumer market, because I think most people would rather have a droid or an iPhone. However in the enterprise market they're bought by IT, and RIM knows who's buying the phone, not who's using the phone.

<comment><USER10> Of the 5 or 6 fortune 100's that I have contacts at, ALL of them are switching or have switched to providing iphones instead of blackberrys by default. _ALL_ of them started this within the last year. 2012 is a rash prediction, given their scale, I agree. I do think that Apple is eating their lunch though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> All that really has to be said is look at the HUGE and active memberships at sites like crackberry.com; obviously every one is going to have their prefs. and opinions, but the author needs to do a little more research on who is using the phones, at least before declaring one will be dead by such and such date.

</comment><comment><USER17> Blackberry is better for dealing with emails than any other phone. Plus RIM is doing very well financially.

</comment><comment><USER18> Isn't Blackberry the only company providing guaranteed messaging with latency caps? (Verizon might, as well) This was an issue for the operations team at a place where I worked. You couldn't use, say, T-Mobile because an SMS notification about a broken server might never arrive, or might arrive after an arbitrary delay.</comment>


Want Better Quality? Fire Your QA Team - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.forrester.com/mike_gualtieri/11-02-17-want_better_quality_fire_your_qa_team <comment><USER2> My wife has a freelance QA consultancy, and while I understand that there is often the sense that QA is a 'nag', I can honestly say that whenever she is involved in my work, the quality of my output is much better, and takes less time to get it there.

A good QA analyst / team does much more than point at a problem and say 'there it is'. A good QA analyst can determine why you made an error, and can anticipate other errors you might have made in the same way. A good QA analyst will learn your formulae, learn your equations, understand your workflow and try to find root cause, even if they're not developers.

Having a good QA person with a trained eye for knowing what I'm likely to have overlooked is also FAR more cost effective than your high-paid developers doing the same task. If they know that 'heads will roll' when they get errors, I'm also betting that makes your releases even slower.

Off-topic completely, but I generally prefer non-developer QA analysts, as they generally prove themselves to 'think too much like me' to be effective.

<comment><AUTHOR> People who know how to test are extremely valuable. Specially when doing peer review/pair programming with (solving the blind's eye thing)

Testing as a whole is not an easy task as it involves testing some really hard things: memory leaks, performance, UX, correctness of parallel and distributed algorithms/programs/systems.

However, Wealthfront engineers probably put this position more into perspective [1]:

 _We do not have QA team and do not want to have one, the reasoning is that if a human is involved in testing then there is a higher chance of missing things and you simply can't test all the site dozens of times a day._

Granted, Wealthfront uses continuous deployment[2], while still being regulated by the SEC. I really enjoy their lean startup approach to minimize inventory (ie: code not in production), while still keeping an immune system. And investors seem to agree it is really paying off [3].

[1] [http://eng.wealthfront.com/2010/04/findbugs-husdon-and- pizza...](http://eng.wealthfront.com/2010/04/findbugs-husdon-and-pizza- driven.html)

[2] [http://www.eishay.com/2010/07/continuous-deployment-at- kachi...](http://www.eishay.com/2010/07/continuous-deployment-at-kaching.html)

[3] [http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/19/kaching-gets-100m-under- man...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/19/kaching-gets-100m-under-management- and-gets-all-wall-street-with-a-new-name/)

<comment><USER2> At least in my wife's case, she generally does pre-release QA, and doesn't necessarily do continuous QA. Still though, even if you need support for continuous deployment, you probably want a QA person to set up your automated test cases to test the output of a site in a way that, in my opinion, unit tests don't seem to catch.

<comment><USER3> Having worked in Silicon Valley for 12 years, I have yet to find QA people who could successfully automate testing in a non-fragile way or without using an expensive, proprietary and crappy testing harness. Those who know how to program are invariably better at writing automated tests. One recent CS graduate should be able to put a team of QA out of a job. (Disclosure: I work for Wealthfront)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > This app can't go down, and it can't be wrong.

Shops who set the bar this high _and mean it_ are exceptionally rare (I look for them when I'm on the market). Where I am now, an hour of downtime costs us my salary for weeks, and still we cut corners that don't always sit right with me.

But having generalist engineers create functional and integration test plans? Not only do we tend to cost more, but we have less experience at it than QA specialists. And a dev shouldn't test their own work, because they won't notice any unwarranted assumptions they made in design and coding.

</comment><comment><USER5> ridiculous.

a large fraction of errors that turn up in QA are conceptual errors made by the development team; like the blind spot in the eye, you don't know what you don't know, and there are certain problems that you'll never find yourself.

Phil Crosby would say that management is responsible for quality; management writes the specifications and has the responsibility to hire and fire developers and QA people. The buck stops with management.

Efficient quality requires practices to be work correctly across the organization, but it starts in the specification process. If you don't know where you're going, you're sure as hell never going to get there.

<comment><USER6> "If you don't know where you're going, you're sure as hell never going to get there." -> Also not always true. Think Twitter. Think Christopher Columbus.

<comment><USER7> Columbus knew where he was going. And would have died trying to get there, if he hadn't serendipitously run into something else, first.

<comment><USER8> But he misjudged that something else (America) with his original destination (India).

Quoting from wiki (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus>):

"Amerigo Vespucci's travel journals, published 1502-4, convinced Martin Waldseemüller that the discovered place was not India, as Columbus always believed, but a new continent"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If a developer's reaction to a client-facing defect is "QA didn't catch it", you have cultural problems that firing a QA team probably won't fix. If you don't have a culture of personal responsibility, a finger can always be pointed elsewhere.

Developers should absolutely write and use unit tests. Where QA really shines in the larger scale: validating actual business requirements.

<comment><USER10> Exactly. For me, every client-facing defect is an embarrassing personal failure. Having them caught in QA simply lessens the shame, and allows me to dedicate all the time I would spend freaking out about the newfound emergency to figuring out improvements that eliminate that entire class of errors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I 100% agree with this article. Quality is everyone's job, not just the QA teams' and I believe that, in most cases, developers can and should be responsible for developing, testing, and releasing their code. When developers can't "throw code over the wall to QA" because there is no QA, they will do a better job testing it themselves.

I don't buy the popular opinion that developers can't test their own code like there is some sort of magic that goes on in the mind of QA engineers that causes them to be able to find bugs that developers couldn't find themselves. In fact, I think the opposite is true - developers are better suited to test the features they are writing because they know the code and know the risk areas, where things need to be regression tested, where more attention should be placed, etc.

I do think that it can be helpful for another set of eyes to look at a developed feature and this is where pair programming can be useful. It does not need to be QA doing this.

One caveat is that this approach does not work for all teams. This works for small, agile teams where roles and responsibilities are less defined. If you fire your QA team but your developers can't test their own code because they are set in their ways of writing crap because they expect QA to find the bugs, you may end up firing your dev team too....

<comment><USER12> Having been in a high pressure position in which my team and I were writing mission critical code which could "have no bugs whatsoever" first without QA, and then later with QA, I can say confidently the quality of the code and occurrence of bugs dropped dramatically after we introduced our QA engineers.

Our prior condition was very similar to telling a newspaper writer "DONT WRITE TYPOS". You can scan a page you've written several times carefully and still miss your mistakes, even if you are a conscientious writer. And the newspaper industry isn't the only industry that prevents mistakes through multi-party review processes, either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> QA and dev are two different skills. It's like saying that we save on design by having the devs do it, or having your quarterback also play noseguard. Sure it works in high school, but not when you're a pro.

I'd much rather hire someone who knows testing and QA well and let my devs focus on writing bug-free product code.

<comment><USER3> I disagree. Developers who don't know how to test are bad developers, they should go. And conversely, if you have QA, they should know how to develop, otherwise you're paying them to hunt, peck, and click. Why not have QA write the code to have computer do that and save like 1000x the time? That's efficiency AND quality.

<comment><USER13> Of course QA knows how to program. But their skillset is about breaking code. It's about writing this crazy C++ function that shows how your API has a security bug in this case. As developers their like dev tools developers as their customers are generally devs.

Skillset maybe isn't the right word... mindset maybe better word. Both should be good programmers -- in fact you'll often have more test code than product code. But you likely won't be able to switch your dev team to QA and vice- versa and get the same results.

<comment><USER3> You're lucky to have QA people who know C++, I've never met one. Maybe I've been in too many web-oriented startups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> By the time anything gets to the QA person at my dayjob, the devs have usually tried every damn thing that they could think of to break their own code.

The usual reaction to the bugs she finds is "what made you think of trying _that_?"

</comment><comment><USER15> I work in QA in a high-reliability industry. Correct operation of some our products saves millions and saves lives. We need _super_ high quality. How we do QA is pretty traditional. In particular, we have functional test teams. The perspective we take is that the testers take the specs and develop tests to exercise the functionality, and theoretically, we (QA) cover any spots the developers missed, as well as providing assurance that the developers aren't talking out of the wrong hole when they say they're done. Seems to work most of the time except when mutual brain-farts develop.

I don't know that I would go so far as to recommend firing myself to increase quality. I would have to visit with many teams and really gain experience in the way they work. I do think that we could take a step forward by having a standard across the company to have fully automated test suites running continuous builds and tests. That, however, runs facefirst into the problem of Legacy Stuff and ROI. Automation just plain takes time when you are interfacing against external programs. It's not always worth it in the short/medium term.

There's no silver bullet to the software quality problem. But me, I think that continuous integration provides a copper bullet.

</comment><comment><USER16> This works as long as your developers are talented in QA and are motivated to do it. That sounds like it requires a lucky constellation of events.

</comment><comment><USER17> Don't be so quick to brush this off. The argument isn't so different from saying that we don't want to distinguish "front-end" and "back-end" programmers. It's probably a special circumstance that you need a team that is _entirely_ dedicated to verification.

Feynman talks about this arrangement in his essay on the shuttle program (<http://www.fotuva.org/feynman/challenger-appendix.html>). In a nutshell, the core software team is responsible for checking the code. Then there is a totally removed group that is adversarial, i.e., it is measured on its ability to trip up the software team. This is the same a "setting consequences" as this author describes.

Now, the shuttle program is truly life critical. I think a good software team can produce quality results internally.

<comment><USER18> _The argument isn't so different from saying that we don't want to distinguish "front-end" and "back-end" programmers._

I don't want to distinguish front-end and back-end programmers. I would like to distinguish front and back-end _development_.

I do everything currently but I still need put on a conceptual "testing hat", "GUI hat" and "back-end hat". That requires mental effort and costs time. A real Q&A would save that even if I was exactly as skilled as the Q&A person.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, that's true. I think the point of the source is that the first line of defense is with the originator of the code. Sure, the context switch is expensive, but that's the price of higher quality.

It's not really about firing the QA team. Instead, it's about having a QA function that does not entirely relieve the original author of his duty to ensure quality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Ah it's a single anecdotal story and comes with no specifics about who it is or in what way things supposedly improved, just some broad calls for firing QA.

<comment><USER20> Forrester will ring a few more people they picked out of the phone at random, write it up as a report for their library complete with beautiful graphs, and then begin to charge thousands of dollars per copy to tell other consultants what the "Industry Best Practice" is at the moment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > They better get it right, or heads will roll. As British author Samuel > Johnson famously put it, "The prospect of being hanged focuses the mind > wonderfully."

Gee, sounds like a _wonderful_ place to work. When can I sign up?

</comment><comment><USER22> My head is more often buried in code than in the product's UI. Our QA team has a better nose for when interaction or UI details are off than I do. In general, they spend more time _using_ the application, and have a better instinct for when a given behaviour is wrong.

Some of the bugs they report would fall under the automatically testable category, but many don't.

I suspect that dogfooding is more effective at companies where the product itself is useful to developers or is a consumer app. e.g. Basecamp, FogBugz, Facebook, Netflix, Gmail, etc.

</comment><comment><USER20> Ah yes, Forrester.

I hope all of you reading the blog post realise that this brainfart will cost your organisation $5,500 per copy downloaded.

</comment><comment><USER23> I don't think this would be a good idea. When developing I don't always have the time to be as thorough as a QA team is in testing my own code. It's very helpful to have somebody else with a non-technical background to help spot problems that I am blind to.

<comment><USER6> That you can afford to be blind to because you have someone doing QA?

<comment><USER10> No, that you're blind to because it's in the nature of software development. Spotting flaws in something you've spent the last $X hours _convincing_ yourself is correct is hard to do. It's easy to make invalid assumptions and internalize them in your thinking to the point you don't notice them. This problem exists, and largely is solved by dragging in _someone else_ to help with it. That someone else, unless you'd like to squabble over semantics, is doing QA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Considering I work with one of the most incompetent QA engineers I've ever had the displeasure of encountering, I couldn't agree more. This person wastes my time, and the organization's time, and has not actually increased the quality of software (as far as I can tell). It is a waste of a developer's time to decipher a bug that states "it's broken," without clearly defining "broken," or "it," or how to reproduce the behavior. Often, reproduction involves user error (like forgetting to sign into the vpn). If it weren't for this bozo, our team could get more work done in less time.

I assume that others have had better experiences.

<comment><USER25> So because one QA guy is bad, the whole profession is bad ? You could say that about any profession, including developers.

<comment><USER24> Bad QA is worse than no QA. In my 15 year career, I've seen two decent QA analysts, and they both had extensive technical backgrounds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Peopleware has a chapter about "the black team" that was at IBM. The chapter is about team work but they describe how in the process of gelling the QA team delighted in finding programmer bugs. They describe how creation of a reputation and ethos in the black team not only made them a little better than other QA teams but significantly better.

While it's easy to say that QA isn't important many of the QA teams I've worked with weren't respected or valued, and often saw QA as a stepping stone. If you want to increase the quality of the code, don't fire the QA team, motivate them.

</comment><comment><USER27> What is the metric for quality? Is the article saying that having fewer people looking for bugs resulted in more bugs being found? Or fewer bugs? Or just fewer bugs found?

</comment><comment><USER28> Most of the other comments already voice my reaction to this post. I will only add that a "heads will roll" attitude towards motivating devs on the part of management would prompt me to switch to some other place very fast. Simply saying "you have to do X as well as Y or heads will roll" just sounds like trying to save money on QA and squeezing more work out of devs - who could be putting that time and effort to much better use improving the product.</comment>


What If Andrew Yang Was Right? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-romney-yang-money/608134/ <comment><USER2> The interview here is compelling. Yang's book is even more compelling.

But what Yang doesn't do here or in his book is make a powerful case to fiscal conservative spelling out just how universal income will avoid demolishing the economy through inflation. Until this happens, UBI is going nowhere.

Although COVID-19 is on everyone's minds right now, it wasn't too long ago that Venezuela, its hyperinflation, and empty stores were the topic of concern.

COVID-19 has brought with it store shortages, which no doubt is a massive shock to most Americans. Nobody knows when those shortages will end.

Imagine what could happen if you dropped a grand in everyone's pocket every month. Also imagine the humanitarian crisis that would result by trying to suppress consumer inflation through price controls.

<comment><USER3> Inflation is a non-issue. Economic growth has largely been constrained by demand, not supply. And the modern economy is saturated with replacement goods. If the demand for milk goes up, I can switch to soy milk. If soy milk goes up, I can switch to Almond. And if all of them go up, I just drink water. Once most basic needs are met, inflation looses its power with a few exceptions. The financialization of our economy has resulted in crazy high house prices, education, and to some degree health care. And that was driven by excessive monetary stimulus. Giving working class folks an extra $1k a month is not going to cause houses to go up by $1M. But giving speculators access to absurdly low interest rates will.

<comment><USER4> > If the demand for milk goes up, I can switch to soy milk. If soy milk goes > up, I can switch to Almond. And if all of them go up, I just drink water.

I don't understand how this example describes a situation where inflation is a non-issue. I used to be able to afford to drink milk; now, due to inflation, I can only afford to drink water. That sounds like inflation. What am I missing from this example?

<comment><USER3> There are 2 issues that I was attempting to demonstrate, but perhaps I conflated them a bit. Here is second attempt:

Inflation requires a persistent and durable increase in the price of a good. The first issue is that a large proportion of individuals in modern economies are barely making enough money to make ends meet. They are very sensitive to price. An increase in the price of milk would likely cause them to switch to alternatives, thus lowering demand for milk which would then bring the price back down. In effect, the constraint on the wages of the lower classes acts as a constraint on prices of goods. And the second factor, is that in these modern global economies, we have plenty of replacements for almost all types of goods. So if a drought in the mid-west causes soy prices to spike, people will just east less soy based products and switch to something cheaper for a while.

COVID-19 could disrupt that of course. But my hunch is that within a few months after the lockdowns are over, most supply chains will be back up and running. At that point we will be back to being demand constrained (perhaps significantly so if the economic impact is severe enough).

<comment><USER5> 1) Real inflationary problems are always about money supply, not regular changes in supply/demand.

When Chavez goes nutty, people don't want his currency, it starts to crash, he prints to pay his bills, it _really_ crashes. This is where all the inflation crisis comes.

2) The 'milk substitute' thing I think illustrates the opposite point you're trying to make. Having to give up Milk to drink water is a _severely_ negative consequence! Projected across all of one's lifestyle and habits, it would be comparable to giving up a car to ride only the bus. Giving up Netflix for 'library books'. This implies a serious degradation in the quality of life.

If anything though, we've been concerned about deflation for a very long time, not inflation.

<comment><USER6> > Giving up Netflix for 'library books'. This implies a serious degradation in > the quality of life.

If everyone gave up Netflix for library books, I think that'd be a massive societal win.

Other than that, I agree with your point.

<comment><USER5> Ah yes, shouldn't we all?

But we can choose books anytime, and we don't. So when you and I think about 'win' it must be different than what 'everyone else wants' at least in terms of how they actively chose to spend their time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Congress woman Tulsi Gabbard (the Clinton blacklisted presidential candidate) took on Yang's UBI initiative after he ran out of money and dropped out of the presidential race. Gabbard introduced HRes 897 last Thursday and has been vocal about providing an urgent $1k per month UBI payment for the projected 10 million US citizens who will lose their jobs.

The DNC in their wisdom have again chosen to blank Gabbard and focus on AOC and Romney thinking about doing the same thing, although I believe there are now co sponsors and momentum for HRes897.

[https://actionnetwork.org/letters/include-ubi-in-the- economi...](https://actionnetwork.org/letters/include-ubi-in-the-economic- stimulus-plan-for-covid-19?source=direct_link&)

<comment><USER8> Tulsi is going on Fox to complain about not being allowed in the debates despite having ~0 support. She is not a good-faith actor, and blacklisting her is entirely appropriate.

<comment><USER9> Well, blacklisting is absolutely undemocratic.

But it is fair to not have her in the debates when she does not meet the requirements.

<comment><USER10> I think they mean that if a Democratic candidate is going on the (known to the left wing as pure propaganda and lies) right wing network of choice to make their case then they are not arguing in good faith and simply looking to score points with people who will never vote for her anyway.

It's disingenuous and she had next to 0 support anyway.

<comment><USER7> Here's the sequence of events with Tulsi Gabbard's presidential campaign which is important if you believe in running a fair democracy, my fundamental point here.

Gabbard resigned as a rising star DNC VP in 2016 to endorse Bernie Sanders over Mrs Clinton who had bought the party off with a cash infusion (largely raised by Weinstein) on the agreement she had control of party strategy and messaging, and could include multiple super delegates at the convention. Congreswoman Gabbard announced her grass roots funded presidential campaign and has run it from a mini van with volunteers, a very small paid staff and ~$1m budget.

Gabbard got great traction - most searched for via Google - in the first two TV show Q & sixty second answer commercial TV 'debates' and destroyed the Harris campaign with her debating skills in November.

Throughout the campaign, and massively increased in 2020, the DNC media has either subsequently ignored her or run negative messaging to undermine her credibility. The DNC knows reform would come if Gabbard got control.

The DNC changed their debate rules to allow 55x billionaire Bloomberg to 'run' and debate as a presidential candidate, spending incredible sums to obliterate Sanders and others before pulling out again.

The corporate puppet candidates Buttigieg, Klobochar (and subsequently Warren afterwards) pulled out just before Super Tuesday - and after tens of thousands had cast their postal ballots - to endorse Biden, the DNC's preferred candidate. The debate rules were changed again by the DNC after Gabbard won two delegates to exclude her. The only media Gabbard gets coverage on is Fox News and internet shows and podcasts.

There is a massive disinformation campaign she is constantly fighting (Russian asset, Assad and Modi supporter etc) that undermines her fundamental anti war pro diplomacy platform.

My point: if the DNC give hundreds of millions in free positive media coverage to their preferred candidates and blacklist/ blackout positive coverage of other candidates is it any surprise Gabbard has done so badly, or other future and past candidates? Many many people don't even know she is in the presidential race on ballots that still list long suspended campaigns from Harris and others.

The DNC rely on name recognition and positive media messaging to amplify their preferred candidates. This is not democracy or a level playing field.

The Gabbard platform positions: www.tulsigabbard.org

<comment><USER11> Bloomberg is a nationally known politician who was willing to spend 230 million in a 4 week span. Gabbard isn't comparable to that.

<comment><USER7> Correct. There needs to be campaign finance restrictions put in place, otherwise these media owning oligarchs and their networks will continue to have overwhelming control over democracy. Gabbard is just a congresswoman and army major with a very modest background.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My primary concern with UBI is not the concept itself, but the risk for people in power to use it against the people.

Once UBI exists, people will rely on it for survival. It will be the single most influential campaign topic.

Worse, if UBI were to get 'Obamacared' then we'd end up with a massive battle over implementation, followed by a much worse system than the one we had prior (worst of all worlds with numerous 'compromises'), and then followed by a repeal and whatever subsequent chaos comes out of it.

I don't want to imagine what would happen to the folks who find themselves reliant on UBI if it were to go down that path.

<comment><USER13> > but the risk for people in power to use it against the people.

As opposed to what, private undemocratic unaccountable authoritarian institutions controlling peoples' lives?

> nce UBI exists, people will rely on it for survival.

Anybody who's dependent on their employers' paycheck is dependent on their employer for survival. How is dependence on the government any more dangerous than being dependent on a corporation?

We already have UBI, but only old people can qualify for it, and the dividend amount is proportional to how much money you made in your lifetime. It's called social security.

Extending this dividend to the rest of the population is the next logical extension of this.

<comment><USER14> > How is dependence on the government any more dangerous than being dependent > on a corporation?

Changing your employer is much simpler than changing your government.

<comment><USER15> > Changing your employer is much simpler than changing your government.

Making changes _at_ your place of employment is often impossible. We get direct chances to change our government every X years. And changing to a different employer often isn't that easy for many folks.

<comment><USER16> Changing your employment is individual and allows different offerings from different employers, matching the wants and needs of different people. Changing your government needs a majority consensus and at least some people will be in the minority who doesn't get what they want.

I don't think tying employment to healthcare is a good thing, but I don't think your argument gives a good reason, either.

<comment><USER17> Changing your employment is as simple as irritating your manager or missing some KPI, and getting fired in all these 'right to work' states. UBI would keep people who would otherwise live on the brink of utter chaos enough to sever their dependence on minimum wage slavery.

Your picture of people picking and choosing from enticing opportunities isn't remotely true for people at the bottom where this would help.

<comment><USER16> So fix your employment, minimum wage, etc. laws, too. UBI is a huge undertaking in terms of legal and social changes, we shouldn't consider it "either this change or no change".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm not sure there's a "what if" at all, more like a "when will".

At some point, a UBI will become a necessity. The most likely other options are a dystopian nightmare or a complete overhaul of our basic economic principles (i.e. a post-scarcity Star Trek-esque society)

<comment><USER19> For the most part I agree, but the important fact is that that point might not be now. Just because you might know the end point, doesn't mean you can skip the steps in between or try to get there too quickly. That can lead to disaster as you'll probably not have the right conditions or supporting structures in place.

<comment><USER20> Our current pandemic and the economic consequences certainly will make more people open to UBI. Once the recovery starts, look for businesses to invest heavily in automation so they're not caught in a labor crunch again when their human labor get sick, quarantined, or ineffective due to social distancing. This may cause a permanent shift in labor demand that never again comes close to matching the labor supply. Or maybe it'll end up like other revolutions with new currently unknown jobs opening up over time.

<comment><USER21> Check out the "Future of Work" where they cover the top 5 most popular jobs and how they are in danger. The self driving trucks shock the human truck drivers in the diner.

Makes me sad to see their faces when they realize just how far along and how good the self driving trucks have become:

\- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iaKHeCKcq4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iaKHeCKcq4)

UBI will become a necessity because the alternative will not be pretty.

<comment><USER20> Self driving trucks probably are going to be considered a national security issue going forward. We can't have cargo sitting around waiting for humans in a health crisis. That will indeed be a huge gut punch to that segment of the labor market. The only slightly silver lining is that trucking has very high turnover so the number put out of their jobs will be less than you might think. What will hurt though will be the loss of opportunity to be a truck driver, even if only for a few years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> UBI is fundamentally right, my biggest issue with this approach is that this is the last step before eliminating support for the poor altogether. No longer hampered by the intricacies of providing a service, it now becomes a debate over "how much do people need to survive? Why do we need this in the first place? This is redistribution!" This is a battle "the people" not only have lost typically, but failed to even take up an interest in defending for themselves.

<comment><USER23> Yeah I'm afraid that the trickle-down grifters will always cook up some soundbites to knock any no-strings-attached benefits by pushing the freeloader fallacy and people will fall for it. Which brings us back to square one, but without anything needs based, causing a massive surge in poverty again.

Of course this has to be balanced with the utter paternalism of determining "needs" in the first place. It clearly isn't enough on its own, and is also ripe for abuse in different ways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Didn't George W Bush send a cheque out to every American? I figured that's what Romney had in mind more than full scale UBI.

<comment><USER20> Yes and most of it was spent on paying off debt rather than buying tvs and iPods to stimulate the economy. I know I put my check into my savings account and didn't think about it again.

<comment><USER25> Isn't that the biggest goal right now? Maintaining a healthy banking and housing system by subsidizing rent, mortgages, debt payments etc? $1000 a month doesn't seem like a stimulus, it seems like a bridge to the other side.

<comment><USER26> Better than $1000 would be codified protections for tenants or borrowers. Yes, this doesn't have to be an either-or thing, but I'd still want to have the law on my side.

I guess what I mean is that in order to fix, as Yang says, the biggest winner take _all_ economy, you have to do something different than _just_ throw money at it (lest the winners take that, too). The goal should be to address why we're here in the first place to make sure it doesn't happen again (at least not to this level), and not to just barely get by and bounce right back to being one inconvenience away from ruin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The problem with UBI is that most versions of it would essentially liquidate social services that people would normally receive. UBI only makes sense in addition to the other parts of a comprehensive safety net (universal housing and healthcare), not as a replacement.

<comment><USER28> Why would I choose to jump through bureaucratic and degrading welfare programs for vouchers and discounts when I can opt-in to a superior UBI program that gives me cash which I can use for anything? I'm the one who best knows how to effectively allocate those resources in my life. E.g. What good are food stamps when I have no gas (or car) to get to the store?

There are some social services that are necessary and beneficial but these should be built on top of a UBI foundation for maximum effectiveness.

<comment><USER29> > I'm the one who best knows how to effectively allocate those resources in my > life.

Some people do not get good enough education and do not know how to effectively allocate resources.

> There are some social services that are necessary and beneficial but these > should be built on top of a UBI foundation for maximum effectiveness.

Do you mean the other way around? Necessary social services should be the foundation with UBI built on top of it. Social services can do some things better than UBI can even when assuming everyone uses their UBI completely rationally.

<comment><USER30> Exactly. If you knew how to best allocate resources in your life, you probably wouldn't be in a situation where you need UBI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Yang was right in the sense that UBI is going to make more and more sense moving forward. I am still unclear how this would intersect with e.g. healthcare needs, which I believe is fundamentally an easier problem to solve for greater immediate effect.

<comment><USER32> I think the idea here is that people that are sick can actually take time off. If you've worked in these kinds of jobs you show up to work sick because you can't miss a day, because you can't have a smaller paycheck. So a little more money eases this and gives more leverage to workers.

<comment><USER26> $1000/mo gives you some leverage, but at the end of the day, not being tied to your job just so you can have decent and affordable health insurance gives you more. This doesn't even talk about stuff money can't buy, like mandatory paid sick leave.

Instead of trying to just "ease this", why not try to eliminate it?

<comment><USER32> I get frustrated with answers like this. It sets up an __OR__ question when one didn't exist. I mean the discussion is about Andrew Yang's UBI. He also supported single payer. Why is this an __OR__ discussion? We don't have to fight when we're on the same side.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> We don't have to entirely speculate, we can look at existing evidence.

Australia has the most liberal welfare in the world. Anyone over 18 can get $984 per month, and up to another $242 in rent assistance. [1]

It has nothing to do with your previous employment history, or being fired, or anything like that. In fact, you can get it if you've never had a job in your life. You need to be "actively looking for work" which in reality means fill out a few job applications and forms every week. It's easy, I've done it.

You can't live a glamorous life, but you can certainly live. Especially if you get 3-4 people in a cheap rental, you'll have enough money to surf everyday, or watch TV, or smoke weed or do whatever else you want.

Yes, there are people that do exactly that, and probably will for all time. Has it ruined the Australian economy? nope. Has there been rampant inflation? nope.

I know it's not exactly UBI because if you have a paying job you can't get this money. So it's not "extra" money for everyone, but money for those that can't/won't or don't find paying work. It's interesting because it shows what percentage of people choose to sit around and do nothing with their lives and get free money - not that many [2]. When you dig into the numbers and take out age pensioners, people with disabilities and students (who get paid to go to university), you see that about 1.2 million Australian get welfare payments, which is just less than 5% of the population.

Keep in mind Australia has extremely low violent crime rates, and has one the highest happiness indexes in the world, and Melbourne is often voted the world's most livable city (or it comes in 2nd). [4]

Here's a great breakdown of how Australia spends it's welfare money [3]

Please, look at what other countries are doing and learn from it, don't just endlessly speculate about all the terrible ways UBI (or something like the above) might destroy things.

[1] [https://www.crikey.com.au/2013/01/16/dole-around-the- world-h...](https://www.crikey.com.au/2013/01/16/dole-around-the-world-how- does-australia-stack-up/)

[2] [http://theconversation.com/factcheck-is-half-to-two- thirds-o...](http://theconversation.com/factcheck-is-half-to-two-thirds-of- the-australian-population-receiving-a-government-benefit-41027)

[3] [https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias- welfare/australia...](https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias- welfare/australias-welfare-2017/contents/summary)

[4] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Liveability_Ranking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Liveability_Ranking)

<comment><USER34> OK. Then why not any of those places become the innovation engine of the world? I heard people would become more creative and innovative under those circumstances.

<comment><USER35> You might now know this if you live in North America because Australia hardly enters our consciousness or our news cycles, but in many parts of the world Australia has a reputation of being a very innovative country, especially in physical engineering and software. Part of it has to do with their anti- authoritarian heritage and survivalist mindset--they don't take hierarchy too seriously. Whether their creativity is helped by a generous welfare society or not, I'm not sure, but you definitely can't say Australians aren't innovative.

<comment><USER34> My question is "why not any of those places become the innovation engine of the world". I didn't even mention Australia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> There is a precedent to this situation.

During the Great Depression/Dust Bowl in the 1920's, government officials were adamantly opposed to giving cash or food to citizens. Moral hazard, and all that.

The result was that:

\- there were food riots

\- some Americans starved to death

\- Washington, D.C. was occupied by protesters living in tent cities, and the military had to intervene to prevent government buildings from being stormed.

</comment><comment><USER37> I was trying to think of parallels with the programming world, and perhaps this analogy might make sense to some people.

Sometimes, the software we maintain accumulates so much tech debt that it becomes very difficult to make any headway. By setting aside some development time to address these issues, we enable developers to gain velocity again.

In a similar way, sometimes we see poor people make illogical economic choices, simply because of a cash crunch. When people are poor, they have too many competing priorities that require urgent attention, and they find themselves caught in a series of wicked choices. A Harvard study suggests that poverty causes 13 point drop in IQ.

The right level of UBI may actually improve the way energy and capital is deployed. It also protects a lot of small employers from economic shocks by smoothing out the velocity of money.

Many readers are rightly concerned about the moral hazard introduced through redistribution of wealth. However, seen through the lens of tech debt and investment, UBI is relatively straight forward way of investing in the future.

</comment><comment><USER38> This would be a kind of monetary stimulus. Helicopter money. Could be more effective than lowering interest rates further.

</comment><comment><USER39> He was right. He was right before the pandemic and he's even more right now. Whenever this ends, it's going create even more incentive for employers to automate. Some of these jobs are going to disappear over the next few weeks and they may never come back.

</comment><comment><USER40> UBI ... providing direct services for/to the poor ... or a blend, will never resolve some people from "being poor" or adding "burden" to the system despite the system giving them "a minimum of what they need to survive." You can give a mentally ill person $1,000 a month for years and every time he gets the check, maybe he hands it over to a slum lord who secretly threatens the safety or has "tricked" the mentally ill person into giving him the money instead. Bottom line: Giving that person the money every month doesn't "fix" the mentally ill person's problem(s). It's just another roundabout way to try and minimize poor-dom.

All of these solutions are potentially workable, or a blend. I think if anything what we should focus more on is which methods (or blend of methods) works to minimize poor-dom the "most" compared to many of the others, while also balancing the overall cost to deliver said methods on society.

<comment><USER41> Except that most people that are poor are not mentally ill. In fact most people that are poor can handle money and their life just fine...they just don't get paid enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> The combination of UBI and universal health care would mean that combating a pandemic would be much easier than it currently is. Everyone stays at home and self isolates for 2 weeks. Curve flattened. Bills payed.

Ah well, it's a pity the side effects apparently include some McCarthyist caricature of communism /s

</comment><comment><USER43> I think his most compelling policy is not UBI, but giving the people money to spend on politics. This country is suffocated by special interests, which create draconian laws for all of us to follow just so that they can collect a little bit ore money. Just filing the taxes alone is a monumentally frustrating experience. This needs to be streamlined, but it will never be until corporations are stripped from their lobbying.

<comment><USER44> Anything that generates a feedback loop where politicians give you tax money to spend on politicians has an instant smell to me. There may be other ways to accomplish this, but that feedback loop stinks to high heaven on initial examination.

<comment><USER45> You might want to try a neti pot, because you seem to be missing the smell of the government giving billions to large corporation in a way that accomplishes the same feedback loop you're mentioning.

That is the way the system has been working for decades. For example, airlines have been doing stock buybacks with all their profits for the last several years, and now they don't have the money to weather 2 months of coronavirus, so they'll need a bailout. Then, watch for more stock buybacks and executive bonuses.

You're right it smells, but it's time that graft was extended to the people of this country, who will actually spend it and help the economy a bit, rather than sending it indirectly to the bank accounts of the wealthiest people in the country.

<comment><USER44> Nowhere in what I said have I defended similar feedback loops. They stink no matter what form they take, and two wrongs don't make a right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Just build more homes!

Build apartment high rises and condominium complexes, that people can own, with 15 years of work. Why should we be forced to work for 30 years as a slave to pay off some bank's mortgage?

It's not our damn fault, that politicians are inept and can't do the right thing, by providing affordable homes.

Socialize the housing market. This is a basic human right, but the greed of capitalism is forcing everyone to pay insane prices for their housing.

</comment><comment><USER47> The problem with UBI is what others have already pointed out. My conclusions are from personal observation, so it is anecdotal and it is a generalization as most societal woes are.

There will always be a group of individuals who are content with the minimum without making any effort. This group will not work to gain more. They are just content at not working and getting the minimum wage and additional government handouts.

My experience is from a communist country. The shoddy craftsmanship for buildings, cars, services all around in my opinion was direct result for all the promised universal basic "something". In the beginning it all seemed good and well, but as more and more people got on the UB something, the less and less production/service was done.

This is not a communist/socialist economic problem, but a human nature problem in my opinion. We always go for the least amount of effort, for the most amount of reward.

To this effect, I cannot see how to prevent UBI pushing the lowest common level of participation in the society as a producer.

<comment><USER48> Definition of work and productivity is arbitrary. You can think of these people taking the monthly UBI, shopping for groceries and eating it as meaningful work in quest for continuation of human race. I wouldn't see that as completely zero value add.

As long as others work more than basic subsistence we'll be fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> One day we will look at all the homelessness and blatant poverty in our society we allow in absolute disgust, similar to the repulsion people feel about slavery.

UBI isn't just about liberty and accelerating ourselves forward (though it's also about that), it's a statement that no matter how dire your circumstances, no matter how useless you are seen to our corporate overlords and private employers, that you belong to society, you are deserving of a modest respectable standard of living, and you are entitled to some of the proceeds of the wealth generated by the land with which you've been excluded.

<comment><USER49> Agreed that everyone deserves a basic standard of living as a human right but disagree that UBI is the path to that.

Giving money to people instantly creates a class of beggars. Beggars with voting rights will vote for people who give them more and more and more for no more work. It's the road to ruin.

My suggestion is a set of hospitals, schools and housing that is super basic but sufficient to give people dignity and opportunity. These would be free for anyone, paid for via taxes on capital gains.

<comment><USER17> It's funny that you say a class of beggars would be created, when most UBI scenarios I've read about show that people tend to try to improve their situations in whichever way makes the most sense...

some who can finally afford basic water food and housing start seeking medical/psych help they couldn't afford.

Some get more schooling to improve their employment prospects.

Some buy a car to start saving themselves hours a week on public transportation and therefore have more time to live.

And a small percentage don't get it and squander it.

You see the policy turning into a UK-style dole... I think you don't see the enormous benefits that reaching the point of 'having enough' can provide.

I've recently started making more than I have in the rest of my life... and besides finally paying down our household debt, and accomplishing the cash- starved household repairs, I'm starting to look at volunteering and truly giving to charities _because I can_.

Just providing basic services doesn't give people the same options, the mobility to do with their lives what makes sense in their circumstances.

<comment><USER49> I really want capitalism to give you a wage to do all those things. I understand it's been cronified and monopoloies have fucked over a whole lot of people.

The real fix is to fix capitalism, not write you a check every month for being born. We need to enforce fair markets, fair wages etc.

For those at the very bottom, I want dignity, a free education, and if still unsuccessful access to a low skill job that can pay basic bills.

<comment><USER50> > The real fix is to fix capitalism, not write you a check every month for > being born.

You write that as if it's some kind of natural law, as if the second clause is _obviously_ more absurd than the first. It's that the case and, if so, why?

<comment><USER49> When you decouple income from output or wages from work, you're essentially devaluing work and incentivizing people to work less or (more destructively) work worse.

It's not an absurd thought at all, it's a very natural solution to propose in environments like we have today. It's also been tried in many different countries in many different time periods. Leads to failure every single time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> No surely a trickle down would work better?

</comment><comment><USER52> Taking a long-term view, UBI is a good idea, full stop.

Societies' advancements in technology & productivity decrease the effective cost (as percentage of GDP) of meeting the very base needs of a human being. Food, cheap medicines like tylenol & antibiotics, most facets of human life are dirt cheap from a production perspective, and this trend will continue from automation.

This means someone who is currently unproductive can be subsidized to survive for 10 full years, and if there's even a small chance they become a high- productivity individual afterwards then society comes out ahead on net value. The actual numbers depend on how low we can push production costs with automation, but in the limit as human survival cost approaches zero relative to the economy, the only rational decision is to subsidize all human survival and work within that framework to encourage citizens to be even more productive. After all, if someone dies of lack of healthcare, or starves, or lives in the streets and doesn't know how to get back off the streets, that's a net loss to humanity in opportunity cost. If that person had just been subsidized through their hard times, there's a non-zero chance they become high value to society.

UBI allows us to reap these benefits in an efficient manner: using the free market. But, speaking today not in the long term, there are exceptions to the low cost of human survival which would hamper UBI from being effective.

In our (American) society, there are a few base needs that we _haven 't_ adequately driven down costs. Shelter mostly, also any healthcare that is more involved than taking a pill a day (notably: seeing a doctor). Humankind in general CAN make these costs low for the most part, but American society in particular has NOT made these costs low.

We need to address the housing & urban development crisis, and we need to address the healthcare crisis.

The housing & urban development crisis is a system of regulations and inaction that have simultaneously limited the amount of housing near desirable locations, while failing to provide efficient transportation to bring people in from less desirable locations. In other words, housing costs are dominated not by the cost to build a house, but the cost of land. This can be addressed by reforming our awful & piecemeal zoning, construction, and transportation systems and their respective regulations. Optionally, some might suggest that we try to fight against the ongoing trends of urban consolidation; if people have a reason to move to upstate new york or the midwest, instead of to NYC, then housing costs aren't a problem. But right now all economic incentives point to moving to NYC metro, given the choices, and personally I don't like to wage war against the tide of the free market.

The healthcare crisis is one of rent seeking by insurance companies upon our awful half-assed nearly-free-market approach to healthcare. Quite simply, people don't have choices (your healthcare options are restricted by your insurance, which is restricted by your employer), and no prices on anything are known ahead of time. This adds up to an ultra-inefficient system. By doing just about anything that stops the rent seeking of the insurance system upon the healthcare system so we can more efficiently treat a healthy society (there are free market solutions, but personally I would put my weight behind medicare-for-all).

In conclusion, if we give everyone $1000/mo, that's going to get funneled into bidding up rent in big cities or surprise healthcare bills. We need to solve these issues with our free market before we take a free market approach to the common welfare; until then I would advocate more targeted approaches that are less likely to invite rent seeking behavior (foodstamps and such).

</comment><comment><USER53> >> Seventy-eight percent of Americans are already living paycheck to paycheck; almost half can't afford an unexpected $400 bill

On big part of this is Americans a whole need to get better with their money.

I know many people can't save because of low income (or lack thereof), but 78%? Don't forget about all those people making six figures who can't get it together.

<comment><USER9> Again, blame the poor for their poverty.

Gives a nice tummy feel but does nothing good for society.

<comment><USER54> It wasn't a particularly deep comment, but your reply breaks the site guidelines. That's heading in the wrong direction. Please review [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and stick to the rules when posting here. Note this one:

" _Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to criticize. Assume good faith._"

<comment><USER9> Yeah. Fair enough

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> The fact that covid is screwing the world right now does not mean that we should all be getting UBI under non emergency conditions. Putting Romney's plan in with Yang's is a conflation here because one is only for a single unprecedented global emergency, not everyday life.

That said, UBI is quite literal wealth redistribution. You take taxes from the haves and give the cash directly to the hands of the have nots. There's a point where it becomes unethical and/or counterproductive...but where that point is perhaps remains to be seen.

<comment><USER56> are you seriously arguing that heavily taxing insanely wealthy people is unethical? i mean, we're literally living in a moment in which public school closures means many kids don't have reliable access to food anymore. there are _plenty_ of other examples in which people are seriously struggling. and somehow taxing the wealthy is unethical. the fact that you bifurcate people into the "haves" and "have nots" speaks volumes.

and of course UBI is literally wealth distribution. what would you consider public schools, roads, infrastructure, and other things paid with taxes?

<comment><USER57> > are you seriously arguing that heavily taxing insanely wealthy people is > unethical?

I don't think that is what allovernow is saying at all.

> There's a point where it becomes unethical and/or counterproductive...but > where that point is perhaps remains to be seen.

So, potentially

\- Tax the billionaires down to 999millionaires. Not unethical or counterproductive in the slightest.

\- Implement a tax that makes every worker's net income identical. Probably both counterproductive and unethical.

\- Implement a tax/UBI system that puts a worker's net income below that of a non-worker. Definitely counterproductive, unsustainable and unethical.

The point that allovernow is describing is somewhere between those extremes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I don't see how a universal basic income could be sustainable in any way.

You either have debt hyperinflation, or you have taxes high enough that the universal basic income is meaningless.

<comment><USER21> "you have taxes high enough that the universal basic income is meaningless."

Not true. You should read the UBI policy proposal that Yang created for his POTUS run. You can find them here:

\- [https://www.yang2020.com/what-is-freedom-dividend- faq/](https://www.yang2020.com/what-is-freedom-dividend-faq/) \- [https://www.yang2020.com/policies/the-freedom- dividend/](https://www.yang2020.com/policies/the-freedom-dividend/)

<comment><USER35> This article [1] is one of the few to have taken Andrew Yang's UBI policies seriously and on their merits (unlike most others that summarily dismiss them), thought through some of their implications, found shortcomings, but still ended up still largely acknowledging that they could work.

I think a well-designed UBI could work. The tricky part is that UBI is one of those experiments that has to be done on the large, and pulling back if it doesn't work out is challenging. Any errors in implementation and design are potentially very expensive.

[1] [https://theweek.com/articles/858097/andrew-yangs-ubi- problem](https://theweek.com/articles/858097/andrew-yangs-ubi-problem)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Why he isn't:

Suggested income: $12,000

US Population: $327,200,000

Total cost for first year: $3,926,400,000,000

Total government expenditure for US: $3,800,000,000

So we would need to shut down everything the government does to afford his UBI. I personally don't feel like going for free market ICBM solutions is the best way to run an army, but each to their own.

<comment><USER60> Aren't there restriction like only for citizens 18+ and under Yang's policy it'd be you either take UBI or other subsidies you qualify for.

<comment><USER59> UBI only works when it isn't universal, basic or income.

At that point you have invented a worse welfare state.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Dealing with contractors? - <AUTHOR>

I have recently been tasked with "managing" both outsourced and in-sourced contractors and I'm having a trouble managing access and each individual contractors contributions.  For example a lot of the contractors that have been handed to me don't really do git and thus I end up having to: setup a copy of the site somewhere they can edit (cleaned of all the credentials), when they are finished copy the files locally and run a diff against those files, then patch, merge and deploy.  I'm starting to feel like I'm spending more time making it so other people can work and not getting  my own work done so I'm reaching out to get suggestions on best practices or whatever.  Thanks guys/gals! <comment><USER2> welcome to project management!

I recommend reading "The Mythical Man Month" and "The Four Hour Workweek"

<comment><AUTHOR> While it's been a while I can't remember anything applicable from the four hour work week. Is there a chapter in particular? I'll have to take a look at the mythical man month. Thank you.</comment></comment>


Better Raises $5M To Be Your Personal Health Advocate - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/16/better-raises-5m-from-chamath-palihapitiya-and-mayo-clinic-to-be-your-personal-health-advocate/ Healthcare done right. <comment><USER2> Hypochondriac's dream! Or if you have a big family, maybe you could ask enough questions to justify $50/month. But I'm having a hard time picturing relevance to the typical single person or senior, at least one who has an established relationship with a health provider and adequate insurance.

<comment><USER3> With the rise in deductibles, and still no formal structure for telehealth reimbursement through insurance companies, more people will start sourcing out other options for low cost alternatives. $50/mont isn't for me, or a lot of people, but I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it, especially on family plans.</comment></comment>


Smear phishing: how to scam an Android user - <AUTHOR> https://jameshfisher.com/2020/08/06/smear-phishing-how-to-scam-an-android-user/ <comment><USER2> > On July 3rd, I reported this vulnerability to Google via their security vuln > program. But on July 17th, Google closed the issue as "Won't Fix > (Infeasible)", with the assessment that "there are no guarantees regarding > the sender ID of SMS messages, and they are known to be spoofable." While > this isn't wrong, it's another thing for the OS to completely misrepresent > the Sender ID as a genuine phone number. And clearly it's feasible to fix, > because iOS does not have this vulnerability.

> The bug, more precisely, is that Android extracts the numeric characters > from the Sender ID, and tries to parse this as a phone number (with the > phone's local dialing prefix – +44 in my case). If it parses, the message is > interpreted as from that number. For example, 7890X123456 also parses as > +447890123456.

I might be wrong, but it seems like a simple enough bug to fix right? Maybe if there are non-numeric characters in the SenderID it should compare with your contacts _before_ parsing it? So that it would appear as from an unknown user not someone in your contacts? There's definitely more to it but it but it's a start

</comment><comment><USER3> That's terrifying.</comment>