Germany's dividend-stripping tax scandal - <AUTHOR> http://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2017-06/cum-ex-scandal-tax-evasion-dividend-stripping-germany <comment> Joe-Z I don't get the number of people here commenting 'this isn't theft' and they're just exploiting legal loopholes.

Yes, you may be able to justify this legally, but it is a morally highly questionable behaviour nonetheless.

I mean jesus, aren't many people on here some kind of intellectual elite? And these are the people that argue FOR the ones fucking over the general populace for their personal gain?

This kind of shit has to stop and we should be the people stepping in for the little man. Unless of course you dream of one day profitting from the same anti-social tax-evasion bullshit.

<comment><USER3> It's just this easy. If it's legal, it's not theft. I don't like that either but that's how the law is.

I mean, apparently, it wasn't so bad. It only took them 20 years to make that behavior illegal. They would certainly have been faster if it were bad. /sarcasm

People will always try to game the system. But in this case, the politicians failed to act properly after it was obvious that it didn't work out as intended.

<comment><USER4> I think its lazy to blame politicians for this. Its complex, highly complex, financial horse trading. Its a loophole exploited. Thats probably far more sophisticated than any politician can reasonably be expected to understand deeply, let alone see the bigger destructive picture. (not to mention lobbyists badgering and actively asking for legislation for "loopholes" like this)

A Financial regulator/watchdog is to blame. And of course, Quelle Suprise, lots of countries let the finance sector regulate themselves.

Which is silly, because there are no ethics involved with some of these people. Just profits, at any cost.

<comment><USER5> Politicians should be experts in many things. Their job is (in the ideal theoretical sense of our political systems) hard and very responsible. What they hell are they doing with their time? Sit in endless pointless meetings? Secret meetings with large business? Faking smiles 13 times a day? WHAT are they doing exactly?

And then -- "we're too busy to know this stuff". In an ideal world such a politician would fly far away from office immediately, and all the people who benefitted from that would have to return the gained money from the loopholes, or live in cozy conditions in the jail. One can dream, right?

So, _what_ are the politicians supposed to know? How to bullshit the general populace on TV?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While I do think the rules should be fixed, I don't think it's fair to call it theft. They do have lawyers to make sure it's legal.

There are desks at banks whose entire reason for existence it tax arbitrage. It's not really a great use of people's education and time, but it's real and it's legal. I don't know the specifics of how it's done, but I do know these desks exist.

There was another case in Denmark where the tax department basically neglected to check that the claimants actually owned the shares and just sent them a huge amount of withheld dividend tax.

The underlying issue is that the rules can be gamed, but only by entities who can pay for the professionals who understand them. There's gotta be a smarter way to arrange the tax system.

<comment><USER7> There is something in Law that is the sprit of the law and if you use loopholes you clearly understand the intent of the law and decide to abuse it for you personal gain- and I think of this as theft...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The very first number is incorrect isn't it?

€3,100,000,000 != 31.8 billion

<comment><USER9> Maybe related to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales)

<comment><USER10> it's actually due to a missing 0 and a misplaced comma.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great long-form reporting about the case in German (minus gifs) > [http://www.zeit.de/2017/24/cum-ex-steuerbetrug- steuererstatt...](http://www.zeit.de/2017/24/cum-ex-steuerbetrug- steuererstattungen-ermittlungen/komplettansicht)

</comment><comment><USER12> I'd like to read the article, but instead I constantly get big animations all over the screen. Very distracting. Apparently this is a frivolous topic rather than something serious?

<comment><USER13> This should have been an animated video with the explanation narrated. They did 90% of the work, just needs someone for the voice over.

<comment><USER14> Yeah. I still managed to read the english part. Painfully and slowly, and only because the subject looked really interesting. If they just added a voice over and changed the format they would finally ensure that I wouldn't watch it, what seems to be the goal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's a small crime - the real crime is this web-site! These developers were the same ones who thought combining <blink> and <marquee> was a good idea in the '90s.

<comment><USER16> Not to mention the discrepancy in the first graphic (which clogged up the screen with dropping money bags for 15 seconds):

> Total amount lost by the state due to the tricks: at least €3,100,000,000 > (31.8 billion)

So which is it? 3.1 billion or 31.8 billion? It's not a minor difference!

Also, does anyone else have extreme difficulty reading text while an animated gif taking up 1/4th of the screen constantly loops? I usually scroll until the gif is off-screen so that I can continue reading. In this case it's impossible because there are multiple gifs per page so I can't scroll in any direction.

<comment><USER17> It now says "€31,800,000,000 (31.8 billion)", so presumably the latter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > What the state could have done with €31.8 billion

If we start with these sorts of calculations, why not set the tax rate to 100%? Apparently the taxed populace doesn't ever do anything worthwhile with their money.

<comment><USER18> Remind me to overcharge you if ever I serve you in a shop. When you complain that with that extra $n you have _done some thing_ , I'll point you back to that comment.

<comment><USER9> I'm happy to enter into any voluntary transaction where the terms are decided upfront and where I can decline to accept your offer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Not a smaller scandal was former Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk (now President of the European Council) reform to move money saved on privately owned pension accounts called OFE (OFE invested peoples money into obligations and bonds) to the public pension system - circa 151 billion PLN, so around 40 billion USD.

link: [http://www.money.pl/gospodarka/raporty/artykul/skok;na;pieni...](http://www.money.pl/gospodarka/raporty/artykul/skok;na;pieniadze;z;ofe;rzad;zabiera;nam;150;miliardow;zlotych,14,0,1375502.html)

<comment><USER20> I don't want to start a political dispute over here, but the private pension funds scheme is a theft by itself. The country transfers money over to these pension funds, and by doing that it raises it's own debt. Now it has to sell bonds to cover that debt. That bonds are being bought by the very same funds. Country will have to buy them back, but with a loss. In the end: the profit on that pension funds is, in fact, funded by the citizens themselves. The only beneficiaries are the funds themselves, as they got the margins, and take a some sickly huge commission.

In short: it was an unpopular but wise decision by the former Polish gov to stop this scam. I believe that the current government is going further into that direction. Also a good move.

<comment><USER19> government pension funds are not a smaller scam. Enough to say they constantly raise the age at which you can start collecting your pensions and return you small % before you die. So privately owned funds, even if they have massive commissions, still return back more than the government.

The government introduced this type of investing in Poland in the reform in 1999 and in 2014 just didn't buy back obligations which were bought using peoples money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This article obscures the most important question you can have about this: was it legal, or wasn't it?

You can have as many ethical systems as you want and call it "evil" or not depending on your opinion. But you don't have multiple law systems (in a single country) and call it "theft" or "legal loophole" depending on what mood you're on. It's either one or another.

<comment><USER22> Yet to be determined I guess. Cum-ex wasn't explicitly mentioned as forbidden between 1992 and 2011, cum-cum wasn't forbidden until 2016.

In my absolute layman's opinion cum-cum trickery might have been legal unless forbidden, but cum-ex sounds more like fraud than exploiting loopholes - <USER2> the state _has_ sued all the people and organisations involved starting from 2014 - looking for tax evasion and fraud convictions...

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> > BERLIN, June 22 German banks exploited a legal loophole that allowed two > parties to claim ownership of the same shares, the financial watchdog will > tell lawmakers this week, in schemes that could have cost the state billions > of euros in tax over many years.

ZEIT: "The Multibillion Euro Theft". To call it theft then, is a bit ridiculous. It was a loophole. There are loopholes everywhere. If lawmakers would make proper laws (isn't that part of their responsibility?), and took sufficient time to think them through, a lot less loopholes would exist. Unless they're put there by design, of course.

<comment><USER24> Most loopholes allow you simply to pay less tax than you might otherwise owe.

This loophole seemingly allows you to take back more than you paid in the first place. This is theft.

<comment><USER23> Or a tax break. If you get an R&D cash subsidy from the government, is that theft? If it's possible within the boundaries of the law, it isn't theft. It's a design flaw (and one certain politicians should definitely be held accountable for, for sure!)

<comment><USER25> No, no, no. Fuck that. I cannot understand this kind of sociopathic attitude to morality, even on Hacker News. Theft is a social and moral concept. Right and wrong are not defined purely by what's legal. The law is just a (flawed) attempt to codify a society's moral consensus, not an excuse for individuals or organisations to abdicate all personal moral judgement.

If a child in a nursery grabs away another child's juice box for themselves, they haven't broken any law, but it's still theft. If an autocratic government passes a law allowing it to seize the assets of a minority group, it's still theft. If a bank exploits legal loopholes to take billions of taxpayer's money, it's theft, regardless of whether it's legal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If theft is involuntary taking of other people's money, then tax is theft. Employing every legal trick to minimize taxes is moral and encouraged.

<comment><USER27> Theft is defined by law so no Tax is not theft. There isn't an objective definition of theft. No one owns anything by any other definition than what society or the strongest define.

<comment><USER9> A person owns himself or herself. Slavery is immoral and wrong even where it is legal or was legal.

<comment><USER27> No they dont own themself there is no such thing in nature as owning yourself. It's something we have agreed upon over thousands of years but you don't actually own yourself.

If you are the strongest you can stand for yourself but there is no natural law that prevents someone from making you a slave of them.

<comment><USER4> No ones saying that in the law of the jungle that isnt the case. It's different rules there for sure. But thats why we have progressed to where we are today.

Since We live in a western democratic civilization, and there are laws against that very thing, I'm not sure what you are trying to say.

<comment><USER27> What I am saying is that the theft discussion is defined by society and the laws of society. So you can't claim that Tax is theft.

<comment><USER9> Then neither is tax avoidance.

<comment><USER27> Not naturally no. Only be the law of society just like ownership is given by society and doesn't exist "out there"

I was responding to a claim that tax is theft if theft is defined by involuntarily giving something up.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to scrape data from sites you can't log into - <AUTHOR> http://ssscripting.wordpress.com/2009/02/24/how-to-scrape-data-from-sites-you-cant-log-into/

<comment><USER2> You're still technically logging in by providing the copied cookie. I don't see any difference here.

Or say the title should be changed to "How to scrape _your_ data from _your_ sites that require login"

<comment><USER3> Agreed, this more of a "how to scrape data from sites you can log into". It's not even a very useful example at that.

For anyone who wants to scrape sites that require login I'd recomend Python with Twill. That lets you do the whole thing with ease.

<comment><AUTHOR> Twill is an option indeed, but this way you don't miss out on the javascript. You can take advantage of all of your browser's features.

<comment><USER3> But the article is suggesting just copying cookies from Firefox into a simple Java based scraper. That won't support Javascript either.

If you needed Javascript you could use one of the Firefox scripting bridges (Selenium or MozRepl).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems to me this is just saying: log in via the browser (with the right password), then use the generated cookie with the scraping code. You can also do that with wget --load-cookies

<comment><AUTHOR> True, you can use wget as well, but this way you have more control over your code.

<comment><USER4> For sure, I was responding to the title, it sounded like a security thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> What did you thought this will be about? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> But, if the site is using only HTTP and cookies, there's no reason not to first make a request to the login page with the username/password and retrieve the cookie via the "cookie" header that comes back... Did I totally misread the article, or was it just dumb?

<comment><USER4> A lot of scraping frameworks will handle it for you, too. It's even the front page example code @ <http://jwebunit.sourceforge.net/>

I think most people are reacting to the title... I for example thought it was a security posting.

<comment><USER5> Of course there are frameworks to do this for you, and I'm sure jwebunit will work perfectly well. I guess I'm disappointed that the author didn't understand the fact that Firefox doesn't perform magic, and that a login page is no different than anything else being scraped.

<comment><USER6> I'm disappointed the author didn't realize that he doesn't need Cookie Monster to see Firefox cookies: Tools -> Options -> Privacy -> Show Cookies

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I do my scrapping with BeautifulSoup from Python, actually from an iPython shell. With a urllib2 opener you could easily handle cookies and UserAgent pretty easy, the later is also important for some sites.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's also mechanize for python. It can be found here : <http://wwwsearch.sourceforge.net/mechanize/> . It handles cookies by default, and is a pretty good tool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> man wget

wget --save-cookies cookies.txt ...

wget --load-cookies cookies.txt ...

</comment><comment><USER9> Can someone suggest a browser-independent way of handling login pages that require javascript ? Twill doesn't handle javascript.

<comment><AUTHOR> You could give HtmlUnit a try.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Huh? What he did is completely automatable, you don't have to touch Firefox. And if you really did need JS to log in, which I have _never_ seen outside misguided banks, there's tools for that too. Selenium and JSSH come to mind but for 99% of sites you'd just need Mechanize.

And Java? Why the hell would anyone write a _script_ in a compiled language like Java? Desperate for that 2ms time saving between 10 second waits for the pages to come down, eh? And any for-real scraping script would have a time delay built in anyway.

The guy doesn't know what he's talking about.

<comment><AUTHOR> The example wasn't written in Java for performance gain. It so happened that I had NetBeans open , and it was easier for me to write it in Java at the moment :).

<comment><USER10> Easier!? You wrote pages and pages describing the most inefficient way imaginable to do something I can do in 5 lines of Ruby, and you call it _easier?_ And unless I'm very much mistaken, you'd have to compile the code anew whenever the cookie changed?

Well, good luck to you, and the more script kiddies you confuse the better I guess, but there are seriously much better ways to do this. Go look at Ruby Mechanize (I think it's also available for python); coming from Java you will be blown away by just how easy this kind of thing is. How do you think we all test? ; )

Update: Oh I see you know Mechanize from another article. So why not just use that ... you do know it can do all that logging in stuff for you, right?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I have worked with mechanize before. I was using mechanize even when there only was the perl version. I added a comment to the article explaining my choice.

<comment><USER10> Fair enough. I guess the surprised reaction you're getting is because web testing frequently involves doing this kind of thing, so, being a community of web programmers, everyone here knows it backwards. I didn't really think of the angle you mentioned where someone wouldn't know all the relevant techniques and just want to get _something_ working ASAP. For that, taking the cookie from FF might indeed be a time saver.

Anyway always good to see everyone chime in with their opinion so thanks for the conversation starter.

BTW, is anyone else nervous about the day the teenage h4xx0rs discover how easy this kind of thing is these days ..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> interesting.

</comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if this works every time...

And if it did, how long until a defense is made...

<comment><USER13> There is nothing magic about web browsers, telent to port 80 at www.google.com and with a simple get request they will spit back their website. You can make it a little harder to do this stuff but a packet sniffer is always going to let you pretend to be any software you want unless they are using encryption. Also because Firefox is open source you can't prevent people from scripting using it anyway.

PS: I recommend all aspiring coders to telent to www.google.com at least once just to feel the magic.

<comment><USER14> > PS: I recommend all aspiring coders to telent to www.google.com at least > once just to feel the magic.

I'm pretty sure it's illegal in a couple of ways. </bitter>

But yes, the magic is there.

<comment><USER15> illegal!? why!?

<comment><AUTHOR> It is recommended that you use the API that google provides for searching, but I fail to see why telnetting would be illegal. After all, both firefox and telnet use sockets to do their job.

<comment><USER14> Again, the comment above wasn't meant to be taken literally, but just because they both use sockets doesn't mean they're just as legal.

Imagine a web site which terms of service state you cannot use software to circumvent ads. Or where part of the security is done client-side (stupid, yes, but not impossible). Skipping the browser breaches at least the terms of service, and may be constructed as hacking. I think even Google discourages automated searching and prefers you use its api, which (at least some years ago) wasn't free for commercial use. I may be wrong in this particular case, but the important point is you may want to check the specific TOS before skipping the browser.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask a Physicist to speak at your funeral - <AUTHOR> http://www.iflscience.com/physics/ask-physicist-speak-your-funeral-0

<comment><USER2> This is pretty obviously written by a non-physicist.

For one thing, energy isn't conserved on a universal scale. Energy conservation is a consequence of time invariance[1]. We've measured that the universe is inflating, and so isn't invariant in time. So on large enough scales, energy isn't conserved.

And, as a (ex-)physicist, I'd be more likely to say something about how little time we have compared to the age of the universe, or even compared to single atoms. Or about how we end up quantum entangled with the entire universe on long enough time scales (at least in some interpretations of quantum mechanics).

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noether's_theorem#Example_1:_Co...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noether's_theorem#Example_1:_Conservation_of_energy)

</comment><comment><USER3> Whoever wrote this is probably going to be quite despondent and inconsolable whenever someone they actually care about dies.</comment>


Obama calls Steve Jobs' success prime example of American wealth - <AUTHOR> http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/12/23/obama_calls_steve_jobs_success_a_prime_example_of_american_wealth.html <comment><USER2> This scares me. While I have nothing against the wealth of Steve Jobs and his revolutionary products, what America needs to maintain the middle class throughout the 21st century is to compete with China and its ilk: raw materials, cheap renewable energy, and basic manufacturing. Because the revolutionary products we sell to the rest of the world aren't even made here.

<comment><USER3> Why?

Or, more specifically - how will racing China (and every other developing country) to the bottom in the manufacturing game be sufficient to maintain the middle class?

<comment><USER2> Because of our balance of payments crisis. We need to stop our country's net outflow of dollars. Lauding Steve Jobs and trying to reproduce his success won't solve that problem. Suppose we all become designers of hit products that are manufactured abroad. How do we guarantee that the USA doesn't get cut out of the vertical stack? I have total faith that the other countries of the world will be able to innovate and support just as well as we can, if not already.

<comment><USER3> I understand the economic benefit, but I have yet to see a good explanation of how it might happen. Americans aren't willing to work manufacturing jobs for $5 or even $10 an hour - and you can't support a middle class in the US on $5 or $10 an hour.

All manufacturing requires is a decent infrastructure, reasonably stable political and legal system, and a workforce willing to work cheaply enough. Trying to compete against China - and the rest of the world - on those terms for today's market, rather than doing everything in its power to keep its lead and define tomorrow's markets, is the biggest mistake the US could make.

Manufacturing is a relatively low skilled job - the expectation that manufacturing = middle class made sense 50 years ago, but not today.

Edit: a lot of my thinking on this issue is colored by the book The World is Flat (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Is_Flat>). It's a complex issue, and I'm definitely open to new ways of looking at it.

<comment><USER4> Manufacturing is not necessarily low skilled. Look to Germany for example, which is a heavy manufacture that uses very advanced factories, some even completely automated.

I have no problem having China make goods for us. Manufacturing is usually a dirty process and the jobs can be relatively low paying.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure how your points connect. If factories are becoming automated, then how does that show that the replaced human workers are skilled?

<comment><USER4> The workers who designed and built the machines are skilled. Inefficient jobs are replaced with with new jobs not necessarily in the same industry.

<comment><USER5> While this makes sense, I don't think the ratio is very high. Workers outnumber engineers by extreme amounts and so a replaced "unskilled" job will necessarily open up less jobs than it will close. No?

And the question stands, what to do with those workers? Move them to the facility that builds the robots that displaced them, in a loop?

That said, I do not oppose the replacement of workers with robots in any way, as that would be artificially trying to stop the progress of mankind. But what happens to the workers is a serious issue. What are all the people from the closed American car factories doing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article subtly points out a logical disconnect: Obama says that we expect Jobs to be rich having created several innovative products, yet the majority of his fortune did not come from these products (at least not the recent ones), but instead from the sale of Pixar.

So by celebrating Jobs's wealth, we're celebrating his investment acumen more than his innovation.

<comment><USER7> His Disney stock is from the Pixar sale, not active investment. Smart of him to keep it all this time (probably an easy choice given the dividends it pays), but he ultimately has it due to the innovation at Pixar, not investment acumen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As of march 2010, Steve jobs owns

5.426 million shares of Apple valued at $1.2bn

138 million shares of Disney valued at 4.45bn

I was surprised to learn today that the majority of Steve jobs wealth comes from Disney although he is known the most for his work at Apple!

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I hadn't realized that it was tilted that far toward the Disney side either.

The way he tends to talk about Apple is that they want to make products that sell so that they'll get to "come to work the next day" and keep making more. Obviously there's some public positioning / PR going on there, but I think there's at least a kernel of truth, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> _Most of Jobs' wealth comes from shares of Walt Disney Co. that he received when the media conglomerate acquired Pixar in 2006. Disney shares recently hit a 52 week high of $38._

I'm surprised that most of Jobs' wealth comes from the sale of Pixar. Even with Apple's stock price ($323) valued at nearly 9 times the value of Disney ($37).

<comment><USER7> The real hidden value of the Disney stock is that it has paid him $242,880,000 in dividends since the Pixar sale in 2006.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Any time I hear a politician say "those are just facts" I immediately get suspicious.

<comment><USER12> How is this different from a politician saying anything else?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The tidbit that surprised me most is that Steve Jobs gets a greater fraction of his wealth from his shares in Disney than he does from his shares in Apple.

</comment><comment><USER14> Steve jobs?? Really? I would say Mark Zukerberg is a better example.

<comment><USER15> Not really, no.

Steve Jobs sits at the core of what Apple represents by his attention to detail down to the aesthetic micrometer. There is an almost sinister genius in what he does at Apple, and at the end of the day you end up with a consistent, applicable and fluid user experience at every level _including_ sales. People _want_ to be involved in that because they know what they're getting. Apple constantly proves itself as a company that does more than talk about thinking outside the box. They think outside the shipping container, and down the street some.

Steve Jobs is an entrepreneur who knew attention to detail, and consistently pushing the envelope beyond a "good product" will bring in dollars.

Zuck sits at the core of a social networking behemoth that has no clear sense of direction, constant changes to using the site, frequent controversy about privacy, fragmented user networks, and no consistency in approach.

Mark Zuckerberg, as much as some people will suffer from bleeding ears after hearing (reading) this: got lucky.

<comment><USER16> _There is an almost_ sinister _genius in what he does at Apple_

That's an interesting thing to say. Why sinister?

I'm not saying you're doing this, but a lot of people associate evil with efficacy (think Darth Vader, or the "evil genius" character in movies). Actually, that's not so realistic. Thinking about Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and so on - these people are not necessarily paragons of virtue overall, but the qualities that make them so productive ARE virtuous, i.e., good, and not evil.

<comment><USER15> Sinister in a very comical light-hearted way, so as to say it's kind of crazy seeing the things he's accomplished over his professional career.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bitcoin Wallet API Preview and Draft Spec - <AUTHOR> http://bitcoin-wallet-api.github.io/ <comment><USER2> Hrrm. 'Digital cash' meets 'browser scale attack surface' and 'endpoint security'. What could possibly go wrong?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. Doing our best to mitigate this risk profile. Private keys are never exposed through the API, browser/extension are isolated environments and wallets MUST implement authorization/signing/broadcasting user confirmations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is this to enable bitcoin services that do not hold a user's funds?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, nor their private keys. This enables these services to sign any kind of Bitcoin transactions, of any complexity (as long as their are valid), without ever touching user's private keys or having to migrate its users to their own [web] client-side wallet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is your Chrome extension its own self-contained wallet or does it do some communication with an external, standalone Bitcoin wallet?

<comment><AUTHOR> The one that I've developed and will opensource soon is a tiny layer above bitcoind (Bitcoin Core); that said, some other extension can implement its own self-contained wallet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> would be great to make it available via [https://mashape.com](https://mashape.com)

</comment><comment><USER6> can this do OP_RETURN?

<comment><AUTHOR> it can do anything bitcoin transactions can contain. the timestamping demo (you can find its screencast on the homepage) does exactly that: [https://github.com/bitcoin-wallet-api/demos/blob/gh- pages/ti...](https://github.com/bitcoin-wallet-api/demos/blob/gh- pages/timestamp/index.html#L73-L81)</comment></comment>


For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hackerrank.com/for-anyone-who-has-been-turned-down-by-38-companies-120-interviews/ <comment><USER2> The current state of the hiring process in tech companies has really affected me. I'm, by nature, a very shy person who doesn't deal with rejection very well.

Because of this, I tend to apply at jobs where my hiring is a slam-dunk because it's so routine and easily within my skill-set.

It results in jobs that aren't particularly fulfilling but gives me plenty of time to work on technology I'm interested in my spare time for personal projects.

In essence, a day job of simple Linux administration may pay the bills, while in my spare time I'm working on large infrastructure automation, deep learning, developing new blockchain technologies, etc.

I don't know how sustainable this is. I have three children and a wife, and I'm getting tired of only being paid for work I can do while asleep just because I'm afraid of rejection.

Any suggestions on how to "toughen up"?

<comment><USER3> I actually found 'toughening up' the wrong mental strategy, but rather "not giving a damn".

You're in a position where you have a job. Anything you interview for you -don't need-. You may want, but you don't need. You also sound very comfortable in a specific role. That's a great place to start from, because if someone rejects you...what are they rejecting? How does it effect you? You know you're good, at least in certain areas. Either they don't need your knowledge in those areas and aren't convinced you'd be an asset in others (which is fair, and a reflection not on your abilities but your experiences), or their process is broken. Neither is a reflection of you.

I've gotten a lot more comfortable in interviews just recognizing that, that I have successes under my belt, I've already proved I can learn and adapt and get difficult things done. So if in an interview I don't get an offer...that speaks more of their process, or the minutiae of what they're looking for, than it does of my capabilities.

And what's funny is that that devil-may-care attitude, has made me both more willing to speak confidently about what I can do, -and- to more readily admit what I can't. I don't fumble and stutter when asked do I know about (a thing I don't know about), and give some half-truth, I just flat out say "I don't. What is it?" And that has led to better interviews, and more offers, than I ever got when I was a scared junior dev looking for work.

<comment><USER4> I think the "not giving a damn" statement belies that you do actually care.

Like someone saying "I don't care" implies... yes, you do care, otherwise you would not state such a thing.

<comment><USER3> Being a bit pedantic there aren't you? Sure, if I wasn't interested, I wouldn't be interviewing. But recognizing that the interview's outcome doesn't reflect who I am, nor does it mean 'my life is over and I'll never get a job I like', or any of the other anxieties common to those first few job hunts, means I am not so invested in -succeeding-, and far more invested in just scoping the company out, seeing if this would be a good fit, and accepting a "no" as in no way a reflection of my quality.

Obviously, "not giving a damn" is hyperbole; as I said, if I really didn't give a damn I'd not be interviewing in the first place. But it is the most accurate description of the attitude I find myself having when interviewing. "Toughening it out" was what I did as a college student and junior dev, trying to fight the impostor syndrome as I try to convince strangers I'm worth hiring, and trying to hold down the feelings of depression and self-loathing afterwards as I criticized every single thing I did that I thought was a mistake in the interview (even successful ones that in hindsight I realize I absolutely aced), and tried not to think about how I just blew my chance at a dream job (because every company that I talked with was a dream job, after all; someone who would actually -pay- me to write code and solve problems!)

I instead describe my current attitude as "not giving a damn" to demarcate it as very much different than that prior experience; my feelings now are "I am good, I know a lot, I learn fast, and I have a track record to prove it, and if you say no it means either you want someone with different experiences who is looking for something very different than what I am, or you've been interviewing for (and thus hiring for) the wrong thing; in either case I don't think I'd enjoy it here. So, while I hope this works out in the affirmative...I will view a 'no' from you as a positive as well, because it tells me more about you than it does about me. Regardless of your response, I am relieved to hear it, hence, I don't give a damn what it is".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One very important thing strikes me about this. Getting 38 job interviews is very much a sign of the times. In 2002 I was a highly skilled senior linux/aix/hp-ux/Solaris admin and PHP programmer and I got laid off. I submitted my resume more than 1000+ times in the first year and ZERO interviews.

I hate to sound alarmist but, I fear many younger tech people may not realize how lucky they are currently. If the economy turns south you are not going to get 38 job interviews unless you seriously have some needed skills.

Don't be like this guy and accept you are bad at interviews thinking there is plenty of opportunity. Don't blame the white board if every job in your field expects you to be able to white board. If you plan to survive during the next downturn or bubble burst you better be someone companies really want to hire. You may be lucky to land one job interview and it will be hard to stay motivated as months start to go by.

<comment><USER6> >Getting 38 job interviews is very much a sign of the times.

I've noticed that many employers have copied google and have stated to interview with as many people as possible. Lots of them take pride in their acceptance ratio, some even advertising that on their careers page. Def a sign of times but might not in a way that you are suggesting.

Getting an interview is not all that hard these days, you can get an interview with google/facebook ect pretty easily.

<comment><USER7> > Getting an interview is not all that hard these days, you can get an > interview with google/facebook ect pretty easily.

Maybe... I got contacted by 2 google recruiters in 2 separate instances. I replied to them, but I never heard back.

I would've probably failed at the whiteboard, but I never even got a chance to attempt the interview.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, that just happened to me this week. I'm sitting here wondering what I said wrong in my reply email.

Was I not enthusiastic enough? What was it?

<comment><USER9> You should get _a_ reply; it is possible the recruiter is no longer working there, or something else. Or maybe they're just being slow.

Some more info: [https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Google-recruiting-take-as- lon...](https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Google-recruiting-take-as-long-as-it- does/answer/Bob-See)

Also down with kt, long live cj. :(

<comment><USER8> lol despite my username, I'm more of an MVP fan. <3 Taeja, HerO, Life!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So I've been on the flip side of this. I've worked at a company (multiple) which had no F-ing clue how to hire. They'd constantly hire terrible people who couldn't do the most basic things.

I think one of the most important aspects of hiring is getting potential candidates in front of the team and letting them talk to the team, to see how they handle questions from other developers (and yes there is always that guy who tries to make the candidate look dumb for some reason).

The most telling question I typically ask when interviewing is what have you worked on recently, why is it cool, and how have you added to the project. This gives the candidate a great opportunity to dive into their own experience. This way if they didn't answer my questions well it will give me some idea of their background. Oh hey this guy didn't know basic Javascript stuff off the top of his head because he's been working on the back end for 3 years. That's cool.

I'd personally take someone who can talk to me about practical design decisions they've made on a project rather than knowing how to solve basic algorithms. If you graduated 8 years ago and you STILL know exactly how to implement a Binary Search Tree without needing a 10 min refresher then you are a better man than I am. I forgot that about 3 years ago.

I don't mind that we expect developers to study for a tech screen but how much does that really tell us about them? They can study and know the basics, but have the ever worked on a large scale project where you have to make something work now vs, having time to do a perfect implementation? Where is their ability to tell their manager no, or their ability to weight COTS vs Custom Build?

Sorry this touched a nerve, I just had a bad interview with a company. The tech screen was outside my IDE, couldn't copy paste (which sucks when you want to move a line or do some refactoring) and it was on topics I haven't looked at in 4 years. Luckily I'd spent 15+ hours studying so one of the questions was a gimme.

<comment><USER11> Still my favourite interview process was a small coding assignment and presenting the resulting code in front of the devs, who got to ask questions about it and then vote in private on whether to hire.

Everybody got the same assignment, everybody solves it in a different way, and everybody makes mistakes[0], but how they handle that and explain it tells a lot about how they are as a programmer.

[0] Except for one who was insanely thorough and still apologized for really minor imperfections in his code. He got the most enthusiastic votes ever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> _So, how did you get to where you are today?_

 _I've always been passionate about coding, starting from my early days at Olympiad teams in high school and ACM teams in college._

Anyone who's made it onto an Olympiad team[1] of any significant geographical scale, in any category, shouldn't have to deal with this whiteboard nonsense. Maybe a few lightweight-to-medium rounds to verify that they are what they say they are. But that's about it.

[1] We don't know if that's the case with Alibek; the article didn't drill down into that aspect of his background. I'm just talking to the fact that generally, there are plenty of easy ways -- albeit somewhat subjective, and in any case not uniformly applicable to all candidates -- to be at least 87% sure that the candidate isn't a a self-deluded poser, or outright liar about their coding skills (which seems to be the default stance many interview teams take).

And the due diligence one should do to remove that 13% of uncertainty can be made far less time-consuming and grueling than it generally is. Really, if you know how to read the signals, you can much more -- and much more easily, for all concerned -- about someone's coding skills by giving them a single medium- hard, but short-and-sweet exercise... than rounds and rounds (and more rounds) of progressively harder ones, as seems to be the current craze.

EDIT: Overall this is a very heartwarming piece; if a company like Booking -- known for having had several exceptionally talented programers on its staff over the years -- can not only take on someone like Alibek, but apparently consider him to be something of a find -- then that's a pretty damning indictment of the filtering processes used by the 38 of 39 companies that rejected him.

<comment><USER13> I see the whiteboard coding test as an attitude-test. If you have too much attitude to sit down and write some code for an hour, then you aren't someone I want in my company. It shouldn't be hard if you're skilled. Sorry to be that way, but that's the way I (and we) see it.

<comment><USER14> Probably one of the most insensitive posts I've ever seen written on here. There are many people who have crippling anxiety and social phobias, and your post chalks that up to them having an "attitude".

<comment><USER15> Not to be harsh or anything, but this kind of proves the point. Crippling anxiety and social phobia are _not_ things I would want in an employee, all else equal, because they will need to be able to communicate in meetings and present findings/work to different teams / executives.

Reply: baseline social comfort is not a generic personality type.

<comment><USER14> Isn't that your job as a manager, though? To balance the various personality types on your team?

Seems like you just want one generic personality type on your team to make your life easier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I read the article as:

"It's not enough to be a mediocre engineer for a mediocre paying job. If you want to play in the local tennis league, you better be Roger Federer (without his pay)"

I think software engineers should counter-question the interviewers. Interviewers should be allowed to judge the candidate only if they can answer the candidate's questions to them. If the interviewer cannot, he/she is not qualified for the job of interviewing.

<comment><USER17> I have done this and have done interviews I did most of the questioning as the interviewee. In my experience, this approach turns off a lot of people.

<comment><USER16> The point is:

If the candidate asks a relevant question that the interviewer cannot solve in time, the company failed at its own game because the candidate proved that he/she is better qualified than the company's representative, given the rules of the game.

What excuse does the company have for not hiring the candidate now?

<comment><USER18> The company is paying you money. The company is the customer of your services. This is why.

<comment><USER19> Except they're not. Companies rarely, if ever, pay interviewees.

Sure, it's true if you become an employee or contractor... but til then they're speculating (as are you).

<comment><USER18> Kind of like a salesman trying to sell you something... Enterprise software companies don't get paid until they say buy, and in the mean time the company hasn't been paid anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Some really great advice within that forms a foundation for the narrative. I can really appreciate the diligence and apparent 'no hard feelings' kind of pragmatism. I especially liked the closing part:

> _If you fail 10 interviews in a row, go for the 11th interview. But take a > look at all the variables, and see if there's anything you can do > differently to improve. Take the pressure off, and work through problems > routinely to keep your muscle memory in shape._

That reminds me of being in 'game shape' as I call it for playing and soloing - standing around thinking about notes to play doesn't come off nearly as fluid as being so practiced as to get into the groove and run with it. Good parallel. Nicely framed conversation, glad to read it.

<comment><USER21> Yeah. When I was job hunting ~3 years ago I knew I was going to have to do a lot of whiteboarding problems. I only had two 2 years of coding experience, and for the last six months I had been freelancing, which doesn't often encourage algorithms. I was working through "Cracking the Coding interview" and "programming interview exposed" but I was worried.

So I sent an email to everyone in my coworking space that I'd put a six pack in the community fridge for every person who did a mock whiteboard interview with me. Some of them came with their own problems, some of them picked problems from websites or the books that I hadn't done yet. Some of them were doing it as a favor, and some of them wanted to practice interviewing people. I got five mock interviews over a week, many of them with strangers. Best 40 bucks I ever spent. (I nailed the next real interview I had and got a job offer.)

<comment><USER22> That's a damn good idea. I completely agree, a job interview is something that you need to practice to be good at. Just doing code exercises isn't enough. Having someone do a real interview is the best way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Any time a company asks me to do a HackerRank test, I immediately reject them. It's just not possible to have a quality engineering team and to also believe the results of HackerRank tests correspond to on-the-job success.

HackerRank is an attempt to commoditize software labor (literally reducing evaluation of your labor fitness to standardized examples). It communicates immediately that creativity is valued less than standardization, and that your uniformity and compliance are more valuable than your experiences.

It's also a way to position developers as lower-status employees -- you essentially have to capitulate to the judgement of higher-status employees. Even if you ace the code test, it puts you in a defensive position to justify yourself, which inherently reduces your negotiation power. If you submit something that is even slightly unconventional (even if it's provably just as or more accurate than conventional submissions), then your negotiation power is extremely damaged.

For example, think of the difference between actors who must audition and actors who are "offer only" \-- they won't respond to your inquiry about hiring them unless you're prepared, based on their previous work, to make an offer already. If you ask Robert De Niro to audition, you'll get laughed out of the room. HackerRank is often like asking Robert De Niro not only to audition, but to do some kind of two-bit community improv class warm up exercise for his audition, then grilling him because he didn't enunciate clearly. Ridiculous.

Employers often say they want to "see how you think" \-- when they say this, it's a good idea to run the other way. No one can grok some whiteboard code or some timed code test on standardized examples and draw any meaningful conclusions about "how you think" or how it will relate to job success. Someone who believes they can "see how you think" from narrow, time- constrained examples is going to be a terrible colleague or, worse, a very dysfunctional boss.

I think the trend of cultivating "full-stack" developers (instead of benefiting from specialization and separation of concerns) is the number one problem facing the software industry right now (and folks are largely in denial about it).

This nonsense with commodity interviews via HackerRank is the number two problem, followed closely by the prevalence of open-plan offices and the prevalence of Agile-like workflow management processes.

<comment><USER24> Ugh.

Using a coding test shouldn't be a red flag. They are an incredibly useful tool for weeding out the applicants who, quite frankly, don't know their ass from their keyboard.

I've done hiring at several companies over the years, and I can honestly say that the signal-to-noise ratio for programmers tends to be very low. Even eliminating the obviously unqualified resumes leaves us with dozens of supposedly 'qualified' developers. Further followup however in most cases (probably 60 to 80% of the time, depending on the seniority of the position) reveals that the applicant is all talk, and can't solve even the simplest of problems.

Eliminating that 60-80% of applicants is an issue. We could have, say, a brief phone interview with each applicant, trying to figure out which ones are garbage and which are good. But that would tie up actual employees for hours and hours, doing something that most of them would much rather not be doing. Instead, using a coding test to weed out the morons can work wonders. We set them all up with a simple problem set, and a day later it becomes very obvious which of the applicants are worth bringing in for a real interview.

Now don't get me wrong - if an employer rejects you because of a spelling mistake or judges you because they say you solved a problem 'wrong', then yeah, that employer likely sucks and you should be happy to have been passed over. But rejecting an employer simply because they asked you to do a test? The only one you're hurting is yourself.

<comment><USER23> The flip side of this is that most companies are "garbage" as you put it, and a lot of them simply do cargo cult imitations of the more popular companies. If a startup is saying they're going to disrupt the online vegan running shoes market and then tells me they have to weed out the "80% garbage applicants" with some parochial trivia about binary search trees that let's be honest none of us has given a shit about since we passed the exam on it in undergrad, then the code test absolutely is a big red flag to nope on out of there.

Since so many jobs are just shitty talent wasters, and you are just treated horribly, given poor equity terms, not paid what you're worth, etc., it unfortunately means that unless you have special knowledge that some particular job is non-shitty (like a trusted recommendation) then you're just better off erring on the side of nope.

<comment><USER24> If the company looks like garbage though, why are you applying?

<comment><USER23> If the candidates look like garbage, why are you screening them?

You can't always tell. You begin part of the process, then the company says how great their Agile teams are, or how "collaborative" their open-plan surveillance workspace is, or they invite you to do a HackerRank test, and only _now_ do you know the company is shit and you pass.

It's the same problem you face with the 60-80% unqualified applicants. I get messages from head hunters, direct recruiter emails on Stack Overflow, traditional recruiting firm phone calls, as well as occasional job listings that I locate through a job search.

80% of these jobs are shitty and need to be weeded out, even when they have plausible-seeming job descriptions and acceptable GlassDoor reviews.

<comment><USER25> Most people don't get to choose who to interview. Your manager or your recruiter does not have enough data to eliminate the 60% unfit. But the first 40% are already eliminated because those candidates did not pass even the first phone interview with a recruiter (think Google hiring process).

<comment><USER23> My point is that candidates face that exact same problem when trying to weed out bad employers. That's why good developers reject the employers who try to use commodity tests like HackerRank. We do it for the same reason that the employer wants to use the commodity tests to weed out bad candidates. But somehow the employers don't understand they are just signalling how bad they are (apart from a very rare few companies).

<comment><USER24> Don't be so quick to speak for all developers. Most good developers I've encountered are willing to put some effort in to find the right job.

<comment><USER23> HackerRank-like lazy, commodity evaluation is not remotely close to "put[ting] some effort in to find the right job." It's very critical that we don't allow people to make the false comparison between actual interview effort and daft HackerRank time-wasting.

In fact, doing the emotionally difficult task of rejecting an employer who tries the HackerRank commodity nonsense represents putting in more legitimate effort to find the right job and to judiciously choose to complete code evaluations for companies that aren't being lazy and wasting your time.

<comment><USER24> Ha ha! Wow, that does sound difficult. You're a real trooper.

<comment><USER23> There's no need to be insincere or intentionally hurtful. Trust me, when you need a job and you've got a lot of life and family pressures building up, but you can clearly see how dysfunctional an employer is and how bad your life will be if you agree to work for them, it can be extremely hard to make the choice to do the right thing and reject them. It's even worse when you get to the stage of an actual job offer and an employer starts revealing how dysfunctional they are when they won't negotiate on basic features that are necessary for minimally acceptable worker health and quality of life.

It seems you really desire to deride me simply because you disagree with me. I don't take it personally, but I will say that the attitude you've displayed throughout these comments defending HackerRank-like evaluations is exactly the kind of attitude that would be indicative of a badly dysfunctional employer, and it's often exactly the kind of dysfunction that HackerRank requests are indicative of. Especially the parts where you try to turn it around and assert that a candidate standing up for minimally acceptable, reasonable treatment is equivalent (for you) to having a "bad attitude." It's quite alarming that you feel entitled to declare candidates as having "bad attitudes" for doing something that simply makes common sense from the point of view of avoiding employers who will waste their time. Contrary to suggesting that the _candidate_ has a bad attitude, it highly suggests that the _employer_ has a bad attitude, bordering on feeling like they are _entitled_ to candidate labor, instead of _privileged_ to have that labor, and somewhat whiny about it too. Definitely a bad signal when coming from someone involved in the hiring process.

<comment><USER24> Was the sarcasm a bit much? Yeah, probably. But really, everyone makes hard decisions when it comes to jobs. I just find it somewhat amusing that someone would reject a company entirely because they disagree with one single facet of a multi-step interview process.

While we're at it, I don't particularly appreciate many of the insinuations people have made about my team and my employers based simply on the fact that I see a role for automated coding tests in the interview process. But like you said, I don't take it personally either.

Coding tests are just one tool in an interviewing toolbox. Like any tool, they can be - and are - abused. You feel that any use of that tool is indicative of some unredeemable flaw in the company as a whole. I feel that the tool has a genuine role in the initial candidate screening process. We obviously disagree, and are spinning our tires trying to convince each other, so there's really no point in continuing the discussion.

<comment><USER23> > You feel that any use of that tool is indicative of some unredeemable flaw > in the company as a whole.

This is a good summary of my position, except that it's not unredeemable. They could just stop using short, standardized, timed tests as a candidate evaluation, and instead they could acknowledge that there is no effective substitute for actually speaking with candidates, probing them about their experiences, and developing more nuanced understanding. Doing so would be time consuming and expensive ... that's life. Papering over the reality of the situation by pretending like automated, timed, standardized tests can measure the thing you need to measure won't make reality go away.

If a company is verifiably an excellent place to work and has excellent technology culture, and this can be verified ahead of time, then they do have the negotiation power to respectfully require completing code trivia (although most of the firms that actually are excellent don't do it this way even though they could).

Firms that are question marks to a candidate prior to some kind of phone interview to assess the fit, experience, and the nature of the role have no business trying to cheaply avoid the required costs of candidate evaluation. By trying to be cheap about it, they send a bad signal (and also generally don't succeed in getting the candidate pool they want to get).

Short, standardized, timed tests have no place in professional software hiring. Literally none. A company that uses such tests definitely raises red flags. It may be a sign of unredeemable dysfunction in the company, it may be some misguided HR initiative, it may be a totally fine place to work. The candidate can't tell and it's seriously not in their interest to waste effort on whatever the test is going to be.

There are just too many bad jobs ... the better decision rule is to always reject and if you end up rejecting an otherwise good job that somehow ended up using short, timed, standardized testing, oh well. The loss function is not symnmetric. Ending up in a dysfunctional job just because you felt good about acing their code test is a far worse outcome than rejecting an otherwise good job and being overly selective about where to work.

<comment><USER24> Yup, I still genuinely disagree with most of your points. Just not seeing the connection between using an interviewing tool and being a dysfunctional company. But like I said, spinning tires, etc. All the best to you going forward!

<comment><USER23> I think the problem is that you continue referring to it as an interview tool just because it is a thing that can be used for interviewing.

Making candidates stand on one leg and recite the alphabet backwards would also be an "interviewing tool" but it's not legitimate, just as short, timed, standardized coding tests are also not legitimate. Playing semantic games about whether it's an "interview tool" is not worthwhile. The question has nothing to do with whether it's logically possible to be used as part of an interview. The point is that it cannot provide the kinds of evidence that people claim it provides, and so continued usage of it for interviews can only be explained by other reasons, which is when it begins to be evidence of dysfunction.

<comment><USER24> That's not 'the problem'. That's the disagreement. You claim it's not a legitimate tool. I say that it is. We obviously disagree and this is going absolutely nowhere.

<comment><USER23> You say

> Just not seeing the connection between using an interviewing tool and being > a dysfunctional company.

This is problematic because you're not representing my position. It's somewhat of a straw-man. You're saying that _I 'm_ saying that the use of some legit interview tool spells dysfunction.

But I'm not saying that. I'm saying that the use of an _illegitimate_ interview tool (timed, standardized tests) is a sign of dysfunction.

Whether or not you see a connection between using an interview tool and dysfunction is irrelevant, because we would _both_ agree that there's a connection between using an _illegitimate tool_ and dysfunction.

So the disagreement happens at least one layer back, at the point where I claim that timed, standardized tests are not actually useful for determining who will be good at a job. The disagreement, and the whole discussion, has nothing whatsoever to do with "just using an interview tool."

I think it's very important to be pedantic about this, because in a lot of cases you keep referring to the timed tests as an interview tool, and speaking about them that way fails to acknowledge that the tests are not capable of producing the kinds of evaluation output necessary for actually determining who would be good at a job.

For example, a great engineer with loads of experience and glowing letters of recommendation about how effective they have been in previous roles might just be a very anxious timed test taker and tend to do badly on timed tests for reasons mostly of anxiety. Since the test is artificial and has no relationship to the actual work they would do if hired, rejecting them based on a failure on the test is a poor business decision.

It doesn't even have to be as extreme as an anxiety issue with test taking. A person could just simply _disprefer_ working in a constrained, timed environment like a browser-based IDE with a literal clock ticking down. They might be a great developer, yet cannot even write FizzBuzz in that situation because it is so utterly and unreasonably alien compared to the manner in which they would do work in a real job.

The tests just simply are not legitimate ways of measuring programming ability. They do not control for all of the bespoke ways a person can appear bad via a timed test, yet still be good, nor do they account for all of the ways a person can appear good on a timed test, yet perform badly on higher- level thinking tasks, open-ended time management, or creative tasks like system design.

Very truly, the tests, and organizations like HackerRank, exist because it's a convenient fiction for HR and management, especially in companies that doesn't have very much of a technology staff to vet candidates. These places are happy to drink the HackerRank Kool-Aid because it gives them all kinds of plausible deniability about hiring the wrong people. It's very similar to the way that management consultants, far from actually functioning in any analytical capacity that benefits their client, really just exist to sort out internal power struggles through means of credential and prestige. It's very much a status-signaling sort of behavior. And it's even worse in the cases when a company adopts something like HackerRank just because some other, supposedly fancy, company adopted it.

Because of all of this and much more, it's just very critical to continue pedantically ensuring that no claim of the tests being valid, legitimate evaluation tools goes unchallenged.

<comment><USER24> And yet you are misrepresenting what I have claimed about coding tests. I have never once claimed it as useful for determining who would be GOOD at a job. I have claimed they are useful for filtering out applicants who are completely unable to do a job. This is an incredibly useful thing to do when swamped with dozens of similar applications for, say, a junior developer role. But again, this is just a first step. By no means should this test determine who gets hired, it merely helps narrow down the interview pool to something more manageable.

Is there a risk of falsely filtering good applicants? Yes. But that is the exception, not the rule.

Sigh. Why do I keep letting myself get sucked back into this? You see it as an illegitimate tool. I see it as legitimate. We disagree. I'm not going to agree with you, and you're not going to agree with me. So I'm done here. If you'd like to keep arguing by yourself, you go right ahead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> A piece of advice from someone who wanted to work at startups.Having realized that its unlikely that my skills will translate to doing well at startup interviews, its only pragmatic to not pursue that path. But my end goal is not to work at a startup, its to keep learning and to stay relevant/employable and those can be done outside of a startup.

Any interview that is structured like a test is a bad interview. Starting your relationship with an abusive process will set the tone of the relationship and I applaud all those who have walked away from interviews that make one jump through hoops. From personal experience, The last interview I took lasted 40 minutes and the person we hired is the best developer I know.

I was never confident at giving interviews until my mindset changed from it being a test to an exchange where someone who needs help is trying to get together with me, someone who can help them. They should able to explain to me how they see me helping them. Questions like: 'what is your biggest challenge right now' or 'if I were hired, what would be the first task' help start that conversation. They obviously will do their due diligence and I need to do mine (collaborative environment, sane hours, reasonable pay, competent management etc.)

All of the above is opinion.

</comment><comment><USER27> _> "Job interviews are difficult by design."_

In the tech-sector at least they're not "difficult by design." They're obtuse and absurd due to laziness and lack of rigor applied to the problem space by individual firms as well as the aggregate marketplace.

Almost nobody applies anything remotely resembling a scientific method or includes the massive body of research available in sociology, psychology, and/or neurology for understanding even their own needs as a company trying to accomplish something, let alone building an effective social group (i.e. team) capable of cooperating together to get there given whatever that organization's constraints are.

<comment><USER28> Would you, kindly, start us off with whichever pieces are best for a company to implement/utilize in interviews?

<comment><USER27> Well, a good first place to start is to survey the various profile models that exist and figure out which one you can get most comfortable using/assessing.

[http://www.businessballs.com/personalitystylesmodels.htm](http://www.businessballs.com/personalitystylesmodels.htm)

I personally use OCEAN because I'm most comfortable with its scaffolding and applying it via field testing.

Then move on to how those models can be tracked/verified through neurological study. Dario Nardi @ UCLA is probably the most "renowned" researcher in this field, though there are many more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Luckily in my current job search I've only been told there would be a whiteboard once (this Friday!). This article made me nervous though—as a busy student I don't have time to sit down and review/learn all those tree and linked list operations as well as their complexities.

Best interview I've had was pair programming with a team member and fixing a bug.

<comment><USER30> Yep! I have been interviewing for fun for the last few years (averaging maybe one or two interviews every few months), and I've seen all kinds of stuff. Way too many whiteboards. In fact, even after all these years, whiteboards still make me nervous, and basically makes it impossible to get into flow, or have a reasonably nice mindset for solving problems. And if I do this for fun, you can bet that people who depend on those interviews for their livelihood aren't feeling much better. I think it's a really stupid way to interview. Anyways, I agree with you: The best and funnest interviews -- and therefore the interviews I feel most comfortable (and therefore able to really show what I know) -- are the pair programming interviews. You build a special rapport with a single developer on the team, who gets a really good idea of the kind of coder you are. It's like a nice, calm conversation about technology.

<comment><USER31> While I appreciate that this process has been great for you, I would think that it probably sucks for all the engineers and managers whose time you took up interviewing "for fun". Have you ever tried to hire engineers? It is a pain in the ass, and giving serious consideration to every candidate takes up a huge amount of time even before the interview, much less taking a significant chunk of a day for a significant chunk of the team to actually do the interview.

If I found out someone had interviewed with me "for fun" I would be very tempted to send them a bill for "employment search consulting services" at my team's market rate per man hour!

<comment><USER32> You go into this process knowing that it consumes time and that not everything is going to pan out. If you had the data and processes to identify the perfect candidate, you wouldn't need to bring people in to interview.

It's not waste, it's data collection. If you're not building usable data out of your interview process, your hiring process sucks.

My team was interviewing candidates recently and we brought in a guy that was great on paper and in the interview but we had other candidates scheduled and two of them ended up blowing the first guy away. I'm glad we delayed that hiring decision until we had an appropriate amount of data.

Also, think of it like dating (or any other matching market). Being outcome- dependent says nothing about your candidates but a lot (that's unattractive) about you.

The best way to do things is to build good relationships. Your company and your developers should have a network of people you can bring in at any time to interview for a position. As a developer you should also have a network of contacts to know who needs developers. Instead you're waiting till you're desperate and coming off as needy. If I see that, I'm going to ask for a lot more money or as an employer offer less.

Thankfully for my wallet, almost everyone else is in the same boat as you.

...and if I'm out interviewing for fun and find a better fit, I'm probably going to take it.

<comment><USER30> Here's really the meat of it (and well said!): I interview "for fun" because 1) I've always got my ear to the rail for a better opportunity, and 2) I _love_ meeting cool, smart people working on awesome projects! I'm not a VC so this is my way of touring the technology industry and networking. The thought that I'm "wasting" someone's time I think is really strange.

<comment><USER32> I've had people bring me in to chat telling me ahead of time that they weren't interviewing me but they wanted to get to know me so that when I had the years of experience they were looking for they'd call me up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I applied to around 100 jobs over the course of 9 months when starting to learn how to program. For the startups I would get to a phone screen and potentially a technical challenge then be turned away. At the job I am at now, was contacted by CTO online, and had phoned/on-site/started within 5 days of initial contact.

I've seen a bunch of blog posts recently about some companies priding themselves on who they turn down versus who they accept and I feel that is one of the bigger problems we have as an industry in hiring.

</comment><comment><USER34> I realized something a while back... My entire career, if I've made it to an on-site interview, I've only had one company NOT make me a job offer.

That interview, I was asked to do something using recursion. (Ug.) The next interviewer asked me to reverse a singularly linked list, and because my brain was still in recursion land, I tried to do it recursively. Blame the jet lag, okay? Immediately after I sucked at that, they walked me out the door. It was emberasing. Two steps out the door, and my brain is filled with POP AND PUSH! AAAH! I knew the answer, I've KNOWN the answer since I was about 14. No joke. So, I've been on that side of the "every now and then people interview poorly" thing. And I can only blame the jet lag, because I KNOW the ridiculously easy answer to that question.

Here's the funny thing - if I would have been offered a job there, I would have accepted. And the company went on to crash and burn in terrible fashion. And two months later, I got a job at a MUCH better company.

TL;DR: I've only failed at one interview, and it was arguably the best thing that ever happened to me. (Life is weird!)

<comment><USER35> Except ... reversing a singularly-linked list recursively is trivial.

If you can't do this, you are not qualified at basic manipulation of data structures and you _should_ fail the interview if they want someone with basic competence in data structure manipulation. Sorry but that is how it is.

<comment><USER36> Because so often we are faced with having to implement singularly linked-list reversal.

I wouldn't even bother implementing this myself in the real world and I have a degree in computer science and 10 years experience doing dev work. I would type the problem into google, survey a couple of solutions and pick one I liked. Done. Next problem please.

This is pedantic crap that is a waste of anyone's time. I can't believe people actually get asked shit like this at interviews? Well, at least none that I've ever been to. They look at my resume "Oh, CS degree at well respected University." and you can deduce that this person can probably work out trivial crap like this or look it up in a book or the internet. At most ask them for their academic records. What a complete waste of time in an interview..

<comment><USER35> The point is that if you can't do this, there is no way you can do stuff more complicated than this, which will actually be necessary during regular work. (And which you won't be able to type into Google).

I run a software company and I'll say straight up I would not hire someone with your attitude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is just an ad for hackerrank.

And yes; it is hard to find a job in Silicon Valley if you are sitting in Kazhakstan and need a visa too. Duh.

<comment><USER37> And honestly; don't spend you time practicing silly brain teasers and programming quiz questions. Write meaningful software that you into production.

<comment><USER38> I've been struggling with this issue for months. I really want to be hired by Microsoft, Amazon or Google, but I feel like the time required to prepare for the inevitable "hazing" would be better served exploring new technologies and creating new software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> > You don't get to use to your own IDE, you have an absurdly limited amount of > time and you're in an incredibly high-pressure environment.

Here's a good interview tip that's helped me out with my last two job moves: Whiteboard code almost always comes out looking like crap because once you've fleshed out the idea, you can't easily insert lines. The solution is to bring a laptop with the IDE of your choice ready and say "Hey, I'm not really good at whiteboard coding. Do you mind if I write the code on my laptop here?"

<comment><USER40> If your interviewer really dings you for the appearance of your scrawled code on the wall, they're being self-defeatingly stupid and you'd probably be happier working with other people.

I do lots of tech interviews, and I always make it clear that I don't care how pretty the ink looks. I stick with the whiteboard because it's the best way for candidates to explain their analyses and algorithms before they write the code.

<comment><USER41> My Google interview in 2008, one guy asked me to write a binary tree structure and implementations of depth and breadth-first search (maybe also balanced insert?) on the whiteboard in C, which I blew through in no time. He then immediately said it was wrong and let me wither for a few minutes trying to figure out what the problem was before pointing out I forgot a semicolon.

<comment><USER40> I hated seeing that kind of crap when I was on the hiring committee, and I think that it's less likely that you'd run into it today.

<comment><USER41> Thanks, it does sound like things have changed. I probably would have been a better hire back then than today though. I was younger, cheaper, and had an almost OCD drive to learn everything CS since I had a complex about getting into the game a little late. Today I feel like I wouldn't be able to maintain my current lifestyle with a wife, two kids, two dogs in the bay area. Occasionally I think about it though...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> During the last 10 years i always go for a solution, just a coded solution (and if you do it quickly, or even while doing it, you can frequently improve upon it significantly). Doesn't work for Google/FB - they probably want the elegant super-performant solution that i usually come up with in the next few minutes after the interview is finished :) - yet it works just fine with the rest of the companies.

Hint: almost always start with putting the input into a tree, and if tree is completely out of question - into hashmap :)

</comment><comment><USER31> There's too much missing information in this article. In today's environment, a qualified programmer with the background this guy appears to have should get offers at a much higher percentage of companies.. IF everything is on the level: decent communications skills, applying for jobs whose requirements match skills, realistic compensation expectations, and (my guess in this case) already authorized to work in the US.

I would expect this low hit rate from a qualified individual looking for a job AND an H1B sponsor.

<comment><USER12> The H1B factor certainly has weight - I can imagine it leading to a 2x factor in his rejection rate. But not the 5x rate he's apparently had to suffer through.

<comment><USER43> I would also have to imagine most of the H1B fallout is at the initial screen, not after multiple interview rounds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> "I got into the final interview for an extremely high-growth human resources startup. That was exciting, and I really thought I was going to get an offer. But, eventually, the last round of the interview was super hard. I just failed."

Been through this too many times.

</comment><comment><USER45> When I was first applying for internships (as a college junior with sort-of- interesting projects on my resume but no real experience) I think I applied to 75 positions, heard back from maybe 20 and got to the first round at 5 or 6 (including code challenges).

The 6% return rate (application to interview) wasn't exactly encouraging. I made a habit of working hard on each application, sending it out and then immediately assuming that I'd been rejected, putting me right back in that stressful place I'd been before.

Being able to leverage that stress into something productive was huge, I'd wake up early and spend my mornings working on cover letters (useless) and researching companies, and eventually took myself across the city to crash another University's career fair to try and meet a recruiter from my then- dream-company (one I'd applied to online months before and never heard back from). That turned out to be one of two offers I got and where I spent my summer.

Keeping up a grind on applications and not getting discouraged is huge, getting into the mindset of "constantly apply until I'm employed, don't assume anything will work out" was probably the real reason I got the job I did.

</comment><comment><USER46> Lol, 38. Only 38. In today's job market one should expect rejections from dozens, potentially hundreds of companies. With hundreds of qualified people apply for each job (thank you electronic CVs) 99+% of applications, of interviews, result in a rejection. It's the new normal. The days of interviewing only a handful of people are long over. Nobody should take it personally.

</comment><comment><USER47> Excelling in an online programming competitions sounds like a fun, exciting way to showcase myself to multiple companies all at once. Way better than white boards, for sure!

<comment><USER48> That might sound "cool" if you are straight out of a college with plenty of time to spare, no full-time job and family to support. Otherwise, it's not so compelling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Recently came across an example where someone entirely different person went for the interview answered, cleared but the another person reported for the job.

I must say I am extremely disappointed at bay area job scene.

</comment><comment><USER50> > You don't get to use to your own IDE, you have an absurdly limited amount of > time and you're in an incredibly high-pressure environment.

Ironically, HackerRank itself is a part of this problem. All of those are true for HackerRank coding challenges.

As another commenter has pointed out here, HackerRank (and other coding test platforms) want to commoditize the hiring process, but in a way that ensures that candidates are the ones who are doing the all the work. The companies just don't want to spend any time in the interviewing process. It's no wonder that so many companies are struggling to hire good engineers.

If you as a company throw me an online coding challenge as the first interaction, you can be rest assured that you won't be hiring from me again (and many others).

<comment><USER51> My favorite interviews have been ones that started with the company giving me a choice between a few small programming projects. They usually let you do it in your own time, over a week or so. When you turn it in, they can see how cleanly you write code, how careful you are about edge cases, whether or not you write unit tests, etc. etc.

Of course, then they call you in to their office and...... give you a whiteboard interview that lasts 5 hours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I have bootstrapped startup and I was rejected by at least 380 companies. Ok I'm not talking about hiring but about sales pitches (with demos and what not).

So again if you are looking for a job, think as salesman. And in sales rejections are part of life.

</comment><comment><USER26> There have been a few articles on the hiring/interviewing practices. As someone who has not worked/interviewed in a startup, I have a few rhetorical yet sincere questions:

Does every startup implement their own algorithms etc. from scratch. Isn't it the reason why we have libraries? I thought most software was mostly glue/crud.

Do engineers at startup only code? Do they never talk to customers or need to clarify requirements or work on timelines or deal with scope creep, since it seems that these skills aren't evaluated at interviews.

If the answer to these questions is what I think it should be, to what end do we have this dog and pony show?

</comment><comment><USER53> I've seen articles about technical interviews too many times to count, and while I personally don't believe whiteboarding is a good tool for interviewing and don't use it when I perform interviews, I do believe that any good engineer should be able to whiteboard answers with relative ease. The gripe really is dependent on the specific questions, however if you've worked with a technology stack you should be able to recall the function names, parameter order, and basic pseudo code syntax to write answers to questions. If a developer is dependent on their IDE or Google to do absolutely anything, I wouldn't hire that person. Even developers directly out of college have done enough programming to do the basics, and if a developer can't they should be honest about their abilities and rather than stumble through a wrong or incomplete answer. Often the interviewer will still ask you to try your best, but it's important to be honest about your capabilities.

I've interviewed at dozens of technology companies, many that do whiteboarding, and I've always done well. I've gotten offers significantly more times than I've ever been rejected, this isn't because I interview well, but because the things I claim to know and be an expert at, I know better than the back of my hand. If a software developer has been writing code and working with a set of technologies on a daily basis for years, I'd expect the same of any of them.

From what I've seen of the modern software engineers isn't that they interview poorly, or that whiteboarding is the blocking issue. It's that they're actually poor engineers. Lots of people are taking 8 to 10 week crash courses on programming and think they are near the same level as someone who went to college for four years, even tend to expect the same pay. I actually don't think college is generally useful for software engineers either, but it's about the time spent. The best programmers by far are those who started young and even program personal projects as a hobby, who actually love to write software. I love writing software, getting wrapped up and losing track of time, creating amazing software that solves difficult problems and is a delight to use. I hire developers who are the same.

<comment><USER48> " _if you 've worked with a technology stack you should be able to recall the function names, parameter order, and basic pseudo code syntax to write answers to questions."_

That's not true unless you work with very narrow technology or single framework. For example, good luck trying to remember all these POSIX API functions. I don't even try to remember mundane things by heart, because it takes a precious and very limited resource (brain memory) for a very small gain (few seconds saved that would cost to look it up).

<comment><USER54> "Never memorize something you can look up" \-- Albert Einstein

"I wrote it down so I wouldn't have to remember!" \-- Professor Henry Jones

Two of the pearls of wisdom I live my life by. Actually, most engineers do. That's why huge books of nothing but formulas, lookup tables, and reference data exist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I've come to the point where I walk out of interviews that involve whiteboard questions. I have conducted my fair share of them, and I have been on the interviewee side as well, and in no situation have I ever found any modicum of value in a whiteboard question. They are a complete waste of everyone's time, and to me, they are the hallmark of an incompetent interviewer/manager (and yes, I felt that way about myself back when I used them).

There are plenty of companies out there who agree that whiteboard questions are ridiculous, and I'd rather work for one of them.

</comment><comment><USER56> Why not show the questions to the candidates say 45 or 60 minutes in advance of the whiteboard session itself, and let them take notes on pencil and paper in an examination-hall like environment during that interval? Even without Internet access it would still be a lot closer to a realistic test of skill at normal software development activities than a set of surprise questions. If you pipeline the candidates it shouldn't add too much time. Please excuse my ignorance if this is something which is already being done, or has already been tried and given up on.

</comment><comment><USER57> I was laid off from my job as a Python programmer in San Francisco on 07AUG2015. It took me 4 1/2 months to find another job working remotely as a Python programmer.

I did not keep an accurate record of the number of resumes that I sent out, but I archived 110 cover letters during that time. I would bet that I probably sent out about 150 resumes.

I had scores of phone interviews and a dozen to fifteen in-person interviews a few of which ended abruptly. I will turn 69 years old in October 2016.

</comment><comment><USER58> Anyone who is a great engineer shouldn't need to go through 38 interviews to get a position. Something is amiss here. Perhaps he has flaws outside of his supposedly amazing coding abilities.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Great discussion! HackerRank founder here - in-case anyone would like to ask questions about what we have seen in different hiring practices.

</comment><comment><USER59> Does anyone have any insight on this reflecting on a higher supply of devs and/or lower demand of employers (bad market for developers)?

</comment><comment><USER60> "Even though algorithmic challenges aren't really used on the job much in production, it's still really important to keep revisiting your fundamentals. It's just like a muscle–if you don't train it, it'll become weak."

So we are testing for stuff that no one actually uses in the job. We are testing for those that have time to practice for interview tests·

</comment><comment><USER61> My current position offered $X to do a pilot project. They then turned me down ---and later called me back when the candidate they chose didn't work out. I took the position.

Companies that want to hire, will hire. Companies that think, "Oh, it'd be nice to hire Jeff Dean maybe" won't hire.

</comment><comment><USER62> Rejection massively reduces IQ [http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2051](http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2051)

</comment><comment><USER63> My comments on HN get shadowbanned for no discernable reason. Does that count?

<comment><USER64> HN has shadowban?

<comment><USER54> Sort of. There is a mechanism to "kill" a user's posts; these are posts that get flagged "[dead]". A logged-in user with showdead checked in their profile can still see them, though. In fact, as of several months ago users can "vouch" for dead posts that should not be dead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Nearly every silicon valley interview is based on whether or not you are as hipster as the interviewer. Keep your head up and don't subscribe to the culture. You can be excellent and live as different as you want.

<comment><USER66> Full disclosure, I work for HackerRank, but I really wanted to comment for two reasons:

(1) Reading this article and seeing the comments, really helps me see how my daily work helps level the playing field and as Alibek says, change people's lives. Very fulfilling and thankful for that.

(2) Re: exabrial's comment above, where do you think culture fit should be evaluated in the process? Lots of interview processes today deal with culture fit at the end, but should it be item 1 and then coding skill item 2?

<comment><USER65> My answer to #2:

Being from the midwest, doing interviews in silicon valley was like stepping into Charlie's Chocolate Factory at a few places in LA and SF. It made me smile to see people using their freedom to do whatever they wanted, but I really felt like -I- was being judged: you know for not wearing skinning jeans, feeling comfortable in my (literal) boots, being clean shaven, dressed in a long sleeve, and of course I have a soft spoken midwestern accent. You can't fake sincerity, and despite knocking the coding interviews out of the park, I felt like some (not all) of the interviewers were threatened by me somehow and mocked me gently with "well you did a really good job despite..." like they were talking to a three year old.

Really left a sour taste in my mouth how it seems the region preaches equality and acceptance, but that's only equality and acceptance of the non- traditional.

TL;DR: It's easy to say "We have a great culture" at your job if you hire hipsters homogeneously. The company I want to work for is color blind: we grow to appreciate each other. People of all walks, western, eastern, european, russian, christian, cat worshipper, whatever, just respect each other believe something different and learn how to communicate across these boundaries.

<comment><USER67> I thought the common stereotype is that most 'hipsters' are from the midwest? Go to any gentrifying neighborhood on the east or west coast and a common refrain is 'go back to Ohio!'.

<comment><USER51> That's so funny- I've been living on the west coast for around 6 years now, and I originally hail from Ohio (but mostly Colorado).

But, I'm decidedly not a hipster; no flannel, no beard, no skinny jeans, no boots, the sides of my head aren't shaved. I always had the impression that the hipsters were native to the west coast and it's always felt like I'm encroaching on their territory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I celebrate my failures

</comment><comment><USER62> Quiz != Interview

</comment><comment><USER68> What do you do to be turned down by 38 companies? Do you turn on your laptop and it's running Windows?

</comment><comment><USER69> "I got turned down by 38 companies, nobody wants to pay me 100k mimimimi" Murican Coders of the 21st Century at the biggest whiners ever...And honestly if you fail to get a job within 3-4 interviews then you are a) doing it wrong or b) applying for the wrong jobs.

<comment><USER70> I somewhat agree with your statement. Mainly because I personally put a LOT of effort into each job application and I would not be able to apply to more than 2-3 jobs a week. Takes time to find the right company, do research, make a perfect personalized application etc.

As a result to that pretty much all applications I have ever made have at the very least gotten back to me. I would never be able to apply to 38 jobs in 2 months. I feel like a lot of copy paste went on and that sets you to a negative start.

<comment><USER71> Most applications are quizzes + resume. There is only one way of applying for it.

I got turned down by over 100 companies before I even had an interview. The process is really random.

<comment><USER70> Right, I personally literally change my resume based on each application focusing on the experience which I think would be most relevant for each position. I also change the introduction sentence and when I respond to open ended questions (in the quizzes) I always refer back to the company and relevant examples. Cover letter, when requested, also takes me a lot of time to write up.

<comment><USER71> I did that too. Perhaps it's a skill of some sort.

The only thing that worked was making a site that went viral. Then I got like 20 unsolicited messages/requests for an interview.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Elon Musk: self-driving cars could lead to a ban on human drivers - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/18/elon-musk-self-driving-cars-ban-human-drivers

<comment><USER2> On a another note, I wonder what all these intermediate helper devices will do to peoples driving abilities. We're already getting to a point where more and more people cannot drive a car with a manual transmission. How long before most people cannot park a car or safely change lanes on their own?

</comment><comment><USER2> I can't see a ban coming anytime soon, but I can see self-driving cars only roads. If you really want to/have to drive yourself feel free to take the 40-50 mph speed limit side roads. Or you can take engage the auto-drive and hop onto the speed limit free express way.

</comment><comment><USER3> So wait, now that the topic has come to Musk's business, AI is suddenly not that much of a threat? Certainly more trustworthy than human beings, eh?</comment>


Productivity in the workplace : Post-It Notes on the monitor - <AUTHOR> http://pitchandpixel.com/2010/11/productivity-in-the-workplace-post-it-notes-on-the-monitor/

<comment><USER2> The bottom row for long-term projects is brilliant. Not so much for tracking things to do for them, but just to be a visual reminder of which side projects are actually important.

I've got easily a dozen medium-sized ideas that I'm rather indecisive about which should get my time on any given night. Actually coming up with a list of them, even without priorities, would be a huge boon. As I re-remember ideas I can easily assess if I should just scrap the idea (already have enough "good" projects) or if it's good enough to bump something else. Keep 3 or 4 ideas tops stickied and stay focused on them.

I dare say I'll try that as soon as I remember where my post-its are.

</comment><comment><USER3> How does this method out perform a plaintext task list including projects? It seems that having so many notes staring me in the face all the time would make it exceedingly difficult to focus on the actual task in front of me. A notebook or text file doesn't have that problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't find that the Post-It Notes distract me at all, and I don't have to keep a notebook around to clutter my desk. For me, with notebooks sometimes it's out of sight, out of mind. Once you start using the system you hardly notice these things at all until you need them.

I do keep an additional notebook under my desk for calculation, or just trying to visualize an algorithm. Notebooks should generally be reserved for bigger and longer thinking, where you can also append the Post-It Notes to particular pages if you so require.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love Post-Its. I would recommend using different colors to denote the various priority levels of your to-do items.

<comment><AUTHOR> But priority is already determined by location, highest priority to lowest, top to bottom, and left to right. I'm still unsure of what to use colors for.

<comment><USER5> Color's could be used to show which project it's associated with. I've been doing this with my Moleskine lately. I have a differnt color of tab depending on what project that page or section of pages has to do with.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome suggestions.</comment></comment></comment></comment>