Did English ever have a formal version of "you"? - <AUTHOR> http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/9780/did-english-ever-have-a-formal-version-of-you <comment> fsck--off Second person used to be:

Singular----|----Plural

       Thou      Ye, You

       Thee      You

       Thine     Yours

       Thy       Your

Which correspond to the nominative, objective, and possessive cases accordingly.

By the way, the "Ye" is not related to the "Ye" in store signs that say "Ye Olde...". Y was sometimes used by typographers instead of the Old English letter Þ(Thorn), which makes a "Th" sound, so those store signs should be pronounced as " _The_ Old..."

The usage of "You" instead of "Thou" began in the 14th century. It was originally used in token of respect when addressing a superior, and eventually began to be used when addressing equals.

EDIT: Removed part about "you all", because some things I said were wrong and others I will have to look up.

<comment><USER3> Interesting. So the way we learned the Lord's Prayer, it seems to use the informal: "Thy will be done". But that doesn't correlate with addressing God as "LORD", does it?

Edit: I looked this up and found this page: [http://brandplucked.webs.com/theeandye.htm](http://brandplucked.webs.com/theeandye.htm)

It seems to infer that "thou, thee" etc. are only about distinguishing between singular and plural. There's no mention of them being an informal form, at least not in the King James Bible.

Even more:

"As William Tyndale translated the Bible into English in the early 16th century, he sought to preserve the singular and plural distinctions that he found in his Hebrew and Greek originals. Therefore, he consistently used thou for the singular and ye for the plural regardless of the relative status of the speaker and the addressee. By doing so, he probably saved thou from utter obscurity and gave it an air of solemnity that sharply distinguished it from its original meaning. Tyndale's usage was imitated in the King James Bible, and remained familiar because of that translation."

Then more from Wikipedia - the plot thickens!

"Early English translations of the Bible used thou and never you as the singular second-person pronoun, with the double effect of maintaining thou in usage and also imbuing it with an air of religious solemnity that is antithetical to its former sense of familiarity or disrespect."

Also, apparently French uses the informal (see "toi" in the Lord's Prayer), whereas Dutch uses formal (U/uw).

<comment><USER4> In Italian, the informal 'tu' is used. No idea why, or what the history of that is.

<comment><USER5> Same in french, in this case I think it implies that God is "part of the family" so to speak, someone very close, not a stranger.

"Vous" is formal but it doesn't necessarily mean that "tu" is informal, it just implies a certain form of intimacy.

Also, I'd like to point out that using the plural "you" as polite/formal also kind of works with plural "we" as in the "royal we": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_we](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_we)

I'm not sure if both are directly related though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Greetings from a speaker of a linguistic oddity that _doesn 't_ have a universal form of the word "you".

My native language -- Sinhalese -- has two forms: written and spoken. The written form, which has a grammar very similar to Latin, does have a universal "you", but the spoken form, which is largely grammer-less except for tense, does not. You literally cannot address someone without knowing their status/relationship to you. This leads to some difficult and sometimes hilarious situations:

\- Children, family members and lovers are often addressed "oya". Using this on your boss or teacher could lead to problems. More acceptable when used by women and girls than by men.

\- There's no way to informally address a superior without a salutation or a name. This leads to people repeatedly using a person's name or salutation in the same sentence. E.g. "Sir, should I have that report sir asked for on sir's desk before sir leaves for sir's doctor's appointment?"

\- Some old fashioned couples have entire conversations (and sometimes marriages) without using second person pronouns because they don't have a single version they feel comfortable with.

\- Male friends of roughly equal age tend to call each other "machang" \-- a term that is well known to those who have known Sri Lankans, and roughly translates to "dude".

\- There's no safe version of "you" that a young man can use on another that he has just met. Most risk using "machang", but could result in offense if addressing someone of higher social standing. This is solved by constructing sentences that avoid the word entirely.

\- Most children, especially from my generation, do not feel comfortable using second person pronouns on their parents. They just repeat "mother/father" wherever the word "you" is supposed to appear.

\- Sometimes the sentences are spoken with the word entirely omitted (like in Latin) -- "Can come over here?", "Did lock the door?"

<comment><USER7> > [...] but the spoken form, which is largely grammer-less [...]

No need to deprecate your mother-tongue. I bet there's plenty of grammar, it's just different from the written form.

(I see a similar inferiority complex with speakers of Singlish here in Singapore. It's a great language, if you ask me.)

<comment><USER6> It is in fact a great language. For one thing, our alphabet is fully phonetic. And it's even arranged in a logical grid: [http://www.omniglot.com/writing/sinhala.htm](http://www.omniglot.com/writing/sinhala.htm)

It's also a great language to tell jokes in. We have a lot of delivery-based humor that gets completely lost if only the meaning is translated (which is often the case when the destination language is English).

Some of our original deficiencies: we didn't have punctuation or even spaces before they were introduced by European colonists (Portuguese, Dutch and British, in that order). So our ancient writings LOOKEDKINDOFLIKETHISANDWENTONFORPARAGRAPHS.

<comment><USER8> I think that's a "feature" of lots of writing systems, punctuation and spaces and lower case and other formatting is one of those things that's obvious only in retrospect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This relates well to one of the fascinating things I realized while learning German: the fact that so many English and German words and sounds have phonetic connections, coming from their common Germanic ancestry.

For example, the letter "d" in German corresponding to "th" in English:

      die/der/das -> the
      drei -> three
      Donner -> thunder
      Ding -> thing
      daher -> therefore

and, most relevant to this discussion:

      du -> thou

I'm sure this connection can be better explained than I'm able to, but it was a mini-epiphany for me while studying the language.

<comment><USER10> Any Danish speakers here? It should be even closer to English as that's where the Angles and Saxons are from.

<comment><USER11> I'm pretty sure there are, at least I think I see Norwegians all the time : )

When you know Norwegian or Danish you can see a lot of similarities. The explanation I got was that around year 1000 Norway/Denmark was pretty much a naval superpower.

<comment><USER12> It's actually more recent. From the mid 1300's the Norwegian and Danish monarchy merged through marriage, and Denmark became by far the dominant party in the union. (Schelswig-Holsten was also for some time part of

The union lasted until 1814, when Denmark (and by extension Norway) had supported Napoleon, and Sweden had joined the other side. Sweden got Norway as a "price". But during that period, a lot of people had started preparing for an attempt at Norwegian independence. And while we entered into a looser union with Sweden, there was a long ongoing debate about creating a new, formalised Norwegian language.

We ended up with two, but one of them - bokmål - was basically Danish + Norwegian pronunciation + various spelling reforms, as this was effectively what was spoken amongst the upper classes in the cities, and this (with further spelling reforms) is the dominant written language today (the other was based on spoken dialects, and is further from Danish but not that much) .

So we've "only" had about 200 years for the languages to diverge again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Swedish has _du_ (singular) and _ni_ (plural). Prior to the "du-reform" in the late 1960's however, _ni_ was also used as a formal singular form, but for the last 40 or so years the formal form has been dropped, leaving _ni_ for plural only. In fact many older people would find it mildly insulting to be addressed singular _ni_ today.

Of course there are a few exceptions, most notably when addressing members of the royal family. If you ever get to speak with one of them, the correct way is to address them by title, in third person ("would her majesty like fries with that?").

Around 8 or 10 years ago I started to notice a trend, particularly among younger people (in their late teens maybe), typically working in shops and cafes, who started once again to use singular _ni_ with customers, but I haven't lived in Sweden for several years now and don't know if that's continued. I hope not!

<comment><USER14> Could this be dialectal? Because I hear "ni" now and then, and I've also found myself using it a couple of times -- not through intent, but rather automatically. Maybe it's the "new trend" you're talking about.

<comment><USER13> Maybe it's a central Stockholm thing, I don't really know. And I certainly didn't mean to imply that it was common, I only noticed it now and then and vaguely recall some mention of it on P1 Språket or in the newspaper, that it seemed to be making a return.

I've only ever known _du_ , would never use _ni_ except for a group, and feel odd being called _ni_ myself. Not insulted mind you, closest I can describe it is like when a small child refers to you as "that man" but you're only 16 or 17. :)

Ok, did some googling...

This from P1 Språket says that it wasn't a trend in 2004 (but then why were they asking?): [http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=411&arti...](http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=411&artikel=390269)

And this blog from 2008, in response to a column in DN that I can't find in their archive: [http://lingvistbloggen.ling.su.se/?p=352](http://lingvistbloggen.ling.su.se/?p=352)

And finally this in DN from 2013: [http://www.dn.se/insidan/fjask-eller- respekt-ar-du-pa-vag-at...](http://www.dn.se/insidan/fjask-eller-respekt-ar- du-pa-vag-att-bli-ni-igen/)

So trend or not, it certainly seems to be a recurring topic of discussion in Sweden!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In Polish, you don't use the plural _vy_ as a formal singular. In Russian you do. I took Polish lessons at one point and my teacher would wince every time I accidentally called him _vy_. He told me the Russians used to force Poles to address each other that way in their own parliament. So sensitive was he to this long-past linguistic oppression that he couldn't help but be offended when an English speaker who happened to have studied Russian did it by mistake.

<comment><USER16> I don't understand - why would it be offensive to have to use the formal case with each other in a parliament? Is the idea that вы ('vih'/'vy') implies formality/lack of familiarity and the Polish wanted a more conversational tone in their governance?

<comment><USER17> I think the point was that it was Russian, not Polish.

<comment><USER16> ....ohhhh (I feel dumb now). Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> We're very happy with _y 'all_ here in Texas.

<comment><USER19> It confused me when I asked a native Texan something about what I should do next and she responded with "y'all could [foo]". But there's only one of me? I suppose that technically I am the 'all' of the 'you' that is being addressed?

<comment><USER20> In some regional vernaculars, "y'all" is singular and "all y'all" is plural.

<comment><USER21> Interesting. Here in North Carolina, "y'all" is generally plural, whereas "all y'all" is also plural but more emphatic, as in "I really do mean every last one of you", or sometimes simply to indicate a stronger emotional content, especially when angry.

<comment><USER22> South Carolinian here that spent a lot of time in Raleigh & Charlotte and is now living in Austin. "y'all" can be both singular and plural, depending on the context. "All y'all" applies to larger groups (sometimes including people that aren't present), as well as with additional emphasis.

"All y'all come by for supper" meaning you and your close family. And maybe even some other people as well, if there's room at the table for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Regarding the comment on the Chinese character 您 at the bottom of that page: it's still very much in use (formal letters, ceremony speeches, etc).

I can't add a reply though, because apparently I need 50 reputation. I can't upvote, because I need 10 reputation. You know what, StackExchange? I'll just stay away from your site with all the barriers to participation that you throw up.

<comment><USER24> You say barriers to participation, I say anti-spam measures.

Have you really never used any StackExchange site, though? Once you've used one, you get 100 free rep when signing up on any other StackExchange site, which is enough to perform all the basic actions (posting, commenting, voting, etc).

<comment><USER23> I have an account on StackOverflow and I linked it to my new english.stackexchange.com account, but I didn't get any free rep.

<comment><USER24> Do you have any StackOverflow rep? I would assume it only gives you MIN(100, otherAccountRep), so if your SO rep is 0 I'm guessing your new account also gets 0.

<comment><USER23> I do, 131 rep on my SO account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> As an aside note, italian has "two" formal versions of "you".

The informal one, "tu", is common on all the peninsula.

The formal version "voi" (2nd person plural) is more common in the south of the Italy (it's a reminiscent of the spanish invasions).

The formal version "lei" (3rd person singular) is more common in the north of the Italy.

<comment><USER4> I live in the north, but when learning Italian, we were taught that 'lei' is the correct one, while 'voi' is sort of archaic. You see/hear it in, say, comic books like this one, set in the 1800's:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tex_Willer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tex_Willer)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm having trouble finding a reference, but it's my understanding that the Dissenter (later Quaker) habit of referring to everyone as 'thou' regardless of rank is precisely what lead to 'you' becoming universal. If one wasn't a Dissenter, one surely didn't want to be mistaken for such.

<comment><USER27> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T–V_distinction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T–V_distinction) has some extensive discussion.

The version I heard is roughly that, though I recall a professor blaming it on Cromwell's commonwealth rather than the Quakers (after the commonwealth fell thee/thou went completely out of favor.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I know a guy who got to meet Queen Elizabeth. He was required to go through a royal customs seminar before meeting her. Apparently, you NEVER use "you" when talking to the queen. You can't say "Would you like some tea?". You must say "Would Your Majesty like some tea?". Hows that for formal.

<comment><USER29> Older English man still use indirect speech when referring to themselves and the person they're talking to if there's a significant class difference or even gender. Sometimes they'll even avoid posing questions altogether: "One would like to request your company for tea if it not too inconvenient...".

Makes everyone sound like a wedding invitation. :)

<comment><USER30> I still use "One" quite a lot in writing (especially forums) when I need to discuss your personal opinion without implying that I'm speaking for the other parties in the conversation. i.e.

"You often see cars speeding along this road" <\- perfectly valid and the context can be taken from the way it is delivered in speach, but could be misread to imply that the writer thinks the person they are addressing sees the cars.

"One often sees cars speeding along this road" <\- unambiguous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> In case you're wondering, the "PIE" referred to in some of the answers is "proto-Indo-European" ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo- European_language](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo- European_language)).

</comment><comment><USER32> Hemingway's abuse of language in _For Whom the Bell Tolls_ always drove me. He uses _you_ in place of _tu_ and _thou_ as _usted_.

<comment><USER15> Do you have an example? That seems like a howler that surely his editor would have caught if he didn't.

<comment><USER33> It was intentional. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Whom_the_Bell_Tolls#Languag...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Whom_the_Bell_Tolls#Language)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> We Vietnamese don't even have anything equivalent to "you".

We use "friend/friends" (we don't distinguish between plural and singular) for a generic "you". Otherwise, in social situation, we have to figure out the relative social order to address the other person, i.e. calling them by titles/roles such as aunt/uncle/mom/dad etc.

It's a big headache cause it can be very awkward to use one pronoun (for example, calling a woman was "younger sis") and she turns out to be older - <USER2> can be impolite, but then some women will be offended if you call them as "older sister" right away, because, ugh, you consider them older. God, it's a convoluted mess of pronouns :(

</comment><comment><USER35> I keep being surprised this isn't common knowledge, but then I remember I married a Quaker

<comment><USER36> I thought it was common knowledge. I mean, if it comes up at school at age 8, it's not exactly high learning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> The original asker made a minor error. Chinese isn't in the Proto-Indo- European language family. It is in the Sino-Tibetan family.

</comment><comment><USER38> As a former Southerner, who grew up with "y'all", and a fan of Shakespearean English, I have to say that I've always been sorry that English lost its distinct second person singular pronouns. We've had to come up with all sorts of work-arounds as a result.

I always thought it odd that Esperanto adopted this "feature", presumably from English:

                    Singular        Plural
     first person    mi (I)          ni (we)
     second person	        vi (you)
     third person
        masculine   li (he)         ili (they)
        feminine    ŝi (she)
        epicene     ĝi (it, s/he)

Not one of Zamenhof's better choices, in my opinion. There is an informal second person singular pronoun, ci (thou), but as I recall it was only used in certain circumstances. If any Esperantists reading this know why Zamenhof used vi for both singular and plural, I'd love to know.

</comment><comment><USER39> In languages I know formal version of "you" (local version of singular second person) is plural form of the same word. Historical explanation is rather simple. Remember history lessons: kings used to say "we, the king, think..." meaning that the king is a representative of some group. Due to this language quirk when addressing such a person formally you actually address whole group the person represents, hence the plural form of "you". In informal environment one usually addresses the same person directly, hence the singular form being not so much formal. Simple as that :)

<comment><USER40> This isn't universal. German is a counter example -- the formal Sie derives from the third person plural, while it still preserves Du and Ihr for informal second person with singular and plural.

I don't know Spanish well, but it probably contradicts this as well. Usted and Ustedes are not related to vosotros (informal second person informal, not used in the Americas) and take the verbs for third person like German.

It's not anything so specific as a group. It's about distancing or impersonalizing the speech. It's too direct to say "Do _you_ want something to drink?" and instead the phrasing could be "Does the gentleman want something to drink?"

We do something similar with phrasing like "if you would like" or in German using subjunctive forms of many verbs like "I would like" / "Ich möchte" / "quisiera" instead of "I want" / "Ich mag" / "quiero".

<comment><USER41> I read long ago in a book by Mario Pei that "usted" was originally "vuestra merced" (your grace).

<comment><USER42> I remember learning that in high school, and things made so much more sense; it explains why _usted_ takes third-person verbs and possessive pronouns.

Wasn't _vosotros_ used as a formal _tu_ at one time, especially with regard to royalty? I seem to recall reading that, but I can't say it with any degree of confidence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> In Portuguese and German there are still the formal and informal cases: Formal : Você, Informal: Tu

The same thing in German: Formal : Sie, Informal: Du

I am not a linguistics guy but I think that Thou, Du, Tu have all the same origin as they sound so similar.

<comment><USER44> The Roman empire spread latin far and wide.

<comment><USER45> yes, that completely explains a phenomenon that arose in the early middle ages.

<comment><USER46> More helpful, less of an ass, please.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Actually there is another form of formal addressing that is more like the spanish and german: "her majesty", "his holiness" (with the equivalents in French, "son altesse", "sa sainteté"). This closes some gap between those languages, and show that there is also a remaining formal address in modern English and there are 2 in modern french.

(next time, examples of present continuous in modern french)

</comment><comment><USER48> I learned this while playing Ultima 7, serpent isle. I literally learned english as a teenager while playing that game. Thanks Origin for that.

</comment><comment><USER49> Nice to see English on here. I'm one of the more active users there (Jon Purdy) and it's a great resource. :)

<comment><USER50> It's also the first time all the work that went into my doctoral exam in Proto-Indo-European Verbal Morphology has been relevant to, well, anything on HN. O.K., it's pronouns, but I had to study those too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I thought 'ye' was a corruption, a misinterpretation of the rune for 'th' combined with 'e'; on a sign 'Ye olde boars head' was really 'The old boars head'.

So there was really a 'ye'? Explains the confusion I guess.

</comment><comment><USER52> I'm not even a native English speaker and I knew that. Is this really news to people here?

<comment><USER53> Take a random word. The proportion of people who know its etymology will be low. Is that really news to _you_? This is Hacker News, not Linguist News.

I don't really understand this attitude. I once made a joke about the Swedish word for sandwich - which is literally "butter goose" \- and a humorless immigrant got all pissy about how Swedes are so ignorant, they don't even know that "butter goose" doesn't refer to actual geese etc etc. (Coincidentally, I did know the etymology but knowing it would not detract from the joke.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> About the top answer: Latin as no pronouns, but it has 2 distinct forms for singular and plural second person in conjugation. I don't remember, though, if the plural form was used as a polite form at least in the texts we have.

<comment><USER50> What I think you meant to say is that Latin does not use pronouns in its verbal conjugations. That's a feature of most ancient Indo-European languages. It did, of course, have a full suite of pronouns used in other contexts.

<comment><USER50> Oh, and no, the plural wasn't used as a formal singular. It was idiomatic to occasionally use the first person plural to refer to oneself (you can see this in Cicero's letters), but it had nothing to do with formality or some sort of "royal we."

<comment><USER55> Wait, I definitely learned of the royal "we" in Latin. Specifically, this came up in Apollo and Daphne[1], with much of Apollo's first speech in the first- person plural referring exclusively to himself. We were taught in class that it was related to his arrogance to use a royal "we", which is a large theme of the story.

[1] [http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Daphne_and_Apollo](http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Daphne_and_Apollo)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> You, sir, are expecting too much from your audience.

It's interesting in that the assumption of formality in 'you, sir,' suggests the speaker is about to be rather discourteous in the following clause.

</comment><comment><USER57> Trust the British to settle on the formal version.

</comment><comment><USER58> This makes me want to see a poll HN to see how many have read any amount of The KJV, and how much they've read.

<comment><USER42> Doesn't the KJV avoid the formal-plural convention entirely? Most of my reading has been in newer versions, but I seem to recall that it used _thou_ for singular and _ye_ for plural very consistently; I sometimes wish for that distinction in modern Bible translations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I was happy to be surprised by the answer!

</comment><comment><USER60> I think that by now, you is pretty commonly accepted as both formal and informal.

</comment><comment><USER61> In the West Midlands we have 'ya'.</comment>


Ask HN: Have you transitioned from development to recruiting? - <AUTHOR>

If so, how did it work out?
I'm considering alternatives to my career in software development for the simple reason that there is no such thing as a part-time programming job (consulting doesn't count). I'm not in a hurry to become a bike messenger, so I'm looking to see if there's a career where I could leverage my software background.
Recruiting is an obvious choice, since there's a dearth of recruiters who really understand the software industry. Does anyone have any other suggestions? <comment><USER2> I am an engineer-turned-recruiter and currently head up tech recruiting at TrialPay in Palo Alto.

There is definitely a dearth of recruiters out there who understand this industry, and if you're able to filter candidates, that is a huge asset. On the other hand, there is a lot more to recruiting than figuring out if a candidate can reverse a linked list etc -- you have to be able to consistently bring good people in, figure out how to promote your company's brand (if you're in-house), and keep working on ways to bridge the gap between recruiters and engineers, many of whom are jaded by several suboptimal recruiter interactions.

If you'd like to chat, drop me a line: firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER3> I did breifly, for a healthcare IT firm.

It was maddening, but for purely anecdotal reasons. It did not turn me off at all to recruiting, because I think when done well, with the right approach and attitude it can be a great boon to other fields.

That being said, I think focusing in on software recruiting and maybe delve a little deeper and zero in on language recruiting (for example South Carolina is on a full-out sprint to hire Java developers) you may have some luck.

As for recommendations, I definitely suggest checking out ere.net. Not a bad recruiting site at all, up to date on all avenues of the industry.</comment>


The underground skate scene of '90s Brooklyn - <AUTHOR> https://www.huckmag.com/art-and-culture/photography-2/the-underground-skate-scene-of-90s-brooklyn/ <comment><USER2> An earlier version of this article (yesterday) repeatedly referred to these participants as skateboarders; a mistake exposing the writer's general ignorance and the publisher's disinterest.

For Huck, street culture is a single concept to exploit for advertisers.

</comment><comment><USER3> reminds me of the film 'kids'. good on the photographer for sharing the royalties.

<comment><USER4> There weren't many inline skaters in Kids. The only one I remember was the one in the background of a scene, that tripped and fell, before all the skateboarders beat up the random guy walking. This was right after many of the characters verbally assaulted a gay couple.

So maybe not a lot like Kids.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I skated those streets at that time. Very cool to be reminded.

Wish there was one of the banks though</comment>


"Best" bank may be no bank at all - <AUTHOR> https://garybasin.com/the-best-bank-may-be-no-bank-at-all/ <comment><USER2> People do not trust their work to act as their bank, this article highlights the disconnect between the author and most Americans.

McDonalds[1] & Walmart[2] already tried paying their employees with payroll cards, angering many of their employees.

1 - [https://www.change.org/p/mcdonald-s-stop-paying-employees- wi...](https://www.change.org/p/mcdonald-s-stop-paying-employees-with-debit- cards-loaded-with-fees)

2 - [https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wal-mart-employees-debit- car...](https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wal-mart-employees-debit-cards- paychecks/story?id=8494124)

Also check out [https://www.thebalancecareers.com/what-are-payroll-debit- car...](https://www.thebalancecareers.com/what-are-payroll-debit- cards-2062769)</comment>


I've been rejected from Y Combinator 3 times. Here's why - <AUTHOR> http://jon.surfscore.com/?p=40 <comment><USER2> I wish people wouldn't treat us like an oracle that can predict startups' success. If only. The fact is we read applications fast and make plenty of mistakes.

One thing YC has taught me is that this must be true of practically every application process. For some reason, both the people who are accepted and rejected in any application process tend to read too much into it. (Is there a name for this phenomenon?)

<comment><USER3> Yes, it's known as the "Spotlight Effect."

\- <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotlight_effect>

\- [http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-big- questions/201111...](http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-big- questions/201111/the-spotlight-effect)

We humans tend to assume that everyone sees something about us, when a much smaller amount actually notice (and an even smaller amount actually care). This has rejected startups thinking "What did _I_ do" when it really has nothing to do with them at all (just that someone else was better).

<comment><USER4> Not even necessarily that someone was better - people who read applications are human too, they have things that resonate with them, they have opinions, fallible memories, biases and gut feelings. At the end of the day, this comes in to play too, as well it should. Getting rejected doesn't mean you were empirically worse than any given candidate, it may just mean the two parties involved in the possible relationship don't have the chemistry that would make the endeavor the best it could be. At the end of the day, there's a limit to what you can infer about the relative merits of your idea from a rejection letter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This highlights part of the HN/YC culture that just doesn't resonate with me at all. I like coming up with creative ideas and working on fun stuff, but it seems totally backwards to me to repeatedly try to conjure a startup out of thin air in the hopes of getting funded. One of the parts that gave me pause was the idea of somebody furiously learning programming to facilitate building an app to teach others to program.

I guess it's a different mentality, and some people get the same thrill out of the entrepreneurial game that I do from writing code. Anyway, looks like some interesting conclusions came from the story, thanks for sharing.

<comment><USER6> I have always been a bit confused by this also. I think I am most likely missing something here, but I've thought about this a lot and can't figure it out. Overall, I think YC and friends provide a net gain to society, encouraging entrepreneurial ideals and bringing a few really great ideas to fruition. But for the rest... I don't know.

This is certainly not universal, but it seems like a bunch of YC funded startups exist solely to attempt being acquired. I understand that 'exiting' is a marker of some form of success, but doesn't this notion sort of contradict some of the hacker mentality and startup culture that created it in the first place? I mean, you just poured your heart and soul into a company for the past several months, if not years, and you're just going to let some mega corporation purchase it and grow even larger? And yet the vast majority of these companies just sit there and eat through their funding... what's the point?

It really feels like the web bubble all over again, but like I said, maybe I'm just missing something.

<comment><USER7> Disclaimer: I'm just a stupid teenager.

We seem to have this discussion too much. Startup culture is business culture. Hacker culture (making and breaking) to me almost seems diametrically opposed to startup culture (making and selling). Startups don't want to reinvent the wheel so much that they rely on the big guns (Apple, Google) to do the foundation work (e.g., making an OS). Twenty to thirty years from now, who will know how to make an operating system. College students online lament that there are no challenging programming jobs anymore so they can't use the deep knowledge from their CS degree. It seems to me that the most challenging stuff that you can make a lot of money from today is a Mac application. My dream is to see a resurgence of MIT and Unix hacker culture.

I know my writing style is disjointed and awkward, so sorry about that :P

<comment><USER5> No need to apologize, you're just fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In case it saves anyone some headaches, I was rejected from YC 3 times (though with useful feedback and connections arise from the experience each time).

Our startup (LightSail Energy) is currently among the best poised to change how the world gets its energy. Investors agree; our startup is currently valued above $100MM, with Peter Thiel, Bill Gates, and Khosla Ventures among those who have invested. So things are going well.

Paul's essays, advice, and YC really did help me get started. But people should remember that the road doesn't stop there. Success is self-determined.

<comment><USER9> Wow, it sucks that LightSail isn't in YC. Is that what you applied with? There's probably a bias toward "team" vs. "idea" in evaluating apps, but idea is still important, and it's one of the best ways to understand a team, I think.

<comment><USER8> We were in a related field but not there yet. We were still honing in.

Also, we were pre-prototype, and I'm not even sure if we had revealed our secret sauce yet (important, because we had to patent it).

At the time, it was a compressed air powered scooter that was to be the product.

Note: I applied _three times_. I think YC was right to reject the first two, as suboptimal ideas, further sub-optimally suited to still further sub- optimally configured teams (Paul rightly surmised that I was grabbing whatever resources at hand to complete some kind of made dash across the Antarctic).

The last application was for a proto-LightSail Energy. We didn't have much and it was an even bigger project than the first two, which, it should be said, never went anywhere notable. If I were YC judging DaniFong circa 2008 applying with LightSail, I'd wonder if she'd ever make it happen, and gently encourage narrowing the scope of the problem. Which they did.

PG and Trevor Blackwell wisely suggested that we consider industrial applications, which turned out to be half right -- nobody really _needed_ to replace industrial air compressor, but many places needed energy storage (e.g. islands reliant on expensive liquid fuels for power, renewable energy developers held up by transmission infrastructure or volatility saturation).

The size of this market -- literally in the billions, somehow eluded us in the early phase because it just wasn't visible -- we seldom think of how we get electricity, it seems like a practically natural resource for us hackers.

Vinod Khosla and his partner Ford Tamer finally got through to us. Ford dutifully sat through the first presentation, but kept coming back to (at every slide!) how this might be useful for the grid. Steve says he made the most important decision in his career, said "we'll get back to you," and we made the decision to rewrite the whole business plan on the drive back. Two weeks later, we engaged with Vinod and Ford together, and after a lengthy period of due diligence we raised capital.

The basic reasoning -- that it was unnecessarily difficult to try to make a compelling mass produced vehicle _and_ invent a new power train technology, took time to dawn on us. We were somewhat blinded by the sexiness of many of the electric car startups of the time, and had the impression that, with the money for YC to hack together a slick and basically functional scooter prototype, that money would flow.

The advice -- and acting on it -- spared us. The disasters that were at that very time befalling Tesla Motors and its now clearly less fortunate ilk were evidently well known on Sand Hill Road, but not to us. Focusing on stationary applications was incredibly important for us at that time, and I'm glad we had a chance to switch.

Still, the dream of an air powered vehicle floats above us.

\---

I should also say, over and over again YC supported me (and thus us as a team.) They connected me with a cadre of super fantastic entrepreneurs (one of which I consulted for, providing the necessary funds to keep going), hosted the amazing and free startup school, hosted this amazing community, and provided the essay example I needed to start my own site, which really launched my professional identity. I posted my essays on HN, where, read by a few fellow entrepreneurs, I both found housing (provided in exchange for my cooking dumplings!) and through a couple more links, my cofounders Steve and Ed.

I have zero sour grapes; YC has been awesome to me.

My only interest is in mollifying the sting of rejection. The YC process is by nature and necessity fallible.

Of course PG himself mentions this in his own writings, describing AirBnB as a strange kind of bad seeming idea, Dropbox as another one of those iDrives that never took off, and describes how people shouldn't read too much into things:

<http://paulgraham.com/randomness.html> <http://www.paulgraham.com/judgement.html>

However! I still felt rejection strongly and painfully, at least the first two times. So if folks were reading this, have heart.

\---

I dearly hope that this won't be taken the wrong way. The YC application process launched me, and countless others. Nothing's perfect. But for every one person they dissuade or distract, 99 must have been launched, just like me.

<comment><USER9> Heh, the first time I saw LightSail, my immediate thought was "replace the crappy battery powered UPSes and diesel generators at datacenters", and then "add redundancy to industrial facilities which could benefit from it (mills, processing plants, etc.) which don't have UPSes because they're too inefficient/expensive in the multi-megawatt industrial scale, and then grid- leveling. I never would have thought of vehicles.

The closest I'd get to vehicles would be something like a supercharger station -- absorb power from the grid at night (or from solar panels), lightsail it, and then dump 480v into a Li-Ion Tesla in an hour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Most of the comments have (thus far) had quite a snotty attitude regarding the OP's very directed attempt to try and _get into_ YC. I have a different opinion.

I don't buy the "do whatever your passion is" bullshit. I just don't. I think that people that win are people that WANT to win. Of course, some times you see some guy who's passion was building boats all his life (or something) and he happens to get on CNN and get some major coverage and his business booms (when he's like 60); my argument is that those are largely exceptions.

If you want to win, you need to focus on winning (like the OP is/was doing). Winning in the start-up world is largely contingent on two things: VC and media coverage. YC can bring both home. I see absolutely nothing wrong with OP's attempt to enhance his application (heck even "leveraging" a woman co- founder is fair game).

Here's a (somewhat poor) analogy: I have a large number of friends that go to law schools (or have already graduated). In many cases, the most ambitious ones will not even consider a sub-T14 school. If they don't get into a top law school, what's the point of paying for a degree and practicing law at some sub-par firm?

Of course, the romantics in us don't really appreciate this cold-hearted realism (if you really really like law, you can succeed! see Erin Brokovich!) But real life doesn't work like that. YC is, in many ways, prime real-estate for new start-ups. I see no reason why you WOULDN'T cater your application and idea to trying to get in. Heck, that's exactly what people to do when trying to get Fullbright scholarships, Ivy league acceptances, etc.

<comment><USER11> The question I have is "Win _what_?" There's no doubt getting into YC is a feather in one's cap. But for what purpose? What's the plan here? That's what struck me as surprising in this story. "I want to be a YC startup to say I was a YC startup and I'll do anything to get it" doesn't make a lot of sense. If you aren't, to use your terminology, leveraging that for something bigger that you already had your heart set on, why go through all the effort?

<comment><USER12> There's something to be said for having a clear goal, but there's also something to be said for establishing the conditions such that when you do identify your goal, you're in a better position to be able to meet it. Years ago, people weren't doing MBAs at Harvard because they already had a business plan. It was because it made it more likely they'd succeed later one when they had their plan.

<comment><USER11> I think you've clarified it better, thanks for that. But take the MBA: the narrative typically goes something like, "I want power/money, being a corporate executive is one of the best means of achieving that, getting an MBA at Harvard makes that much easier, therefore I'll do whatever it takes to get into Harvard."

The narrative here is "I want to succeed/win, getting into YC is going to help me, therefore I must get into YC and I'll do whatever it takes even though every time I've tried so far I've failed." The seemingly obvious question here is: what are you trying to succeed/win at? It obviously wasn't a product you're passionate about (although going into the fourth try, it sounds like the latest pivot is growing on you). Fame, power, money, personal validation? 2.3 kids and a white picket fence? YC isn't the only way to get it, and it's probably one of the harder ways to do it.

If it's common to treat YC as a Harvard MBA—something like "if I have it, everything in life will almost magically work out for me"—that's pretty interesting and surprising to me. I always thought it was more about speeding up getting a specific vision or idea to market, or at the very least iterating on an idea until it grows into something huge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The first five paragraphs—particularly the multiple pivots, bringing on a woman co-founder in hopes that it might look good, and spending an inordinate amount of time researching everything about getting into YC—really surprised me. I would think you'd want to get into YC because you have a (hopefully) marketable vision and YC is simply a means to an end in getting that vision shipped.

It looks like the OP finally realized that towards the end, but is the first part a common way to approach YC, where it's an end in and of itself? If so, is the central idea that "well, now that I've been a part of YC, everything will just fall into place"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Just to clarify, we initially decided to work together because she's an excellent designer and I can't design for shit. I just thought it might help our case.

<comment><USER11> Ah, thanks for clarifying: I read the last sentence in paragraph 3 as you had brought her on to improve your YC application.

<comment><USER13> "I thought having a female co-founder might help, but alas, YC isn't like college admissions, and demographics don't help your application" <\-- that doesn't came out very good actually. I don't see any explanation about the skills of your co-founder. Seems like an strategic addition, which doesn't look good either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just some comments as a YC alum:

1) The "threaten to show up on YC's porch until you get an answer" thing is seriously a bad idea. I probably wouldn't have let alone know about that even jokingly. I mean, "football player waiting outside your door until you give him an answer" is inherently threatening. You probably didn't mean it this way, but I can see people being concerned.

2) Why do you want to try to sell to schools? From what I see of the product, it looks like something a programmer-parent would be more likely to buy for his kids, which is a quick $20 sale with no hassle, vs. the long and drawn out sales process to a school district. I hate kids, but if I had them, I'd definitely be looking for applications like this to get them thinking logically and like a programmer from as early an age as possible. Yes, a school would be a lot of units at once, but much more hassle.

The good thing about selling to parents is that once you sell one product, the kid will continue to grow, and the parents are likely to buy additional products from the same company (if you keep moving up in age along with the kids). Sell things to 3-5y to start, then move to 5-7, then 7-11. This is largely what made J.K. Rowling rich -- her first books were perfect for one cohort, and kept moving up with them in sequels. Kids can start at the appropriate stage later on.

The YC company "tutorspree" has some interesting stories about parents who _really_ care about their kids, and spend substantial money on their education -- as do any tutoring programs. (I know people who spend $120k/yr for a Mandarin-speaking nanny for their kids in California.)

3) From the public info here and your iPad app, it's not bad. I don't know about 70th percentile. If you figure YC gets 3k apps/yr, and interviews 150 (5%), and accepts 50 (1.5%), then 70th percentile is not ideal. But there's probably both a huge amount of variance how things are evaluated by different people, and maybe some variance year to year (like, if there's a super- successful Bitcoin company, a lot of investors will go for a Bitcoin company again which they might not have before; not sure how YC is about that.)

</comment><comment><USER14> Also on a serious note: I'm not sure this post is going to help you get in. You might be thinking so but I might say that it could set you back a bit. PG can't deposit your passion in the bank. He's out to find great scalable ideas that can be turned into profitable businesses being run by efficient and smart people.

YC is not some kind of beauty pageant and it's not a make or break situation for your business. Posting up the rejection letter in your office? Don't be obsessed with Ycom. If you make it, that's great, you can get a lot of good resources and you've essentially got the seal of approval from angel investors. If Not? No big deal! Build the product, bring it to market, get active users and make sure that it's a profitable business that can stay profitable even at a scaling point. If you do this much, you'll get good attention and will find yourself raising seed money.

</comment><comment><USER15> Getting into Y Combinator for the sake of getting into Y Combinator seems to be quite common; I wasn't too surprised at that. Could there be scope in the application for a question along the lines of "What do you want to achieve by being a part of Y Combinator?"?

<comment><USER16> No doubt that YC has a fast growing fan club, I know IDEO have to differenciate between the suitable employee vs. the fan club of which YC is likely to be the same. I have applied to YC this round, but I am confident we can build a business and take on the world with or without YC. The tone of your blogpost suggests success is dependent upon getting in to YC which isn't overly attractive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I really like this post. It had a ring of truth, admission of failure and its associated feelings, with a positive narrative arc.

It doesn't seem surprising that someone with an entrepreneurial drive but only an embrionic vision would want to join the cool kids club. I mean, you gotta do something with your life even if you don't have a grand vision.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm surprised nobody in the comments or even in the OP has mentioned the prevalence of "How to get into YC", "How to hack your way into YC", etc. submissions that pop up on HN every cycle. There really have been a lot of those and they usually try to spell out a concise set of rules or patterns for each question/step. Even when PG gets interviewed and asked the question "What kind of companies do you accept?" I wonder if he realizes that this is bait for prospective applicants and blog post fodder instead of a genuine opportunity to endorse the quality of startups accepted into YC (to make these companies look good).

Has there ever been a write-up on "how to get into YC" by someone who followed such a guide and got in?

\- Someone who was rejected 4+ times, and doesn't believe in that kind of stuff anymore

<comment><USER9> A fair number of YC founders/alums have written about the application process and how to optimize for it.

I'm thinking about doing something like that, but it would be about helping people avoid false negatives (which make YC's decision-making harder, by obscuring/defacing otherwise great applications), rather than helping bad people or even marginal people get into YC when they otherwise wouldn't.

There are a lot of things you can do to make it _less_ likely you'll get into YC. Not doing those things is the first step. It's the "do this and you'll get into YC" is much more concerning, because if there were exploits to the process, they would harm the set of YC companies, and if they were widely used, they'd rapidly be "patched".

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This all seems so misguided. "I'm going to come up with something so I can get into this club and I'm going to sit in protest until they let me in! And if that doesn't work, I'll just keep trying." Reminds me of Rudy... Instead of working on an idea in hopes of getting into YC, focus on an idea/market you care about and don't give a shit whether you get into a special "cool kids" club. That will get you a hell of a lot further.

<comment><USER20> > Reminds me of Rudy...

In case you did not get the reference, the story of Rudy is a famous, sensationalized true story of the power of perseverance.

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

<comment><USER19> I often take for granted that most other people in the world didn't grow up in Indiana

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > I think that this in and of itself was the reason we were rejected. We > hadn't done a whole lot of customer discovery, didn't have a fleshed out > business model, and were banking on the idea that once we got into YC we > would take care of all that. We were counting on YC to create our business, > not just accelerate it. I believe this showed in our application, and is > ultimately what hurt us the most.

I'm learning this now. We've been working this idea over for months so _we_ think we know it. And sure we've talked to customers, but we have not focused on rigorous customer development.

All I can say know is if you are getting started on an idea start with customer development, do it early, do a lot of it and actually learn to get good at it. It's everything when you're talking to investors or customers. It helps define all the fuzzy details of your product and business model. It helps determine distribution, positioning, marketing and yes features.

Do not underestimate this part.

<comment><USER22> Customer development is really good. You gain a deep understanding of the problem you're trying to solve. You know what's even better though? Convincing those customers to pay you immediately. Now your bar is set high. You need to deliver a quality product or service. I find that when doing customer development for customers who aren't paying they tend to care less about what you're doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I read your post and it reminds me of how I was at the age of 18 when I started my first business. At 18 I had grossed over $100k on eBay within a single year but at the time they were hypersensitive to any wrong doings and I ended up getting kicked off the site for a few months. I wanted to handcuff myself to their front entrance door until they reinstated my account. hahaha! Ahhh wreckless passion...the good ol days! :)

</comment><comment><USER23> Instead of trying to sell yourself in the orange room, build something and make them come to you. Set the rules of the game. You can do that.

</comment><comment><USER22> One way to look at getting into YC is like a marketing channel. They help you shape your startup into something that looks fundable. The press will get you eyeballs. But it's still up to you to successfully convert those eyeballs into paying customers. Your startup won't just magically become successful.

</comment><comment><USER24> "At the end of the day YOU have to be the one to make your own destiny. If we want Kodable to be used in every elementary school in the country, YC isn't going to do that. We are."

...so get to it. The past 3 seasons you spent trying to get into Y Combinator you could have spent building a base of customers.

</comment><comment><USER25> I wouldn't take it so seriously. In the grand scheme of things it's a minor detail unless you let it be a major one. (I've been rejected several times but my company is profitable and growing at a nice rate and I'm having the time of my life).

</comment><comment><USER26> Am I the only one who thinks the poster sounds like an oblivious narcissistic bro jock?

<comment><USER27> Do I love the guy, no. But, he is doing something. I've "completed" quite a few side projects (video game, chat server, etc) but I've never got anyone to actually use them. To do all three sides of the coin, technical product development, artistic design, and marketing, earns you respect in my book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> You know, the one thing that I think even PG would agree with is that the best way to figure out some of this stuff is to ship product, talk to customers, fix stuff, and repeat the cycle of shipping, talking, and fixing.

The OP is lucky they finally figured this out and shipped regardless of YC.

Getting VC or getting in YC can be great, but plenty of great businesses are built by people just putting their head down and building stuff.

</comment><comment><USER29> Only 3? ppfffffttttt

</comment><comment><USER30> This is an interesting essay on the _politics_ of education. Wherein the filtering mechanism drives, in a somewhat murky way, "real-world" behaviour. That being said, the quote _you can never step in the same river twice_ comes to mind, and its interesting to see the experience from another perspective.</comment>


Early Retirement May Speed Up Cognitive Decline: Study - <AUTHOR> https://www.studyfinds.org/if-you-rest-you-rust-study-finds-early-retirement-may-speed-up-cognitive-decline/ <comment><USER3> Not only early retirement but any kind of retirement that gets the retiree in a mode that they don't have to try anymore will result in cognitive decline. I am seeing this in my dad who has been retired for ten years now. Throughout his work life he was a sharp hard working banker. Now he uses his age and retirement as an excuse for not trying. Just yesterday he wanted me to order something for him from Amazon. I told him to send me the link to the item. He asked me how to do that. I told him if you can't find the Share link just copy the link and send it to me. He responds by saying that he doesn't know how to do copy-paste. He has been using computers for at least the last fifteen years. I asked him how come he didn't know how to copy-paste. His response was - I am retired now and there's nobody to tell me or teach me. I can see the cognitive decline. Things he used to be able to do, he can't anymore. This type of attitude is also affecting his self respect and confidence.

<comment><USER4> I guess this is why you should work less hard and do more to cultivate hobbies. I can't imagine retiring and doing nothing. So many projects.

<comment><USER5> I don't understand how so many people can anchor their lives to work. If you do that, when you retire, you've lost your meaning of life. I have a list of things a mile long that I just can't get to because 40 hours a week is already spoken for. Early retirement speeds cognitive decline? Maybe if you sit on the beach and/or watch TV all day long, but that sounds kind of miserable if done for more than a few weeks.

<comment><USER6> Some of us see work as the meaning of life. Traveling and doing things just for the _experience_ alone seems kind of meaningless. Great for vacation, but not great for long term goals. Perhaps if you're at a dead end job, then work might feel meaningless, I agree.

<comment><USER7> To the people downvoting this: why is this an unreasonable perspective?

The commenter isn't advocating one way or another, only pointing out that there are people that exist who are content with work as their self-perceived life meaning.

I can absolutely see how this can be true for people in the sciences. There are many academics who devote their entire career - and often their life - <USER2> finding the answer to extremely difficult problems. For those people, I imagine they must feel their work as more of a _life mission_ rather than a regular job necessary to pay the bills.

There are a lot of people who find significant meaning in their work (perhaps greater meaning in their work than they've been able to find outside of it). That doesn't necessarily mean it's bad or unhealthy.

These type of people may be few and far between. But they exist.

<comment><USER8> I don't even think you need to be in the sciences. Perhaps it's a result of a protestant upbringing, but I grew up in blue-collar America where virtually everyone was a tradesman. If I may generalize: these are people that while they might complain and dislike _going_ to work, they feel deep satisfaction about contributing back to society.

Or maybe it's that with trades you have a direct connection to the work you do and the effect it has on the world.

Either way I think we could learn something from them. White collar types seem to want to avoid work at all costs. Work isn't to be avoided. In fact if you measure your life by how much it affects others, it's probably the most important part of your life.

<comment><USER4> As a developer, I feel a deep disconnect between the work I do and any results. At home I make things and I get way more satisfaction from designing a simple 3D object that serves a function and printing it out.

I can see why tradesmen may have better job satisfaction. You can directly improve the life of someone else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sitting around May Speed Up Cognitive Decline.

Both my Grandfathers retired shortly before seventy. One sat down in his Chair and did not get up. He ignored his health, and passed within 10 years.

The other is highly active in his community and church, still gardens, and travels constantly. He is in his mid 80s with no sign of slowing down. Barring a major health incident, he will live well into his 90s like his mother, and may pass 100.

Not doing anything is bad for your health, both physical and mental. The effects are exacerbated when you are older, but are still prevalent when younger.

<comment><USER10> My dad always refers to his body in a similar manner to how one would refer to a car, I.E. "too much mileage on me", "I walked a lot so now my knees are worn out". I wonder if their generation has a more simplistic view of our bodies as mechanical things.

<comment><USER11> The joints do get worn out with the age tho..

<comment><USER12> What's the best way to preserve them

<comment><USER13> Never use them.

Truthfully I believe it's strength training that actually helps keep them up. Could be wrong.

<comment><USER14> IMHO. Moderate strength, moderate cardio, Moderate mobility. Mobility in particular may improve blood irrigation on the joints and help regeneration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is something I think about a lot. I plan to never stop doing mentally stimulating activities, even in my old age. The difference you can see in cognitive ability between the elderly is staggering.

One particular instance that sticks in my mind was a video filmed in the UK where for some unrelated reason four older men and women were interviewed, with ages ranging between 80 and the low 100's. The mid 80 year old had trouble recalling information, spoke slowly, and generally seemed to exist in a fog so thick you could practically see it. On the other hand, the person around 100 was completely lucid, maybe even sharper than me! I can't say for sure that this is due to keeping busy and not partially genetic as well, but the variability really struck me.

<comment><USER16> My understanding is that social activities are even more important than mentally stimulating activities.

<comment><USER17> I wonder how that tallies up for introverts vs extroverts. Personally I'd rather stick sharpened pencils in my eyes than partake in social activities with a bunch of other retirees.

<comment><USER18> How introverts are poking their mental decline in the eye!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Pierre Bourdieu would put into perspective notions of work/activity and retirement.

So he was interviewing if I recall people from North Africa, some were used to western industrial work and others not. (He wasn't aware of that yet)

He asked them if they worked lately. Those who knew industrial work said no or partly and the others yes.

He asked both groups what they did during their typical working days. The « no/partly group » described some kind of chain/industrial work and unemployment traps.

The « yes/busy group » said their typical work day was to discuss with their wives during 2 or 3 hours, attend and assist in solving the disagreements between neighbours in the public place of the village... etc.

Taking care of their animals and fields was not that time consuming or exhausting (subsistence agriculture).

In western societies, most of the socialisation and interactions happen in the work and professional environment. So what would one expect from « retirement »?

<comment><USER20> What does that say about heavy Internet users and how they're going to age?

<comment><USER21> They will argue endlessly on twitter & HN equivalents and maybe resolve an argument or two.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I hope not, I recently retired. Still, the idea makes some sense. In retirement, I try to read one paper a day (usually deep learning, PGM, or classic AI), play at least one game of Go and Chess, do some recreational programming, and read. But, I don't work into a state of brain-tiredness anymore like I used to at work.

<comment><USER23> Do you exercise? Lifting weights regularly (3 x week) and getting some light cardio every day will help keep your body strong into your retirement. It dramatically reduces the chance of getting injured by a fall and will keep you healthly and happy longer.

I'm approaching 40 and have built it into my schedule after several years of doing little and I'm feeling great for it. Next year we're moving to a large house and I'm going to have a small gym in the garage so I can keep to a tight schedule (I miss too much training because of having young kids).

<comment><USER22> I hike at least ten hours a week (I live in the mountains) and go to the gym once a week. Your advice is excellent. My Dad is in good shape at 98 and he does thirty minutes of Canadian Airforce Exercises early each morning (he started doing this in 1964).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> My experience with both my parents was "I retired and I don't want to use my brain anymore," and they have both definitely experienced decline since retirement. Some of my friends' parents, however, have adopted more of a "I'm retired and now I can dedicate all my brainpower to these special projects I've always wanted to focus my energy on." These people have mostly declined not at all or very little. I think the answer is not to retire and go rot in a chair while taking 5 naps a day.

<comment><USER25> Consider that the reason they don't want to use their brains is that they don't seem to work effectively, but they don't want to admit they have some cognitive decline.

Like not wanting to go to a social function because you find them hard, one might say "I'm tired" or offer some other excuse because putting your failing on show is difficult too, the moreso when you're already smarting from a knock-back (being confronted with another failure).

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> My dad is a doctor in his 70s. He works 60 hour weeks (which he claims counts as retirement for doctors). He truly believes that true retirement is suicide. He wants to be found dead while doing rounds at the hospital.

<comment><USER27> I work to live not live to work.

<comment><USER28> I can certainly imagine having meaningful work that's the purpose of life, not just a source of funding for other activities. It's definitely not the case for many (probably most) people, but it _is_ that way for some; there's probably a correlation with "high-status" jobs.

For the OP example of a doctor, it's quite plausible that their social and ethical goal in life is healing people and their home life is just there to support their work; instead of wanting to (for example) play golf and having to heal people for money to support that. Or for example, did Feynman work on physics in order to "live" or was that work a goal in itself?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It'd be interesting to better understand the control for this research.

The main premise here is that "those receiving pension benefits" (i.e. no longer working) have faster cognitive decline. But is there a correlation between the kind of work you did and receiving a pension? Perhaps the word "pension" means something a bit different here, but in U.S. English, we usually use it to mean a company-sponsored retirement plan, and that is something that is less common than it once was.

Could it be that if you had a job where you knew you'd get a pension, maybe you didn't have to try very hard while you were working? That is, maybe you spent the last decade coasting and taking it easy before you retired.

All of this could be invalid speculation if they just mean "retirement benefits" of any kind?

<comment><USER30> Yeah, that was my first question: Is this not just a hopelessly confounded correlational study? I was disappointed that the article didn't seem to talk about this.

Well, at least it links to the paper, so here's a starting point: "In this paper, we estimate the causal effect of the NRPS program on cognition among individuals ages 60 and above. The expansion of the program affected an easily identifiable group, as the policy was introduced only in select areas. Our identification employs a triple difference (DDD) strategy. We exploit the staggered policy implementation between 2009 and 2013 and compare the cognitive outcomes of individuals 60 years and older who live in areas that implemented the NRPS program to the cognitive outcomes of individuals of the same age group who live in areas that did not implement the NRPS program."

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> The much more likely cause is people who are aging poorly are more likely to retire.

My grandmother retired then experienced sharp mental decline. For a long time I thought her retirement caused the sharp mental decline. But looking back at it after learning about dementia, and talking with other family members she retired because she was experiencing mental decline which was the predecessor to dementia.

</comment><comment><USER32> Anecdotally, my grandfather is 92 or so and still works as a journalist (reduced hours). He is still super sharp and does yoga every day. Blows my mind.

<comment><USER22> My Dad is 98, retired when he was about 80. He is still very sharp mentally, but has taken on hobbies like video production and 3D animation. Hopefully hobbies count towards brain health.

<comment><USER33> There's nothing special about a job! If anything, I'd believe that someone who had the drive to do challenging activities on their own (and engage socially with others) is doing more for their mind and body than someone clocking in and out at a boring job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I feel that my cognitive abilities, along with my overall mental state, to be steeply declining.

And I'm a senior software guy in a big Valley corp.

Probably the real priority here is to find one's "happy place" and stay there as long as it stay that way.

<comment><USER35> You don't mention your actual age so if you're not past 50, maybe you're just bored or slightly depressed?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I've been wondering lately about whether video games will have any impact on this for future retirees. Anecdotally, I think today's teens/20/30/40 year- olds spend more time playing video games (whether solo or as part of their social interaction) than the current generation of retirees. Theoretically that may be one more tool to keep someone's brain sharp after they retire.

Have there been any studies about video games and their effect on maintaining cognitive function?

</comment><comment><USER37> How do you separate this from the surely non zero "cognitive decline causes early retirement" effect?

</comment><comment><USER38> Anecdote: My grandma retired in her 60's, she is now 102. She used to own a bar, in France (you can imagine the secondhand smoke, back in the 60-70's). She is mentally sharp, although the last couple of years, she is napping more. Vision (always had issue) and hearing (super annoying now) are declining, but memory is still here, and with hearing aid, the conversation is fine (if you do not mind repeating sometimes).

So got retired for about 4 decades now (she lost my grandpa at the same time, it is crazy she lived ~40 years with him, and ~40 years without him). Even though she was not "working" (i.e. for a salary) in the past 40 years, she always kept herself busy, taking care of her house until 2 years ago when she went to assisted living place (not ideal, but it was becoming too dangerous for her to stay by herself past 100 years old). She like to do stationary bike until her 90's.

Her daughter (now 82 yo) has some sort of Alzheimer, and does not have any short memory or facial recognition. Strangely enough she does have very old memories that looks current to her e.g. she warned us that we need to hide from the Germans... second world war trauma I guess, but interesting how it is still in her memory, when she cannot remember what she ate for lunch. So, for a while like until 5 years ago, my grandma (97yo at the time) was taking care of my aunty (77yo at the time), and was schooling her to make here remember of things. That was weird to witness... My aunty retired in her 60's too, did not exercise more than normal, but was always active maintaining a large house after her 5 kids left home. She worked in a hair salon for about 50 years (started at 16yo). I always wondered if hair products (ammonia, spray, etc.) did not play a role in the current situation.

I have no idea how much exercise can slow down the decline, but there is more than just exercise. Clearly I would put my grandma as a "fighter" spirit person. She was born in an extremely poor family (alcohol issue, ending her as an orphan), in Brest, France which was where the Spanish flu started in Europe, in 1918 (she was one year old). She is a tough cookie, in a frail body. She is short and always been kinda skinny, probably the result of malnutrition in her early years. But yet, here she is a century later. To be fair, she is a bit tired to be around, and see everyone around her either die or getting some sort of Alzheimer. Now she is friend with her kids friends, since all of her generation friends are not there anymore. It is kinda cute to see her talking to my dad's childhood friends who are in their 70's or 80's now, recalling some mischiefs that happened 60 or 70 years ago.

<comment><USER35> My grandmother had Alzheimer. Before the major decline she would remember things from her kindergarten, recite songs and things that even she was surprised she remembered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I've always benchmarked post-retiring cognitive abilities and professional continuity with Noam Chomsky. He is my hero in that aspect too. If I can continue to do what I do now at his age, I'm ready for the off.

</comment><comment><USER40> Alternative explanation: decades of work destroy internal motivation and leave people directionless in the absence of someone to tell them what to do

<comment><USER41> 1000x times this!

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> To me the problem is that entire generations have tied their worth/sense of self into what they do from 9-5. The idea of stopping that is so anathema to them that they just can't handle it.

It's really sad to not be able to enjoy downtime in my opinion.

<comment><USER29> If I understand you correctly, your premises are:

that most people base their identity on their work; when people stop working, losing their identity, they experience faster cognitive decline.

It's not clear to me what your frame of reference is for the second premise, though. How does having or losing identity maintain or diminish cognitive decline?

EDIT: Two downvotes but no one is providing a source or some educational material to help me understand the science behind the premise. Let's be constructive here and try to educate each other. Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Better headline: Cognitive Decline Prompts Earlier Retirement

<comment><USER44> Is there a reason you believe that the causality should be reversed? The article suggests they did tests post retirement and observed the rate of decline.

<comment><USER45> Someone with health declining over a long period will retire and withdraw from everything, and then later on be tested to find that their health has been declining I think you will find that most retired people are dead, just by virtue of the fact that all dead people retire!

<comment><USER44> The study talks of rate of subsequent cognitive decline post retirement. There's no fixed state, which once reached, people start retiring. I think the study does control for reverse causality. It is not a correlational study.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Not surprising. I took a couple of years out to raise my kids, and I am having a hard time feeling as intelligent and proactive as I did before the break.

<comment><USER47> Interesting. I did the same, but returned refreshed and sharper than before.

However, 10 years or so ago I suffered from major burnout, and my brainpower has yet to fully recover.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Here's the actual PR: [https://www.binghamton.edu/news/story/2117/research- shows-th...](https://www.binghamton.edu/news/story/2117/research-shows-that- early-retirement-can-accelerate-cognitive-decline)

And the study (PDF): [http://ftp.iza.org/dp12524.pdf](http://ftp.iza.org/dp12524.pdf)

I haven't read the whole study but it seems like it's pure correlation, is missing some controls, and has suspect conclusions.

They claim

> We find large and significant negative effects of the provision of pension > benefits on cognitive functioning among the elderly.

That's correlation. They're claiming that giving people money reduces cognitive function which is ridiculous. Eliminating cognitive activities and meaning could reduce cognitive function, giving people pensions would not.

They didn't seem to have any controls for post retirement activity. All they controlled for was age, gender, and other medical conditions.

</comment><comment><USER47> According to the study, it sounds like the cause is not early retirement, but a decrease in the amount of social and mental activities.

Those two things don't have to go hand in hand. Personally, I'm looking forward to retirement because it will afford me more time to engage in social and mental activities.

</comment><comment><USER49> I suppose this applies to people who think of "retirement" as being sedentary and not challenging your brain. We need a word for what people in my social group who no longer have to collect a paycheck do, which is embark on things that either teach a new skill, have low probability of payback, or are intellectually challenging for the fun of it.

It isn't "work" in that you don't have to put in time at someone else's business and sign over all your work product to them, but it isn't casual leisure either.

</comment><comment><USER50> I've had a similar experience just from going on a 2 week beach holiday. Getting back to work was really hard, I remember staring at the screen full of code that I wrote without any idea of what it all meant. It took some real effort and breaking things down into tiny steps to get back into it.

</comment><comment><USER51> "For cognition among the elderly, it looks like the negative effect on social engagement far outweighed the positive effect of the program on nutrition and sleep"

As a telecommuter, I wonder if I can slow my cognitive decline by retiring? I will need to avoid falling into the old solitary habits. And wear pants.

</comment><comment><USER52> I can't help but wonder if all the well intentioned advise here by 20-40 yearolds to their grandparents about how to live their retirement to them sounds the same as a 16yo advicing those here on middle age life decisions.

</comment><comment><USER53> My personal anecdotes are many but most of the elderly that I knew to be highly active, sociable and of sound mind were people who did stuff that was engaging and social. The only real limiting factor for the elderly that I knew well was when they had health problems (falls, stroke, heart attack, etc.) that they didn't recover from due to age.

I would suggest that if you see retirement in your future then getting a long lasting hobby (gardening, wood working, etc), a simple side job or even volunteering (hospitals need volunteers for so many things) to make retirement a period where your mind/body is used.

</comment><comment><USER54> The title is kind of misleading, in fact the article's second last paragraph ends with: "Or alternatively, the kinds of things that matter and determine better health might simply be very different than the kinds of things that matter for better cognition among the elderly. Social engagement and connectedness may simply be the single most powerful factors for cognitive performance in old age."

Point being: if you're wealthy enough you should care more about spending time with the people you love than how long it takes you to solve a Sudoku.

</comment><comment><USER55> I wonder if subtle cognitive decline leads to early retirement.

</comment><comment><USER56> Not if you have hobbies that require mental exercise and effort. Go try out a bunch of stuff, stick to a few of them, see yourself improve, rinse and repeat.

</comment><comment><USER57> Retirement leads to boredom maybe and thus unhealthy eating habits. The hippocampus seems to be affected by too much insulin and sugar. This said, people in elderly homes in Germany are getting carb-loaded. Low fat, high carb meals and apple juice a lot of them take medications against high cholesterol. they are suffering from all the sugar related illnesses what's the brain made of? Fat and cholesterol...

</comment><comment><USER58> My grandfather and father-in-law have both got dementia in 2 years after their retirement. My Father even got heart disease after retirement.

I have long believed not working or not being active both physically and mentally is harmful to one's health.

Keep yourself occupied in some way or the other. Human mind and body needs some engagement to work well. Too much of rest is as harmful as fatigue.

</comment><comment><USER59> The child in me wonders if something like video games (i.e. StarCraft II/DotA/LoL/Card games, something with strategy and thinking) would be a way to fight this onset of cognitive decline in retired folks.

It would be interesting to see a study of retired folks from the millennial generation, providing they play much more games than older generations.

<comment><USER60> My view is that games help you become better at playing games. A while ago a lot of people said that doing crossword puzzles was a good way to keep your mind sharp but it's not really the case. The elderly who did a lot s puzzles just got good at doing puzzles.

<comment><USER61> One key difference between (many) games and crosswords is the presence of a human opponent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Never retire. If you retire, you're just waiting to die.

They'll have to pry my keyboard from my cold, dead fingers.

</comment><comment><USER63> I would like to think I might experience a cognitive acceleration when I retire. No more bullshit occupying my mind. No need to meditate to stop thinking about such-and-such shitty interaction at work. Hoping to get my mind back so I can do things more creative than whatever is in the JIRA.

</comment><comment><USER64> I'd still love to take that risk...

</comment><comment><USER65> I think this is not just limited to cognitive decline but I heard cases where people start suddenly contracting all kinds of diseases upon retirement. Goes on to show the both mental and physical exercise is key to our long term survival.

</comment><comment><USER66> Simple test: if you do this one minute later does it matter any other thing. None? You will start lazy and all way down.

We do thing at the margin. We stay sharp for that. It is not work or collegiate. But at the margins, the moment ...

</comment><comment><USER67> > among adults over the age of 60

This study has a different definition of "early retirement" than I do. I don't think the conclusions are applicable to FIRE people planning to retire in their thirties.

<comment><USER68> It's a study of elderly Chinese.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> My mother was widowed in her 50s, worked until she was 67. Her advice? "Don't retire too early. You'll just get bored."

I know it's good advice, but it's hard to want to follow it.

</comment><comment><USER70> Whether retirement was voluntary or forced, the health of the person at retirement time and social/vocational continuity could be bigger factors than the act of retirement itself.

</comment><comment><USER71> You forgot to say IN MICE

</comment><comment><USER72> Excellent, something I definitely don't have to worry about.

</comment><comment><USER73> More anecdotal...my mother-in-law is mid-70s. Retired for the last 20 years. Plays mahjong all day. Sharp as a tack, along with her mahjong friends.

<comment><USER74> I plan to study and play chess and go once I retire. I also want to contribute to OSS. I think if you engage in truly intellectually challenging activities daily then you will be lucid for your entire life. The brain needs stimulation like a muscle in order to retain its ability over time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Did you also read the study that said you may live longer if you retire earlier? I think the key is to stay physically and mentally active.

</comment><comment><USER76> Yeah I'm on a few months break from working and the most unexpected downside is the uptick in existential dread I've experienced.

<comment><USER25> I'll anti-anecdote that. I've just started working a steady office job again after a 15 year "break" (mostly non-office work; raising kids) and existential dread is eating me. I had a couple of months interim and despite being dirt- poor in that time (no income practically) had no dread at all; too little time to get existential!

<comment><USER77> 1\. Raising kids is work.

2\. It may be that it's the change in routine and identity is what's dread- inducing, more than the "work" (traditional/office/wage-labour) vs. "not work" distinction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> The act of retiring to do nothing is so foreign to me.

I take long sabbaticals from employment so I can actually work on harder problems and unfamiliar domains I'd struggle to do professionally if I could even get hired at all to do for money. That and spend more time on my physical fitness while still being able to sleep enough and study other things.

Retirement where people just shut down is no different than a scheduled form of burnout.

</comment><comment><USER79> One fifth of a standard deviation? Can't be separated from self-selection effects.

</comment><comment><USER80> While there are certainly degenerative diseases, "use it, or lose it" also holds true for the brain. And whether it's TV or Facebook, junk food is junk food.

The mind is no different than the body. In fact, the mind is probably more sensitive to neglect.

</comment><comment><USER81> "You live as long as you learn"

</comment><comment><USER82> maybe videogame could be a way to moderate this especially puzzle video game or brain teaser video game;

</comment><comment><USER83> This seems like a no-brainer to me... _slaps knee_

</comment><comment><USER84> age old saying "Use it or lose it"

</comment><comment><USER85> This is communist/capitalist propaganda.

</comment><comment><USER78> "Use it or lose it" is not a new discovery.

<comment><USER86> That's why I keep smoking. Those lungs deserve a workout!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to divide ownership of my new startup? - <AUTHOR>

I'm founding a startup! Yaaay! I have some friends who like my idea and want to help me. However, I have no money to pay them, so I'm guessing that I'll need to give them a piece of the action. I don't want to get screwed, but at the same time, I don't want to be perceived as a jerk. What is the most fair way to divide up the pie? What's the best way to approach this discussion without coming off as a jerk?
The idea is mine, I came up with it myself.  I'm a developer, so I'll be writing a lot of the code. I have at least one friend who's really excited and willing to commit a fair amount of time to the project. I have a couple other friends -- a developer and a designer -- who are interested as well. I'm imagining I'll have to give everyone some kind of stake in the company, otherwise they really have no reason to work on it. I've never done this before, and don't even have any idea how to approach the situation.
The pitfalls are obvious. On the one hand, I could give someone a cut, and then they don't contribute, but they still own a piece of the company. I could give them too big of a cut, and wind up screwing myself. If I don't get anything on paper, someone could steal my idea or my code. Or they could come out of the woodwork somewhere down the line and claim that they're owed something, and I could find myself in a protracted legal battle, a la Facebook. And if I completely fumble this conversation, I could wind up alienating my friends.
How much of a cut do I give to my friends? At what point is it necessary to get things on paper? How do I even approach this (kinda awkward) conversation?
I'm meeting with the other (committed) developer tonight, and we're supposed to start planning the project. It will be our first real planning session, and I'm imagining we should talk about this stuff.
I appreciate any ideas, resources, and reading material you have to offer. As I mentioned, I have never done anything remotely like this before and have no idea how to even approach the situation. <comment><USER2> Have all the full-time people split the equity evenly. Have vesting to protect you if people don't contribute - four years with a cliff at one year is good. Founding a startup is so stressful, if people are doing it part-time it probably will not be very helpful, so try to get everyone either full-time or just an "advisor" role where they get < 1% of the company.

</comment><comment><USER3> Definitely discuss this earlier rather than later.

How much equity to give is very different for every situation.

The fact that the idea was yours isn't worth a whole lot in terms of equity. Maybe it gives you a 5% premium.

More importantly is how much work your friends are putting in. And if they are leaving their jobs to work on this project.

To protect yourself you will want them to have "vesting" meaning their equity accrues over time.

A really easy way to apply vesting is to just promise them 0.25% - 3% equity for each month they work on the project and then have a cap of 20%, 30%, 40%, 50% or w/e you decide. Typically vesting periods can last 3-5 years.

<comment><USER3> Also read this.

[http://www.geekwire.com/2011/wrong- answer-5050-calculating-c...](http://www.geekwire.com/2011/wrong- answer-5050-calculating-cofounder-equity-split)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You should have a look at Joel Spolsky's answer: [http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/6949/forming-a- new-s...](http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/6949/forming-a-new-software- startup-how-do-i-allocate-ownership-fairly/23326#23326)</comment>


Dear ISP: Here's why your pricing is unfair - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/ThisIsCalledFreeSpeech/dear-isp

<comment><USER2> This is really dumb.

Firstly, I'd bet dollars to donuts that his ISP advertises "up to" a certain speed and includes language in the T&Cs that specifies speeds may vary based on a variety of factors.

Secondly, is this even taking network overheads into account?

Thirdly, saying "kids in Africa might have 14kB/s for their whole connection, therefore that amount of bandwidth is worth fighting for" is dumb because it assumes constant marginal utility of bandwidth when that's obviously not the case. Going from 0kB/s to 14kB/s is a hell of a lot more valuable than going from 14kB/s to 28kB/s, and going from 14kB/s to 28kB/s is many orders of magnitude more valuable than going from 882kB/s to 896kB/s.

<comment><USER3> His ISP also likely only guarantees 70% of the advertised speeds be available and that the advertised speeds are theoretical maximums. This is what companies like AT&T and Charter do.

<comment><USER4> Last I lived in brazil they needed to guarantee only 10% of advertised speed, if I got 70% I would be happy

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For what it's worth, most of the cost of providing a net connection is in the delivery to your endpoint ("last mile") and customer service. If all you want is X Mb/s and you can accept it at a place convenient for the ISP, prices are well under $10 per Mb/s per month. That is, a 100Mb/s bidirectional handoff will cost you significantly less than $1000.

Now, a 7Mb/750Kb connection? The return bandwidth can't be shared, so that gives you an idea of the contention ratio: about 1:10. The ISP is overselling their bandwidth ten times. This is probably reasonable for a consumer ISP. On the other hand, their cost for that bandwidth will be substantially under $7/month. The rest of the cost is going towards actually getting it to you, running a few services, customer interaction, and keeping everything repaired. Those other costs are relatively fixed -- it doesn't matter how many megabits you're buying, it costs the same per person -- but over-differentiating the prices seems to make sense to the marketing departments.

Pray for a sensible fiber provider, and in the meantime, don't let your local government abdicate its role in regulating telecom services.

</comment><comment><USER6> He's getting worked up over 2%? I would expect the rates to fluctuate on the order of at least 2% due to normal traffic variations.

</comment><comment><USER7> 2% ? that requires testing, information on TCP stacks used, computer used, distance, ping, network card, network drivers ... And most importantly tested twice, and all other services on the computer have to be stopped. No messengers, no browsers, no updates zip nada nop.

</comment><comment><USER8> My car has a top speed of about 100mph, but I usually only go at up to 70% of that. I think they should refund 30% of the purchase price.

</comment><comment><USER9> OP: This is your ISP.

Per your methodology we have adjusted your rate based upon services rendered. We are also adjusting your bill based upon exemplary upload performance.

((6.89/7)+(0.78/.75))/2 * 80

Amount Due: $80.97

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I guess you'll then take into account the variable bandwidth and charge me accordingly each month? Perfect.

-Your customer

<comment><USER9> That is what having an SLA ought to be for. OP paying for "up-to" service doesn't really have grounds here for either of these.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> No sorry, I don't trust you. You might be an engineer, but you don't seem to know how networks work.

98,4% in a speed test which highly relies on the destination server and the routing is a perfect result.

</comment><comment><USER11> He must be a train engineer.

I work at a place that provides dedicated bandwidth on fiber owned by the company. We would probably get results worse than he did. When you're trying to get to 100% theoretical utilization, you need to do alot of tuning, and then at best you'll pick up another 1%.

</comment><comment><USER12> format error: unclosed </sarcasm> tag.

What would ISP pricing look like if the market were heavily competitive (5+ alternatives) and the pricing was more like an electrical utility: $N just for the wired connection, and $B/gigabit after that?

</comment><comment><USER13> Sounds like the usual state of affairs with most ISP 's in the world.

</comment><comment><USER14> Yeah, he'd be justifiably pissed if he got 50% of the maximum advertised bandwidth, but 98% - Who's his ISP, and do they have service in my area?

</comment><comment><USER15> 2% really that's not a big deal. Some company charge 30 for 3Mbits while another charges 30 for 30Mbps, now that's unfair.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is rather embarrassing. If OP had dedicated BW of 8MB I wouldn't be surprised if ISP started charging $200+/month for it. The whole reason why we share BW is because it's way cheaper and resources become more efficiently delegated as we have changes in network usage by different people.

Just go with the argument that $80/month is too expensive and explain why. Don't trifle with notion that we don't get dedicated BW.

<comment><USER17> Who said anything about dedicated bandwidth? There is nothing wrong with the ISP putting more than 1000 8Mbps users on an 8Gbps uplink. That's just basic network engineering.

But there is a difference between shared bandwidth and _insufficient_ shared bandwidth. If your network's uplink is at in excess of 80% of capacity during peak usage periods, it's time to expand capacity. Follow that simple rule and all your 8Mbps customers will get at least 8Mbps, notwithstanding that they don't each have 8Mbps of dedicated bandwidth.

Obviously that doesn't include the rare outlier demand spikes, e.g. what happens to the network during a sudden disaster when many people all at once want to communicate with loved ones, but even there you won't have literally 100% of your customers using their full allocation at once. Which means that as long as you can predict within an order of magnitude the peak usage during such events, you can install capacity sufficient to carry it, which will be less than 100% dedicated bandwidth for everyone. And let's face it: We want the network to keep working during a disaster if at all possible; that's pretty important from a national security perspective (and therefore if nothing else from a public relations perspective for the carrier).

Granted installing capacity based on expected peak demand means that if people start using more bandwidth then more capacity will have to be installed and prices will have to increase. But so what? Isn't that how the market is supposed to function? Demand goes up, price goes up. If you don't need a specified amount of bandwidth then don't pay for it and subscribe to a slower package. But if you pay for it then you should be right to expect to get it.</comment></comment>


The US needs a new spectrum policy - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/02/the-us-needs-a-new-spectrum-policy-.html

<comment><USER2> What I want to know is what we as individuals and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley can do to make this happen. Is calling or writing to our representatives the only option?

</comment><comment><USER3> I really wish this post got more attention. Really important stuff.</comment>