Introduction to Probability at an advanced level (2018) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~aditya/resources/AllLectures2018Fall201A.pdf <comment><USER2> This is nice but I would have expected "probability at an advanced level" to mean the measure theoretic foundations of probability.

<comment><USER3> > This is nice but I would have expected "probability at an advanced level" to > mean the measure theoretic foundations of probability.

Fair point, though with no intention of being too literal, might this qualify as the difference between "Introduction to X" vs. "X"?

In case anyone else is interested: measure-theoretic probability theory "unifies the discrete and the continuous cases, and makes the difference a question of which measure is used. Furthermore, it covers distributions that are neither discrete nor continuous nor mixtures of the two." [0]

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability_theory#Measure- the...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability_theory#Measure- theoretic_probability_theory)

<comment><USER4> There's usually a difference between statistics and probability theory, so I was also expecting the measure-theoretic foundations of probability (the advanced point of view). Things like "Covariance, Correlation and Regression" are not about (advanced) probability in a literal sense.

Or, to provide another perspective: The field of stochastics is bigger than just statistics. It includes probability theory as its foundation and then applies it to different domains, including but not limited to statistics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Whelp, first and foremost, thanks for the push I needed to commit to learning stats through and through.

Second, more of an ask HN than a comment; With a background in math up to ~1st semester calculus (i.e. differential and integral calculus) what are the killer resources for getting up to speed with Statistics & Probability?

For the record: I found the discussion and content discussed last week(1) to be a great refresher and the document linked above even denser as far as topics to explore go.

Many thanks...

[[[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21382470](1)](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21382470\]\(1\)) The Little Handbook of Statistical Practice (2012)]

<comment><USER6> > what are the killer resources for getting up to speed with Statistics & > Probability?

(1) Linear algebra. Much of applied statistics is _multi-variate_ , and nearly all of that is done with matrix notation and some of the main results of linear algebra.

The central linear algebra result you need is the polar decomposition that every square matrix A can be written as UH where U is unitary and H is Hermitian.

So, for any vector x, the lengths of Ux and x are the same. So, intuitively unitary is a rigid motion, essentially rotation and/or reflection.

Hermitian takes a sphere and turns it into an ellipsoid. The axes of the ellipsoid are mutually perpendicular ( _orthogonal_ ) and are _eigenvectors_. The sphere stretches/shrinks along each eigenvector axis according to it's eigenvalue.

U and H can be complex valued (have complex numbers), but the real valued case is similar, A = QS where Q is orthogonal and S symmetric non-negative definite. The normal equations of regression have a symmetric non-negative definite matrix. Factor analysis and singular values are based on the polar decomposition.

You get more than you paid for: A relatively good treatment of the polar decomposition has long been regarded as a good, baby introduction to Hilbert space theory for quantum mechanics. The unitary matrices are important in group representations used in quantum mechanics for molecular spectroscopy.

Matrix theory is at first just some notation, how to write systems of linear equations. But the notation is so good and has so many nice properties (e.g., matrix multiplication is associative, a bit amazing) that with the basic properties get _matrix theory_. Then linear algebra is, first, just about systems of linear equations, and then moves on with matrix theory. E.g., could write out the polar decomposition without matrix theory, but it would be a mess.

(2) Need some basic probability theory. So, have _events_ \-- e.g., let H be the event that the coin came up heads. Can have the _probability_ of H, written P(H), which is a number in the interval [0,1]. P(H) = 0 means that essentially never get heads; P(H) = 1 means that essentially always get heads.

Can have event W -- it's winter outside. Then can ask for P(H and W). That works like set intersection in Venn diagrams. Or can have P(H or W), and that works like set union in Venn diagrams.

Go measure a number. Call that the value of real valued _random variable_ X. We don't say what _random_ means; it does not necessarily mean unpredictable, _truly random_ , unknowable, etc. The intuitive "truly random" is essentially just _independence_ as below, and we certainly do not always assume independence. For real number x and _cumulative distribution_ F_X, can ask for

F_X(x) = P(X <= x)

Often in practice F_X has a derivative, as in calculus, and in that case can ask for the _probability density_ f_X of X

f_X(x) = d/dx F_X(x)

Popular densities include uniform, Gaussian, and exponential.

We can extend these definitions of (cumulative) distribution and density to the case of the _joint_ distribution of several random variables, e.g., X, Y, and Z. We can visualize the joint distribution or density of X and Y on a 3D graph. The density can look like some wrinkled blanket or pizza crust with bubbles.

In statistics, we work with random variables, from our data and from the results of manipulating random variables. E.g., for random variables X and Y and real numbers a and b, we can ask for the random variable

Z = aX + bY

That is, we can manipulate random variables.

Events A and B are _independent_ provided

P(A and B) = P(A)P(B)

In practice, we look for independence because it is powerful case of _decomposition_ and with powerful, even shockingly surprising, consequences. A lot of statistics is from an assumption of independence.

Can also extend independence to the case of random variables X and Y being independent. For any _index_ set I and random variable X_i for i in I, can extend to the case of the set of all X_i, i in I, being independent. The big deal here is that the index I can be uncountably infinite -- a bit amazing.

For the events heads H and winter W above, we just _believe_ that they are independent just from common sense. To be blunt, in practice the main way we justify an independence assumption is just common sense -- sorry 'bout that.

Can define some really nice cases of an infinite sequence of random variables converging (more than one way) to another random variable. An important fraction of statistics looks for such sequences as approximations to what we really want.

Since statistics books commonly describe 1-2 dozen popular densities, a guess is that in practice we look for the (distribution or) density of our random variables. Sadly or not, mostly no: Usually in practice we won't have enough data to know the density.

When we do know the density, then it is usually from more information, e.g., the renewal theorem that justifies an assumption of a Poisson process from which we can argue results in an exponential density or the central limit theorem where we can justify a Gaussian density.

(3) A _statistic_ is, give me the values of some random variables; I manipulate them and get a number, and that is a random variable and a _statistic_. Some such statistics are powerful.

(4) Statistical Hypothesis Testing. Here is one of the central topics in statistics, e.g., is the source of the much debated "p-values".

Suppose we believe that in an experiment on average the _true value_ of the results is 0. We do the experiment and want to do a _statistical hypothesis test_ that the true value is 0.

To do this test, we need to be able to calculate some probabilities. So, we make an assumption that gives us enough to make this calculation. This assumption is the _null hypothesis_ , _null_ as in no _effect_ , that is, we still got 0 and not something else, say, from a thunderstorm outside.

So, we ASSUME the true value is 0 and with that assumption and our data calculate a statistic X. We find the (distribution or) density of X with our assumption of true value 0. Then we evaluate the value of X we did find.

Typically X won't be exactly 0. So we have two cases:

(I) The value of X is so close to zero that, from our density calculation, X is as close as 99% of the cases. So, we _fail to reject_ , really in practice essentially _accept_ , that the true value is 0. _Accept_ is a bit fishy since we can _accept_ easily enough, that is don't notice the pimple simply by using a fuzzy photograph, just by using a really _weak_ test! Watch out for that in the news or "how to lie with statistics".

(II) X is so far from 0 that either (i) the true value is not zero and we _reject_ that the true value is 0 or (ii) the true value really is 0 and we have observed something rare, say, 1% rare. Since the 1% is so small, maybe we _reject_ (ii) and conclude (i).

So, for our _methodology_ we can test and test and test and what we are left with is what didn't get rejected. Some people call this all _science_ , others, fishy science, others just fishy. IMHO, done honestly or at least with full documentation, it's from okay to often quite good.

I mentioned _weak_ tests; intuitively that's okay, but there is a concept of _power_ of a test. Basically we want more power.

Here's an example of _power_ : Server farm anomaly detection is, or should be, essentially a statistical hypothesis test. So, then, the usual null hypothesis is that the farm is healthy. We do a test. There is a rate (over time, essentially probability) of _false alarms_ (where we reject that the farm is healthy, conclude that it is sick, when it is healthy) and rate of _missed detections_ of actual problems (fail to reject the null hypothesis and conclude that the farm is healthy when it is sick).

Typically in hypothesis testing we get to adjust the false alarm rate. Then for a given false alarm rate, a more _powerful_ test has a higher detection rate of real problems.

It's easy to get a low rate of false alarm; just turn off the detectors. It's easy to get 100% detection rate; just sound the alarm all the time.

So, a question is, what is the most powerful test? The answer is in the classic (late 1940s) Neyman-Pearson lemma. It's like investing in real estate: Allocate the first money to the highest ROI property; the next money to the next highest, etc. Yes, the discrete version is a knapsack problem and in NP- complete, but this is nearly never a consideration in practice. There have been claims that some high end US military target detection radar achieves the Neyman-Pearson most powerful detector.

There's more, but that is a start.

<comment><USER7> Thank you. This is an excellent list. Can you also point us to resources that have examples that are relevant to engineering and machine learning? I can't take one more cancer example!

<comment><USER6> The world is awash in texts and papers on applied statistics. My notes were an introduction to provide a start on what is needed to read more in applied statistics.

For much of engineering, e.g., quality control, the statistical hypothesis testing I outlined is common.

There are now classic texts on hypothesis testing:

E. L. Lehmann, _Testing Statistical Hypotheses_ , John Wiley, New York, 1959.

E. L. Lehmann, _Nonparametrics: Statistical Methods Based on Ranks_ , ISBN 0-8162-4994-6, Holden-Day, San Francisco, 1975.

Sidney Siegel, _Nonparametric Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences_ , McGraw-Hill, New York, 1956.

The last is also just hypothesis testing; apparently the book is still referenced.

From some statistical consultants inside GE, there is

Gerald J. Hahn and Samuel S. Shapiro, _Statistical Models in Engineering_ , John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1967.

For machine learning, so far the approach appears to be cases of empirical _curve fitting_.

The linear case of versions of regression analysis remain of interest. There the matrix theory I outlined is central. And regression analysis goes way back, 100 or so years, and is awash in uses of statistical hypothesis tests for the regression (F-ratio), individual coefficients, (t-tests), and confidence intervals on predicted values.

For using probabilistic and statistical methods in the non-linear fitting, that is more advanced and likely an active field of research.

In my own work, I use and/or create new statistical methods when and as I need them. My current work has some original work in, really, applied probability that also can be considered statistics. And when I was doing AI at IBM, I created some new mathematical statistics hypothesis tests to improve on what we were doing in AI. Later I published the work. Parts of the machine learning community might call that paper a case of supervised learning, but the paper is theorems and proofs in applied probability that give results on false alarm rates and detection rates, that is, statistical hypothesis tests (both multi- dimensional and distribution-free). So, that paper can be regarded as relevant to machine learning, but the prerequisites are a ugrad pure math major, about two years of graduate pure math with measure theory and functional analysis, a course in what Leo Breiman called _graduate probability_ , and some work in stochastic processes. At one point I use a classic result of S. Ulam that the French probabilist Le Cam called _tightness_ \-- there is a nice presentation in

Patrick Billingsley, _Convergence of Probability Measures_ , John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1968.

The work was for anomaly detection in complex systems so could be regarded as for both engineering and machine learning. But I can't give all the background here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Another of his lecture notes on Theoretical Stats was posted today: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21468493](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21468493)

</comment><comment><USER9> This looks like it's roughly at the level of Allan Gut's intermediate probability book ([https://www.amazon.com/Intermediate-Course-Probability- Sprin...](https://www.amazon.com/Intermediate-Course-Probability-Springer- Statistics/dp/1441901612)). There's a need for more exposition at that level, but I'm not sure that the course notes themselves are a good source.

</comment><comment><USER10> I wish I had searched for something like this when I was revising for some interviews last month! This is a great quick overview of intro probability. Thanks for sharing OP.

<comment><USER10> Homework problems and notes split into individual lectures available here:

[https://www.coursehero.com/sitemap/schools/234-University- of...](https://www.coursehero.com/sitemap/schools/234-University-of- California-Berkeley/courses/7342063-STAT201A/)</comment></comment>


Job Skills Companies Want but Can't Get - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-job-skills-report/

<comment><USER2> Yes, all beautifully presented, very whizzy, graphics flying all over. For me? Completely unusable. Nothing stays still long enough for me to work out what anything means. A total triumph of presentation over usability.

One word: Tufte.</comment>


Job Titles in the Web Industry - <AUTHOR> http://css-tricks.com/job-titles-in-the-web-industry/ <comment><USER2> > SEO Specialist

As someone who has been called "one of the world's experts on SEO", let me just say this title and industry is BS.

Here is my expert opinion on SEO: Write good content, make it easy for a human to read, and get other humans to share it with other humans in their network of friends.

I'll admit that there is a very small set of things you can so to help your rankings in search engines: have a descriptive URL, a unique title on each page, a proper robots.txt, a sitemap, basically all the stuff that is called out in the Google Webmaster tools.

Beyond that it is all snake oil. I challenge anyone to show my objective metrics proving any one SEO technique works.

<comment><USER3> If you're hiring someone to do SEO, they need to not only implement SEO tactics (like you say, URL's, title tags, robots, GWT, etc.), but also create a surrounding SEO program/strategy.

Doing things like keyword research, selecting keywords to target audience segments, measuring the effectiveness of the targeting, etc. is all part of what an SEO should be doing. You're not simply optimizing SERP rankings as much as possible. A good SEO should be able to bring in results and measure that their plan that brings in 10k visitors and results in $10k in revenue is superior to the plan that brings in 100k visitors but only 5k in revenue.

For these reasons, I think it's completely unjust to call SEO work beyond tactical implementation "snake oil". Sure, there are less-than-honest people calling themselves "SEO Specialists/Strategists/Ninjas/Whatever", but if I'm a company hiring an SEO, I expect MEASURED business results in return and scrupulous and honest contractors, employees, and agencies should be able to deliver that.

<comment><USER2> I agree completely. I would expect measured results.

I've just yet to see anyone show me objective results that show they brought in 10K users for $10K in revenue or anything of the sort.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I used to hate telling people I was a Web Developer. People would always say, "oh you build websites! I've done that some myself with Front Page!". Basically most of my career I've done traditional business applications. Just happens they have a web interface. So I always just say Software Developer.

</comment><comment><USER5> Job titles (in my experience) have been 100% worthless to my day to day. I go in and do what's necessary based on what skills I have. Sometimes that means writing code for the web (html, css, etc.), sometimes that means writing a windows service to run a long running or recurring process, sometimes it means writing stored procedures, and sometimes it means writing a process to automate deployments.

It's always upset me a little that I've had to communicate with people using this narrow definition of what I do from day to day. And so, I prefer the title Software Engineer because it's not specific to mobile, web, devops, etc.

<comment><USER6> Some people who can do a wider range of tasks are useful, and at some companies necessary, but division of labour was set up for a reason.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, that's true. I really enjoy working with a) designers, and b) good IT/devops people. I definitely wasn't trying to suggest there shouldn't be specialization ... but it is frustrating when you run up against no-my-job kind of people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting question being asked in the comment section I'd like to repeat here. Is it correct to call yourself a (software, web, backend, whatever) engineer without actually holding an university engineering degree?

<comment><USER8> Engineering degree in what? Mechanical engineering? Electrical engineering? Architectural engineering? etc. These have nothing to with software either.

Politicians often don't have a university degree related to politics...

<comment><USER6> > Engineering degree in what?

Software engineering.

<comment><USER8> The point still stands. Just because you studied it at university does not make you an engineer in the field or necessarily any good at it. We don't need parrots, we need thinkers and sometimes that means drawing on experience from different fields.

I know plenty of software engineers that never went to university, and one of the best dev's a know studied Russian. Undoubtedly mathematics is the underpinning for programming, if someone held that degree would they be any less of an engineer, esp given a lot of work relies heavily on algorithms?

<comment><USER7> No, but being registered with a certification body does for example the IEEE ([http://www.ieee.org/](http://www.ieee.org/)). Just for interest sake, would you apply your same logic to surgeons and pilots etc?

<comment><USER8> Surgeons, sure you need relevant education. But pilots, do you require them to have a degree in flying, or aeronautics? Sure they have to be licensed, but that's different from having a degree in the subject - which is what the original question was.

As for being a member of a relevant organisation, I think that comes down to what you are working on. If I had a mission critical* piece of software (used in military, medical, lift mechanism etc) then I would specify that all employees need to have certain minimal credentials. Am I going to be better at my job coding up some websites which just provide some info, probably not.

Anyway, IMO titles are meaningless in this industry, the ability to do the job is far more important.

*subjective, I know.

<comment><USER7> But that brings us back to the original question, would it be appropriate for a web developer to call himself an engineer. What engineering effort is there in web development?

But I agree with you, talk is cheap, and certifications are meaningless if the person cannot do the job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When writing resumes in the past I've taken lousy job titles and updated them with actual job titles equivalent to the work I was doing -- for example changing "Software Developer" to "Front End Developer" or "Full Stack Developer".

What's the opinion on this? Is it considered deceptive if it matches the work that you were doing?

My thought is that it more accurately represents what you were doing for HR filters, since I don't really care about my title on a personal level.

<comment> grey-area Sounds fair to me. As long as you're not being deceptive about what the job actually entailed, and are trying to describe it more fully, I see no problem with switching job titles - they're just a descriptive label.

Job titles in software development are mostly invented out of whole cloth anyway as it's such a young and dynamic profession, and many labels are borrowed from other professions solely to lend a patina of authority to the role - developers are not engineers or architects in my opinion except by analogy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It bothers me that the word "designer" has been twisted by the web community to mean only non-engineering design (e.g. design of aesthetic appearance).

All engineering students must take "design" classes where they learn to design things like bridges, electrical circuits, distribution systems, spacecraft, snowmobiles, software, or boilers. Is that not design?

<comment><USER11> Anything that the end user sees counts as "design".

As such, electrical circuits and the internals of software don't really count. They're hidden from the user.

<comment><USER10> Is this somehow the official definition or are you just being sarcastic?

<comment><USER11> I don't think it's an official definition but it's how I interpret it, and probably how others do as well.

<comment><USER10> In my experience, it's only the web community who has this "look and feel" definition of design.

An electrical engineer who designs an electrical circuit calls that process "circuit design." An aerospace engineer who designs a spacecraft trajectory calls that process "trajectory design." See the Wikipedia article on design:

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

You'll see that the web community is living in a language bubble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One title I found interesting recently was Rasmus Lerdorf's (creator of PHP.) He is a 'Distinguished Engineer' at Etsy ([http://lerdorf.com/resume/](http://lerdorf.com/resume/))

<comment><USER13> Alternatively he could use the title Jeff Atwood jokingly bestowed on him: "History's Greatest Monster".

Jeff doesn't like PHP much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Good job on this list, for decades titles have been really lousy in this industry.

I didn't see Technical/Web/Application Architect on the list. It's been very common to add "architect" to the end of a title, even to go as far as to have Application Architects under Sr. Application Architects... I wonder if eventually we'll have "Sr. Principal Application Architects".

I'm curious to see what HN would consider calling an Application/Technical/Product Architect and if there is a better name or more clear description.

<comment><USER15> I actually think 'Architect' is a pretty good term, when used correctly. Someone who plans out the architecture of an app, maybe lays the groundwork, but leaves the actual development to others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Web Design: ...Specific skills would be design-tools-of-choice, HTML, CSS, > and light JavaScript.

I've worked in a startup, and at a few design/web agencies, and I'm yet to see a single "Web Designer" write HTML/CSS, let alone JavaScript. A Web Designer does just that; creates designs for the web. There are some designers that like to write mark-up, but they never class themselves as designers without mentioning that they can handle front-end development too.

I find it safe to say that if someone classes themselves as a designer, they design. Writing mark-up is not design.

One other issue I have is with the prefix "Lead". Senior indicates experience, whereas Lead states that they lead a team. My first full-time job after university was at a start-up and after six months I became the Lead Developer. I was in no way Senior, but the title Lead was correct as I led all development, along with the decisions that came along with it.

<comment><USER17> And on the flip side, if you are a freelancer with a title of "Web Designer" then it is expected that you can also build the webpages that you create. Businesses want someone to design & build them a website and if you can only do part of that job then you can only make part of the money they want to pay. I don't know anyone doing web design consulting/freelancing who can't also write HTML and CSS.

<comment><USER16> I've met a few freelancers that claim to be able to do both, but they tend to fall into either the designer or developer camp; either a good developer that can just about use Photoshop, or a designer that can throw some mark-up together. In each instance they've always classed themselves as "Web Designer and Developer" and never as either.

Either way, I'd never hire one person to do everything, and no company I've ever worked at, including non-tech companies have ever been ignorant enough to suggest that one person should do everything. A designer designs and a developer develops. I wouldn't expect a plasterer to fit my windows on my house.

<comment><USER18> > In each instance they've always classed themselves as "Web Designer and > Developer" and never as either.

I've had independent jobs as a designer (including one that was not related to software at all) and as a developer. Though I do bill myself as a designer and developer because I enjoy both and prefer to have a job that is the mix of both.

> I'd never hire one person to do everything

I think that's fair for a number of reasons, but why not hire two people who are great at both aspects? Then they can collaborate on both sides of the project, which is surely better than having someone who can only design and someone who can only develop.

<comment><USER16> > I've had independent jobs as a designer (including one that was not related > to software at all) and as a developer. Though I do bill myself as a > designer and developer because I enjoy both and prefer to have a job that is > the mix of both.

This is the way I've always found it to be in reality. I too have worked in both areas, and although I am good with Photoshop I've worked with too many good designers to ever want to classify myself as one of them.

> I think that's fair for a number of reasons, but why not hire two people who > are great at both aspects? Then they can collaborate on both sides of the > project, which is surely better than having someone who can only design and > someone who can only develop.

Because I'd want someone who is both a great coder, and someone that knows design inside and out. I'm yet to see a single person that can boast impressive (senior-level) skills in both fields.

Sure, there are plenty of developers that can design a good site, but the best designers do FAR more than this. Their skills lie in the process, rather than the ability to design. In similar vein, a great developer is far more than a code monkey. They have considered opinions on the functionality of a site, they are at home with JavaScript, understand cross-browser constraints, and are expected to work alongside designers to help with the process.

<comment><USER18> One thing I have noticed that when I've been only doing development for an extended period of time, my design skills go out the window and it takes a while to bring myself back to a level where I consider myself "good" again. The reverse is also true.

With that, perhaps because of the hostile environment for designer/developers we've created in industry, you are always interacting with people who come from an environment that only fostered one side of their skills? And given that you are hard lined on the separation in your own workplace, you're not going to see them grow in the other direction either.

Where I work, we've actually been encouraging the designers to learn how to program (not just simple markup stuff) and the results have been quite promising. It's really just a matter of practice, I am convinced.

<comment><USER16> On the contrary, the agency I work at now is almost purely a development agency. We usually get freelancers in to handle design, but I will pick up Photoshop whenever I can to do very basic things, such as to mock-up a form change.

However, I've worked with enough designers to know that even though I can create a design, that I am no designer, and that it would be offensive to a real designers ability for me to compare myself with them. I can cook a mean steak, but I'm no Gordon Ramsey.

I agree entirely that all designers should learn to handle basic code, and vice versa. In fact, any agency I've worked at has worked similarly, and was very keen to get each "side" working collaboratively and learning how the other half lives. It's a necessary part of getting an agency working in the same direction. However, putting a designer in front of an IDE doesn't make them a developer by title.

<comment><USER18> > I will pick up Photoshop whenever I can to do very basic things, such as to > mock-up a form change.

That's not exactly the kind of environment that fosters improvement on the design side though. In fact, your situation sounds similar to mine right now where the design work I do end up doing is basic things like that and the results usually end up being pretty poor.

Your structure really has to treat design and development as one in the same if you want to see growth on both sides. But those jobs are so rare, people are forced into only one aspect of the job, which produces what you've witnessed. And thus begins the feedback loop.

<comment><USER16> You're making a number of baseless assumptions about the quality of my job. I'd say my company is more than ideal. In fact, I'd say that we're pretty darn close to having one of the best processes I've seen in an agency or startup.

We work very closely with designers. We're a part of all kick-off meetings, we're involved in all phases, we even sit in during workshops so we understand the process from the client perspective. It is a process that works well in all manners of small business, and most importantly, it works for our clients.

My design work is basic because the task is basic. Why pay for a designers time when I can modify something in 5 minutes? It's basic common sense to do so.

<comment><USER18> > You're making a number of baseless assumptions about the quality of my > job... We work very closely with designers.

Unless you disagree with my earlier premise that the skills see some atrophy if not used, then you most certainly do not have an environment that fosters designer/developer skills. If you have specialized roles, and you are handing the majority of the design work over to a dedicated designer, then you are left with a developer seeing an emphasis on developing code. I do not have to make any assumptions, that is just basic mathematics.

Jumping into Photoshop every once in a while to help out does not lead to a "senior level designer" as you already attested to yourself. You have to have intense focus on both almost every day if you want to see senior level quality on both sides. It can be done, but the jobs are quite rare, so few people ever have the opportunity to reach that level. It goes without saying that finding such people then becomes a challenge, but not because of it being some fundamental truth.

Programming itself requires design skills, so we know all (good) programmers have what it takes to be good designers by default, they just need an environment to frequently practice those skills in contexts other than the text editor.

<comment><USER16> I had written comments for the rest of your points, but then I read your final paragraph.

> Programming itself requires design skills, so we know all (good) programmers > have what it takes to be good designers by default, they just need an > environment to frequently practice those skills in contexts other than the > text editor.

This is a huge red flag for me. The design skills you are talking about are incomparable to the design skills my comments have referenced.

<comment><USER18> It is well understood in programming circles that the code layout/design is one of the most important aspects of maintainability, and achieving that requires exercising the same parts of the brain that any other design work does.

The most obtuse example is the old Perl one-liner, which is generally void of any real design thought, and can scare away the best programmers just at the first glance. But even code that attempts to be written well can fall short without the developer having some design sensibilities; the same sensibilities that apply to any design medium.

Good code, and therefore maintainable code, brings on a positive emotional response before you even start reading the content within. That's straight up design. The exact same kind of work you do in Photoshop, a piece of paper with a pencil, paint and canvas, etc.

You claimed earlier to not be able to call yourself a designer, so I'm going to assume you do not have the experience outside of the code medium to see the overlap, but that doesn't mean it is not there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> A Product Manager is absolutely not similar to a Project Manager. These are two completely different jobs and skill sets.

While a common misconception, Product managers are charged with knowing the market/users/competition and driving the product to commercial success, as much as a development success.

Project/program managers focus on specific delivery.

<comment><USER3> Like most other job titles involving the web, I think "Product Manager" can mean different things to different companies.

Coming from the traditional marketing definition of the role, a product manager is typically the "CEO" of the product and is in charge of aligning the product with the market.

In tech, particularly with smaller companies and startups, the need to wear many hats, and the unique issues with project management in relation to software development, has often times seen the product manager also take on project management duties. This may be a mistake or may be a requirement, depending on the resources of the company, but I largely agree with the structure of having both a product manager and a program manager and not blending the two.

<comment><USER19> Achieving commercial success often means managing delivery as well, but saying the two roles are equivalent is a mistake.

Someone who is a true product manager, can usually pickup project management duties. The inverse is not true. I have seen many times someone with a project management background trying to get into product management without shifting the attitude or thinking the two are one and the same, only to drive developers nuts and fail to deliver good products.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is a pretty good list!

It does, of course, exclude titles that are not specific to the web industry: \- CEO \- salesperson \- HR person \- accounting

There is an argument for adding "customer support" to this list, as a person doing customer support for web-based products/services generally need a specific skill-set.

</comment><comment><USER15> Just wait until you try to get a visa using these titles. The government is pretty humourless about "ninjas" and the like, and I've even been questioned about my transition from "Software Engineer" to "Web Developer" before (doing the exact same thing in both).

</comment><comment><USER21> Missing "full stack code monkey" and "jack of all trades (master of {none,all,missing deadlines,you decide})" titles.

I use those from time to time, when I'm totally positive the irony be understood correctly.

</comment><comment><USER22> I know a lot of people who would get offended if you said UI designer is a synonym for Visual designer. Is it really common to interchange the two?

</comment><comment><USER23> Good list!

Do we put ____ guru in the same bin as the ninjas?

It would be worth adding data analyst or data scientist, as this is a growing aspect of managing a platform.

</comment><comment><USER24> > Dev Ops: I wish this had a more job-title-y feeling to it. As it stands it > sounds like what you would call the whole team of people with this job.

That is what we call a whole team of people at my company. Most of the people on the team have the title Build Engineer or Automation Engineer, along with a few System Administrators.

</comment><comment><USER25> Forgot to mention "growth hacker"

<comment><USER26> They didn't, it was the first one I looked for:

_______ Hacker - Cheesy for anything with the possible exception of a job with the specific responsibility of finding security exploits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Why is "Mobile _____" overly specific, but something like "JavaScript Developer" or "SEO Specialist" isn't? Responsive design/developing could definitely fall under "Front End Developer", but I feel like it's as focused a title as some of the other ones.

</comment><comment><USER28> Do any job titles these days warrant the 'Web' prefix? So much software touches the web it's kind of pointless.

I think you can tack on 'Front End' if you're good with JS, MV*, HTML/CSS.... and 'Back End' if you understand DB concepts & scalability or architecture stuff.

<comment><USER29> > 'Front End' if you're good with JS, MV*, HTML/CSS.... and 'Back End' if you > understand DB concepts & scalability or architecture stuff

It's been my experience as a front-end developer that you need to understand the entire stack. From the wireframes to the database. Perhaps this is a "full-stack" developer to some, but there's been an increase in the amount of "front-end developer" job postings that require you understand every aspect of the application.

If the user will eventually see that data, then it's the responsibility of the front-end developer, this includes all information stored in the database and the ability to store, manipulate, and create that data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> > Software Engineer / Programmer - This has come to mean "programming, but not > for the web."

...whaaat?!

</comment><comment><USER31> What about Web master, from the web 1.0 days?

<comment><USER32> A Web Master is still a real role. More among smaller businesses who don't have a web team, or bigger businesses that outsource most the technical aspects of their web presence.

A Web Master generally does upkeep/maintenance of the website, minor modifications/customisations, content updates, maybe some social media stuff. "A little bit of everything but not a lot of any thing".

People sometimes give it a different title these days but I don't see why Web Master isn't still valid.

<comment><USER33> I wouldn't call it a job, but I'm the webmaster of my personal sites. I haven't heard of a different title for the same thing either... ?

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

 _" A little bit of everything but not a lot of any thing"._

I don't think wearing many hats has to mean you're subpar with a specific hat; just like having hobbies doesn't make you less of a front end developer, neither does having an eye for design or people skills or knowing backend stuff. It's not like everybody who wears just one hat always and automatically masters that subject, that's just a fallacy. To the contrary, we all know that having expertise in wildly varying fields can inform and enhance the creative and analytical processes a great deal. Too little focus is bad, but so is too much focus (or, "specialization is for insects").

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> What if you actually are a Ninja?

</comment><comment><USER35> Also noticed some people using - ____ wizard

</comment><comment><USER36> Missing: UI Engineer

<comment><USER36> Also, there is a growing cadre of people who specialize in data visualizations. What title suits someone who does primarily data visualizations? I also, for example, consider myself a storyteller—though I spend my time coding stories—on the web. Is there such a thing as web storyteller? What's the correct title here?</comment></comment>


Chilly at Work? A Decades-Old Formula May Be to Blame - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/04/science/chilly-at-work-a-decades-old-formula-may-be-to-blame.html <comment><USER2> At my office, which is business professional, it seems that men have less options for "lighter" clothing than women though. I have to wear a long sleeve, pressed shirt and tie, pants, and dress shoes no matter what the temperature is (although the coat is optional). Women can get away with short skirts and dresses that are much cooler.

<comment><USER3> This. If we bump the office temperature 5* without adjusting the dress code, I end up sweaty and miserable.

I'm not allowed to wear sandals and a skirt; let me wear shorts and flip-flops and you can set the thermostat wherever you want.

<comment><USER4> It would make sense, in a lot of ways (money saved, better for the environment), to have people dress properly for the conditions, rather than requiring uniforms that are ill-suited to the climate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This feels like a manufactured gender controversy.

IMHE, there tend to be equal numbers of men and women on each side of the thermostat wars. Or, just as often, we are all on one side, with the person in control of the thermostat on the other.

<comment><USER6> It's not entirely manufactured.

Women have lower skin temperatures, and higher core temperatures. So in lab conditions they feel the cold more.

Tracking down a semi-academic article, it noted that in non-lab conditions, people are well aware of their heat tolerance, and generally wear warm clothes if they're going to be cold.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article seems kind of dumb. It briefly mentions that people who are too warm can only take off so many articles of clothing but then drops it when it's really the most important factor. If you're cold you can put on a sweater or a blanket. If you're too hot you have just have to sweat it out and be miserable.

<comment><USER8> considering what our dress code permits and what HR overlooks it is little wonder some women are freezing. When you have half the clothing on another does I would expect you to be cold. Throw in that most of the clothing seems lighter in material usage and it just magnifies the effect.

Simple examples are required shoes, men cannot wear open toe or anything close to what women wear based on fashion. Similar to covering the legs, shorts are out but short skirts pass muster. Its an odd world but it tends to get abused a bit more on the woman's side because most male managers are afraid to say anything and HR only steps in the most egregious examples

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> IMO winning this battle will involve changing culture--

changing what is appropriate to wear to work. If I could wear shorts and a muscle top to work, then i'd say just float with the ambient outside (upto 90f) .

But because some of us have to wear suits and ties. Its really hot, plus stress/exercise etc, it could literally be a health risk for some men.

Compare health risk to inconvenience of wearing more clothes and having a personal heater and it seems clear to me.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm not suggesting freezing anyone to death, but its a lot easier to toss on a layer of clothing compared to the alternative. Granted, the article mentions this, it just seems preferential to have an office a bit too cold rather than too hot.

</comment><comment><USER4> That's something I miss about Italy: less air conditioning. Oregon summers are beautiful - warm, sunny, but low humidity. For people who don't have to be in a suit and tie, there's not really that big a need for AC. And yet, I have a sweater myself for the office.

<comment><USER7> Do you live in Oregon now because that has definitely not been the case for the past 2 years.

<comment><USER4> My family and I moved to Bend. Even 35 C here is pretty tolerable if you're not out under the direct sun, because the humidity is so low, and there's often a bit of breeze.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's kind of interesting - we can turn this into a gender debate, where either the evil men freeze the poor women, or the evil women in their skimpy dresses sweat the poor men.

Or we can assign blame where it's _actually_ due: Zoned temperature control in offices is perfectly possible. Buildings that maintain a decent climate without excessive cooling/heating is possible as well.

But that costs money, and most companies don't want to spend money just to make their workers feel OK. They'll adjust, or so the thinking goes.

I'd suggest we look there, as opposed to telling each other what we're supposed to wear/not to wear.

</comment><comment><USER12> Wow, extremely fascinating to see this war is happening-- because I'm a part of this war everyday at work, except I'm a male and I'm fighting these wars with males. Particularly, it's a war against thin people (me) vs those who have a lot of fat. I lost the war though, mostly because my adversaries are my higher ups. I now keep sweaters and jackets at work... Even when it's 95 deg outside (temp in our office is set to 65)

<comment><USER9> Its not just fat. Its metabolism. Lean people who have exercised in the past 24 hours will likely be warmer.

</comment></comment><comment> norea-armozel Wow, this article sort of explains my situation fairly well. For years I use to get around on a bicycle to/from work and school. So, I was exposed to the hot Kansas summers so much so that I can't really tolerate temperatures below 75 F without at least a long sleeve shirt on. Just for the record, I'm biologically male (even though I'm mtf trans). So, you could say I'm on the end of the normal curve of this situation.

</comment><comment><USER13> Here in NYC, I've always been confused by how offices are sweltering in winter from heating, and freezing in summer from AC -- the thermometer on my desk will easily read 82°F in winter, and 68°F in summer.

But what confuses me even more is how people _still_ dress for the season -- guys are walking around, in the office, in sweaters in the winter, and in shorts and sandals in the summer.

Sometimes I wonder if it's all just psychological...

</comment><comment><USER14> I had a good laugh. Sadly some people may see this as serious journalism.

Many offices are a little too cold - but this has little to do with gender. Fat, or/and high metabolism ppl can wear tshirts at best but cant run around naked. Lean and slower metabolism ppl can put a sweater on. Heck i even take it off for meeting because dress code.

For the record, im in the sweater category. Now then again offices with temp lower than 70 are a lil crazy.

</comment><comment><USER15> Very interesting to see this. Our office is 2 men, 2 women and we have this argument constantly. The men are sweating their nads off, the women freezing cold - often simultaneously unless one side temporarily wins by changing the setting without anyone noticing. Our solution is going to be rearranging the office so the men are sat directly under the A/C.

</comment><comment><USER16> Maybe we should examine the obsolete concept of "professional attire" at non- public-facing parts of the workplace. Is there any proof that wearing a suit makes you more productive? Are profits going to go down if people start showing up to work in shorts, tshirts, and sandals?

</comment><comment><USER17> Looks like bad science to me:

"the researchers tested 16 women"

But if you don't also test some men in the exact same chamber you know nothing because you have no control to compare to.

You can't just compare to published studied because you don't know if your equipment is properly calibrated.

</comment><comment><USER18> I live in Scotland and the reverse is the issue here: mostly women with personal space heaters turned up to max to ignore the thermostat (because that means it heats up quicker, right?) which then causes the temperature to rise, they get normalised to the hot temperature and complain about the rest of the building being cold so find extra personal space heaters...

Meanwhile, I'm what's known as a "hot tatty" and melt when I'm wandering around the building, but mostly because our central heating is off because the computerised heating system has decided that the rest of the building is too warm thanks to these personal space heaters throwing megawatts of power away into the ether...

</comment><comment><USER19> Looks to me like they wrote an entire, serious article just so they could work in the sentence "I wouldn't overestimate the effect of cleavage, but it's there."

Which may also explain why the thermostat will end up higher... :)

</comment><comment><USER20> In this world there's two kind of people: \- Those who hate AC. \- Those who know how a thermostat works.

To the employers: \- Buy AC that are powerful enough for the office room. \- Have the office in a well insulated building. \- Keep the office at 20°C (68F) in winter and 26°C(80F) in summer. If you can also keep the temperature stable, everybody will be happy.

To everybody: \- If you see someone setting the AC at 16°C in summer or 30°C in winter, you are allowed to revoke this person's rights on the remote AC forever.

</comment><comment><USER21> Naked men and women bundled for the arctic doesnt seem quite right for me. I'm older and like it a little bit warmer, so I sympathize with the ladies. I just add a sweater, but then my girlfriend says that I have the fashion sense of a mule.

Summers are the worst. Often the thermostats are in sun-facing offices, and the worker bees are in a windowless open plan cave. Some poor sod gets to sit under the vent with a chill factor of 40 degrees. My compromise is to telecommute.

</comment><comment><USER22> As far as I'm aware most thermostats don't really factor in humidity which has a big factor on my comfort. When I'm at home on a relatively mild summer day, my house actually feels uncomfortably warm. When it's blisteringly hot outside my AC goes into overdrive and turns my place into an icebox - even though the temperature is always set the same at 72.

</comment><comment><USER23> I wonder whether LEED certification, with its energy conservation requirements, has an impact on climate satisfaction. Are the women, on average, more comfortable and the men less?

In any case, I worked in a newly built, open plan, LEED certified building and was surprised by the inconsistency in temperature on the same floor.

</comment><comment><USER24> What happens to the argument about energy efficiency in winter in cold climates? ;)

<comment><USER4> Same thing: you should probably be comfortable in a sweater in the office in winter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Among the many factors in that equation, using a 40 year old male weight 154lbs seems a little off too. Is that actually the median age and weight of office workers these days?

<comment><USER9> Many designers know that you do not design for the average, but for the edges. The middle figures itself out. So how do we accommodate 200lb guys who weight lifted this morning and 100lb girls who havent exercised in a while? Maybe some kind of climate zones? It usually a lot easier to get warmer (clothes) than to get cooler (less clothes isnt usually appropriate) .

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Men tend to prefer 70 degrees and women tend to prefer 75. 72.5 sounds like a reasonable compromise.

<comment><USER27> Sounds like no one is happy then.

<comment><USER28> Maybe the women could wear warmer clothes?

<comment><USER29> Or the men could go naked!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


RFC 2324 - Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol (HTCPCP/1.0) - <AUTHOR> http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2324 <comment><USER2> It would be more REST-ful if a GET simply resulted in coffee at my terminal. (More restful for me anyway...)

</comment><comment><USER3> God this is old. Why is this appearing now?

<comment><USER4> Because a lot of people had never seen it before and would never have seen it with a link from SOMEWHERE. And this is a good place for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> In general, I try to return status 418 (I'm a teapot) whenever possible. Much better than 400, 404, etc.

</comment><comment><USER6> I wrote a similar real service for IP-enabled high-end coffee makers. Every cup brewed generated a key/value "ping" with brew time, dose, desired and actual temp, and other cup metadata. These went to a Rails web service which actually did expose REST target endpoints (though they weren't on the coffee maker itself, and one couldn't send a brew instruction).

A version of this even tweeted every cup for a while, and that HTTP client was actually implemented on a microcontroller inside the coffee maker.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have an espresso machine that partially implements this.

EDIT: Here's the partially-incomplete and largely out-of-date source: <http://github.com/burke/coffeeclock/tree/master>

</comment><comment><USER8> Here is a Lisp implementation of the BREW method.

<http://emarsden.chez.com/downloads/coffee.el>

</comment><comment><USER9> the server was timing out for me, but this coral cache link works: <http://tools.ietf.org.nyud.net/html/rfc2324>

</comment><comment><USER10> Where can I buy a network enabled coffee pot?</comment>


Show HN: Status – HTTP Status for Humans - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/avinassh/status <comment><AUTHOR> Nothing fancy, however I was manually copying `status.py` file from Django Rest Framework in every project. So I thought I would release this as a pypi package and it may come useful to others also.</comment>


Rate our startup: Yogile.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.yogile.com

<comment><USER2> A few points, based only on my own thoughts and emotions when clicking your link above:

* I have a fairly small screen, and when the page loaded all I saw was the "Photo sharing has never been easier" and sign up. I didn't see features, I don't see any screenshots, etc. It would help if the features are more up and center rather than a sign up form.

* Related to above... there is no demo or screenshots or anything. I'm not sure if this site is supposed to be dead simple image sharing (like imgur.com or something) or something more. But I'm not willing to sign up to find out. More visual assistance, please.

* For a photo sharing site, the design -- while sleek -- is pretty drab. Its a fairly depressing set of colors that didn't evoke any sort of excitement from me. For example, when I visit flickr.com, I see a bright, vibrant image of people swimming. Beautiful. It gets me excited to share/see other images.

I'm no professional, just a regular consumer, and those are my two cents.

<comment><USER3> My thoughts exactly on the drab. Photos are full of color and life, and the site doesn't fit that mood. Even the 'you' and 'others' and 'photo album' images shouldn't be just bland icons, show some pictures, it would be much more engaging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure the term "Use Case" belongs on the front page, that's a fairly technical/business oriented term.

I'd flip the "What is Yogile?" and the sign up forms. People want to know what it is before getting involved. I'd also say the "what is yogile?" needs to be dead simple, easily ingested in seconds.

But with those criticisms aside, I love the idea. I think the net is long overdue for a site like this and really look forward to what you guys do.

<comment><USER3> Actually, I think they may have the order right, as I think you naturally see the right side of a page before the left, similar to why magazine ads cost more for right page vs. left.

<comment><USER5> Evidence for this? I can see why the magazine example might make sense since english pages turn on the right side, but that doesn't really translate to webpages; i've always heard that top left was the most valuable page real estate.

<comment><USER6> I saw a "view map" a few days ago--sorry, I forget where--and it showed that the hottest (most viewed) area of the screen was the upper-center right. I believe that the top left was the second most viewed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think this is a great idea, and it solves a real problem that I've encountered myself. That being said, it feels somewhat incomplete at the moment. There isn't an easy to find out more about the site. For instance, I'd be interested in knowing more about how the service works before signing up for yet another account, e.g. step-by-step would be great to illustrate how easy it is to use.

Also useful would be what the different plans are, if any - the Techcrunch article seemed to indicate a free and paid plan. Some public galleries on the front page would be great too, to help get a sense of the site. One more quick commment is that as I look through an album, from a UX perspective, the controls being icons make it harder for me to quickly scan my possible actions.

</comment><comment><USER6> Is there a way to update Facebook when pictures are posted? That would be a really good way to pull in collaborators.

Is there any way for people to search for and find these photo albums? So, like, if someone starts a "Game three of the World Series" album, can everyone who was there find the album easily and upload their own photos? That could be kinda cool.

<comment><USER8> Also, with your wedding suggestion, will you offer print solutions (do you already)? Being able to make a book out of selected prints would be fantastic, but could be tricky because of different photo quality levels.

<comment><USER6> Not to mention copyright restrictions. The upload would have to come with some kind of a non-commercial-use waiver.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like it, it works well with what I imagine is a common casual workflow after people come back from a group event. People email each other pictures. You can just fwd those pictures to your site. Or CC: your site in the discussion.

</comment><comment><USER10> You should take a look at Bubbleshare and how they failed doing something very similar to what you are trying to accomplish. I'm sure you can learn a thing or two. The founder Albert might even be able to give you a few pointers.

</comment><comment><USER11> In "Large overview" mode on the photo pages, consider adding some kind of loading indicator when new photos are loading in the background. I'd click forward, then click again wondering if I'd hit the button correctly.

</comment><comment><USER12> You need screenshots.I could not find any from the home page.

</comment><comment><USER13> "public album" might confuse users given that the title says "privately and in groups".

</comment><comment><USER14> Not too fond of the name...

</comment><comment><USER15> Are you guys going to build an API?</comment>


Show HN: Tech.pro – social network for tech - <AUTHOR> http://tech.pro <comment><AUTHOR> Hey, HN! Tech.pro founder here.

Tech.pro is a niche social network for people in Tech, with a focus on content discovery and sharing. It's designed with blogging in mind, while also allowing users to share links, images, Q&A, micro-posts, etc.

Our main feed (the home page) is driven by a combination of the people you follow (your network) as well as the tags you follow (your interests). We've been working hard to make the platform work well for the broad range of interests that someone in the tech industry might have.

Inspiration for the site has come from many sites and communities that exist today including HN, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, etc. but take unique aspects of each to make the best possible experience.

I'm eager to get any sort of feedback from the HN crowd. AMA

Some additional links:

\- Register + Video: [https://tech.pro/register](https://tech.pro/register)

\- Feed: [http://tech.pro/](http://tech.pro/)

\- Privacy Policy: [http://tech.pro/privacy](http://tech.pro/privacy)

\- Blogging: [http://tech.pro/blog/6173/getting-started-blogging- techpro](http://tech.pro/blog/6173/getting-started-blogging-techpro)

<comment><USER2> While I have a somewhat dim view of niche social networks (seriously, I just joined a Trekkie-only social network, why the heck does _that_ exist?), I'm going to give this a try, it sounds interesting.

<comment><USER2> My initial feedback: The signup process is horrific. Asking me how many years of experience I have with each skill someone on LinkedIn endorsed me with? Literally just delete this entire page of the process.

Signup should be simple, you want people using your site as fast as possible.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, and for trying it out. Was it clear that that page was skippable, and that the years experience were optional?

I will take another look at the signup process. While I want it to be quick, the onboarding process is important for people to customize their experience and find who they know, etc. Definitely needs to be quick and easy though.

<comment><USER2> I assume there was a skip button on it, but it was a terrifying thing to be hit with. Even if it maybe picked just your top five skills to ask you about and offered to let you add more with a list or something. It's probably the appearance of the size of the thing.

But some of the hyper-detailed profile options may be better to ask people to add to their profile post-registration, so you can get people into your site as quickly as possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I wanted to link the picture of my Google profile but the permissions you ask are a bit too... permissive. It says it's for retrieving my picture, but it is asking for things like managing my contacts.</comment>


Serveraxis jacked up their prices today. Alternatives? - <AUTHOR>

..Right before the next billing cycle too.<p>What other Xen VPSs have you guys used? <comment><USER2> <http://www.slicehost.com/> is really popular here but they have a waiting list unless you prepay. Serveraxis is still cheaper per unit of bandwidth and HD space.

<comment><AUTHOR> My limiting factor is RAM, but it looks like serveraxis is cheaper than slicehost for that.</comment></comment>


ReChord – Forget the Notes. Focus on the Conversation - <AUTHOR> http://www.rechord.ai <comment><AUTHOR> ReChord is an AI-powered smart application that takes the notes of your online meetings, gives you the entire transcript, also gives you the summery of the meeting. It also gives you the highlights, metrics, questions asked and also action items and decision points.

With ReChord you can increase your productivity for all online meetings.</comment>


My Time at Lehman - <AUTHOR> http://nickchirls.com/ <comment><USER2> "Which, it turns out, is a trader's field day. What this meant, in its simplest form, is that these traders (or salespeople) could buy bonds at the "market" price from intelligent hedge fund managers in NYC and sell this same crap at much higher levels to unsophisticated (but legally considered "sophisticated") pension funds and insurance companies in middle America. What I discovered, quite starkly, is that the part of Wall Street that I worked in was simply transferring wealth from the less sophisticated investors often teachers' pension funds and factory workers' retirement accounts, to the more sophisticated investors..."

"'We are important providers of liquidity that create stable financial markets. We're a crucial part of a system. And besides, if we don't do it, someone else will.' These are the lies that people tell themselves so that they can buy larger homes."

Both of these things are completely true, and that's why American public policy is having such a hard time grappling with Wall Street. We try to rationalize the state of affairs by pointing out all the ways that Wall Street has an "unfair advantage" but the fact of the matter is that: what do you expect in a free market system that rewards every marginal advantage other than wealth to flow from less sophisticated people to more sophisticated ones? We like the idea of letting everyone transact freely, but we are uncomfortable with the "winner take all" implication of that policy.

Wall Street: 1) Hires some of the brighest people in the country (e.g. 40% of the author's class at Yale); 2) Aggressively weeds out that impressive pool by forcing out all but the most promising people within a few years; 3) Trains them rigorously and maintains a level of institutional knowledge transfer that tech companies can only dream of.

Why are we surprised that they disproportionately get the better end of every transaction?

<comment><USER3> > _simply transferring wealth from the less sophisticated investors often > teachers' pension funds and factory workers' retirement accounts, to the > more sophisticated investors..._

Exactly. Wall street and investment have wonderful effects -- funneling money towards companies that can use it in amazingly productive ways. It provides an incredibly valuable service.

But the flip side is exactly this, that pension funds, ordinary investors, etc. wind up getting screwed.

I, for one, don't realy see the problem with Wall St. in itself, but rather -- who on earth is allowing the managers of pension funds to "gamble" with their money like this? Why should retirement accounts get invested in anything but government bonds and index funds? Employees get duped because they "trust" their company to take care of their pension, or "trust" their financial advisor to give them good advice.

At heart, I think it boils down to a fundamental misguided notion, prevalent in America at least, that investment is good, that you can grow your money, that you can outwit the stock market -- when the reality is, that for 99% of people, investment is just playing the lottery, and over the long run, Goldman etc. is going to win, because they're smarter than you. Just like, in the long run, the lottery always wins.

<comment><USER4> If you're investing over the long term and can afford to ride out the shocks then historically speaking stocks have always out performed bonds. That's not gambling.

It's not a zero sum game between you & Goldman. In a growing economy everyone can win by investing.

<comment><USER5> While cash securities markets (i.e. stocks and bonds) are not a zero sum game, derivatives markets (i.e. futures, options and all kinds of swaps) are zero or negative sum by definition. Also, derivatives markets are far larger in size [1]. There are always 2 parties to each transaction and one makes the money that the other one loses. The additional transaction fees that go to the banks and various other operations providers make it negative sum.

[1] <http://www.isda.org/statistics/recent.html#2010mid>

Also see:

[http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/03/worldwide- derivatives...](http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/03/worldwide-derivatives- market-estimated-as-big-as-1-2-quadrillion-as-banks-fight-efforts-to-rein-it- in.html)

<comment><USER6> Can we stop quoting the underlying notional size when comparing size to equity markets? If you know how a derivative works, it's well understood that quoting the notional to represent size just doesn't make sense.

To put it simpler, a terminated CDS contract does _not_ mean there is a loss of wealth equal to its notional, whereas a stock price going to zero in the equities market literally means you just lost the complete amount you invested.

Not to sound offensive, but I've heard this comparison way to many times and it just doesn't add up in terms of prices - most swaps, for instance, have their fixed leg in the single digits in relation to their notional.

<comment><USER5> That's certainly true for interest rate swaps, but credit default swaps are actually quite similar to stocks. For example when Lehman filed and the stock went to 0, the CDS settled at 91.375 [1] meaning that the protection seller had to send 91.375% of the notional value to the protection buyer. Yes, in most cases there is no credit event and even in many credit events the impairment to the debt is much less than 90%, but also most stocks don't go to 0. This case is a good example because the maximum market cap of Lehman stock was 60 bln [2], but the CDS market moved 270 bln in the credit event (see [1]).

[1] [http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a...](http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aLkOZnNcDmSQ)

[2] [http://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/09/lehman- bro...](http://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/09/lehman-brothers- collapse.asp)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I worked at Lehman from 2004-2008 in investment banking and on the bond trading floor and I think I have a little more balanced view.

Yes, there are people on wall street that hate their jobs. Yes, there are people obsessed with money. That's easy to point out. But there are also some people that are there because they like working with their friends and making big bets, and getting proven wrong or right. It's actually similar to the culture of being a contrarian that I see in SV. And as to the point where the guy felt shorted by a million dollar bonus, wouldn't you feel shorted if you made the company 10x that in profit on your trades, and all your friends at other firms that made 10x got a bigger check than you? That's human nature, not something specific to wall street, even if it's easy to throw up your hands and say how shocking it is because of the amounts involved.

Anyway, I don't mean to be overly harsh on the article. It's possible my additional time there put some blinders on, and I still have a lot of friends that work on the street (a good percentage of whom actually like their jobs). It was really interesting to get Nick's perspective, and it's especially awesome that it's from someone else who has jumped over to startups from wall street. Just throwing my 2 cents in.

<comment><USER8> > wouldn't you feel shorted if you made the company 10x that in profit on your > trades

That guy didn't make the company all that money entirely on his own. Lehman supplied the capital, they get the bulk of the profit. That's how it works.

If he wants the truly big bucks (as if a million isn't), then he should trade his OWN money. But of course he probably didn't have anywhere close to enough to do so.

<comment><USER2> > That guy didn't make the company all that money entirely on his own. Lehman > supplied the capital, they get the bulk of the profit. That's how it works.

Capital doesn't sit there and make money by itself. The allocation between how much of the profit the bank gets versus the trader is itself a market transaction--if the bank low-balls traders consistently, they'll just go to another bank. If the supply of traders who can do that is low relative to the amount of capital available to invest, bonuses will go up and traders will take a larger allocation.

<comment><USER8> Yes, that's true. In fact, that's true of all employees at all companies (just replace "trader" with "employee" and "bank" with "company").

However, we do not know that this trader was underpaid relative to other traders. All we know is that he was unhappy with his bonus. Once you join the Manhattan rat race, you'll find all sorts of ways to be unhappy with your bonus no matter how big it is and regardless of whether you are paid the same relative to your peers or not. In Manhattan, the sky is the limit as far as apartment prices go, for instance. If you want a place just slightly nicer or in just a slightly more ideal location, after a certain point that might be an extra million right there. There's a culture of making everyone constantly feel poor, especially after a transition in the 1900s where it became hip to live in the city rather than out of the city.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I cringed when I read this headline on HN because I too worked for Lehman between 2006 and 2008. I felt the same way Nick did even around the same time (wanting to go back to making "real things"). However, lately I feel like I have come back somewhat full-circle. Many of the issues he complains about is rampant in almost of every industry.

For example, Groupon was basically taking advantage of unsophisticated small businesses. How much brain power in SV is devoted to tricking people to click on ads, "covert users" or become addicted to Zynga-style games? How many things are sold only because that company has the strongest name-brand even though better versions exist? Could you have sold the product for less than the customer paid and still make a profit?

You are almost always taking advantage of a customer in some ways but still providing a service or product that the customer ultimately wants. WS is just easy to pick on because they are the most blatant about this practice while at the same time protected by the government.

<comment><USER2> Bingo! All the interesting, financially-remunerative jobs these days for ambitious young people are bullshit. Not in the sense of not creating value (because I think there is value created in these industries), but because they are all open to criticism of this sort in one way or another.

Are you a rocket scientist? You probably make your money directly or indirectly from the military industrial complex. Are you a doctor? You'd make much less money if the AMA didn't artificially restrict the supply of doctors. Are you working in Silicon Valley? Your product is either based on ads, or is a side-project of some company that makes all its money on ads (e.g. Google, vis-a-vis Glass or self-driving cars).

It's not worth worrying about this shit. Do something you find interesting if not morally fulfilling, and try to make a lot of money doing it because we live in a country where your kids can't see a doctor unless you can write the checks.

<comment><USER10> Why do people get paid six figures right out of school?

Easy, the people hiring them think they'll make them a lot more money than that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I worked at Lehman for 4+ years (left in 2008) and while I didn't feel so negative about work (I was more senior than the OP) I definitely was in a spot where I knew that if I kept at it for another 10-20 years -- no matter how much money I made -- I would feel like I wasted my time.

I went back to tech, and now I have a job where I'm still well paid by any reasonable standard, and I really enjoy what I work on and who I work with. Given how much of our lives we spend at work and thinking about work, it can be a mistake to overvalue compensation as an element in our career decisions.

<comment><USER12> I'm always curious when I hear things like "Lehman for 4+ years" because, based on the numbers thrown around on HN and blogs like this, it seems likely you could have a net worth over a million dollars.

While not the "F You" money many here dream of, it still seems like a few years on wall street would give you a nest egg that would make it easy to live comfortably on any other salary (whether that's tech or teaching or bartending).

Do many of wall streeters who left after 5ish years do that? Or do most of them blow all their money? I think being under 30, a millionaire and having $PRESTIGIOUS_FIRM on your resume would be a pretty good setup, even if the work itself sucked.

<comment><USER11> That's not generally how it seems to work. For junior bankers under 30 (analysts and associates) you're making good money, but not such great money that you're putting away hundreds of thousands of dollars a year after your expenses and taxes. I can't recall ever hearing of someone saying, "I've worked 5 years, I've saved $500K, but instead of making $500K next year, I'm going to retire."

Also, the lifestyle (and partner, and kids) that you end up with while making banker money means that $1M is not remotely "quitting money", because it won't last long enough. I'd guess most folks would talk about $25M or $50M min for that in the industry, and you're not saving that anywhere below MD. Bankers have banker wives, banker mortgages, and their kids have banker tuitions. (One of my bosses had an $8M mortgage on a $12M home. That's ~$30K in mortgage payments a month... no way he could quit) I'm not saying anyone should feel bad for them, just the whole idea of "save up $1M and quit" doesn't make any sense in reality.

Finally, there's a lot of pride/ego/image folks have in their job and their job title, for better or worse. Even if it ruins their life. I didn't love being a banker, but I can't deny it's not fun telling folks you're an investment banker.

(Also, it's worth pointing out that people don't go work 100 hour weeks for years on end just so they can quit with $1M. They're doing it to have $10M or $100M.)

<comment><USER12> I absolutely understand that $1M doesn't seem like much while on wall street, as I said in my original comment it's not early retirement / "F You" money. For the purely money-driven clearly they keep working and living the lifestyle.

But for the people who do leave, as you did, and the blog author, and presumably the others considering which foul acts are better than going to work each day, I have to think their lives are still on a much easier trajectory. If you have $500k and hate your life, you can easily take a year off to figure out a new plan, go to grad school without worrying about cost or lost wages, start a company, etc. If you hate your job as a dishwasher you probably don't have a lot of options, but as a wall streeter, it seems like you should be able to walk away at any point and still be better off than 95% of Americans.

I guess I just wonder how many people do take that opportunity. $500k makes you a BSD in most of the US, but if you've only ever known prep school, ivy league then wall street, I suspect the idea of living and working elsewhere sounds repugnant.

<comment><USER11> Yes, but you're forgetting that this is a business where pretty much the _only_ reason you're there and successful is because you're either enormously ego or money driven. Otherwise you just wouldn't last. Lots of people don't last very long regardless.

Someone who will work 100+ hours a week -- despite being able to make $200K at a regular 40 hour a week job -- is not the kind of person who "takes a break" because they have a little cushion in the bank. These are incredibly hard core people who spend every minute of their day figuring out how to be just a little bit more successful than they are right now. Their goals are to make millions _per year_.

I've worked with people who were worth more than $2B and up and would pretty much cut your heart out with a spoon if it meant an extra $100 in their pocket. As another banker pointed out, that's part of why they're worth $2B, and we're not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have a strange sense of sadness for my friends who are "stuck" on Wall Street. Strange because it's weird to feel sad for someone making $250k+ per year, but I've heard their first hand accounts of how much they hate their jobs. If you're the type of person who can step back from the ego-driven culture of investment banking I feel like everyone reaches the same meta- conclusions that Nick did. It's just unbelievably hard for them to step away from the money.

I mean, I'd like to think I would be able to make that choice and that purpose and meaning would ultimately trump a large paycheck. But nobody's putting $250k+ in my pocket so it's genuinely hard to say.

Kudos to Nick for leaving. It took guts.

<comment><USER14> Step back from the ego-driven culture of investment banking, into the ego- driven culture of startups. Hmm...

<comment><USER15> ding!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "... of my class of 1400 graduates from Yale, forty percent took jobs in finance."

This reminds me of an interview with the President of Iceland, where they let their megabanks fail.

Speaking of the downside of having a huge banking sector, he said "... since then you have seen a great growth period in the Icelandic IT sector, the high- tech sector, the manufacturing sector, because they could suddenly get the engineers, the mathematicians, the computer scientists."

Really interesting interview. [http://www.businessinsider.com/olafur-ragnur- grimsson-icelan...](http://www.businessinsider.com/olafur-ragnur-grimsson- iceland-2012-4)

</comment><comment><USER17> I was at Lehman in 2007-08 and saw first-hand the firm implode. But what interests me was this statement:

"I would spend days attempting to understand the intrinsic value on structured bonds collateralized with physical jet engines or commercial real-estate scattered across various regions of the country."

Everybody bangs on about how complicated and opaque products like derivatives and asset-backed securities are... yet the most complex product of all no one bats an eyelid at: the share (or stock). The pay-off of a derivative can be modelled by a mathematical formula (and if not a closed-form solution than via a Monte Carlo distribution) but the pay-off of a stock - that's quite different. Modelling future company cash flows is not trivial.

</comment><comment><USER18> The submitted URL is to the front page of the blog. The URL for the individual post is <http://nickchirls.com/my-time-at-lehman>

</comment><comment><USER19> _The experience reminded me of one as a child when I unfairly sold some worthless items to neighbors at a stoop sale in front of our house in Brooklyn. When my parents found out that night, they made me go from home to home on our block returning the money._

I think I like his parents :-)

<comment><USER20> Indeed, they're quite wonderful and I'm very lucky :-)

<comment><USER19> :-)

I remember living in Wood Green, a vaguely rough area of London, where people put the sofas they no longer wanted out in the front garden in case someone else did.

Anyway, we were getting rid of an Ikea box-case-thing, and stuck it outside, and a kid of say 11 asked if he could have it, and took it off on a toy truck.

He came back and pushed a card through the door saying thank you (it would be "just right to keep all my toys in"). I am pretty sure his mum made him write it, (long story) but we kept that card in the back of various drawers through maybe two house moves because it was an unexpected example of politeness and parental guidance.

One of the crazy things that social media might sort out one day is that i would strongly consider recommending that kid for a job, or university, simply on the strength of that one act. No idea who or where he is of course but there we go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I too joined Lehman as a graduate in 2007. My experience was different; I was based in the London office and was in a back-office role (IT Infrastructure). I also worked there as an intern in 2005-2006 (or "Industrial Placement" in Lehman-speak).

I have to say I enjoyed my time there. I primarily worked as a developer in a non-developer team, but was continually encouraged by management to pursue this work. This led to work with development teams in other regions, which really helped expand my horizons.

When I started making money from my website (independent of Lehman and unrelated to finance) and wanted to start it as a business, I had to approach legal and my division's MD for approval. They were completely supportive and again encouraged this work.

The downfall of Lehman was a sad but strangely exciting time for me. I remember staying up all night on September 14th watching the number of remote access sessions running, and suspected those users were doing the same as me and watching Bloomberg for an announcement. The following days and weeks saw a lot of interesting events take place, particularly from an infrastructure point of view. Barclays and Nomura (who bought different regions of the bank a few weeks apart) both rushed to connect their infrastructure to Lehman's, which resulted in some curious situations I'm still reluctant to mention publicly!

The most interesting part of it was the transition to Nomura for me. I stayed on there until mid-2010. It was a very different environment to Lehman. Our small team was given vastly expanded responsibilities to build out key services and infrastructure lost during the bankruptcy, and our team truly operated like a startup for about 9 months. We toiled tirelessly with teams in other regions to get services online before deadlines, and got a real sense of achievement out of it.

As things at the day-job settled down, my website became a startup and it was time to join that full time. Again, management was very supportive (incidentally the same management as at Lehman).

I look back on my time at Lehman/Nomura with fondness and truly believe my time there gave me experience I couldn't have received anywhere else.

</comment><comment><USER22> Not to be too self-promotional, but this is literally the problem we're solving at Addepar.

15 years ago the power shifted from banks to hedge funds, and then in 2008 it started shifting to investors. But they still don't have the tools to understand what's going on.

If you're interested in solving problems like this in an engineering-led company, please email me. I'd love to talk.

<comment><USER23> What are your plans to deal with this?

<comment><USER22> There's a whole lot we don't discuss on the website, which is focused towards current target customers of the tool we've built vs. our broader goals to bring transparency to the financial world.

First we've built a (we've been told) very powerful tool to quickly group, filter, sort, and compute standard financial metrics on a portfolio. Importantly, we don't care where you own your securities. It can be holdings from financial accounts, operating companies, homes, art, private options, manually brokered CDSs, whatever. Shockingly, our customers like to pay us a fair amount of money for this tool alone!

On the back end this wasn't easy. We have to normalize the incredibly varied (and often inaccurate) information from banks, third party data providers, excel spreadsheets and other systems. Reconciliation, all day.

Second, if facebook has a friend graph, we're creating the financial graph by aggregating ownership across all sources for our customers to analyze and report on.

At a high level, the financial world (shockingly) lacks a standardized way of communicating information about ownership and transactions. There are complex and specific protocols like SWIFT and FIX, but no standard way of saying "this is what I own, this is what I used to own, this is how it's changed, etc." Banks each make them up with hundreds of unique data formats, often sent with COBOL-style headers. It's 30 year old technology.

Long term, we'd like to open this open both as a data format for representing financial data and as a set of APIs for building tools to interact with financial data.

To use another analogy, if you wanted to make a phone game in 2004, you had to build a phone. Then the iPhone came out. If you want to make a program to analyze portfolio risk in 2013, you need to build out relationships with an entire network of banks, data providers, and customers. We want to be the "app store" for those tools.

There are a million other ways to make a platform like this valuable, but I'll save some of the juicier (and more strategic) ones for personal conversations if you're interested :)

<comment><USER23> Always interested in meeting smart people like you. Shoot me an email. I'm very into securities analysis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Investment bankers make money because they are allowed to borrow enormous sums of money (leverage) to invest. In other words, they are allowed to gamble with the money of others with very little consequences. There is no other industry where a company would be allowed to take on that much debt. It's like the old joke: How do you make a million dollars? Start with _n_ million dollars! Even if you do make money in finance, your contribution to shareholders is probably a lot less than it would be in another line of work. Here [1] is an excellent write up about it.

In 2008, Barclays had over 43 times as much assets as they had equity (leverage ratio) while GlaxoSmithKline had a leverage ratio of 5. In 2011, GSK had a return on assets (money made from assets at its disposal) of 15%. Barclays had a ROA of 0.25%. GSK had a return on equity (ROE) of 67.2%, while Barclays had a ROE of 6.1%. In the same year, Barclays Capital (investment bank part of Barclays PLC) had a ROE of 10.3%, but had a leverage ratio of _55_ and a ROA of just 0.18%. If you paid Barclays Capital employees the same salary as GSK employees, the pre-tax profits of BarCap would have doubled. _That_ is why bankers pay should be limited — their ROE would be better although their leverage ratios are still way too high.

TL;DR version: If you want to work in a field where you generate real value instead of gambling with someone else's money, find a job where you _make_ things. The world doesn't need more inappropriate math models of finance (no, the market is not always rational and large volatility is more common than you think) — it needs real research.

[1] [http://www.moneyweek.com/news-and- charts/economics/uk/banker...](http://www.moneyweek.com/news-and- charts/economics/uk/bankers-dont-have-talent-just-lots-of-borrowed- money-57728)

<comment><USER25> I don't know the numbers but I'm not sure using 2008 data gives a fair picture. If the ROA of Barclays would have been consistently so much lower than that of GSK, the capital would simply gradually move to GSK. Banks are not _allowed_ to borrow money, their creditors _want_ to lend them money. (Presumably because TBTF lending is perceived to be a safer business than risky development of pharmaceuticals.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> some will read this and think: "disgusting. thanks for the honest appraisal of what it's like... and it's disgusting."

Others will read this and think: "holy crap man, the people that are screwed by the company still make just under a million! I totally want to work on wall street. I'll be rich"

It's a jungle out there

<comment><USER27> When Michael Lewis wrote Liar's Poker he was shocked over the number of people who contacted him, asking for advice on how to get into investment banking.

<comment><USER28> I read Liar's Poker, and the above article.

I probably wouldn't like the environment at such bank. But yet, making U$ 20.000 a year, a million dollars is the stuff of dreams - 50 years at my current salary.

The freaking lottery here in Uruguay doesn't give a million dollars !! (the current Cinco de Oro pool is U$ 125.000)

PD: Yes, I'm quitting as soon as I get something else that pays the bills. I neglected to stay up to date in tech and am struggling to get a good job on the open market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "When you'd rather have someone shit on your face than go to work, it's probably time to leave." sums up the article.

</comment><comment><USER30> I remember a friend who was telling me that only reason this wall street thing works is because there are enough not-well-informed people who will continue to feed money into the market for other well informed people to profit from. It is about people being in a market that they know very little about in a hope of making some riches.

</comment><comment><USER31> Great article. I had similar thoughts when I quite my Investment Banking career.

What I was surprised by in the bank is how many people think that the money make other people respsect them. They forget though, that most billionaires are respected for the things they created, not money they made. Money is just the by-product.

</comment><comment><USER32> "In what possible reality can someone receive a million dollars and feel as though they got fucked?"

It's _all_ relative. I've got friends living in $500k homes, and they still feel the need to keep up with the neighbors, at great expense. Keeping up with the Joneses is a sure way to be perpetually on edge.

But more to the point, a person in a company like that might get $1m, but knows the people around them got more for doing less, because they had a better boss, or knew someone who knew someone. I don't think the dollar amount specifically was what pissed that person off as much as knowing how much of a political game the whole thing is.

</comment><comment><USER33> "In what possible reality can someone receive a million dollars and feel as though they got fucked?"

The reality where if you play for the Yankees you do not care if you beat the Jamestown Little League Allstars.

</comment><comment><USER34> Not exactly related, but nonetheless interesting:

A blog post by Doc Faustroll (@faustroll on Twitter) on the strain of being evil, including reference to Dick Fuld of Lehman

"Fuld at least had something of the physiognomy of the raptor, of the beast of prey, a kind of last remnant of aggressive character."

[http://congruenz.wordpress.com/2010/10/27/the-strain-of- bein...](http://congruenz.wordpress.com/2010/10/27/the-strain-of-being-evil/)

On my wall hangs a Japanese carving

The mask of an evil demon, smeared with opulent gold

In sympathy I see –

Bulging veins on the forehead, expressing

the strain it is to be evil.

-Bertolt Brecht

</comment><comment><USER35> "When you'd rather have someone shit on your face than go to work, it's probably time to leave." What's unfortunate is that money is capable of convincing people to stay around in situations where they may even come close to such a state of mind.

While I'd like to say that I'd leave well before, everybody has a price, and it sounds like Wall Street is willing to pay it.

</comment><comment><USER36> The government needs them, who else is going to buy the bonds issued by these Governments. For example, in India , only 19(as of Jan 12) fat ass financial companies are authorized to buy Indian Government bonds at primary market, and if few of them had to collapse, who would buy it (less competition -> less demand -> low value)

</comment><comment><USER37> _> What this bizarre reality really meant is that I couldn't be myself._

Ugh.

In my experience, this is one of the most painful situations to be in (I've been in one myself, obviously). Pretending like you're someone who you're not (or worse yet, _feeling_ that you have to dance this dance) is unexpectedly draining and demoralizing.

</comment><comment><USER38> This reads a bit like a hyper-condensed version of Liar's Poker [1].

1: <http://www.amazon.com/dp/039333869X>

</comment><comment><USER39> So awful, being a trader. It seems like they destroy themselves to destroy others.

</comment><comment><USER40> fascinating writeup

</comment><comment><USER41> zero-sum all the things.

</comment><comment><USER42> Welcome to modern day capitalism in America.</comment>