Ask HN: Which Developer Boot Camps Are Most Respected? - <AUTHOR> I am considering applying to a developer boot camp in the SF Bay Area. They all tout that an impressive percentage of their alumni are hired within a few months. But I want to hear from hiring managers directly: Are there boot camps that you take more seriously than others? Have you hired anyone out of these camps and if so, how did they do? <comment><USER2> I attended a bootcamp 1.5 years ago and have been working as a full stack dev for almost a year. My firm has hired a few bootcamp grads who have all done well.

However, I would only recommend HackReactor and App Academy in San Francisco as those are the bootcamps I've seen grads consistently do well in.

I find that the placement stats are a bit bs at bootcamps since they are unaudited but I have a strong confidence based on my network that both Hack Reactor and App Academy place 75% of their grads within 6 months into 6 figure jobs.

Happy to answer any questions.

</comment><comment><USER3> Bootcamp grad here. Honestly, I don't think it really matters what bootcamp you go to. I think the defining factor for getting a job depends on what you did before the bootcamp. If you're a college dropout (like me) don't even think about it. However, if you've had a successful career in your field and want to make a switch, you should have no issue getting a job.

As far as the most respected bootcamps, based on who I've talked to I would say App Academy, Hack Reactor.

<comment><USER4> Do you mean had a successful career in a non-tech field and making the switch?

<comment><USER3> Yes, that's correct. My cohort had a former music teacher go straight to a front-end role at Apple. We also have graduates working at Salesforce, Coursera, a16z, and others - to my knowledge none of these people had prior tech experience.

My running theory is that companies know what they're getting into with a bootcamp grad, and what is important to them is that the candidate is a quick learner, hard working, and motivated. Someone unproven like a college dropout, or someone who has worked retail for the past few years will have a much harder time proving that.

<comment><USER4> Interesting. What would you say is the average age of these people? Would you say a 31 year old would be on the "older" side comparably?

<comment><USER5> Hack Reactor grad here. I was 24 when I went through the program, and was the second youngest person. You'd feel right at home being 31.

<comment><USER4> I'm more concerned with job outcomes and long term career prospects than the course itself though.

<comment><USER3> If you are concerned with outcomes I would strongly recommend not going to HR or an affiliated school. There has been internal conflict about the declining quality of cohorts, and I believe the 97% hiring statistic is no longer accurate. I went to a HR affiliate and have been unemployed for the past five months since I have graduated.

I can't comment on App Academy because I have not taken their course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've worked with 2 graduates from Dev Bootcamp who contributed a lot on the team. (~5-7 developers total) One of them came on as an intern (originally we weren't going to take him on, but we re-interviewed him. The second time around, he really prepared for the interview) and we converted him to fulltime. Another of our team members went to Dev Bootcamp later and recently landed a position as a backend dev.

Also worked with a HackReactor grad who did some good work on web and embedded stuff (which he learned on the job). One of the common traits of these bootcamp grads is that they were willing to build stuff and took time to learn (ask a lot of questions).

I think DBC also has hiring coaches and a good community for career help. Also, I think DBC alums often go back and mentor new developers in the program, which is nice.

</comment><comment><USER7> I would recommend hack reactor as I have consistently heard good things about the quality of training from their grads.

my ex-company hired 1 junior engineer from hack reactor and she has since then gone on and accomplished good things at other companies. And 2 of my ex coworkers transitioned into dev roles after going through hack reactor as well. They have all had positive experiences.

I have also heard good things about hackbrite if you are eligible. One of my ex-coworkers is an now instructor there and she cares passionately about cs education.

Source: I used to work in edtech in the valley so I have relationships or heard 1st hand accounts about these boot camps.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's mixed, see here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8844848](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8844848)

If you're looking for a job, I'd want to know way more than percentages. Companies, positions, salaries, etc.

I do recruiting and have seen a number of boot camp grads, and their first job is usually an (unpaid?) internship. Boot camps are at most 6 months of study (often compressed to 3). That's not a lot, compared to BS or MS in CS. You may want to look at remote masters programs, like Georgia Tech's.

<comment><USER9> If you are seeing a lot of unpaid internships from boot camps that is a very negative sign about said boot camps. In our industry (in the US) it is _very_ hard to find a situation where an unpaid internship is not a labor violation.

A boot camp that makes large use of them would be a gigantic red flag to me, both as a hirer and as a potential student.

<comment><USER8> That's a good point. For those unfamiliar, see:

[https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.htm](https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.htm)

Essentially, the intern has to be a burden to your organization. Granted, I've had coworkers who would qualify for that...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> All boot camps graduate strong students and all boot camps graduate weak students.

Using the name of a boot camp as the basis for judging the abilities of a student is a fool's errand.

Recruiters who do this are making a serious mistake. I say this as somebody who has interacted with hundreds of boot camp graduates across multiple boot camps. There is such a wide range of abilities that move through every boot camp that you really cannot generalize about the talents of each student.

<comment><USER4> would you say there's a consistent theme amongst the strong ones? i.e., they were previously programmers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> As someone with their BS and working on their MS are boot camps actually worth it or am I going to spending a lot of time learning basics.

<comment><USER7> Outside of hacker school (now recourse in NYC), I would recommend against attending a boot camp if you have received a quality CS education from you undergrad years.

Specifically, going to a boot camp is both a time (3-4 months) and a $$$ (20k - 30k) commitment. They will teach you the tools of the trade well, e.g tools and frameworks and will make sure you come out with a certain level of knowledge that fill most junior level roles.

However, if you have a bs computer science degree, you probably won't get much value of of these boot camps other than learning the tools of the trade, which are things that you can pick up on your own since you have a solid cs foundation.

However, it's not a bad option if you have both the time and the money, and feel that the commitment of a boot camp will be beneficial to you.

bur the quality of these boot camp varies and I would only recommend going to the highly recommended one, eg hack reactor, hack brite, app academy, and recurse.

<comment><USER12> I agree that Recourse has a good reputation. For someone with a graduate CS degree and in the Bay area, what would be your recommendation?

<comment><USER7> Personally, I wouldn't recommend that you attend a bootcamp if you already have a graduate CS degree because the cost (time and money) isn't worth the benefits (an entry level developer job, which you can probably obtain on your own given your credentials).

For you specifically, the only things that you'll get of a bootcamp are probably: 1) An expedited and structured learning process 2) Mentorship and peer support 3) Introduction to startups in the valley looking to hire entry level, junior developers

However, if you feel compelled and really want to attend a bootcamp in the valley, I have heard good things about: Hackreactor and Hackbright for web- development App Academy for mobile development Insight Data Science and ZipFian for data science

Hope that helps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Bootcamps have become more about cash and I know quite a few that are in trouble financially. Though they've gotten postive reviews lately it seems they will eventually be viewed in the same vein as Online degrees.</comment>


Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America's Biggest Companies - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/15/business/pregnancy-discrimination.html <comment><USER2> Personally experienced it. Wife worked at Google, had always positive performance reviews. Come pregnancy time she informed her manager, 3 days later they put her on a performance improvement plan. It didn't take long for them to realize they were making a big mistake, risking an expensive lawsuit so they let it go and let her have her paid 12 month leave. After returning she got the choice to do the PIP or take severance and leave. We had twins so she wasn't going back to work anyway but the fact that they tried left us with a bad taste.

EDIT: Let's call the company by name indeed.

<comment><USER3> My wife interviewed at Google and was asked how she'd be able to meet the requirements of the job while taking care of young children; the discrimination persists even after pregnancy.

<comment><USER4> There's something that has always nagged at me in these discussions, and I've always been somewhat afraid to bring it up lest I misconstrue, but I want to try and figure this out.

What's a state of affairs we can reach such that people don't become preemptively discriminatory for lack of being able to examine factors that would impact workplace performance? We agree, societally, that we shouldn't discriminate against parents. However, we don't live in a world where a business is spared the cost incurred by that. That's just not the pragmatic reality of employment in the US at this time, and my fear is that if unable to ask "do you have a good track record or gameplan for keeping up with the unique obligations of childbearing" we'll err on the side of paranoia in hiring, and the discrimination will occur in seeking to AVOID potential conflict or discrimination.

A govt stipend was one way I could see this, in that the business doesn't have to bear the cost and can offload work. I'd still be concerned that a business might be afraid about context switching/onboarding, but it's a step forward. Unfortunately, I don't even see that becoming a reality in a country where paternity leave is still the exception and not the rule.

There almost seems to be a "psychological game theory" question lodged in there, apologies if I was rambly in stating it.

<comment><USER5> > However, we don't live in a world where a business is spared the cost > incurred by that.

We also live in a world where the stock market ceases to exist if there isn't a new generation of consumers and workers. (Facebook's stock price is predicated on the idea that 1 years from now there will still be young people to advertise to.) Children create internalized costs (to parents, to businesses that hire parents), but large positive externalities.

We address that situation by categorically prohibiting discrimintion. Yes, businesses aren't spared the costs of dealing with peoples' parental obligations. But it doesn't matter because that is a cost all businesses have to accommodate (just like the cost of providing for bathroom breaks and lunch breaks and other accommodations for human needs).

<comment><USER6> So here's a concrete example of the types of problems existencebox is highlighting:

My sister was laid off from her employer of 8 years 3 months after her first child was born. She was a top performer, and they'd been throwing raises and bonuses at her before she got pregnant. Over the same year or so (there were 3-4 rounds of layoffs), _every single_ pregnant woman or mother with kids under 2 that she knew at the company was also laid off.

I mention this story, and people ask me "Is that even legal?"

And my response is "Of course it's not, but if you've got a 3 month old newborn at home, have just been laid off, and are trying to conserve cash so you don't go bankrupt before getting another job (which, BTW, you will never get if you sue your former employer), are you really going to sue them? Where will you find the money? Where will you find the lawyer? Where will you find the _time_?"

And then even if you do, they are going to trot out a multimillion-$ defense team who will argue that they laid off 40% of the company, they sold off a business division, the price of oil was down 2/3 from its peak, and all of the layoffs were _necessary_ for the survival of the company. All of which might or might not be true. Look at just a few women's story and it's pretty clear they're breaking the law, but factor in macroeconomic concerns and you can muddy in the waters just enough that they might win.

That's the problem. "It's illegal" does not automatically mean that you can't get away with it. In fact, if you're wealthy and pick the right targets, you can get away with a damn lot of things that are illegal.

<comment><USER7> It is free to file a discrimination complaint with the EEOC if you are in the US. They will investigate your claims and attempt to settle them with your employer. If your employer is unwilling to settle they can and do often sue on your behalf to ensure an equitable outcome. Additionally the Department of Labor will investigate your claims and can bring enforcement actions on your behalf. Additionally pregnancy is considered disability therefore you can also lodge an ADA complaint with the DOJ who will investigate your claims and bring enforcement actions on your behalf.

To say you have no options is incorrect. Bona fide violations of law are routinely handled by these agencies at no cost to the victim and are very often successful.

[https://www.eeoc.gov/federal/fed_employees/filing_complaint....](https://www.eeoc.gov/federal/fed_employees/filing_complaint.cfm)

[https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/wysk/conciliation_litigat...](https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/wysk/conciliation_litigation.cfm)

[https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/whd/fmla/13.aspx](https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/whd/fmla/13.aspx)

Edit: ADA to DOJ

[https://www.ada.gov/filing_complaint.htm](https://www.ada.gov/filing_complaint.htm)

<comment><USER8> If you work in an incestuous industry like tech, you will be blacklisted in many circles for going down this path.

<comment><USER7> Those situations can often be solved in much the same way. If someone is giving out malicious references due to an enforcement action, you report it to the EEOC or other agencies. That is also a violation and can result in further action on your behalf. Many states have statutes on the books against blacklisting and you may be able to engage the state DOL or other agencies to help you. These agencies have the full weight of the federal or state government behind them and are not in the habit of losing enforcement actions.

<comment><USER9> This is not likely to be the case. It is not so easy to pursue a retaliation complaint. I suggest you look at the case law history here. America is not France where the courts almost always side with employees. It's just the opposite. There's a very high bar for retaliation complaints and it's getting higher all the time [1]. These days you basically need a _confession_ from your employer to establish that the retaliation was the "determinative factor."

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/25/business/supreme-court- ra...](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/25/business/supreme-court-raises-bar- to-prove-job-discrimination.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This area is really tough. I feel terrible for women who experience this bias, but the solution is not nearly as obvious as with race/gender/age/religious/etc discrimination. In those cases the answer is: stop being biased.

Let's say you're a small company and you can really only afford to have <10 people on your payroll. Let's say you're considering two candidates of exactly equal skills and age: a 28yo man and a 28yo woman.

Even if they both plan to have 2 kids in the next 4 years, it's a biological reality that it will take the woman away from work for longer. She has the 9 months of pregnancy where she may be tired or uncomfortable, then the actual delivery, then recovery, and then often a period of breast feeding. The man could be father of the century but there are certain burdens that fall on women because of their sex.

So while I'd like to force the startup to make the decision without considering this factor, is that always reasonable?

And before the downvotes come: I am really on the side of pregnant women here. I want them to get generous leave without any effect on their careers. But I am questioning if that is always possible.

<comment><USER11> It actually isn't a biological reality that the woman is away from work for longer. What's actually happening is that the man isn't expected to be away as long as the woman, so he doesn't take as much leave. It's a form of discrimination to make it the woman's problem because she's the one laid up in the hospital.

Just because women are bearing the physical burden of the pregnancy, it doesn't mean it's solely their burden. We're making the choice that it should be their burden. We could just as easily provide subsidies and insurance to companies to cover family leave. If we value childbirth as a society, then we should put our money where our mouth is and actually pay for it somehow.

<comment><USER12> How can you say this with a straight face?! It's a _fact_ that (some) women _need_ to stay off work (bed-ridden before birth, in hospital after birth). It's also a _fact_ that men don't _need_ to.

Obviously, men don't _need_ to work and women don't _need_ to take care of the kids (above and beyond what's biologically required of them), but (1) on average, outcomes will be influenced by underlying biological reality, and (2) it's a fantasy thinking that people _can_ take time off work - e.g. a poor family with a newborn, you really think that any parent will take off more time than they absolutely _need_ to, biologically?

Finally (3) yeah there are possible social levers we can use to counter this biological reality and enforce equality of outcomes, but ultimately, we need to decide what we want - why is women working more better than women spending more time with the children? Personally, I look up to Netherlands, one of the happiest countries on Earth, where many women work just part-time.

<comment><USER13> > How can you say this with a straight face?! It's a fact that (some) women > need to stay off work (bed-ridden before birth, in hospital after birth). > It's also a fact that men don't need to.

You're referring to a timescale of days which a woman will likely need to spend in hospital. I believe jschwartzi is referring to the weeks/months of maternity/paternity leave following the initial birth. There isn't a hard biological reason not to evenly share the load after the immediate medical concerns are completed.

<comment><USER14> My mother was bed-bound for several months during pregnancy. It's more common than you think.

<comment><USER15> What you're describing is a special medical scenario, not a universal burden shared by all women. Health problems can disable people of any gender.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> One of the solutions to this is matching paternity leave.

If I gave you the choice of two employees, one of whom would take 12 weeks of paid leave and one who would take 2 weeks of paid leave, which would you choose?

If you offered both sexes 12 weeks of paid leave, you wouldn't have to make this decision.

<comment><USER17> You'd have to make it mandatory leave. The social pressure is still tilted towards women as care givers and men as providers so more men will end up not using the leave. If it becomes mandatory then it's just a baked in rising to every employee, _and_ will probably do better for society to have both parents get time with their children.

I believe some European states solve this by having the state cover ~60% of your wage while on leave so that it's not a giant burden for companies

<comment><USER18> _You 'd have to make it mandatory leave._

How do you accomplish that without violating the right to privacy? If a man keeps coming into work and his partner is pregnant, nobody has to know.

<comment><USER19> A woman doesn't have that possibility, so enabling that also encourages discrimination.

<comment><USER18> I'm aware of that. This is a case where one right is in conflict with another. There's no good answer. One group of people is going to lose and another is going to win.

The disadvantage women have is that they can't hide a pregnancy forever. Men can go to extreme lengths to hide their relationships. Although rare, it is not unheard of for a man to have two families at the same time, each one hidden from the other, and maintain this state of affairs for years before getting caught (otherwise we'd never hear about it).

<comment><USER20> Society doesn't need to and doesn't have any duty make this kind of arrangement easier to maintain.

Also multiple marriages are illegal in Western countries.

<comment><USER18> The point about multiple hidden families was an example of the lengths men can go to in order to hide their relationships, not an endorsement of the practice.

The fact is, an employer has no right to know what, if any, relationships the employee has, let alone the pregnancy status of them.

The fact that employers discriminate against pregnant employees is the problem we should be addressing directly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's not just women that experience discrimination. When my wife was pregnant and I let our CEO and co-founder know (small company, < 15 people) they began covertly looking for a replacement for me knowing I would take some time off work for her birth.

Not long after letting them know about the pregnancy/birth, I found a suspicious/hidden hiring post from the CEO for a position that mirrored mine although we were "not hiring".

Within the next month or two I had a few suspicious interactions with the cofounder over things he'd like to see "improved" within my work. Which was complete bullshit. The guy didn't believe in version control, managed tasks in a Google Doc and didn't like how I used branches for feature development (why don't you just commit to master?). Trust me when I say his list of issues were bullshit (not worth going into all of them, though they may be funny as hell to hear). His improvements/concerns carried no weight and were obviously a front for something else.

The CEO became more and more aggressive with me over things that were outside of my job/position/role. He would go off the handle over them and eventually I called him out on it. He lost his shit and basically "fired" me. I won't go into details regarding what happened next, but lets just say I made out very well :)

Moral of the story, it's not just women that get discriminated against. If you're a father to be, be careful who you let know and how you handle it. Keep a record of everything including the timeline of events, it can come in handy ;)

<comment><USER22> > It's not just women that experience discrimination

> Moral of the story, it's not just women that get discriminated against. If > you're a father to be, be careful who you let know and how you handle it.

I have heard so many stories along these same lines, I think it's just accepted as normal in the industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wonder if this discrimination is exacerbated in silicon valley where job tenures are so short and perks are so good. If on average, you keep employees for two years and offer 6-12 month parental leave, then an employee who uses it gets paid for two years while actively working for 12-18 months. That's 30-100% higher cost to you the employer per month of active output from the employee. The shorter the tenures and the longer the leave, the higher this extra cost.

As a society, it seems like a no brainer to want to allow new parents to spend lots of time with their kids, but it does incur a way higher cost to the employer, many of whom can't afford to pay employees 30-100% more. The most immediate answer seems to be to make society pay and not the employer. Something like a government funded regional cost-of-living adjusted stipend, or a capped wage matching?

<comment><USER24> I just switched jobs in San Francisco, and part of my search was parental leave. I did not see any companies in the 6-12 month paid parental leave range.

6-20 weeks is the range I saw. Twitter at 20, Square (and I think Facebook) at 16, Google at 12, and most at 6.

I'm totally onboard with it being government funded instead of employer funded. I think tying it to salary (and what people pay in) makes sense, as many people are less likely to take it if it's significantly under their normal income.

<comment><USER25> Netflix gives 12 months for maternity/paternity.

<comment><USER24> Thanks! I didn't check them out because I wasn't interested in leaving the city (and only included FB because I'd heard theirs was good).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Being anti discrimination started with not discriminating people for things they can't control. Race, gender, etc.

Now we're moving into territory of not discriminating against _optional_ things people _choose_ (having children).

This is a very significant change, IMO. I wonder how far it can be taken.

I think there's a fair argument that since pregnancy only affects women then it counts as gender discrimination. However, if that line of thinking was applied everywhere then nearly everything would be sexist because few things affect men and women exactly 50/50\. So in and of itself, that reason cannot fully explain it.

<comment><USER27> The phenomenon you describe is not new. Discrimination law differs by jurisdiction, but there are various protected classes that may be seen as " _optional_ things people _choose_ ". People will not agree on precisely which such classes truly reflect choice, but some examples may include religion, familial/marital status (and related), political activity/affiliation (and related), pregnancy (and related), military/veteran status, matriculation/student status, place of residence/business, whistleblowing ("anti-retaliation"), source of income, smoking, and participation in lawful activities during non-work hours. (Some people believe even more class membership reflects choice; indeed, this is often a factor in their reasoning about whether the classes should be protected.)

Some of these classes are protected in the United States as of the Civil rights acts of 1964 and 1968, as well as other federal laws from 1974 and 1978. (The protection of different religions is, of course, a founding principle of the United States. However, many people do not believe religion is a choice.)

The following webpage was helpful in assembling this list and includes a few amusing items such as membership in the Communist party (not protected in Nebraska) as well as having a degree in theology (protected in Oregon): [http://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and- employment/discrimina...](http://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and- employment/discrimination-employment.aspx)

<comment><USER26> This is a good comment.

I'm less concerned with the law and more curiou what people actually think about those various types of discrimination, and why. Its a fascinating moral question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> To play devil's advocate - a personal anecdote: in a previous job, a newly hired manager announced she was pregnant and going on maternity leave in 6 months - threw our department into chaos. To me it seemed clear that in her mind, getting the job was a green light for getting pregnant - at the expense of the company! I can't blame companies for being nervous about these kinds of scenarios.

</comment><comment><USER29> Fundamentally, this is one of those places where if we want to change policy, the government needs to step in.

If we want companies to honor paternity and maternity leave, then when a parent takes such leave, the government needs to soak the employee's salary and benefits. 100%, no questions asked, full stop.

Any less is incentive for every company in the marketplace to find every excuse to cut parents out of the loop for costing more per-hour-unit-of-work than an equivalent employee with no children.

<comment><USER30> So what do you do when you have high risk scenarios that are semi-rare but semi-predictable, combined with a high loss when they happen?

It's called insurance.

That's the private/"market" based solution to privatizing and sharing risk across a pool. Given it's kind of an impossible thing to fake, there isn't much risk of false claims.

<comment><USER31> insurance doesn't work when the event is controllable (like pregnancy) and happens regularly to everyone.

Imagine an insurance company offering to sell to a business a plan for each employee, which covers their salary while they take leave.

The premium of this plan must be lower than their total cost in salary while they are on leave, since if it was higher, the business can just pay the salary!

Therefore, the insurance company must cover the cost by taking on the risk that some employee don't take parental leave (and thus, profit off those premiums).

But in aggregate, "everybody" reproduces. Therefore, there'd be nobody to "earn" the premium from. So the only remaining possibility to profit is from making interest from the premiums not yet paid out (which, while significant, can't really be as profitable as any existing insurance product).

<comment><USER30> You've just also proven health insurance doesn't work!

<comment><USER31> yep. Health insurance shouldn't be called insurance. It should be called a levy, and all citizens making more than a certain amount have to pay into it, and all healthcare costs paid for by this fund. Insurance companies are middlemen that don't provide real value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Thought experiment: a scrappy startup is struggling to stay profitable, they literally (and not figuratively) can't afford their developers leaving for extended amounts of time and they are very upfront about this in interviews. Are they legally allowed to discriminate against candidates that are pregnant or expressed a desire to have children in the near future since it has the potential to kill their business if they hire them?

<comment><USER24> What they should do is say "These are our parental leave policies" (which will be at least legal minimum) and go from there. (Ideally, these should be reasonable leave time government policies and paid by the government, but let's assume we're not going to fix that soon)

It's then up to the candidate to accept it or not.

It'd be entirely shitty of a company to say "here are our policies" and then reject a candidate who would exercise those policies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Is this really surprising? We cannot have meritocracy and a system where some people will go missing for a year at a time (and perhaps come back with completely different motivations). There is a fundamental mismatch, and as much as some people want to frame careers as lifestyle and entitlement, the primary purpose is to get things done and produce value. The situation is even more stark for smaller companies, many of which would be bankrupt if they lose one employee for a year.

The unintended and inevitable consequence of trying to legislate something as massive as this away is it promotes what I call wankerism. Where by the more law abiding individuals are put at a further disadvantage as they try to follow onerous laws, whilst the people who are happy to skirt and bend them will do so and get ahead. After all there is almost never going to be a smoking gun and to the extent than you can tighten the rules against laying off pregnant women, then it moves on to hiring discrimination against women of a certain age range and effecting even more people, where its practically impossible to prove discrimination.

Maybe the government and increased maternity pay is part of the solution, but no formula is going to capture the career costs and simultaneously be fair to the lower paid. Maybe it is the responsibility of the parents to make it right between them, in as much as that is practical and in as much as they believe in operating like that.

<comment><USER34> The system that you are proposing is anti-human. We are not machines and time does not directly equal productivity.

Diversity is a proven cultural milestone that increases the efficacy of organizations.

I'm curious what you would say to this. What about individuals who have mental or physical disorders and need a reduced work schedule?

<comment><USER26> People have very different goals for society. Solving inequality is not everyone's top priority and it is weighed against many others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The obvious solution that brings many other benefits is to allow people to work from home.

By simply removing the long commute the problem is already nearly solved, as all of a sudden people have two extra hours of productive work in many cases.

If a kid wakes you up at 3 AM, it helps to only have to wake up at 8AM instead of 6AM. Also, the levels of stress while working from home make for much more productive workers.

There are many other benefits, but making it easier to reconcile parenting with a full time job is one of the biggest.

</comment><comment><USER36> Isn't the case of physical labor justified? Here I refer to where the article states that pregnant women doing physical labor often face discrimination upon asking not to lift too much weight.

This is an example where pregnancy directly makes someone less able to do their job. That seems like a valid reason to want to pay them less, or to no longer hire them. Unlike the more general call of equal pay for equal work (regarding the wage gap) here the demand is essentially equal pay for worse work. I assume the argument is that affirmative action is needed to get more women at the top. However, not taking affirmative action is rather different from active discrimination.

I'd like to qualify that I tend to support affirmative action, but I do not think that forced affirmative action works. If we force companies into such action by law, they have every reason to follow the letter to the least amount possible, and totally ignore the spirit of the law.

</comment><comment><USER37> My partner works at a small startup of ~12 people. They employ some 8 ladies all but one of whom became pregnant in recent years, while working at the company. The company kept going without any damage to its business. At some point, they had a bad turn and had to downsize so they fired most of the working mothers, who tended to hold the most expendable positions, I guess. Eventually, the company's fortunes turned again, at which point they re-hired all the people they had laid off (or offered to- some had moved on). They seem to be doing fine now, in any case they have plenty of business.

I'm just saying: pregnancy does exactly zero harm to a company's bottom line or a woman's ability to hold down a job and perform at her role. And even if it did, we're talking about a tiny startup of a dozen people. If it can handle most of its staff being pregnant or with kids, then a big corp like Walmart or Merck has no excuse not to. No excuse at all.

</comment><comment><USER38> On one side companies want to do more to get women into tech then on the other side they are not supporting them when they need to do what families want, have babies. This is upto the government to protect women against layoffs and redundancies after pregnancy. Especially if that woman has had a reasonable tenure leading upto the pregnancy.

</comment><comment><USER39> I've discussed how pregnancy discrimination impacted me (male) before [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16105745](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16105745)

Lawyered up, lawyer said "it's not worth it to me, nor you." This is the world we live in now, folks.

</comment><comment><USER40> In the age of companies wanting to expand on an exponential pace and globalization. I get the feeling that there is no longer any compassion for things that are normal. It is normal for women to have children and have parental leave. It is good for a countries GDP that women have equal opportunity to take part of the work force. If women would not participate working the economy GDP of the country would be half of what it could be. Is is also good for dads to take equal long parental leave as women.

Thus it is short sighted by companies and the economy as general only to see the very short term.

</comment><comment><USER41> Pregnancy, having kids, both for dads and moms, having a life, being older, experienced, all things that will count against you.

Starting your business sometimes seems like the only way to get things right for you.

<comment><USER22> > Pregnancy, having kids, both for dads and moms, having a life, being older, > experienced, all things that will count against you.

This is so true, at least in the tech industry and startup world.

The bottom line is that if you're a parent, parent-to-be, or older, the apparent assumption is that you have a life outside of work, and thus you will likely not make work your life, so you will be working less than a childless early 20-something, and you'll probably actually use the health insurance, take vacation time, and maybe work reasonable hours. This, I suspect, is a big component of age discrimination as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> To reproduce this error:

1\. Create a law that penalizes companies for activities against current employees with attribute X (or who might have attribute X in the future)

2\. Watch as companies ride the grey-line getting away with as much as they can whilst (a) staying within the letter of the law and (b) creatively discriminating to avoid hiring anyone who has (or might in the future have) attribute X.

I'm not making a moral judgement, but when you set the system up like this can you really be surprised by the results?

<comment><USER30> I hate these kind of sophisticate-cynical arguments.

Yes you are technically correct, and thus get to revel in Being Right. Drinking a celebratory champaign.

Yet we are still having negative outcomes that are highly problematic. And you have contributed nothing except, what, smugness?

<comment><USER42> Where you see smugness, I ask you to see reality.

If you want a system that works, design the incentives to align correctly. This is not happening here.

If you leave a T-bone steak on your porch before you sleep, can you really be surprised in the morning to discover the raccoons have gotten it? Do you then blame the raccoons and call them evil? That might feel good but it's not going to solve anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'll fully get behind mat leave if it's taken as bonus paid vacation time that's available to everyone. Having a child is a choice, and a selfish one at that, the world being as overpopulated as it is. No problem with that. You want a kid, I want to take time off to make music and travel.

</comment><comment><USER44> I guess this is good for me, I don't have plan to have kids. This can potentially give me slight competitive advantage since the employer doesn't have to worry about me taking long paid time off.

</comment><comment><USER45> Decades of Neoliberal economics and systemic propaganda by self serving libertarians nostalgic for settler ideology and 'freedom' it seems has resulted in a corporate 'business only' society that is completely divorced from the practical realities of humanity.

Many of the commentators seem to be arguing against their own existence like they are robots who just turned up, no one had to give birth to them or bring them up. And its not just their parents, there is a whole infrastructure around you that took hundreds of years to build that we call civilization and culture that allowed them and you to get you to where you are.

I don't see how you can value or discuss culture or have any kind of shared existence and commonality with other human beings without acknowledging the entirety of the human condition.

</comment><comment><USER29> Because it's not legal to even ask about pregnancy or desire for children during an interview, there's an unfortunate side-effect the market has adapted to: under-the-hood discrimination against young woman candidates.

All other factors being equal, an employer knows a young woman _could_ get pregnant and will _probably_ quit to take care of the kids (going by statistics alone). So since they can't explicitly ask those things, the market prices in the risk by devaluing woman candidates in every legal way possible.

It's downright insidious.

<comment><USER46> > Because it's not legal to even ask about pregnancy or desire for children > during an interview

It's not illegal to ask about these things, but it's illegal to make a hiring decision based on these factors and asking during an interview would be pretty strong evidence of using the information in hiring.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> this would be unthinkable here in Iceland. we are looking for sw eng and sre here : [https://jobs.netapp.com/job/Greenqloud%2C-Iceland- Office-%28...](https://jobs.netapp.com/job/Greenqloud%2C-Iceland-Office-%28RE- Site-Reliability-Engineer/440991800/)

</comment><comment><USER48> I have a few honest and open questions as a US-based small business with a handful of women who have recently had children or who are pregnant.

Do you guys have any advice for how to balance the impact to the results that we receive from those having children prior to vs after pregnancy and/or having children?

Example:

One individual is a phenomenal front-end website engineer. Her input has been critical in helping us solve a lot of engineering challenges and more forward in significant ways. When she became pregnant she had debilitating morning sickness so much so she could hardly function on a personal level. This morning sickness persisted for the last 5 months through the present day to the point where she's only be able to come to work (or even work from home/remotely) for perhaps 15 days sprinkled throughout the 5 months. We all value her opinion and expertise highly. We try to schedule meetings around when she might available (to the point of even having spontaneous "she's available" meetings) but even she doesn't know when she'll be able to work or operate productively. Further, her ability to code/design/be productive has plummeted to perhaps 5% of her original capacity. Do you guys have any tips on how to handle this situation? We thought about starting her maternity leave early (during pregnancy), but she'll definitely need that leave AFTER she has the baby. Perhaps we start the paid maternity leave during her pregnancy and then a leave-of-absence (unpaid) after the child is born? Is that fair to her? Is that fair to us? In many regards, we have a paid member of the team but without any of the capacity.

Another example:

We have another woman who is very detail-oriented. For years, her projects always came out flawlessly. She has an amazing talent to see all the different ways a project could go wrong and then she would plan accordingly to keep things on track. However, since her first child was born move than a year ago, she's been a completely different person. Her child still isn't sleeping through the night. She's sleep deprived in a big way. On many days, she's almost a zombie. Previously she was punctual, reliable, and focused. We're not sure what to do. We have offered to pay for sleep training for her baby which she has refused (and that's her right as a mother of her child), but we would like to have some form of productivity capacity from her. We don't want to let her go because we know what she is capable of. For the last 18 months, we've been struggling to balance what we can reasonably expect from her vs the demands/results that her role requires. Letting her go sounds like horrible, insensitive, and possibly illegal. Is reducing her compensation a fair trade? Ultimately, we're paying value to be delivered and that has been slashed to a fraction of her previous state.

Are there any tips, tricks, ideas, or ways of thinking that can help us be fair and equitable with these individuals in their unique circumstances while at the same time allowing ourselves to expect a reasonable amount of value from them in exchange for the compensation they receive?

A few other notes: 1\. We offer 4+ months of paid maternity leave for having/adopting children. 2\. We also offer paid paternity leave for male employees for having/adopting children.

<comment><USER49> The tips and tricks that I can give you as a former employer (and present employer as well but not on the same scale) is that you're just going to have to suck it up. Yep, that's right. The burden you perceive is people no longer performing _above_ normal, this is normal. So you're going to have to learn how to deal with that, be loyal to your employees and then when things in their lives are more manageable again they will pay you back in spades, or, alternatively you could see the past as them having built up credit.

 _Every_ employer is in this boat, except for the ones that do illegal stuff. So take it as a fact of life that not every employee is able to give you 100% 100% of the time.

If you want to extract the last bit of something you might want to go into the lemon juice business, people aren't lemons and it is perfectly normal for them to occasionally have periods of lower productivity, and for some those periods can last quite long. I've been there myself - even as the employer - and it is always a great feeling to see the rest of the company around you pick up the slack and to know that things will end well.

On another note, it sounds as though you have very little in terms of redundancy built into your company, you may want to look at that in some more detail, it may be that you are one disease or a car-accident away from a real problem.

Thank you for trying to do the right thing, I hope some experience and a few more years will show you these things are not nearly as hard to deal with as they seem to be right now, there is a certain size company (> 10 and < 40 or so) where these problems can hit harder because there are enough people that synchronous events can happen but not enough of them to take up the slack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> "Wahh why can't I disappear from a company for a year to pursue my personal life goals without any consequences"

<comment><USER51> We ban accounts that post like this, so please read the guidelines and comment civilly and substantively instead.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I'm really surprised by the number of comments here that support this kind of discrimination. I thought we were better than this.

<comment><USER53> It should be expected - the high number of comments that regularly showed up in support of Damore's scientific (in the sense of being in the ballpark and selectively referencing some social science work) arguments in his internal post that got him fired when that was a hot topic was pretty disappointing.

<comment><USER30> "scientific" might be a better way.

I am continually disappointed at people who use the summary of a scientific article to prop up their justification, along with what I call "the world is a binary logic puzzle" fallacy.

For example, a lot of arguments positioned nature vs nurture. It's not a simplistic blend of this or that, or even as simple as "trait X is DNA and trait Y is societal" \-- if you learned anything about biology the sheer adaptability of the human body should be it.

Don't forget that every single study hypothesizes a model, then attempts to build evidence in support of it. All models are wrong, some are occasionally useful.

I've been extremely disappointed in the 'bay area rationalist' community with their response to that memo. It's really given me an eye opening view on the limitations of so-called "rationality" as they practiced it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Don't bite my head off, but is that really discrimination in the sense of what word actually means?

If you're literally not PRESENT to do the work, is that really a case of the employer discriminating against you? It's a privilege, not a right, to be paid to be at home taking care of a child.

I grew up in an area where a lot of discrimination occurred, but it was racially motivated. I've seen guys smarter than me literally chased out of stores, had fingers pointed at them while obscene slurs are shouted at them. I've seen brilliant minds that get trapped in the ""wrong"" bodies. They get caught in the wrong environment around the wrong people, and the stress and danger of it all breaks them down. I've seen racism obliterate men that could've been ANYTHING, rocket scientists or something, if they could've had the luck to have been born a different color or live in a different neighborhood.

So, from that perspective it's a bit mind-boggling that women will choose to pursue children and for some reason expect their employer to just pay them to be at home, while they aren't completing any work.

Of course it's important to be with your child early on. So do that. But is it really important that your employer pay for work you didn't do? That is something that I believe lies on the shoulders of government, not industry.

(And personally, I don't think govts should provide funding for it either, but that's for each nation to determine, and also cultures can be very different. It might not work here, but it may work over there.)

Nobody owes you anything because you went and got pregnant. Nobody should attack you for doing so, either. But to turn around and think that you are somehow ENTITLED to wages and compensation for that time is absolutely insane.

</comment><comment><USER55> Is it unreasonable discrimination or is there a performance degradation correlated with pregnancy?

</comment><comment><USER56> Pregnant employees are undoubtably less of an investment for the company when you consider paid leave. In fact the company might actually lose money on you.

This is a lot different than racial, sex, or age discrimination as a result of social bias or stereotypes.

So it makes sense there is discrimination from companies and managers - especially competitive companies where the managers are paid based on their team performance. In a truly capitalist market you would rarely hire someone at risk of becoming pregnant.

That leaves me to believe the only good solution is some type of mandatory leave for both men and women. Rather than trying to avoid the discrimination (via penalties, laws, etc.), force an equal leave rights for men and women so the companies no longer have to consider a particular gender over the other.

<comment><USER33> Then you'd just be discriminating against the youngish, the married and a bunch of other factors. I just think these kind of answers are the first logical steps in trying to address the problem. With more thought and experience people will arrive at the realisation that there may actually not be a good mechanism to socially engineer the desired outcome.

Devolving decision making to the business owners and managers, and to individual workers is what allows the system to work. Attempts to override and legislate decisions will fail with unintended consequences and ultimately make things worse in other ways. A complete solution would require totalitarian control, at which point you may as well just have central planning.

<comment><USER57> People already discriminate against young women based just on the risk they could get pregnant, doesn't seem like it'd be that bad to spread it across to young men as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I know many cases where small employers were left paying 100k's after taking on a woman for a position, and just a few months later 'she got pregnant'.

\- employer had to fork over 12 months of pay

\- employer had to disrupt their business and hire another person

The employer struggled to eek out their own profit to feed their own family and meet their obligations.

This is a common scam that some women will get a job, with the intention of juicing the parental leave AND then we they are supposed to return to work.... they instead quit.

This scam has cost my friends a lot of money and suffering because these women are predators and care not of others, but getting something for themselves.

And they scream "mah discrimination".

<comment><USER59> Do you have the employers names and any documents or court records to show that this is what was uncovered? Why were your friends not able to determine the quality of employees during the interview and on-boarding process? Have you actually read the FMLA? They would have had to work their for quite a bit of time before requesting leave, and even then there are additional requirements:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_and_Medical_Leave_Act_o...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_and_Medical_Leave_Act_of_1993)

I was denied FMLA when I got full-time custody of my kids. Not saying that you are, but you come across as a biased person trying to stereotype and generalize women. FMLA does not only apply to women either.

<comment><USER58> The world does not revolve around US law. Where I live, you just have to surpass your probationary period to qualify.

My apologies for being biased by sharing a story of how my friends lost 100k's, next time I guess I should bring documentation and court cases before daring to tell you about something that happened. /s

And why the heck would I tell you the name of my friends business to effectively give you my identity?

The scam I outlined is common enough and you will hear it happen if you ask.

A variation is that women will take their 12 months pay from a business, and then a certain percentage decide they do not want to work and then do not go back to their jobs.

Whether it applies to men or women both under FMLA law has no bearing on the morality of executing this scam. I'm not sure why you even pointed it out and what you're trying to say with that information.</comment></comment></comment>


Craigslist's ongoing success story - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/may2007/id20070515_301894.htm?chan=smallbiz_smallbiz+index+page_success+stories <comment><USER2> Ha, every time someone writes about Craigslist, it's like checking in on the Big Lebowski: "Still abiding?" "Yep." "Anything new?" "Nope." "Should I ask the same six questions every other reporter does, which I'd realize if I bothered Googling your name before I interview you?" "Sure."

<comment><AUTHOR> _'... every time someone writes about Craigslist, it's like checking in on the Big Lebowski: "Still abiding?" "Yep." ...'_

good observation. It's worth posting because _the dude_ (Craigslist) is A) the anti-pattern to those who say the only way after you get big is to advertise (missing the point you annoy your users beyond distraction) and B) nobody believes (and probably why its a story) that Craigslist has not sold out and pursued the megabucks that could __cough __be made with greater advertising.</comment></comment>


Patreon Is Suspending Adult Content Creators Because of Its Payment Partners - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/vbqwwj/patreon-suspension-of-adult-content-creators <comment><USER2> This problem has existed forever. As long as I can remember. The main company that seems to be able to process credit cards for porn is CCBill. They seem to have no real competition other than small fringe services. As soon as those services get big enough it raises flags and they get shut down. How and why CCBill are able to do it while others aren't I don't know.

You can sell snake oil on Shopify all day long but sell a JPG with that shows female nipples and it raises flags.

Does anyone know WHY this actually is? I know it's related to Title 18, Section 2257 somehow, but I don't understand exactly how, nor why CCBill seems to operate without issue. Can somone with inside knowledge explain?

Porn has come such a long way in the last 10 years. Maybe I'm just more progressive than I realize, but I see stuff like X-Art as actual art and I wish there was something like iTunes for porn.

If someone can explain to be what the legal roadblock is for porn billing and how one might be able to get around it, I'd be the first investor and founder. Seriously. There is so much great pornography out there now I feel like you could actually change the way people think about it and maybe even clean up the industry. It doesn't have to be a dirty thing you bury under 10 cryptic folders.

<comment><USER3> I was the CTO of kink.com in the mid-2000s.

My biggest challenge of that time was reliable billing. That said, it wasn't quite as bad as you make it out to be. When you have a long history of low chargebacks you can make some deals, and even then there were a few options. We always had a few processors integrated at any one time because 1) any processor could pull the plug on us with minimal notice and 2) these organizations tended to be technologically inept and their platforms were not reliable.

Some payments we processed through our own merchant account. We tried to get more merchant accounts and were unsuccessful. It's difficult because (IIRC) banks only allow a certain percentage of their total volume to be "high risk" and porn is in that bucket no matter how low your chargeback rate is and how long you've been established. It's something you could probably arbitrage profitably if you were a bank, but by the time you get to be a big enough bank you are bound into the stodgy culture of banking ("ewww porn").

That ship has sailed however; there's not much money in porn anymore. The tube sites have _killed_ the content business; this is a shrinking industry. I agree, the content is better than it ever has been before, and you can get it free... uploaded to tube sites by the very producers themselves, hoping to get exposure.

<comment><USER4> > _The tube sites have killed the content business; this is a shrinking > industry. I agree, the content is better than it ever has been before._

Then why is so much porn still being made if there's so little money in it today?

<comment><USER5> There is actually a really interesting story behind this that was once on HN, I unfortunately can't find it anymore but it has something to do with the following process:

1\. New content creator enters market. 2\. Content gets uploaded to tube sites constantly, take-downs are intentionally slow and ineffective to make this process as tiresome and inefficient as possible. 3\. New creator is eventually forced to upload the content themselves in order to generate leads and collect some revenue although this is very little. 4\. This revenue is not and was never planned to be enough for the creator, two options: A. Quality of content and models is reduced in order to reduce costs and remain profitable. B. This does not happen, studio struggles to stay afloat and is forced to sell, it gets acquired by guess who... the parent company of the tube site.

I probably got some things wrong so feel free to correct me!

<comment><USER6> Jon Ronson's "The Butterfly Effect" covers this quite well. It's free on iTunes and quite an entertaining listen.

[http://www.jonronson.com/butterfly.html](http://www.jonronson.com/butterfly.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This kind of outcry happens again and again, but nothing ever happens, because it's a niche problem.

Some time ago it was fetlife: [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/03/payment- processors-are...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/03/payment-processors- are-still-policing-your-sex-life)

And maybe of interest: When the EU brought out GDPR, so many people complained about the injustice of one group of governments bringing their laws to the world. For the rest of the world, this is nothing new: The dominance of the US finance sector means that any US law is automatically international law. Visa follows US laws, nobody can exist without taking Visa payments, so everybody follows Visa rules, which means you follow US rules.

In the end, what is allowed is the intersection of behavior that's not penalized in any state of the world.

<comment><USER8> And yet I'm constantly told that European banks make it trivial to transfer money without middlemen like visa. So why not just submit payment that way?

<comment><USER9> They do. If I have someone's bank details I can transfer for free, instantly. (OK it sometimes takes a few minutes at weekends). There's two issues with _ever_ using that for online payment:

1\. There is no mechanism to obtain a refund for a mistake - eg I mistype the account number, someone else gets the money. Banks won't reverse but ask the payee to refund. If they still exist and are willing to cooperate. This is the route used for many, many scams like Microsoft calling because they noticed a fault with your Windows.

2\. There is no protection under the Consumer Credit Act to obtain refund in the event the company goes bust or the product is defective and they won't refund. Credit cards have to provide that.

I use it with friends in preference to any other method, especially Paypal though.

<comment><USER10> With SofortBanking and similar services it is becoming more common to use this to pay online. It eliminates much of the issues you mention.

<comment><USER11> Sofort are problematic because they a) access your account via credentials that it's against bank ToS to share and b) they scrape and store (and likely sell) transaction data unrelated to the current transaction because they have access to your account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'll be 'that guy'. This is the number one use case for a cryptocurrency in my opinion - a decentralized microtransaction system.

This isn't the first time Patreon has faced these issues and services like PayPal are notorious for closing your account then giving you the finger.

I don't want to give my credit card info to 30 different sites or services or creators I want to support. I don't want a bunch of small recurring charges from different places on my credit card. And most of all, I don't want a service to arbitrarily be able to decide (or have others force their hand as in this case) what I am and am not allowed to support.

I don't think the technology or people are remotely near ready for mainstream adoption yet but it is still the most compelling use case I've seen.

<comment><USER13> Unfortunately cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are a little ill-suited for automatic recurring payments because one of crypto's big selling points is that the crypto is stored on your computer, not in some bank or other computer, so it can't be easily automatically be taken from you. Of course maybe someone could develop a special type of crypto-currency or wallet system which allows for coin to be stored privately while also able to specify automatic transfers without any action by the user (nor the requirement to keep your computer online).

<comment> vertex-four This sort of thing is, actually, a reasonable use case for things like Ethereum's smart contracts. If there were a standard interface by which revocable "direct debits" could be created against users' wallets, this would be solved.

Except that it needs more thinking about than that, because of questions like "what data source does everything use to agree that 1 month has passed since the last transaction", or "can I revoke a direct debit within a certain time period after the money's left my wallet" combined with "how do I get notified when money leaves my wallet".

There's also the question of whether the ability to just register a monthly standing order with various common clients would be good enough, rather than needing to pull money.

A lot of this is a UX exercise rather than a technical one, to be honest.

<comment><USER14> Every Ethereum block contains a timestamp which smart contracts can read, so it's trivial to write code that only allows withdrawals in 1 month intervals.

There's no way to revoke a transaction but you could implement a hold so ETH could only be withdrawn from the contract x days after the charge is incurred, within such time the owner could cancel the withdrawal.

As far as notifications are concerned, there are events in Ethereum that you can subscribe to. So for example you could subscribe to a charge event, and go in and dispute it.

<comment><USER15> > Every Ethereum block contains a timestamp which smart contracts can read, so > it's trivial to write code that only allows withdrawals in 1 month intervals

Not disagreeing, just wanted to point out that one needs to be careful with timestamps in Ethereum, as the source of truth is miner. Using timestamps could result in security vulnerabilities.

<comment><USER16> True if you're being really fine-grained about it, like using the timestamp as the seed of a random number generator.

However, on the scale of a month, the miners aren't going to be able to mess with you. A block stamped with a significantly incorrect timestamp won't be accepted by other miners.

<comment><USER15> Are you sure about that? I was under the impression that there were no checks whatsoever and it's only a goodwill of miners (and lack of incentive to do otherwise) that provides somewhat accurate time.

On the flip side, I'm sure there are/will be oracles for approx. block time, so this is still a solveable issue.

<comment><USER16> Here's a spec from 2015:

[https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/blob/c02254611f218f43cbb075...](https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/blob/c02254611f218f43cbb07517ca8e5d00fd6d6d75/Block- Protocol-2.0.md)

From the block validation section: "Is block.timestamp <= now + 900 and is block.timestamp >= parent.timestamp?"

(In Solidity, block.timestamp is in seconds, and I think that's a direct translation from the underlying opcode, so I assume it's 900 seconds here.)

<comment><USER15> I stand corrected - it seems blocks' time must be increasing and must not be more than 15 minutes in the future, according to clocks of validating miners. Thanks, didn't know that!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> TechCrunch did an interesting piece on this: [https://www.engadget.com/2015/12/02/paypal-square-and-big- ba...](https://www.engadget.com/2015/12/02/paypal-square-and-big-bankings-war- on-the-sex-industry/)

The short version: PayPal blames the credit card companies, the credit card companies have nothing to do with it, and looking at court cases seems to indicate that regulations once required financial institutions to consider "reputational risk" but those were ruled unconstitutional a few years ago.

It seems like everyone is sleepwalking into censorship based on entrenched business practices rather than actually making reasoned decisions.

</comment><comment><USER18> I find this worrying, and for the usual reasons. People would often want to make a living by making money from their craft, but it turns out it's not so simple as finding "the market", one needs a whole load of boilerplate for it too. One such piece of boilerplate is Patreon, and Patreon's boilerplate is payment processors. So it's strange that whenever this topic comes up, people speak of it as if it's just a little issue, when it's not.

Often this idea that "it's their business, so it's their rules" is trotted out, which while of course being technically correct works to shut down any kind of critique of the state of affairs. People rightly or wrongly, depend on such platforms for their livelihood, and it's a shame that, as eurg wrote, nothing happens because it's a niche problem. It doesn't affect the "good guys", because we value their craft more than other crafts.

But it comes down to this - I realise that if I ever wanted to monetise my own artistry, I'd have to use Patreon, and the limitation of what I can post (be that adult content, even the more "disgusting" kinds involving incest or bestiality as they mention) means that my creative output is limited. As such, what I can spend my time on is not only restricted by "the market", but also by Patreon, also by Visa, also by PayPal, also by Mastercard etc. I become self-censored, chilling effects.

<comment><USER19> I can assure you with full confidence that there's practically no limitation on "disgusting material" that you can sell online, as long as it's legal (which bestiality isn't).

In fact, the farther you push the boundaries, the better chance you will have at making money, assuming there still is an audience for it. There's a platform for almost anything.

Patreon just isn't the place for it and it never was. Patreon isn't even on the radar.

That's not to say you will never run into issues with payment, but your ultimate problem isn't going to be the platforms, it's finding customers.

<comment><USER20> According to Wikipedia, sale and distribution of zoophilic pornography is legal in a few states, including CA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I know what everybody's thinking: visa/mastercard is playing world morality police. But most of the major payment processors have banned certain types of products from being used on their platform[1], some of which obstinately lacks a "moral" reasoning (see: virtual game currency). My guess is that _those_ types of businesses attract a high fraud/chargeback rate, which makes them more expensive to process. It's a risk/benefit trade off, nothing more.

[1] [https://stripe.com/gb/prohibited- businesses](https://stripe.com/gb/prohibited-businesses)

[https://www.paypal.com/gb/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse- full](https://www.paypal.com/gb/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-full)

[https://docs.adyen.com/legal/adyen-restricted-prohibited- lis...](https://docs.adyen.com/legal/adyen-restricted-prohibited-list)

<comment><USER22> Gambling is super high risk compared to porn.

In fact, high risk is just another way in which VISA and MC will squeeze merchants, it doesn't matter to VISA because they pass all of the risk to the merchant anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Can someone explain to me why people and companies even use credit cards? Why not bank transfers? Why credit cards are often in exclusions to other payment methods?

I wanted to support 3blue1brown on Patreon and I can't because I need to have a credit card. Even PayPal requires a credit card.

If I want to have a server on AWS or Google Cloud I need to have a credit card.

Why not prepay trough bank transfer? It's some American thing that is just imposed on Europeans because why not or there are some valid reasons why companies try to force credit cards on me?

As I see it, if I send someone money it's up to me and that person, eventually to a court, to resolve any issues. Why bank can't be a neutral third-party?

To me it seems like a beneficial deal to companies. If they got the money then it's up to them to return them or not, so they are in beneficial, safe position.

Currently I try to somehow go around need for credit cards with virtual credit cards that are prepaid, but it seems like they are banned quite often... E.g. I haven't found a way to do prepaid for Google Cloud, so I can't use it.

<comment><USER24> Credit cards offer a lot of benefits and cash back (essentially a discount).for bank transfer to compete they'd need to offer the consumer similar fiscounts in lieu of the benefits and cashback.

Some cards can offer 3-5% of the transaction back, on top of a slew of benefits including extended warranty, 90 day accidental damage or theft reimbursement, price protection (a refund if the price changes), return protection (a refund if the store doesn't accept a return).

<comment><USER23> Yes, that would explain why customers may want to use, so companies may offer them as an option, but why companies don't offer bank transfers? In Europe we do most of the day to day payments with bank transfers and companies seems to be OK with that.

<comment><USER24> I offered bank transfers on Instapainting.com but nobody used it. It required logging in with your bank credentials. Other times I've seen it you would have to enter your routing and account number, and then wait several business days to verify the transaction from two deposits before they could debit your account.

The user experience is simply not in place by the incjmbent players.

It's like the adoption of QR codes in China vs US, apple, facebook never baked in native qr code support like they did in WeChat in China. So in China it took off like crazy, but in the US no one used them because no one could (you'd have to find and download a special app).

Apple did this because they were banking on bluetooth beacons instead, but that never took hold either.

Corporate strategy and policies thus are largely to blame for this, and unfortunately it can boil down to a single decision from a C-level that doesn't know better.

<comment><USER23> Your company is located in USA and I guess you cater mostly to USA based customers.

I start to suspect that this is partially a cultural thing.

In Poland, my home country, we pay mostly with PayU and DotPay, or direct bank transfer. Many companies even offer templates that one can print and use to pay from a post office :). I have been even using it from time to time as a kid before I had my own bank account. In Belgium almost all payments can be done with Bankcontact. I think some people even consider card payments one with Bankcontact, because I quite often would be asked if I want to pay "with Bankcontact" instead of "with a card". In Netherlands most payments go trough iDeal. Sometimes I also see Sofort, PayPal or PaySafe. PaySafe is a prepaid code for X money that you can buy in a shop :) .

[https://www.payu.pl/en](https://www.payu.pl/en) [http://www.dotpay.pl/](http://www.dotpay.pl/) [https://www.bancontact.com/en/what-does-bancontact-stand- for](https://www.bancontact.com/en/what-does-bancontact-stand-for) [https://www.ideal.nl/en/](https://www.ideal.nl/en/)

All of them are some kind of third-party that seems to allow companies to verify immediately that a payment has been done.

In case of Patreon there seems to be a demand for non credit card payments and they even acknowledge that. So, it indeed may boil down to some decision to not invest in that :/ .

[https://www.google.com/search?q=patreon+without+credit+card](https://www.google.com/search?q=patreon+without+credit+card) [https://patreon.zendesk.com/hc/en- us/articles/115001917686-W...](https://patreon.zendesk.com/hc/en- us/articles/115001917686-Why-do-I-need-to-add-a-credit-card-for-PayPal-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This seems like a great use for cryptocurrency. (Not some weird complicated ICO-backed scheme, just regular payment.)

</comment><comment><USER26> Whatever the reasoning behind these suspensions, I think it's very rude and unprofessional to simply suspend accounts without giving some warnings and some time for a user to comply. Most of these popular online services, including the tech giants, seem to prefer this rude approach. Not having any reliable human support makes the problem worse. Since you can't provide human support, just give some days to comply and then suspend.

<comment><USER27> Professionalism would require it to be an actual planned approach and not simply 'hair on fire' behavior in response to the knee-jerk reactions of others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Until I saw the stock image I was so confused. Adult content creators seems like almost everyone. It's outdated seeming to say it this way. Sexual content creators seems a better option.

<comment><USER17> "Adult content" or "adult entertainment" is, in US English, exclusively used as a euphemism for pornography.

<comment><USER28> I recall but I've been living in Europe for 6 years and it seems odd now especially when phrased as 'adult content creators'

<comment><USER17> Assuming it's in the UK, remember the saying: two countries, divided by a common language :-D

<comment><USER28> You're right, it's the UK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Somebody a little while ago figured out the most popular Patreon pages, wish I could find it, but I remember there was SO much porn. Not regular porn either but weird japanamation porn, furry porn, you name it. And that's probably why Patreon doesn't have a functional "discovery" feature.

Like I have a songwriting web app almost ready that I think might do well there but without a way for people to discover it through the community what's the point of using Patreon and not a traditional subscription model? The porn has to go so they can have a "you might also like" column that isn't filled with hentai barf porn or whatever.

<comment><USER30> You can see the top Patreon creators on Graphtreon: [https://graphtreon.com/top-patreon-creators](https://graphtreon.com/top- patreon-creators)

Even going back in time (Graphtreon keeps historical data), there's less porn there than you suggest.

<comment><USER29> I think that's it but it didn't have the categories when I saw it, so every other one was adult animation, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The same problem exists for firearms and related products. There are only a couple of (expensive) processors out there.

</comment><comment><USER32> Seems unfortunate. These are what I'd imagine to be near private transactions between consenting adults.

Where's the harm in that?

</comment><comment><USER33> It's easy the see the financial institutions as the bad guys or the users as the idiots. But really, after having used a few of those sites for adult, I feel safe saying that most of them had/have it coming.

Personal experience only a few weeks old, with a medium sized porn site:

* During the subscription, you get another service -costing extra of course- proposed. The checkbox for it is checked by default, in small font, on the side of the screen.

* The subscription; it renews every month by default. You better read carefully before you enter you payment data.

* You want to cancel? No way to do it from your account settings. You try the web site of the processor; nothing. Well, actually, maybe there is, but the only way to log in is by using you card credit number. No thanks. You finally find a link (deep in the FAQ of the first web site) that will brings you to a page on the processor's web site.

* Finally, you seem to be able to cancel; the page shows a "Membership cancellation" title, a pile of text, and a "I confirm" button. Well you better read the pile of text, because the "I confirm" button of the "Cancellation" page does not cancel your account.

And that's only for one site.

Beside that, there is also a whole bunch of stuff that would make any IT professional cringe really hard.

It's kinda hard to believe that all of this is perfectly legal, specially given that they operate internationally. No surprise that their payment partners get reluctant to work with them.

PS: not speaking about Patreon, never used that site.

</comment><comment><USER34> Paypal, Patreon, Visa, whatever. They do all the same.

Remember Fetlife? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13483998](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13483998)

And there are 1000 other examples too.

</comment><comment><USER35> I feel like this constantly happens. I'm not a fan of people getting shut down if they are creating something legal and it has an audience.

</comment><comment><USER36> I had a friend who was in promotions. She promoted parties mostly for gay women. Nothing sexual or explicit. She found it hard to get payment processors - this was around 2011....

I thought this was ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER37> So consensus largely is - probability of fraud is higher in adult entertainment business, downstream processors either charge exorbitant fees or altogether refuse to accept such payments, to mitigate having to deal with chargebacks.

My question is, Why is chargebacks still a thing ? Why hasn't the US adopted 2F Auth for payments ?

With advent of smart phones we can have reliable identification based on two factor authentication, by sending a text message to mobile number registered with the bank, or even go further with text + fingerprint / text + password. The odds of fraud with such system would be minuscule.

Is there any reason apart from banks being greedy and the government being hand in glove with them ?

<comment><USER38> Chargebacks protect buyers from dishonest sellers?

<comment><USER37> Shouldn't that be job of a consumer protection body ? Banks should not be in operating in law enforcement domain / be deciding what's right or wrong.

My understanding is most chargebacks are for fraudulent transactions, which were not authorized by the card owner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Looks like an opportunity for an adult version of Patreon.

<comment><USER40> They already exist

<comment><USER41> Imagine Patreon but even more dysfunctional and unreliable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Credit card company or morality enforcer?

<comment><USER7> Credit card companies don't really care either way, but heavily regulated industries tend to prefer being on the regulator's good side, and the regulator is ultimately the political institutions.

The mirror version of "distributed costs and concentrated benefits" is working against what progressively minded people would think of as simple personal freedoms: Most progressives are not avid consumers of adult services, so they won't throw their full political weight against such actions. But those who are against adult services _will_.

I hope that voting and patience in explaining to political outgroups does help, but I admit it's more hope than anything else, strangely. This should be a bipartisan priority, but either party thinks they can "win" the though- police race.

<comment><USER41> I was half joking. This often tends to be a problem of the customers more than the credit card companies.

Adult content and gambling face charge-backs at a far, far higher rate than for other things. I'm sure cryptocurrency is now in this basket as well, as anything people have "regrets" about tend to get charged back way more than others.

If credit cards were more secure, if you couldn't just claim "Wasn't me, gimme my money back" on just about anything, this would be far less of a problem.

Credit cards should, at the absolute least, have embedded one-time password generators as a necessary component for online purchases.

The American financial system is so ridiculously baroque, though, that I bet this will happen forty years from now when the chip+PIN phase in is finally complete.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I recall a magazine that bought and published articles that were certain not to offend anyone. It was called Reader's Digest. Haven't seen a copy in decades, yet it persists to this day.

There is a crowd that will pay to have what it's exposed to restricted. I guess they would not want Patreon to create a separate, less-restricted service. (The name 'Patreon' itself seemed carefully chosen.)

</comment><comment><USER43> Meanwhile the multitudes reiterate the "crypto is dead" mantra until next year.

</comment><comment><USER44> bitcoin and clones - here is yet another niche opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER45> This is why we need cryptocurrency.

</comment><comment><USER19> This idea that the livelihoods of adult performers are at stake is nonsense.

Almost nobody in the industry relies on Patreon for their income, not in the least because people don't go to Patreon for adult content. Sure, some performers do set up one for their fans to support them, but practically nobody lives off of it.

Not to name any names, but there are dozens of popular sites where performers can offer their content/services. They all take a relatively big cut (on the order of 50%), but that's due to rampant fraud, chargebacks and because of money laundering. If that service could be offered substantially cheaper, it would. Case in point is that despite the issues, cryptocurrency isn't popular at all.</comment>


Ask HN: Why there is no open source Shopify alternative? - <AUTHOR> There are few solutions but nothing like Shopify exists.<p>While we've wordpress which is very flexible and superior to most commercial blogging solutions <comment><USER2> So on wordpress install woocommerce. Or if not wp then drupal commerce. Or Magento. Oscommerce. Etc. Etc.

<comment><USER3> Are any of these following the modern standards of web development (like what you would get with a framework like Laravel), or are they still just a pile of random PHP files?</comment></comment>