U.S. Employers Struggle to Match Workers with Open Jobs - happy-go-lucky http://www.npr.org/2017/08/31/547646709/u-s-employers-struggle-to-match-workers-with-open-jobs <comment><USER2> Recently had a recruiter call me, interview me over the phone once, in-person once, and via skype once. The job seemed to be a great fit, the pay was there, everything seemed to be lined up. The recruiter called me again to tell me that they were going to be taking the next steps with me very shortly. A week of silence goes by, then another.

I email, inquiring about the position. "Oh, we gave that to someone we had been interviewing for months, but we'll keep you in mind for the future." Unprofessional disconnects and other encounters like this have taken place several times, in my experience. It turns out I knew the person who did get the job I was all but promised. After talking to them, the company had contacted them three days after its last interview with me, and the successful candidate had been asking for $10,000 dollars less and had less experience than myself. A month later, that candidate emailed me and told me they were let go for "being unable to meet the requirements of the position."

Anecdotal experience like this really makes me skeptical when I hear employers bemoaning that they cannot find employees. Can they really not find employees or good talent, or do they just not want to pay the wages that people are asking for?

<comment><USER3> I feel like there's two tiers of the software industry: those employable at AmaFaceGoogFlix or a competitor, and everyone else; but the "everyone else" is completely unaware that the first tier exists. It's like if minor league baseball had no idea about major league baseball.

You even see it on HN. Someone will come along and talk about how a senior dev at Google can expect $250k a year. You'll get two categories of replies: "I don't believe this at all, Glassdoor proves you are wrong, nobody I know makes that, blah blah" and "bro that is totally normal". $250k is honestly on the average-lowish end for a senior eng at a major SV company in 2017. Much of the industry is not only unaware of reality but refuses to believe in it. This includes real engineers who do real work at real companies and comment actively on Hacker News. $250k for a senior engineer is just completely outside their reality.

On my last job search, my best job offer was about 2x as high as the worst one. The guy who made the worst one--which was about 30-40% below my minimum stated range, depending on how you valued the equity, so he had been stringing me along, but anyway--he started arguing with me about my unrealistic expectations, and wouldn't stop talking until I told him I was going to hang up if he kept trying to talk me down.

I know it's considered bad negotiation, but if I can't figure out the salary range of a job opening, I'll name my requirements up front. Over 50% of the time the conversation ends there. I know at least twice people assumed I was over-highballing as part of some misguided negotiating tactic when I actually was a little conservative.

<comment><USER4> I still don't believe the $250k figure :)

I make exactly half of that here in Florida (a fairly low cost area) as a senior dev and my salary has definitely plateaued (and I haven't had a raise in a few years).

I know I make more than most of my peers and local recruiters scoff when I tell them my current pay (I had to talk my current employer up about $30k just to match my salary at my previous employer to get me to switch -- and they only did so because they were quite obviously desperate).

<comment><USER5> "here in Florida (a fairly low cost area)"

Let's say you work in downtown Tampa and live 30-40 minutes away. You can get a 4 bedroom 2500 sq ft house for $350K. That's about 3 years salary for you.

Now let's say you get a job at Facebook and want to find a similar house, about 30-40 minutes away. I think it will cost you upwards of $2M. You need to be making $670K or more to make housing the same fraction of your living expenses.

Your quality of living and long term economic prospects are probably significantly better where you are.

<comment><USER6> > _to make housing the same fraction of your living expenses_

And when housing is the same fraction, the disposable income after that fraction is removed is far, far higher. As Bill Gates says, once you can afford the $30 burger, there's nowhere to get an even more expensive burger.

<comment><USER7> Bill Gates needs to update his quote, I don't think $30 is where burger- technology has topped out these days

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "They're just asking for the moon, and not expecting to pay very much for it," Cappelli says. "And as a result they [can't] find those people. Now that [doesn't] mean there was nobody to do the job; it just [means] that there was nobody at the price they were willing to pay."

In my opinion, this is the key paragraph in the article. I see this all the time when recruiters send me job postings, and they want someone with 5 years of experience for the salary of someone with 2 years of experience.

<comment><USER9> But maybe the job isn't economically worth it at the higher salary? You seem to be assuming it's worth doing at any price, as does the article, and that's untrue.

Besides, I don't know about others, but I've recently put out multiple job ads for one vacancy. Our app, Noctacam, uses computational photography to take great photos at night. I was looking for someone with computational photography knowledge and/or iOS. And/or Android, since we plan to make an Android app in the future. I found it convenient to post three job ads, so that I can clearly organise the dozens of applicants based on their skills. Two of them went unfulfilled. Which is exactly as was intended. Someone who doesn't understand the background may say, "Oh, no, tons of positions aren't being filled." In other ways, it may a counting problem, not a real problem.

<comment><USER10> If they need to fill this job and it is not worth the higher salary and it cannot be filled at this salary or lower then this job should not exist as a job: the owner of the company, the manager of the company, the HR person of the company can either do that job themselves or that job should be eliminated.

<comment><USER11> But why? Does having the position open harm anyone?

<comment><USER12> It needlessly wastes peoples time.

<comment><USER13> If employers were required to pay for someone's time for an interview, you would see this fixed right quick. But because an employer can leave an unreasonable job req out there and interview as many candidates as they want, with the only cost being their own time, this continues.

<comment> lloyd-christmas Here's something I wrote on a different discussion about hiring:

 _Imagine I cost my company $50 an hour in salary, and earn them $150 an hour (revenue of 3-5x salary is ballpark for most companies, we 'll go for the low end for some perspective). As a senior dev, I have to sit in all the interviews of people potentially joining my team. Imagine we have 10 people that make it through the HR round. I have to participate in 10 interviews, and then likely 3 more for the final round.

My cost for round 2 is: 10 people x 2 hours x (150 lost revenue + 50 salary paid) = $4k

My cost for round 3 is: 3 x 8 x (150 + 50) = $4.8k

My company has already dropped $8.8k on my involvement solely in the interview room for your typical entry level position. This doesn't even include my involvement in onboarding, training, pre-interview prep, post-interview review, etc. This is also JUST ME, and a very lowball figure at that. Now factor in the cost of the HR round, recruiters, background checks, the other devs in the interviews with me, etc. It adds up very, very quickly._

The "costs of doing business" can easily be reduced by not interviewing for shits and giggles.

<comment><USER14> I don't get why companies can't just hire a bunch of more "questionable" applicants at a lower rate, say $45k - $60k or so for junior devs in most cities.

No need to spend much effort on the interview process, just make sure they can solve a couple standardized problems, and then "hire" them as contractors for a 90-day trial.

Put them onto teams and throw them in the deep end, then get rid of all the ones who can't swim, which will probably be like 75%. But you'll also find quite a few unexpected gems that way.

I mean, that's exactly what we did in Call Center management and it worked great. Hired people at $10 / hour for the first 90 days, then a $2 raise up to $12. We did have super high attrition for brand new employees (since we didn't technically do a contracting period,) but who really cares.

We just kept on filtering and eventually had dozens of shockingly intelligent and competent call center employees for like, $13 / hour. (This was in the Midwest.)

<comment><USER15> Quite a few companies are doing exactly what you describe to fill dev positions. The real cost comes when the systems designed and built by those junior devs are so brittle it becomes very time consuming and expensive to add new features. Most of the time, however, those systems built by the junior devs are so buggy there's no time to build new features in any case because everyone is too busy dealing with issues in prod.

<comment><USER10> That's because these companies management loves to develop by committee that comes with agilie, points, IPMs and standups. When a voice of expert is assigned the same weight as the voice of a Joe Random Developer and there are more Joe Random Developers than experts, you end up with garbage fire of systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The tech sector is the worst at this. The skills we test for are the ones that can be figured out in about a month, and the ones we don't test for are the ones that need to be learned over a lifetime

<comment><USER17> Well said. I've been telling people for years that tech sector interviews select for the wrong skill sets.

<comment><USER18> What skill sets should they select for?

<comment><USER19> Having done a good handful of interviews, I tend to look for "generic problem solving" (not in the sense of trick questions, but in the sense of running through ambiguous engineering and mixed social/engineering scenarios to see how they'd move forward) communication skills (the ability to communicate the above effectively, talk about past work, problems, successes) and frankly track record. (this is obviously harder for new hires so you look for things like coursework, projects, even successes in other lines of work can demonstrate someone's professionalism and capability)

You may note that these are all primarily "soft skills" and I would hope this is the takeaway from my ramble. My experience has been that it's often easier for a hire to pick up the technical rather than the nontechnical side of things. Depending on the level of the job, of course you have to filter for a certain level of competency as well, but I can usually get a good sense of that within the questions I ask above. When I get someone to really start talking about "what have I succeeded/failed at; why; what would I do different" I tend to find I can get a decent read on if they're bullshitting me or not.

<comment><USER20> Are you hiring programmers/developers or people like sys admins? It sounds like the latter, I can't imagine anyone hiring the former claiming dev skills are easy to pick up.

<comment><USER21> I think they are talking about picking up unfamiliar tools and languages that are reasonably close to their existing skillset rather than 'learning to code'.

<comment><USER20> Maybe, evaluating a dev is tricky, judging them on soft skills alone would lead to many false positives and negatives.

<comment><USER21> Sure. I think the parent is implying that this evaluation is what is flawed, and overly driven by a focus on the superficial layers of technology.

So, for instance, a Reactjs developer fresh out of bootcamp gets considered over a veteran Angular developer, 'because they know React.'

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> In my mind this is screaming for apprenticeship programs like in Germany.[1][2] Companies need a more streamlined process to get employers early in their career so employees have the necessary training and then get promoted within. All the while employees get paid to learn and work.

This one-size-fits-all 4-year college track that every U.S. citizen is being pushed through is failing miserably.

[1] [https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/why- ger...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/why-germany-is- so-much-better-at-training-its-workers/381550/)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship#Germany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship#Germany)

<comment><USER23> Even for people who go to college, more work experience is a huge plus. Waterloo's coop system (4 months of school, 4 months of internship, repeated) provides a great mix of practical experience and academics. It would be great if all majors could have an experience like that.

<comment><USER24> I graduated from college 30 years ago and every engineering major at every state university I ever heard of had a coop program.

<comment><USER25> Waterloo places much more emphasis on it. The program is built around every student doing coops.

<comment><USER24> That part I did not know, most of our professors in our first year engineering classes strongly recommended it, though. I co-oped at a company only about 100 miles from my university, though other students were from out of state schools.

The other thing I just thought of was I co-oped at IBM for three semesters which was the max for a location but they had openings in a different country, I probably should have done that instead of staying in the USA for my last co- op, are most of the Waterloo students going to Canadian companies?

<comment><USER26> A _lot_ go to SF bay area. I met a large group of them in 2007 when I was doing my coop. My school, University of the Pacific, also had a mandatory coop program, although they started to make it optional sometime after 2009.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> _Insert comment about requiring 5 years of experience in a 3 year old language_

HR gating really is the worst thing going in American hiring practices today.

"Do you have multiple years of experience with 99.9% of the skills listed as requirements, which only a handful of people in the country have? Yes, but I see that on our web form that you had to use to submit your resume you didn't check the box next to 'Degree in X', so you're automatically disqualified."

<comment><USER28> Or in the software world...I see you have essentially built my exact company before and have tons of experience, but what I really need to know before I hire you is...Can you show me how many queens you can put on a chess board in code!

<comment><USER29> let numQueens = 64;

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Part of this comes from executives being taught to think of employees as expenses rather than assets. "Less money to employees = more money to me." This attitude is part of a larger systemic problem: A great deal of American business is now more about gaming the system than about building products. Take the VC money, build nothing, and cash out. Sell customer data to ad networks and cash out. SEO the hell out of that thing and cash out. Cook the books and cash out. Sell bundles of subprime loans and cash out. Buy your competitor, harvest its assets, kill their product, and cash out. Pump and dump and disappear. "What, you still have seed corn? Eat that shit!"

It's all just bullshit short-term arbitrage. It has nothing to do with adding value, which is what sustainable business is based on. It works well in an environment where such behavior is not punished, and where business executives are rewarded for "maximum profit in minimum time" and penalized for long-term thinking. It's certainly not sustainable, but alas, that's exactly where we are in the U.S.

<comment><USER31> An underrated comment. It sounds harsh, but It's institutionalized get-rich- quick. A lot of it is the hyper-focus on efficiency. Which gets interpreted as efficiency of time, which turns to "get money back out as quickly as possible". And as people look for faster and faster ways to get money out at some point the only route/scheme that can keep up is "create an illusion of value and sell that."

And all of this is a drain for society, not a net plus. Even though you'll inevitably hear the argument "Creating an illusion of value has societal value. Obviously it does, otherwise people wouldn't pay for it." A which point you're reaching peak irony. And then you begin the inevitable arms race of smarter minds working on better ways to hide the illusions, and smarter minds on the otherside working on better ways to sniff them out. This is pretty mucb equivalent to having your best and brightest optimize better ways to predict horsetrack betting (but at least in that case if an Einstein invents an accurate weather prediction machine that value is transferable to society at large). These minds are bust develiping non-useful, non-transferrable non- useful abilities instead of becoming the next Elon Musk. It's a train wreck in slow motion, but those on the inside are so deep in it they're unable to see it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I love what Joel Spolski said about this "problem" in his article "Whaddaya Mean, You Can't Find Programmers?" back in 2000. [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/06/15/whaddaya-mean- you-...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/06/15/whaddaya-mean-you-cant- find-programmers/)

 _" Now, let's review some microeconomics. In a free market, it is almost axiomatic that the market always clears. That's a technical term that means that when somebody tries to sell something, if they are willing to accept the market price, they will be able to sell it, and when somebody wants to buy something, if they are willing to pay the market price, they will be able to buy it. It's just a matter of both sides accepting the market price."_

<comment><USER33> But, when the price of other labor sources is cheaper (eg H1-B, interns, your nephew, etc), economics dictates that you should use those instead of the local population.

The solution, imo, is to raise the price of the other sources somehow. That way, the local population is cheaper.

<comment><USER32> If a company _can_ find "other labor sources" then they really don't have a reason to say "we can't find labor".

Employers are saying "there is a shortage of workers" when what they really mean is "the market price for workers is more than we want to pay" or "we don't want to share more of the profits with the employees (who actually make the product) then we used to". To "fix" this, they want some sort of special treatment that will decrease the cost of employees - like being allowed to employ more indentured servants (H1-B) at below market rate.

<comment><USER34> If bread costs 100$ per loaf, and people are literally starving to death in the streets because they can't pay for food, is this just the "market clearing rate" for bread where supply is meeting demand, or is there a shortage of bread?

<comment><USER35> You could have a point if it cost $10 million to hire a senior competent software engineer. It does not.

You could have a point if bread cost $75 to produce. It does not.

Many of the companies complaining about a shortage of people are posting record profits. Workers are receiving the smallest share of the pie in many decades.

In many cases this really is just stingy employers complaining because they want to keep most of the profit for themselves.

In other cases businesses can't raise prices because their customers don't have any money (because wages are so low and the 1% captures so much economic surplus, stashing it away in investment accounts, causing investors to dash around shoveling _tons_ of cash at anything that looks like yield). In this case hiring workers at higher wages wouldn't be sustainable without raising prices. The "solution" in this scenario is not to suppress worker's wages even further; that only makes the problem worse. The solution is much higher taxes on the ultra-rich to filter the money out of investments and back into the economy where 10: it can be spent by workers, raising profits, leading to expansion, higher pay, more spending, more profits, goto 10.

If we were in a capital-constrained environment then it would make sense to cut taxes to make more capital available for investment. We aren't. We haven't been in decades. Taxes on income & capital gains >10m should be much higher.

<comment><USER36> > The solution is much higher taxes on the ultra-rich

I was with you up until this part. This has been tried for decades and it clearly doesn't work. What we need now are tax breaks specifically for small businesses. We want people to be able to work for themselves or work for somebody more willing to share more of the profits with their workers. More businesses willing to pay market rate means more employment, more competition and more pressure on the companies who like to underpay.

Neither idea (tax breaks for SMB, more taxes for rich) are going to happen anytime soon. Nobody with deep enough pockets to lobby for it would want either idea to become law.

<comment><USER37> When was this tried? I'm really interested in data that shows taxing the ultra-rich at the same rate as the middle class (~30%) and "clearly doesn't work"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Pay. More. Money.

There, I solved it for every single one of the "struggling" employers. Money is a proxy for _everything_.

<comment><USER38> Though with unemployment around 4.3% you may be paying up for mediocre employees you are then stuck with for a long time.

<comment><USER39> If you want better than mediocre employees then guess what the solution is? More money!

Although mediocre employees can often become great employees with some training and coaching.

<comment><USER40> > Although mediocre employees can often become great employees with some > training and coaching.

Although mediocre employees can often become great employees with some _MORE MONEY_!

<comment><USER41> True, but it's often the case that the money is spent inefficiently or on the completely wrong things. More money + proper spending = worker growth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Maybe they should allow people a little time to learn the exact skills needed? These days you need to have done already what you will be doing on the new job. No time for learning anything even if it would take only a few days or weeks to get up to speed. How are people actually learning new stuff?

If Uber had looked for a CEO that way they would have rejected any candidate that hadn't run a fast growing ride sharing company with HR problems and an extremely high valuation and no clear path to profit. They would also complain about not being to find suitable candidates.

<comment><USER43>
        > How are people actually learning new stuff?

You just do it. On the job. Without asking for permission.

This doesn't work for all skills, unfortunately, and some people have jobs where they are project-managed to a degree that every minute needs to be accounted for. But mostly, there's some slack to pick up new skills.

<comment><USER33> > You just do it. On the job. Without asking for permission.

And hope your boss is forgiving.

<comment><USER43> Perhaps, but I have NEVER heard of somebody getting fired for "up-skilling" while still getting work done.

<comment><USER42> I have seen people squeezing in a whole new stack just because. Like instead of adding two new web APIs to the existing server suddenly you have that weird beast that's half Node and half .NET.

<comment><USER44> I think that's one of the gaping flaws to that method of skill acquisition. It's a great way to introduce politics and negative-sum-games to the workplace.

Suddenly people are picking projects and stacks based on personal aggrandizement rather than professionalism.

Maybe companies should start hiring a chief behavioral (economic?) officer to go with the chief culture officer.

<comment><USER42> I don't blame this on the people doing it. There are some idiots but in general it's mainly because a lot of people don't feel challenged and therefore look for something interesting.

Managers should encourage innovation but control it. I see so many projects where management rejects every kind of change without discussion. Either only losers will stay in that environment or you get this kind of underground projects. If management looked at something more than only deadlines and budgets the whole climate would improve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Go and read "Weapons of Math Destruction" by Cathy O'Neil.

This has an excellent chapter of the use of ATS software the majority of recruiters use these days.

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

<comment><USER46> Resume optimization to get the foot in the door, take home assignments, automatic platforms verifying programming skills, algorithm and data structure teasing. This is getting inpenetrable. I wonder how many of those smartasses inventing another question or an assignment would be able to get a job again.

<comment><USER33> > automatic platforms verifying programming skills

Somewhat related, I withdrew from an entry level physics course in college after only two weeks since the professor insisted on using an automated homework platform that cut your grade in half if you couldn't figure out the problem on the first try.

This problem isn't exclusive to tech.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I've been watching this tension grow for a while (otherwise qualified workers unwilling to work for the pay offered). I keep expecting the system to crack and boost pay, and then we'll see some more severe inflation in the US economy as a cycle of product costs go up rather than down. And yet it is stubbornly hanging in as employers try ever more intricate ways to avoid having that cost bump.

It is very much a prisoner's dilemma sort of situation. If one company boosts their pay (and their product prices to cover that pay) then they lose market share. If both boost pay they both make a bit more money as their prices go up simultaneous (no change in market share). If neither boost pay they continue to operate at a restricted level which doesn't allow them to do additional development or increase sales.

<comment><USER48> That dam has burst years ago. Facebook, then Google, significantly increased their pay to software engineers and it lifted all the salaries in the bay area.

What's interesting is that this tide hasn't propagated very far outside California yet.

<comment><USER47> Not the tension I'm seeing. I'm seeing it in the rank and file all across the country as the article points out. Office admins, waitstaff, hospitality positions, janitorial, etc. These generally blue collar positions have had negative wage growth between 2009 and today but that has slowed or nearly stopped according to the labor statistics put out by Bureau of Labor Statistics[1].

As an example, at some point the customer complaints about room cleanliness will force hotel chains to increase their wages offered to fill positions that have gone unfilled for too long. That change will be reflected in higher hotel rates. Restaurants that can't keep all their tables open during 'peak' times will have to raise prices to add staff Etc.

It isn't a 'big deal' for Facebook or Google to raise wages because it just slows the free cash flow into their bank accounts. But it is a big deal for business models where personnel costs are a material factor in the company's operating margin.

[1] [https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/realer.pdf](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/realer.pdf)

<comment><USER49> And then all of these new janitors and clerical staff will have paychecks, which they can use to play for hotel rooms on their new paid vacations...

There's a strong argument that the wage stagnation in the middle and lower classes in the US is slowing down the economy across the board.

In fact, I wonder if the increasing concentration of profits in a handful of companies is contributing to the inability of companies further down the food chain to pay workers market rates.

<comment><USER47> > _In fact, I wonder if the increasing concentration of profits in a handful > of companies is contributing to the inability of companies further down the > food chain to pay workers market rates._

You would not be the only one wondering that :-). A friend of mine who used to be an economist working at Google and I were discussing what the impact of having over a Trillion dollars locked up in 'cash and cash equivalents'[1] by the top 50 international companies.

By its nature, cash equivalents can't be lent out by banks for longer term investment (they are required to be able to exchange the investments for cash on short notice) so that hoard just sits there.

[1][https://www.gfmag.com/magazine/september-2016/global- cash-25...](https://www.gfmag.com/magazine/september-2016/global-cash-25-2016)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I've recently started mentally comparing tech companies that complain about the "lack of talent" to SUV drivers who complain about the price of gas.

There is so much low hanging fruit in terms of improving engineers productivity, but the companies refuse to even consider the possibility. If you offered private offices or remote work and the opportunity to use more productive tools, candidates would line up to apply. And would need fewer workers because they would get more work done.

</comment><comment><USER46> There is flood of American outsourcing centers in post-Communist EU countries. Top salaries for software devs/eng, including seniors, are USD 40k gross annually. They can treat the employees in the worst "corporate America" ways - their offices, available hardware, policies, laughable benefits, annual leave, create a perfect package for miserable professional and private life.

<comment><USER50> ? Total misinformation. As applicable to Ukraine salaries are US salary - <AUTHOR> tax -(20-30)% take into account cost of living and special tax treatment (3-4%). Workday is normal workday and not some unknown number of hours offices are way nicer then in US minus the usual suspects (Google FB etc.). You get way more time off plus there are like 3X official holidays in Ukraine. Running recruiting biz. on the side we had real trouble finding people for senior java dev. remote product work 60K/year (tax rate 3%) + all the usual benefits good candidates wanted 70K.

<comment><USER46> > As applicable to Ukraine salaries are US salary

> remote product work 60K/year

60k USD gross anually in Ukraine? No. Sorry, but it doesn't exist. An unicorn salary, dozen of those lucky perhaps have.

<comment><USER50> To reiterate we had trouble hiring at that rate good senior Java engineers. Not sure what you are basing your opinion on I lived and worked there for over 10 years including running my own company and working for other companies. I also know good number of founders/owners of the top outsourcing outfits.

<comment><USER46> > good senior Java engineers

duh! they left for Germany

<comment><USER50> Some did, but they did not win as far as after tax $, it's mostly for better infrastructure and security. At the time we were trying to fill the positions a large UK based company closed down dev. office in Ukraine they had 120 dev's about 40 were senior scala/java within 1.5 weeks only one was without a new job he didn't take 60K offer either as he got a better competing offer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> There are a lot of comments in this thread about how recruiters are bad at their jobs, they want X years of experience in framework Y and they want to pay for X/2 years of experience.

What can we really expect from recruiters though? They get paid a fraction of the salary of the jobs they are recruiting for, and they're asked to evaluate someone's potential competency in a field that's complex and rapidly changing. So _of course_ they pick proxy metrics. They just ask "do you have 10 years of C++ experience" because it would be impossible for them to, say, read your GIthub code and see that you're really good at C++ even without the years of experience.

The only way you're going to have a good experience with a recruiter for a technical position is if the recruiter has the technical aptitude to make judgement calls on your qualification.

So maybe we need to pay recruiters more and then convince people with software engineering degrees to become recruiters? Of course the companies would have to be willing to invest in their recruiters, and they won't do that.

</comment><comment><USER52> "A players hire other As, B players hire Cs..."

"The cost of a bad hire is higher than a false negative..."

"... culture fit.."

"We solve hard problems so we need the best.."

It's pretty clear that hiring in technology is a cargo cult that mostly serves to waste time and haze newcomers.

But I think the hiring ritual in general of 'post requirements -> get resumes -> interview' is ineffective bullshit. Each filter is progressively more error prone than the last and you mostly get noise out the other end.

<comment><USER43>
        > post requirements -> get resumes -> interview' is ineffective bullshit

I agree, but that's not necessarily the way many (most?) jobs even get filled. There are other channels, professional networks and word-of-mouth, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> At the low end, few people will move to take a $8-$17/hr job. Moving costs are too high, and selling a house in a declining small town doesn't provide enough cash to buy a house in a town with jobs. This is why there are so many people stuck in small towns with no jobs.

Moving to a place where there's one big employer, the case in too many small towns, is signing up for indentured servitude. You can't quit without moving. Employers like that situation - it's called having a a "compliant workforce". It's common in the southern US.

From the employer perspective, hiring for low-end jobs means first filtering out the druggies, the crooks, and the crazies. Druggies alone are about 20% of applicants. The U.S. Army says that only about 25% of young men meet Army recruiting standards today. The Army won't take fat people, druggies, crooks, or anyone requiring frequent medical care, and they require a high school diploma. It's scary that only 25% pass that basic screen.

</comment><comment><USER54> The reality is that you need your job more than your employer needs you. We're all replaceable, and this is further exacerbated by technology and outsourcing. Hiring in the tech industry where senior engineers have to go through multiple rounds of answering data structures & algorithm riddles is probably the epitome of this absurdity.

As long as this is the case, employers are always going to demand the moon, only hire the "best", and offer as little money as possible. If employers really needed you, they wouldn't be holding out for the diamond in the rough willing to work for peanuts.

It boggles my mind that we as a society still cling on to this notion that everybody must rent themselves out to somebody else to survive. Wage slavery should not be the backbone of our economy. Something like a basic income would go a long way towards evening the playing field, so that desperate workers can walk away from this nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER55> To sum up the article, businesses are making ridiculous demands and expecting to pay prospective employees marginally above nothing. Aside from the people posting these job ads, nobody is really surprised.

<comment><USER43> Job postings are ridiculous, but one would think employers would gradually learn a lesson when not enough applicants come forward and relax puffed-up requirements.

But if anything, job "requirements" in postings have been getting even more absurd and persnickety in the last 10 years or so. Are employers simply not adapting or is there something else more complex going on? I suspect the latter.

<comment><USER56> I believe many companies want to portray the image that they are successful, growing, hiring. Job listings are cheap. What is the real cost of advertising for many positions and hiring the good people that come along irrespective of the advertisement?

<comment><USER33> > What is the real cost of advertising for many positions and hiring the good > people that come along irrespective of the advertisement?

If by "good people" you mean desperate workers willing to work for peanuts, then the cost is almost nonexistent. And that's the problem. Since real workers don't like to be fished.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> You can partly blame the tech elites like Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe for this. They were found to have a no poaching agreement [1]. This kept wages down, and because their wages were down, other companies benefited by not having to pay as much compared to them. They could remain competitive even with these companies.

You cannot pay "competitive" salaries and "only hire the best."

1\. [http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach- order/](http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach-order/)

</comment><comment> throwaway-sorry Most of the commentary here is focused on the high end, but there's a bigger problem on the low end of the labor market.

Our government plows tons of money into job services, training add, and other programs at the state/local level. There are some really successful agencies, but there is a hell of a lot of waste where the system just helps enough to "check the box" that you're trying to find work and eligible for unemployment.

A huge part of the problem is that the workers don't trust the system. And why would they, when massive data breaches happen due to poor handling of data. See [http://www.securityweek.com/joblink-breach-affects-job- seeke...](http://www.securityweek.com/joblink-breach-affects-job- seekers-10-states)

Unfortunately, this problem is only going to get worse as more data is accumulated by state agencies unqualified to watch over it. I firmly believe that if we reformed the data systems and the programs relying on them at the state level we could make a lot of progress on the lower end of the labor market to get people re-engaged, more productive, and start growing skills.

As those people increase skills and responsibilities shift to them, the people who are freed up will be able to become more productive and move up-market as well.

Which sounds like a pipe dream - but what person in IT hasn't been tied up with "junior work" they would be happy to unload if there was anybody to do it? And once that task finally goes away, you go on to do better things.

</comment><comment><USER58> This is largely a problem of "informational asymmetrics between agents," as Nassim Taleb would describe it.

Or Gharrar as describe in Sharia law. "It is an extremely sophisticated term in decision theory that does not exist in English; it means both uncertainty and deception –my personal take is that it means something beyond informational asymmetry between agents. It means inequality of uncertainty. Simply, as the aim is for both parties in a transaction to have the same uncertainty facing random outcomes, an asymmetry becomes equivalent to theft."

The employer sees the entire talent pool and can therefore leverage this informational advantage to drive prices (wages) down.

[http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/equality.pdf](http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/equality.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER9> It's possible for there to be a shortage of people AND millions of unemployed people if they're unskilled.

That's certainly the case in India, where the majority of "software engineers" can't tell me the maximum value an 8-bit integer can have, or claim that an object's instance variables can continue to exist after the object gets deallocated. One clown even wrote an if statement with two else clauses, the second one "just in case the first doesn't execute".

[http://indiatoday.intoday.in/education/story/engineering- emp...](http://indiatoday.intoday.in/education/story/engineering-employment- problems/1/713827.html)

</comment><comment><USER59> Employers _always_ struggle to to fill openings. It's the same thing as selling a product - you have to work on marketing, promotion, advertising. This says nothing about the state of the job market.

</comment><comment><USER60> Employers are unwilling to invest in employees. Then they wonder why the (good) employees they do have don't stick around.

U.S. labor market: Everyone running around, looking for "something for nothing." We had a couple decades of outsourcing and off-shoring, coming from this perspective (and law and regulation effectively neutered on its behalf).

Let's hope the MBA's and short-term-focused executives find out just how fungible they are. (A suit is, after all, just a suit.)

</comment><comment><USER61> A better title would be, U.S. Employers are cheap and if they don't cut it out; unions might be on the rise in America.

</comment><comment><USER62> If this happens is not due to lack of candidates bur rather because of extraneous and extravagant expectations.

</comment><comment><USER63> This article has little relevance to the kinda professionals on HN. They're talking about relatively low paying labor.

I think the problem boils down to vanity. Companies want to post glamorous jobs, and figure they'll hire if the glass slipper fits. Conversely, job seekers aren't too hungry.

</comment><comment><USER64> ...for the price they are willing to pay.</comment>


40% of Bay Area Residents Considering Leaving in the Next Few Years [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://documents.bayareacouncil.org/bacp17exodus1.pdf <comment><USER2> does anybody have comparable data for other metro areas? is this a bay area anomaly or is it a common phenomenon?</comment>


Latency Map of all the major backbones - <AUTHOR> http://www.internetpulse.net/

<comment><USER2> This is _awesome_ , I've been looking for something like this for a while.

It'd be great to expand it to the Tier2 providers in a undirected graph format, so you could see latencies from the peering points of various ISPs/datacenters. That way you could check on the real-world connectivity between places you interface with -- AWS, The Planet, Verizon in NY, Comcast in the Mid-Atlantic, etc.

<comment><USER3> I'm not a customer but it seems like you may be able to get that kind of information from them if you are one:

<http://www.keynote.com/products/web_performance/index.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How do they measure this? (They have different latency between the same nodes depending on direction)

<comment><USER3> The docs say they use the time it takes to do a TCP open between their agents because they "believe that TCP Open times are more representative of Internet users' actual experience".

That is, they think pings could be treated in a different way but with a TCP connection establishment you are measuring what most internet users want to do over the link.

As for different readings from different directions you can get that with both pings and TCP open, it's just maybe more noticable and exacerbated with the longer and multiple-message nature of a TCP open.

<comment><USER5> and icmp can get deprioritized on busy routers, yaddayaddayadda. pathchar (old old) was doing interesting things in measuring link health.</comment></comment></comment>


Thrush combinator in Clojure  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fogus.me/2010/09/28/thrush-in-clojure-redux/

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the link! I remember as a newbie learning Clojure, being puzzled by why (-> 5 #(+ % 4)) didn't work as expected.

</comment><comment><USER3> thrushtastic

<comment><USER4> your comment puts a Smullyan my face, but I fear we're devolving into a redditesque pun thread...</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What was the most useful advice you've received in 2017? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Classic but true: "never put off till tomorrow what can be done today".</comment>


Ask HN: How does the US Government just "revoke" Snowden's passport? - <AUTHOR>

Are the charges in question enough to do this without a fair trial? <comment><USER2> The principal law enforcement reasons for the U.S. State Department to deny or revoke a passport are the existence of (1) a valid federal or state felony arrest warrant; or (2) a criminal court order, condition of parole or condition of probation that forbids departure from the United States (See 22 C.F.R. 51.60-51.62).

SOURCE: [http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/smart/pdfs/passport_fact_sheet.pdf](http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/smart/pdfs/passport_fact_sheet.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> From what I have read elsewhere, passports remain the property of the U.S. government and they claim the right to revoke them after charging someone with a felony.</comment>


Backdoor SOPA -- CISPA - <AUTHOR> http://act.demandprogress.org/letter/cispa/?akid=1306.1076593.HixRPH&rd=1&t=2

<comment><USER2> Totally false. There are no blocking provisions __whatsoever __in CISPA, no one has any right to the information from ISPs or any other provider or organization, and it does not supercede other provisions. ("The phrase "notwithstanding..." is boilerplate language that is not interpreted by the courts the way a layman might.)</comment>


What's the best way to master a programming language? - <AUTHOR> For example, I have interest on C#. I noticed when I use framework like ASP.NET, it automates a lot of task for me. I don't want that. So I wanna completely focused on mastering the language and moved on to a framework. Is it the right thing to do? And if yes, how can master a language? <comment><USER2> > So I wanna completely focused on mastering the language

Read the C# language specs. I think you can find it in doc format on microsoft's site.

[https://www.ecma- international.org/publications/files/ECMA-S...](https://www.ecma- international.org/publications/files/ECMA-ST/Ecma-334.pdf)

Write C# code in vim or visual studio code ( not visual studio ). Use the csc.exe on the commmand line. I use powershell but this requires you importing the environment variables from the vs dev bat file. This way you have to write everything yourself and build/link everything yourself.

Also, use ildasm to look at the MSIL.

And move on from there. Other steps to mastering a language requires having built one yourself or at least a compiler for a language. Then you have to know other languages to compare it with. Function, procedural, imperative, declarative, object oriented, etc. Also, does mastering a managed language like C# mean that you have to understand MS IL? The CLR? Etc?

I guess it all depends on what you mean by "mastering" a language.

My advice is to not go overboard with "mastering a language". It's far more important that you learn a technology/libraries/tools/etc if you want a job. If you are trying to get a job as a developer, it's better you learn about ASP.NET, SQL Server, IIS, etc rather than mastering C#.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great! very rigorous answer. Thanks mate :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Practice, practice, practice. I always suggest that you should start by writing your unit tests on the language you wish to learn, but this is valid only with languages that play together. For instance, to learn groovy i wrote my unit tests for my JAVA code in groovy, now i'm repeating the process with Kotlin... Other than that, do as many KATAs as you can find online. "codewars.com" is nice, too. But keep in mind that "language(s)" are just tools, you reaaly should focus on a better grasp of CS concepts and fundamentals, the tools will be obsolete before you notice.

<comment><AUTHOR> this is a great piece of advice... thanks mate :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Find a good, up-to-date reference manual for the language and read through it a couple of times. Then do a lot of data processing exercises.

<comment><AUTHOR> what do you mean by data processing exercises?

<comment><USER4> Things like transforming data from one format to another, algorithms to process large amounts of data, etc. I singled out this type of code because it tends to involve writing lots of code that uses the standard library of your language, but the point is to become very familiar with your standard library.

<comment><AUTHOR> ohh I got the picture now! Thanks mate :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Finding Stuff on Instagram with RedisAI - <AUTHOR> http://ecsta.tk <comment><AUTHOR> Hi! and Happy new year, everyone. I had a goal to finish this little hobby ML project this year, so I stayed in tonight to get it done. It searches for artisanal gear for sale on instagram. It works by quickly scraping your search term (without the '#' please, and don't ask ;) and running the results through a machine learning model to find the good stuff. Search should be instant thanks to redis streams, and redisAI. For tonight the demo is running off my laptop, so hopefully most of your are out celebrating, or you might kill it.

Happy 2020 :)

</comment><comment><USER2> dead already :)

<comment><AUTHOR> It should be up now. There's a problem with it not serving from cache right now, so it's firing off an expensive job each time, but it is working. And when I fix the caching it will be :)

<comment><USER3> it seems like it's down again :(</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What activity should I spend most time on? - aman-pro I am a software engineer turned freelancer, and I started a company some time back with a friend.
I am good at making stuff and my other co-founder is good at design & research.
We have a couple of clients right now that are helping us pay our bills and take care of a couple of employees (excluding us).
Obviously, for increasing the revenues we should focus on increasing the sales and marketing. Right now I am not sure should I focus on just catering our existing clients(which is a risk) or should I spend time on some other activity too?
PS: We provide Web design and development services to our clients. <comment><AUTHOR> I'll just suggest reading _The E Myth_ which covers this topic quite thoroughly.

[https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Most-Businesses-Dont- About/dp/08...](https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Most-Businesses-Dont- About/dp/0887303625)

but the tl/dr; is something like "make time to work _on_ your business instead of always working _in_ your business. To that end, make things as process oriented, repeatable, and automated as possible".</comment>


Glyphs: Free Social Network Icon PSD Set - <AUTHOR> http://gsixcorp.com/glyphs/

<comment><USER2> If you don't want to subscribe to mandatory mailing list: <http://gsixcorp.com/downloads/Glyphs_byGSIX_v4.zip></comment>


Geek anti-intellectualism: replies - <AUTHOR> http://larrysanger.org/2011/06/geek-anti-intellectualism-replies/ <comment><USER2> The more I have been studying, the more it has been coming to me that knowledge must not be an end to itself. This is because there is an infinite amount of knowledge out there (care to catalogue the shapes of grains of sand on Earth?), but only a very small subset of it is useful (for example, the fact that sand consists mostly of SiO2 represents much more useful knowledge than the above-mentioned detailed catalogue of shapes). Knowledge is an attempt to describe complexity, and since complexity of the Universe is enormous, the amount of knowledge that can be gathered is enormous as well. So one must not seek knowledge indiscriminately.

The traditional academic way of teaching material to students has been to cultivate the idea that knowledge (academic knowledge in particular, something that went without mentioning) is of tremendous value in and out of itself. I disagree with this (see my argument about grains of sand). Some kinds of knowledge are more valuable than others.

Now that we all agree with this, the question becomes what is it that we value. The problem is that people define value in different ways. Some talk of spiritual value (which I find to be complete nonsense -- an artifact of a runaway brain process). Some talk of some "eternal" value that will benefit humanity in a very long term (but I tend to be skeptical of claims that cannot be measured). The bottom line is that this is not an argument about knowledge but an argument about either values or priorities. Given a choice to know (for example, whether or not a killer will come to your house tomorrow) or not to know, most sane people would choose "know". The "intellectualism" the author espouses is the type of intellectualism that relies on emotional thinking to instill the belief that we have a "duty" to know even things that are of little measurable value. I am sorry, but I prefer to see numbers first.

Ironically, the reason why becoming a scientist is not a great life decision compared to, for example, becoming a lawyer, a businessman, or even a computer programmer, is that science does a poor job measuring its own impact (i.e. it is ironically not empirical enough), despite of the fact that it claims to be based entirely on our ability to measure and on the empirical method. In other words, science, while denying religion for the most part, itself relies on this religious-type thinking that knowledge possesses some mystical value in itself (it doesn't).

 _Small edit_ : I wish there were more good scientists, not less. I think the value of scientific contribution is enormous. I only think that our current way of doing science (grants, journal citation indexes, reviews by very small circles of peers which can often be mistaken, ignorance of financial aspects, the coupling with teaching) is a bad way and that a better one is possible.

<comment><USER3> The fundamental point underlying science and basic research is that it's generally not possible to know the value of knowledge before you, well, know it. Your perspective is extremely shortsighted.

If humanity only invested in projects of "measurable value," there would be no computer programmers, because there would be no computers, because we would not understand physics, because physics requires esoteric mathematics, and what good did fiddling with numbers ever do for anyone? No measurable value whatsoever!

<comment><USER2> > The fundamental point underlying science and basic research is that it's > generally not possible to know the value of knowledge before you, well, know > it

Oh no, I wasn't arguing against science -- to the opposite, I wish that scientific achievement was better recognized by our society. I was making a claim that when science does achieve something, the value of those achievements is not "tracked." I fully understand that our whole technological economy depends on the achievements of science. The problem I was trying to solve is, basically, why is it then that scientists don't make a lot of money (a small fact, which, I believe, causes a "brain drain" to the financial industry, etc). I believe that if science correctly "tracked" its achievements (either by replacing the current journal citation rank by something more closely resembling a currency, or by implementing a better patent system, or both), more good science would have been made.

I think that the high-brow idealism you often find in science is a product -- not the origin -- of the current academic system. The reason there are many idealists in science is not because science requires idealism, but because the pragmatists end up somewhere else. As a result, the high-strung idealism devalues science in the eyes of the public.

<comment><USER3> Oh, I see.

That would be interesting if it were possible. I'm not sure how you would manage it, though. Scientists already have an implicit incentive not to throw their careers away on unimportant research, and one of the major problems leading to the whole "publish or perish" trend is that it's really just impossibly hard for anyone who isn't directly involved in a narrow slice of research to evaluate that slice effectively, while anyone who IS involved in that narrow slice of research probably can't evaluate it objectively.

But some kind of prediction market or 'kickstarter' type model might do a better job than the grant model in figuring out how to dispense limited funds...? I'm not sure how you'd get it up and running with credibility and authority, but it's interesting to think about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Most of his arguments come from flawed premises* and are riddled with logical fallacies, especially straw man, no true Scotsman, hasty generalization, and appeal to authority. But the essence of his argument essentially comes down to:

      (1) "There are geeks that are anti-intellectual"
      (a premise I reject)

      (2) "The geeks that are anti-intellectual are an increasing larger subset of geekdom"
      (ironically (given that he advocates for facts), an opinion given without facts)

      (3) "Anti-intellectual geekdom is bad"
      (something I would concur with if it weren't a contradiction in terms)

*(e.g., geeks love knowledge, we go to parties and talk about up and down quarks, politics, theory of the mind, nature of reality, Aristotle vs Plato, metaphysics, and all sorts of philosophically rooted stuff)

<comment><USER5> This sounds like an implicit disagreement over how "geek" should be defined, which is bound to be a silly argument (on both sides) as it's a slang term that's always meant different things to different subcultures, so there's no "real" definition.

Personally I wouldn't use the word "geek" like he does either, but if you scroll down to "bchjam"'s post on this thread, I think you'll get a good idea of the kind of thing he has in mind =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I know HN is not really a place to talk politics, but something in the article surprised me:

        > leftist academics who were already anti-intellectual

I'm French so maybe this is different in Europe and in the US (if it is, that would surprise me too), but since when "leftist" are anti-intellectual? It seems to me that it's quite the opposite. Let alone "leftist academics" who I can't even start to imagine being anti-intellectual.

To be clear, I _really_ don't want to start a political discussion here. What I would like is just an anwser to: Is the part of the article I quoted something people find normal in the US or does it seems weird there too?

Thanks :-).

<comment><USER7> The US has a deep divide in academia between folks who wish the study of philosophy and literature had ended in 1950 or so, and those who embraced what came after (perhaps a little too strongly).

(Alternatively you could maybe draw the line with the end of the Enlightenment, but not quite as starkly...)

<comment><USER8> For more information on this see C.P. Snow's over half-century-old lecture, "The Two Cultures." Within it he posits a great rift between the humanities and the sciences. The lecture is very much relevant to this discussion. As a side note, Edge.org posits itself as an abridging third culture in direct relation to antagonisms between the humanities and sciences. Also on this front is 3 Quarks Daily, which is a more or less excellent feed of multi- discplinary geekdom.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._P._Snow>

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

<http://edge.org/>

<http://www.3quarksdaily.com/>

<comment><USER7> Great info, but a clarification of my comment may be in order: I wasn't talking about the "sciences" vs "humanities" divide (which is huge), but a divide that goes deeply within humanities itself, which is much more of a left/right divide (hence the "leftist" wording in the original article).

<comment><USER8> Do you mind expanding on this? I am having trouble seeing an internal divide within the humanities between those that want a continuation of the study of lit and phil and those that would like to see it cease. The reasoning that normally goes into the defense of lit and phil seems to be essential to the reasoning that might go into the defense of any sub-field of the humanities. Do you mean to posit an alliance of lit and phil with leftist politics and everything else with rightist politics?

<comment><USER7> I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek with the "1950" comment, is all -- making fun of one camp's deep backlash against post-modernism (among many other things).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I still think he's confused. I've never yet met a geek that was anti- intellectual. Anti-college, anti-snob, anti-something... But not anti- intellectual.

The 2 are too much at odds. The geek loves information, and (often) spreading that information, and using that information. Information is a geek's stock- in-trade.

He continues to claim that he's only talking about geeks, but by definition he can't be. Because anti-intellectual means anti-geek. And I've never yet met a geek who hates other geeks. Okay, maybe some particular brand of geek rubs them wrong, but not all geeks.

<comment><USER10> I teach philosophy at a university. Whenever we discuss basic issues about the mind, my computer science students are always dismissive about any and all positions that don't simply say "the brain is a computer, the mind is software." It turns out that this is a pretty naive and simplistic way of thinking about the issue; but that's the "easy" way for them to frame the problem, and they often think that, because computer science is difficult subject, this response must be pretty good.

<comment><USER11> I find this deliciously ironic. I can hear myself arguing as a sophomore CS student, "but whatever is going on that constitutes the mind is observably a process on information that happens entirely inside your skull, of course we can model it with software," to which I would today answer "you can model any phenomena with software, stating as such doesn't constitute a model."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "There are Jewish anti-Semites, too."

Now that is anti-intellectual, see-

Semitic is a Language Group, Not a Race or Ethnic Group

<http://www.counterpunch.org/hamod07122003.html>

I'm a geek, I'm not anti-intellectual however I am anti-BS, whether it is the above statement or whether it is any of the intellectually bankrupt -isms, Marxism, Fascism etc or religious dogma that goes against all the evidence for evolution or other scientifically validated theories. All of which have been promoted as being "intellectual", Fascism was famously promoted at Harvard before WWII, Marxism has been promoted at innumerable universities and now we have creationism attempting to be "intellectual" via the idea that there is a "controversy" that pits it along side the theory of evolution in terms of being able to explain how we as a species came to be the way we are. I'm also anti-prophet, that is I do not believe that there is any human being that has all the answers to all questions. Experts to me are useful as long as they are not experts in the domains of BS.

</comment><comment><USER13> I knew, before reading the first line of the article, that he was not suddenly going to change his mind. He managed to go lower than my lowered expectations by saying he had "hit a nerve", which doesn't mean anything about his degree of insight.

The root problem of this debate is that the word « geek » has lost any kind of meaning a few years ago. There is no clear definition of it, and it's become an empty buzzword.

Every time I see the word « geek », it reminds me of Orwell's essay about « Politics and the English Language » ([http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/essays/politics-and-the- eng...](http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/essays/politics-and-the-english- language.htm))

« _The word FASCISM has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable."_ »

Well, the word 'geek' has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies « A bunch of people who do not necessarily share any goal, ideology, cultural references or lifestyle, but that we lump together because it fits our simplistic worldview »

<comment><USER14> Geeks don't get to define themselves. The word has clear meaning UNLESS you ask a geek.

The definition of geek being used is one that comes from wider society, where anyone interested in computer gadgets as a primary life interest is generally classified as a geek.

Go meet some non-geeks and you'll quickly learn the proper definition of geek.

<comment><USER13> My claim : There is no proper definition of 'geek'.

In order to refute such a claim, you mustn't limit yourself to saying there is one, you must say what it is and prove it is indeed _the_ proper definition of 'geek'

Unfortunately, the definition you give is wrong. The word geek used to mean "someone who's passionate about something". It also used to mean something like "freak".

In any case, I have seen people whose primary life interests was RPGs or literature be classified as 'geeks'.

Also, "computer gadget" in itself is a vague phrase. Lumping together people because they're somehow connected to computers in some way is stupid.

What is there in common between a video games producer like Peter Molyneux, a millionaire entrepreneur like Bill Gates, an ideologist hacker like Richard Stallman, an amateur programmer like myself, and a technician that takes care of a university network of computers ?

<comment><USER14> >"Unfortunately, the definition you give is wrong. The word geek used to mean "someone who's passionate about something". It also used to mean something like "freak". "

 __"used to" __

> Also, "computer gadget" in itself is a vague phrase. Lumping together people > because they're somehow connected to computers in some way is stupid.

So you think society's definition is stupid. Ok.

The similarity between all those people is that they all are very interested in computers. They are all geeks.

<comment><USER13> « _So you think society's definition is stupid. Ok_ »

Just because you claim something is "society's definition" doesn't imply it is anyone's definition but yours.

« _all those people is that they all are very interested in computers_ »

Not necessarily. Not in the same way. Not to the same extent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I apply a simple test—Who is Edgar Lee Masters?, Rupert Brooke? Tintoretto? Hardy? George Mallory? William Morris? I'll even throw in one most geeks get even if they haven't read—Edward Tufte. Not a long list, but good enough to give me a clue as to where someone stands… Note that this is not liberal or conservative, neither one side of the campus or the other, these are in fact people that you could easily become familiar with at any reasonable library or bookstore. It would require you to wander 'beyond the fields we know' (quick, who said that?), i.e. set aside the books on Scala and Lisp etc. and go look around, it is never too late to expand horizons.

</comment><comment><USER16> I kept hearing the same cliche over and over in my head as I read this:

Shipping code wins

<comment><USER17> And pair that with the well-known facts that:

* quality takes time

* the amount of low-quality "ship it in a hurry" code is immense.

And we quickly see that "shipping code wins" is the root cause of our crap!

<comment><USER16> I'm all for higher standards of what counts as shippable. However, years spent perfecting the wrong idea will probably yield something of questionable value at best. I don't know what the right balance is but I never got closer to knowing by just thinking about it without some sort of feedback loop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's not ant-intellectualism, it's anti-pendantry.

</comment><comment><USER19> The entire article is honestly just an overly verbose, misguided, disorganized, incoherent straw man.

Geeks say classics are worthless because they're long and hard to read? Peter Thiel is out to ruin college just because it's 'elitist'? Books are no good because they're written by one person?

Give me a break -- he doesn't even bother citing anything to support his premises. These points are so laughably far from reality that no one should waste their time addressing them. It's not even worth reading this article except as an example of faulty logic and how _not_ to write a persuasive piece.

<comment><USER11> And the only "classic" mentioned was "War and Peace". I haven't read that one but I've read Anna Karenina, also by Tolstoy, and a few of Dostoevsky's books. Yeah they're long, but they're long like concept albums are long. They're classics 'cause they're awesome, not 'cause some imaginary egghead wants to bore you with them!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which $1B startups will continue to succeed if a bubble bursts? - <AUTHOR> Recently someone asked which ones will fail, but I think a far more interesting question is "Which ones are capable of weathering the storm?" <comment><USER2> A question I always ask myself for products I'm building and products I'm thinking about is: "If I removed this product from my life or my user's life, how hurt or upset would they be?" I think this is a good frame for answering that questions as well.

If a startup is a nice to have, where if you have the extra cash it adds a layer of convenience, those companies will be more likely to fail than the ones who are the core of a user's lifestyle.

I think good examples of this are companies like Box, which is extremely integrated into many company processes. Slack is another great example. Companies rely on this for their communication. Removing it is like removing a key piece of a company. On the consumer side, Honest Company has become a staple to many people's lifestyles. Perhaps Spotify, which I know many people refuse to switch from simply because they have invested time and resources into getting it just how they like it.</comment>


The Italian Covid contact-tracing app is now developed in open source - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/immuni-app/immuni-documentation <comment><AUTHOR> This shows the application and gives an overview of how the product works for the citizen: [https://github.com/immuni-app/immuni- documentation/blob/mast...](https://github.com/immuni-app/immuni- documentation/blob/master/Product%20Description.md)

This the main technical documentation document: [https://github.com/immuni- app/immuni-documentation/blob/mast...](https://github.com/immuni-app/immuni- documentation/blob/master/Technology%20Description.md)

All the documentation is here: [https://github.com/immuni-app/immuni- documentation](https://github.com/immuni-app/immuni-documentation)

<comment><USER2> I have looked a bit at the documentation (not the code yet) and I have to say that I am pleasantly surprised.

They seem to be doing this right, including an attention to the reproducibility of the builds, which IMO is of utter importance in such a sensitive app:

[https://github.com/immuni-app/immuni- documentation/blob/mast...](https://github.com/immuni-app/immuni- documentation/blob/master/Technology%20Description.md#reproducible-builds)

(long story short: Android builds are substantially reproducible, iOS are not because there doesn't seem to be a way to achieve that. They are doing the best they can.)

<comment><USER3> Bending Spoons are top notch. Super glad they're the ones handling this

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Summary of all European (EU+) apps initiatives: [https://github.com/ct- report/summary](https://github.com/ct-report/summary)

<comment><USER5> Maybe a bit of a weird question, but does anyone know why there isn't just a single EU-wide effort? Or is it just politics as usual?

<comment><USER6> there was an attempt at initial coordination around the DP-3T and PEPP-PT working groups to get a single shared protocol, but that fell apart, while at the same time many countries decided to go different ways.

Timing was relevant, plus different countries also have different regulations that make specific implementations possible or not.

In the middle of this Google and Apple announced their contract tracing framework so some switched once more.

This can be seen clearly in the documents that the italian governmental task force submitted when evaluating the various apps: proponents suggested home grown protocols, reusing existing apps, or deferred to PEPP-PT or DP-3T.

Even the Immuni app which won the selection was supposed to use PEPP-PT, but then switched to the Google/Apple CTF.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting. I am curious to see how well it works. The UK (which is developing two apps in parallel, one based on the Google/Apple API and one based on a proprietary protocol similar to PEPP-PT) has found in a large scale trial that though the technology worked relatively well, people did not respond well to being told to isolate by an app.

It would be ironic if after weeks of passionate arguments on HN and other places about the technology and about finding the right balance between efficacy and privacy, the whole thing fails because people don't like the principle.

<comment><USER8> Where are you getting information about the UK trial? I don't think I've heard the finding you said from ministers, they just seem to say it's all great and refuse to engage on it. I don't think they've even admitted developing the second app actually.

<comment><USER7> The second app we know because there was a work-order modification posted publicly a while ago instructing their app developers to develop a second app as well. You're right that ministers have never formally acknowledged that they are doing it. I do not understand this but then I am from the: people will accept 100x as much incompetence as deceit school of communication and they are not.

The other information comes from Lord Bethel's house of lords testimony and also from this blog: [https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/blog-post/nhs-covid-19-app- security-...](https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/blog-post/nhs-covid-19-app-security-two- weeks-on) and things linked to from it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Some other countries recently took same path, relevant discussion here :

1) Singapore : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22702701](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22702701)

2) India : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23311298](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23311298)

3) Germany : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23376682](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23376682) ( no discussion, link to repository )

4) France : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23321137](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23321137)

<comment><USER10> Japan: An open source community built a contact tracing app but the government doesn't adopt the app and building different app. I expect the app won't be open sourced.

[https://github.com/mamori-i-japan/mamori-i-japan- ios](https://github.com/mamori-i-japan/mamori-i-japan-ios)

<comment><USER11> It's not entirely clear what's going to happen with the source of that governmental app, but at least, it's mentioned in [https://cio.go.jp/sites/default/files/uploads/documents/tech...](https://cio.go.jp/sites/default/files/uploads/documents/techteam_20200526_01.pdf) (last page)

<comment><USER10> Oh, I haven't read the sentence. thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Switzerland's app is opensource.

[https://github.com/DP-3T](https://github.com/DP-3T)

<comment><USER13> All Repositories:

Android repository: [https://github.com/DP-3T/dp3t-app-android- ch](https://github.com/DP-3T/dp3t-app-android-ch)

iOS repository: [https://github.com/DP-3T/dp3t-app-ios- ch](https://github.com/DP-3T/dp3t-app-ios-ch)

Covidcode Frontend: [https://github.com/admin-ch/CovidCode- UI](https://github.com/admin-ch/CovidCode-UI)

App backend: [https://github.com/DP-3T/dp3t-sdk- backend](https://github.com/DP-3T/dp3t-sdk-backend)

App config backend: [https://github.com/DP-3T/dp3t-config-backend- ch](https://github.com/DP-3T/dp3t-config-backend-ch)

Covidcode backend: [https://github.com/admin-ch/CovidCode- Service](https://github.com/admin-ch/CovidCode-Service)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What happened to the US Apple/Google app?

<comment><USER15> The API is supposed to be available once 13.5 goes live (and it is available in public beta now, I believe). Here is a list of states who are participating with compatible apps: [https://9to5mac.com/2020/05/21/covid-19-exposure- notificatio...](https://9to5mac.com/2020/05/21/covid-19-exposure-notification- api-states/)

TL;DR: Hardly any.

Edit: Whoops, I am out of date, I thought 13.5 was not out yet! Apparently it is, and then some.

<comment><USER16> 13.5 went live on May 20. They just released 13.5.1 yesterday to patch the unc0ver jailbreak.

[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211214](https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT211214)

<comment><USER15> Ah my bad, thanks for the correction. I'm still at 13.4 and I haven't been overtly refusing upgrade notifications, so I thought it hadn't been released yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > and it is released under a GNU Affero General Public License version 3.

AGPL for these apps is probably a good match.

</comment><comment><USER18> Last I read the UK intends to centrally retain proximity-contact data for 20 years. Rather than deleting when it is decided it's no longer needed to deal with the pandemic.

The UK has also refused to legally commit to not sharing the data with other government departments such as the Home Office (immigration and policing) and DWP (benefits).

So much for data protection and obtaining data for a designated purpose. Whatever happened to the GDPR.

I know enough people that will be inappropriately harmed by this sort of data, whether it is used against them directly or not (it's still a miserable life living in constant fear of "doing something wrong", which now includes "being somewhere you shouldn't be" or "being near someone you shouldn't be"), that I'm firmly against this sort of surveillance state expansion, and firmly in favour of data protection.

As it stands currently I will not install the UK app, and I advise all my friends to steer well clear of it as well.

-

(If they meaningfully improve data protection then I'll change my mind and be all in. E.g. the Google-Apple approach and zero-knowledge methods are enough for me. If epidemiologists and public health would find data useful, let's use some differential privacy. I'm not against data collection done properly in such a way that actually protects people.)

<comment><USER19> > Last I read the UK intends to centrally retain proximity-contact data for 20 > years. Rather than deleting when it is decided it's no longer needed to deal > with the pandemic. The UK has also refused to legally commit to not sharing > the data with other government departments such as the Home Office > (immigration and policing) and DWP (benefits).

that's scary..

any chance you can share the references for these?

<comment><USER20> One reference: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/31/privacy- campai...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/31/privacy-campaigners- prepare-legal-challenge-to-uks-test-and-trace-scheme)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Finland has an open source fever tracking system too Fevermap at [https://fevermap.net/](https://fevermap.net/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Iceland: [https://github.com/aranja/rakning-c19-app](https://github.com/aranja/rakning-c19-app)

</comment><comment><USER23> Good to see they have open sourced the full backend/server code (including analytics code) as well as the client.

The UK has open sourced only the clients source code from what I can tell. This comes on top of the initial refusal to use the Google/Apple API and some downright awful data retention and privacy control policies. What a contrast.

</comment><comment> Fire-Dragon-DoL I'm surprised and pleased to see this app being developed properly.

When I was working in Italy, the state of software development was terrible. It looks like now there are great developers too.

</comment><comment><USER24> Has anyone done an analysis of the various open source government contract tracing app? I'd love to read some tear down/code review articles on what each country has released.

<comment><USER24> Australia's code is also open source.

[https://github.com/AU-COVIDSafe](https://github.com/AU-COVIDSafe)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not under an open source license, though. Any idea why?

<comment><USER25> Because lawyers and a secretive, untrusting government.

Interestingly, much of the code is forked from Singapore's OpenTrace initiative, which is GPL3, so Australia's app is most likely a copyright violation. Whether anyone will take action is another story.

<comment><USER26> As far as I'm aware, the Australian government got permission from Singapore to make the fork in that way, so as long Singapore didn't accept external contributions (or if they did, under a contributor's agreement) then they're in the clear. GPL doesn't automatically make it impossible to copy code under other licenses. You can license code out in multiple ways. GPL is just the default license that can be used without explicit permission.

<comment><USER25> Thanks for the info, though I would have imagined that the government, which already has a trust deficit, might have mentioned this somewhere.

<comment><USER26> I feel like they did, but a quick Google can't turn it up - strange. But I agree they could have been more clear about it. Just one of many issues with how they've handled this situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is a great tool for Italy. It's too bad the US government can't step up their game with contact tracing -- we could really use something like this right now.

</comment><comment><USER28> These will fail. 1) Not accurate enough; 2) Don't account for walls/floors; 3) Will have low adoption where anything less than full adoption means fail; 4) can't account for actually having a virus.

False positives and false negatives combined with lack of rapid result testing will also make this useless. This is why Google and Apple looked around the room and slowly tiptoed away.

Then we have the GDPR. Beat of luck making sure you're compliant.

Just don't. Humans do a better job with contact tracing. Not everything needs to be hit over the head with a technology cudgel.

<comment><USER29> I don't think these apps will be a success either but Immuni (the Italian contact tracing app) had more than 500k downloads in a single day on iOS and it's still in testing regime, available only in 4 regions out of 20

<comment><USER30> Is available for download in the whole country, not only the 4 testing regions

<comment><USER6> just for completeness: it's even available abroad, though that probably doesn't impact the numbers much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Stop building tools to enable fascists. Has anyone not learned the lessons of history?

<comment><USER32> I would encourage you to read up on the technology behind it. It was intended to be anonymous to such an extend that some governments went out and said they wouldn't use it because of the lack of tracking. The methodology has also been laid out quite extensively, and it's an opt-in approach.

<comment><USER31> It's not about tracking locations, it's about tracking social connections. I'm a skeptic it won't see abuses.

<comment><USER33> How can it track social connections when the codes are anonymous by default and can be deanonymized only with an OTP code you generate yourself?

<comment><USER18> If lots of people are pressured to deanonymize, which they are in this case (it's your civic duty!), that's not a very strong system because a lot can be inferred from "gaps" between people that you are linked to in other contexts.

Just like I can avoid using Facebook but they can still, in principle, keep a shadow profile with lots of details about my life, inferred by putting together knowledge from other people. Just like when I joined LinkedIn it already knew who I knew, without me entering anything except my name and email address (that was spooky, I didn't give it contacts or anything). Just like Google knows your personal interests, even if you delete all cookies at the end of every browsing session.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Honestly Covid tracing seems fairly moot at this point. With tens of thousands of people marching in the streets every night, aren't we all basically exposed if we're part of _any_ network?

<comment><USER35> Contact tracing is exactly the kind of tool that would help track outbreaks from protests. Unfortunately in the US we have almost no contact tracing going on.

It is unclear how bad the spread from protests will be since protesters are outside and often wear masks, and the density of protesters can vary greatly. I haven't read of documented super spreader events that occurred exclusively outdoors, it would be great science to track the spread due to protests.

<comment><USER36> * no mobile contact tracing - lots of actual.

I'm not sure how much the mobile protocols would even help in protests. Don't you need proximity with someone for 30 minutes or so to be tagged a contact?

<comment><USER37> If there was a mobile contact tracing app that used AGPS with accuracy down to ~1m _maybe_ it would be useful?

Existing contact tracing apps use Bluetooth which can't be used to determine proximity with any reliability - solid objects (particularly human bodies) absorb significant signal.

Unless all protestors were holding their phones up high for unimpeded line-of- site connections then even protestors next to each other could 'appear' 20-30m away.

In most cases (especially in a protest situation) all Bluetooth-based contact tracing apps can tell you is that two devices are in Bluetooth range (so accuracy of ~30m?).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bloomberg U.S. Startups Barometer - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/startup-barometer/ <comment><USER2> Just a decade ago, a 'startup' meant a group of enthusiastic young people wanting to affirm themselves by creating some cool technology which will change the world, trying to convince people with money to 'invest'.

Today, a 'startup' means a group of people with money hiring enthusiastic youngsters to implement _something_. They bet their youth, health, relationships and mental health to work for that _something_ in exchange for 'funding rounds' and the chance to be the next Xberg.

Unfortunately, more or less 90% of the enthusiastic young founders end up broke, depressed and resigned as a consequence. I know this because I've been the founder of a startup in the 90% club. Took me years to recover financially, mentally and personally.

The quiet winners in this case are the big corporations, who's technology and services have been paid for with seed/venture money given to startups. The investors loose their money, but no worries, because they have other groups of young people who are doing the same thing.

But of course there's a bright side to this - the 10% winners. Those that go on to transform the world around us. Again, I've been there - I was lucky to work for a startup that eventually made a multi-billion dollar exit. And change the world it did !

But now I'm looking at this changed world around me - what kind of reality are we living in ? We're constantly inside these cool shiny gadgets which can do incredible things, while the world around us is disintegrating - climate is going nuts, crazy politicians are getting elected and dystopia is settling in with clouds of war and destruction forming on the horizon.

How did we get to this ? How come all these young and enthusiastic dreams morphed into dystopia ? Make no mistake - technology that you and I have been developing is very much a cause of what the outside world looks like today - didn't we 'change the world' ?

And since most of this technology was born out of startups, we can conclude that the 'startup culture' was the precursor to the dystopia we're currently in.

This has to change. It has to at least go back to 'young people solve world problems with money as a means' instead of 'young people do something for the sake of hitting the jackpot'.

<comment><USER3> > _90% of the enthusiastic young people end up broke_

The median salary for a "high-tech" worker in the United States with 1 to 4 years' experience is about $70,000 [1]. That's almost 60% higher than the median American family's $43,500 household income [2].

[1] [http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Industry=High- Tech/Salar...](http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Industry=High-Tech/Salary)

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

<comment><USER4> Not that it changes your point much, but the intro paragraph says it's $56,000. Where did you get $43,500 from?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Tracking sales of pin-pong tables might be a better indicator. [1]

Also during dotcom bubble somone people used number of Porche Boxters in the street. These days it might be a different model, such as Tesla.

[1] [https://qz.com/676050/if-ping-pong-table-sales-are- falling-t...](https://qz.com/676050/if-ping-pong-table-sales-are-falling-then- silicon-valley-is-clearly-doomed/)

</comment><comment><USER3> This index appears to have been "designed and develop[ed]" by a digital artist [1], a "data journalist/designer for Bloomberg" [2] and a software developer [3].

Where are the econometricians? What guided the data sources and weighting of this index? What is it designed to predict, and how accurately does it do that in backtests?

[1] [https://aubergene.com/sketches/2014/paddle- clock/](https://aubergene.com/sketches/2014/paddle-clock/)

[2] [https://twitter.com/homiedonttweet](https://twitter.com/homiedonttweet)

[3] [https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendazysman/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendazysman/)

<comment><USER6> An econometrician does not have the necessary experience to create a practical "barometer" for an industry.

Second, this is just a quick reference and nothing more. It's a simpler version of what the S&P stands for.

It was done in collaboration with an analyst[0] and two execs[1][2] (insight maybe?).

[0] [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonbirchler](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonbirchler)

[1][http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?p...](http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=61025125&privcapId=875458)

[2][http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?p...](http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=380632481&capId=379520491&previousCapId=379520491&previousTitle=Tune%20Labs)

<comment><USER3> > _An econometrician does not have the necessary experience to create a > practical "barometer" for an industry_

Gross domestic product, producer price indices, consumer price indices, employment statistics, housing starts, manufacturing and trade inventory levels and flows and stock indices are not practical? I think you underestimate the role and prevalence of econometric methods.

> _It 's a simpler version of what the S&P stands for_

The S&P 500 has a clearly-stated goal and methodology [1]. It's used as a shorthand for U.S. large cap equities because it's well designed for that purpose.

The Bloomberg "barometer" doesn't do any of these. Is it supposed to forecast valuations? Ease of fundraising? IPO conditions? Nailing down what an index is designed to do, practically, is important because that directs which data one uses and how one weights them. Calling this a "quick reference" is a farce-- it's an obfuscated infographic that fails to make a point.

[1] [https://us.spindices.com/documents/methodologies/methodology...](https://us.spindices.com/documents/methodologies/methodology- sp-us-indices.pdf)

<comment><USER6> > Gross domestic product, producer price indices, consumer price indices, > employment statistics, housing starts, manufacturing and trade inventory > levels and flows and stock indices are not practical? I think you > underestimate the role and prevalence of econometric methods.

They're very prevalent, I have no qualms about that. But, economics is a young field and we're starting to see the old methods come apart. Specifically, GDP. It has been touted as the end-all-be-all to measure a country's wealth (quality of life), however this notion is incorrect[0].

> The S&P 500 has a clearly-stated goal and methodology [1]. It's used as a > shorthand for U.S. large cap equities because it's well designed for that > purpose.

I am speaking purely of a practical sense. That is, what use do market practitioners (investors, speculators, etc.) assign to it. The group of S&P indices (not just the popular 500) is used as a quick tool to gauge segment "health," i.e current level compared to all levels and means before it. This is the same reason this barometer is _supposed_ to serve.

>The Bloomberg "barometer" doesn't do any of these. Is it supposed to forecast valuations? Ease of fundraising? IPO conditions?

It's _supposed_ to be shorthand for the "startups" segment. However, since most startups (and in particular the technology startups that dominate this segment) are difficult to assign accurate valuation (due to: risk, intangible assets (see: goodwill), opaqueness of financials, private ownership, etc.), there is very little work with.

>Nailing down what an index is designed to do, practically, is important because that directs which data one uses and how one weights them. Calling this a "quick reference" is a farce--it's an obfuscated infographic that fails to make a point.

I believe it's a step into the right direction, but it definitely will need updating moving forward as we learn more about the nature of startups.

[0][http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21697845-gross- domest...](http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21697845-gross-domestic- product-gdp-increasingly-poor-measure-prosperity-it-not-even) _(as only one quick example)_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 25-30% swings seem a little excessive for a barometer when most of that volatility is market noise rather than real sentiment. If there was a 30% Market crash on Wall Street there would be blood in the streets. Seems like this index needs some work to capture real sentiment.

</comment><comment><USER8> VCs are finding themselves with less cash than they expected because they invested in stupid ideas/people. This is good no matter how you cut it, if you have a shitty idea you wont get funded. If you have a good idea there will be less competition.</comment>


Show HN: Conotify.org – Stop the spread of Covid-19 by notifying your contacts - <AUTHOR> https://www.conotify.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, founder of Bayes Impact here (the tech nonprofit behind Conotify.org). We built Conotify.org to help fight the spread of Covid-19.

To do this we took a different approach than the automated contact tracing apps relying on GPS or Bluetooth, which require a large adoption from the general population to work. Instead, we noticed that many of our friends around us who had (or had symptoms of) Covid often did not notify those they met during their infectious period.

This was because they either didn't know this was important, did not know the precise dates of said infectious period, or sometimes just because writing such a message can be a bit touchy, which adds too much social friction to the process.

So to address this we built a simple solution, which doesn't require any fancy tech: we simply took the questionnaire used by human contact tracers and put it in a user-friendly, digital format. We then help people remember (Turbotax- style) who they crossed paths with, and suggest pre-written messages they can send in one click.

We launched this in France back in May when lockdown ended there, and were able to generate hundreds of alerts, so we made an international version. Let me know if you have any questions or feedback!

<comment><USER2> Good job! Nice explanation and visualization to guide user. Doesn't want to be a party pooper here, but what prevents people from pranking others?</comment></comment>


Don't Be Fooled: The Mac App Store Is Full of Scams - <AUTHOR> http://www.howtogeek.com/281849/dont-be-fooled-the-mac-app-store-is-full-of-scams/ <comment><AUTHOR> HTG really has been very vocal about issues pertaining shady apps available anywhere. I can understand it must be very difficult for an newcomer to not get crapware on their PC (including mac). Here are the similar previous issues raised by HTG.

[http://www.howtogeek.com/207692/yes-every-freeware- download-...](http://www.howtogeek.com/207692/yes-every-freeware-download- site-is-serving-crapware-heres-the-proof/)

[http://www.howtogeek.com/198622/heres-what-happens-when- you-...](http://www.howtogeek.com/198622/heres-what-happens-when-you-install- the-top-10-download.com-apps/)

[http://www.howtogeek.com/218764/warning-don't-download- softw...](http://www.howtogeek.com/218764/warning-don't-download-software- from-sourceforge-if-you-can-help-it/)

I want to see if Apple does something substantial as MS and sourceforge did, to counter the accusations by HTG.</comment>


Ask HN: In Bay Area during Thanksgiving, anyone want to meet up? - <AUTHOR>

I'm in the bay area for two weeks and was looking forward to going to tech/startup meetups but stupidly didn't realize it was Thanksgiving this week. Since there's no meetups Thursday and Friday, is anyone interested in meeting up for coffee/drinks/lunch/dinner?  I'm interested in talking anything related to startups and growing a bootstrapped business and software development.  You can see more about me in my profile. <comment><USER2> I'm in SF and not leaving for the holidays. Would be down for a coffee on Friday. Hit me up at dan at techendo dot com. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Dan, sent you an email!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hi! I'm around from December 1 to 9. Would love to meet.

email@example.com</comment>