What happens when you talk about salaries at Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/07/happens-talk-salaries-google/?mbid=social_twitter <comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9906107](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9906107)

<comment><USER4> yeah was searching for that as well.. this thread doesn't appear in the HN list and even search didn't throw it up..

Wonder if there is a special type of Shadow banning submissions on HN

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is not journalism. Do not treat it as such.

Molly McHugh and Wired need to reach out to this woman and ask a few questions. They need to reach out to Google and ask a few questions.

Otherwise, this information is just a shade better than useless. There's a lot of detail missing in these tweets. There's a lot of handwaving where the audience is essentially invited to fill in the blanks with whatever stereotypes -- good or bad -- they feel like.

It irritates me immensely that this story is now out there and getting to be a Big Deal -- and there's no actual journalism to attempt to get to the bottom of it. How time consuming could it possibly be to send a few e-mails, hop on the phone, or go dig up someone you know who works at Google and might shed some light on this?

Maybe Erica Joy is right. Maybe there's a huge problem at Google regarding sharing salaries. Maybe something illegal or, at least, immoral/hypocritical is going on. Or maybe Erica Joy is misunderstanding something about how Google works. About how peer bonuses work, for example. Or maybe some combination of both.

But unless we want to go dig up that information on our own, we just don't know.

Good job, Wired.

<comment><USER6> This comment is derailing. The precise definition of journalism is totally irrelevant.

Erica Joy has shared an important story that we should listen to.

<comment><USER7> How'd that work out for Rolling Stone? When you report without fact-checking it's a disservice to readers, and sometimes, the people's voices you are trying to amplify.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Was stringing together a couple dozen tweets really the best format to share a story like this?

There is a lot that's left out. Once she vaguely mentions that another employee who was "involved" was still getting all of his peer bonuses (which may or may not have been PB's for his "involvement", we don't know), the whole thing just crumbled into a victim story for me. OF COURSE the MALE coworker can do WHATEVER HE WANTS, as long as we don't actually have any details about it.

Also, generally shit will hit the fan if you tell anyone to fuck off, especially if they're your manager. Again, we don't know that she told her manager to fuck off for being racist (??) because this is a terrible story told in a shitty format. But it's implied. Just like everything else in this "article".

tl;dr she got exactly what you would expect when you're intentionally stirring shit up at any company. I'm not sure what she expected.

<comment><USER9> > tl;dr she got exactly what you would expect when you're intentionally > stirring shit up at any company. I'm not sure what she expected.

What? Sharing salary information is a protected employee activity, and retaliation is illegal.. so maybe she expected there wouldn't be retaliation?

<comment><USER10> "retaliation is illegal"

I'm not sure what world you think we inhabit. Are we humanoid automatons? The whole welter of human emotion more or less always outweighs a programmatic injunction like "retaliation is illegal."

Companies are still people working together. They'll probably never be anything but people working together. It does not matter how protected the activity allegedly is; a giant embarrassment campaign run against your company, especially if in pursuit of a particularly feeble branch on the tree of political correctness, means you're out. Or, at least, things won't be pleasant for you. Because your coworkers, above and below, don't like what you've done to their company. One can't write a law preventing that.

<comment><USER11> Oh, one _can_ write a law preventing that, but what happens when you write laws to curb human emotion? Very little. Human nature takes generations to alter their behaviour - even with laws making that behaviour illegal. It sucks that we can't be less judgmental, more accepting and more adaptable to the wants of others, but that's the way we are: Flawed. Until we can be more tolerant and accepting of one anothers needs and less bound by our own egos, we will be doomed to repeat this behaviour until we destroy ourselves.

<comment><USER12> _what happens when you write laws to curb human emotion_

We call this "civilisation".

<comment><USER11> Now if only we _were_ as civilized as we'd like to be. It takes many years for these values to become the norm. We make great steps every year and will continue to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Other side of the story: [https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/3e05wg/what_hap...](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/3e05wg/what_happens_when_you_talk_about_salaries_at/ctap9sx)

Either way both are completely unverifiable. Take both with a huge fistful of salt until both parties are interviewed and quoted and research is done into what happened.

<comment><USER14> One 'side' is a non-anonymous first-person account from one of the major parties in the described event.

The other 'side' is a post from Redditor 'dickbutt_md', who claims to have called up "a friend" who works at Google. In dickbutt's account, the friend claims not to know Joy personally, and not to have been involved in the events, but manages to describe Joy as "passive aggressive" and "not classy", and closes by saying "Google is fucking awesome and anyone who says otherwise is talking out their ass."

I kind of wish this were not the top-voted comment on an HN thread about pay equity.

<comment><USER15> Here is an (apparently) non-anonymous comment from HN which seems to be saying the same thing:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9908030](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9908030)

<comment><USER16> There are a few things in common but that account is far more professional – note the lack of personal disparagement directed at her and the direct acknowledgement that they had significant problems in parts of the company.

Explaining how salary disparities might have happened is very different from saying she's making it up or calling them a rabble-rouser.

<comment><USER15> Erica is strongly implying that she was discriminated against either because of her colour or her sex, but these reports seem to suggest that there were other reasons for her PB rejection and the salary disparities, and therefore her entire spiel is (probably) invalid.

Some disparagement seems reasonable, unless she has some more evidence to back up her claims of discrimination.

<comment><USER16> Or, as many others have pointed out, that her experience with her immediate management and group can be true without being representative of the entire company.

Note that, unlike the unverifiable hecklers, deelowe did not claim that her experience was invalid or that the numbers in the spreadsheet were inaccurate but instead discussed the question of sampling bias or simply the sample size being small enough to be skewed by other known factors.

<comment><USER15> As I pointed out in my comment, I'm talking about the accusations of racism/sexism. In particular the accusations of racism regarding her peer bonuses, telling the "known racist" to "fuck off", etc. _That_ seems to be completely unsubstantiated/refuted.

It's fair enough being upset about your peer bonuses being rejected. What is _not_ okay is to just to some invalid conclusion about racism and then slander your company in public.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I hate that wage disparity is being heralded as a gender issue. It's really a negotiating problem. My coworker and I were hired together, same position, same experience, and offered the same salary. When I was offered the position, I asked for $15,000 more and they gave it to me. My coworker didn't ask for more and is therefore now making $15,000 less than me. After six months, I asked for a raise of $5,000. He never asked for a raise. So now he makes $20,000 less than me.

<comment><USER18> Most people also agree that in ideal circumstances you wouldn't have to negotiate your wages (because you're effectively being rewarded for your negotiating skill, which is probably completely irrelevant to your actual productivity and value).

<comment><USER17> I would agree but I think there is something about a person who believes in themselves enough to negotiate that can be a differentiator. For instance, my coworker is a total slacker, comes in late and leaves early. I come in early and leave late and take on extra work. Someone who is determined enough to feel they are worth more money will probably statistically work harder. I know it isn't the same for all people, but I would bet that the majority of people who ask for more money work harder.

<comment><USER12> It's not unusual to find female employees who are doing extra work because they don't have the confidence to deflect it or seize credit, _and_ who are comparably underpaid.

Work hardness (how do you measure this, anyway?) and salary are weakly correlated above the minimum in most work places.

<comment><USER19> That's an extreme generalization that's sexist against males and females. There are plenty of women with confidence and negotiation prowess and men that lack them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> >"Don't you know what could happen?"

>Nothing. It's illegal to retaliate against employees for sharing salaries.

This answer in fantastic and I wish more technical people learned with this.

As a programmer, some managers assume(often rightly so) that you have no clue about laws, finance and business in general.

<comment><USER8> I think this shows how selfish her goals really were. As if her manager asking "Don't you know what could happen?" implied that bad things could happen to only _her_. Why would she assume they were saying _she_ would be retaliated against (or that anyone would be retaliated against)? What about the other 5% of the company this affected?

<comment><USER21> Retaliation is illegal against them, too.

<comment><USER8> The point is the manager might not have even been implying _any_ retaliation. Can you think of other possible meanings behind the manager's question?

<comment><USER22> Yeah I didn't even at first take it to mean "the company can retaliate". I assumed the manager was referring to unrest & animosity at people undeservedly making more money than others.

<comment><USER23> Which is still not the employee's problem, and so bringing it up is, to me, very much a threat.

<comment><USER8> As an employee you should _kind of_ care about the company's problems, especially if they're ones that _you_ caused. It doesn't read like a threat to me as much as it's a "Do you even realize the internal repercussions of everyone discussing their salaries?"

They're just asking for insight into why this could be a problem (think 3rd grade, "Do you know why this is wrong?") and she shoots back aggressively. I think her inability to produce any sort of thought besides oppression shows that she probably isn't able to handle issues like this.

<comment><USER23> Those repercussions are irrelevant in their entirety because it is both legal and right to discuss compensation. There's nothing for her to consider as wrong and inconveniencing an employer by exercising _completely and utterly protected rights_ is not, in any way or by any stretch of the word, her problem. The company may have a problem with openness and truthfulness, but it's not hers, and to lay it at her feet speaks volumes of you but not of her.

(edit: politeness)

<comment><USER8> I don't think she's an SJW and putting quotes around it doesn't mean I ever said that (I didn't). I just think she's a shitty employee.

Whether or not it's legal for her to discuss those things, it's also legal for her employer to be upset that she's making the work environment more difficult for others.

The problem with these noble issues is that there's a view that you can do no wrong as long as you're fighting for what's right. She clearly sees herself as some Snowdenesque whistle-blower, and she's surprised that it's cold in Russia.

<comment><USER23> _> it's also legal for her employer to be upset that she's making the work environment more difficult for others_

I guess I'm not done, because I am compelled to point out that this is completely false. That's the entire point of all of the legality around the protection of these discussions under United States law: that, no, your employer cannot be "upset" at you for choosing to exercise that right.

<comment><USER8> But they didn't actually do anything to her! What did they do? Please, I am clearly missing it.

Yes they can absolutely be unhappy that their employees are causing a problem, that's why they tried to discuss it with her. But they didn't do anything to her for it.

<comment><USER23> An employer is the power-holder in almost any employer/employee relationship. And so even the "discussion" exists to have a chilling effect upon that worker. The act of having that uncomfortable and fraught discussion is _in itself_ a threat. You have those "discussions" to get a worker to stop exercising their rights. There's no other reason to have it.

When your employee does something that is entirely legal and protected, you don't have a "discussion" with them. You nod, say "OK", and you do absolutely nothing else, because nothing you do in response to it, as it pertains to that employee, can be anything other than hostile--and hostility of _your_ direction. Not the employee's, not now and not ever.

<comment><USER8> First off, all we know is that it was a question "Do you know what could happen?", not some scary "discussion". Such a chilling question to ask someone, so intimidate, very trigger.

It's good to know that my employer can never question anything I do legally without being hostile, though.

<comment><USER23> That's an interesting misreading of what I said. Let's try again: your employer had best not even give the appearance of questioning _legally protected actions_. Is that straightforward enough? Does that make sense?

But I cannot envision a situation where the question "do you realize what could happen?" is not implicitly suggesting that the realization to be made is one of company harm--and thus, yes, _threatening_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Google is a company that wants to have access to all the information in the world.

But if somebody rightfully publishes some information that is sensitive to Google, look what happens...

<comment><USER25> In the reddit comment thread for this u/dickbutt_md had a lengthy comment that seemed to call into question some of the details of this story. His facts weren't first hand, but then again, sometimes a little distance can help with objectivity. In any event, I tend to take comments from possibly-disgruntled former employees with a pinch of salt.

<comment><USER23> On one hand, we have a primary source putting her name on the line, publicly, with a story about her personal experiences. On the other, you have "dickbutt_md" talking about his-friend-at-Google/his-uncle-at-Nintendo and how the primary source that the secondary source doesn't know personally is "a passive aggressive rabble rouser."

And we have HN posters reposting it like it means something.

I think we just hit the peak of this "do anything to discredit a woman who has a beef with a tech company" thing.

<comment><USER26> Is this one of those "high information", intelligent comments? Seems like it amounts to little more than gossip. I'm also wondering if you could point me to what you think your best comment is? Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The article format is completely busted by Twitter's display rules and made unreadable. In this case, formatting the text in a readable way would probably get you sued. Those tweets belong to Twitter now and are good for nothing else but ferrying ads. I won't have my time wasted by trying to read that crap.

<comment><USER28> Why do people insist on using that medium for blogging?

It would be better to tweet, "Guys, I updated my blog with a story about this thing (link)".

<comment><USER29> I had no idea this was a trend. How could anyone ever think this is a good idea? You'd think the editors at wired would be able to copy and paste, surely that's easier than embedding 45 tweets.

<comment><USER27> While this is technically true, you also need to adhere to Twitter's TOS if you're going to use their product.

<comment><USER30> Or Wired could do some actual _journalism_ and, I don't know, interview the original poster plus ask her ex-boss and Google for comments plus try and track down the mysterious other man?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> i hope things like this serve as a wake up call to all young talents willing to sacrifice their lives for these companies, enamored with some idealized visions of what they are and do.

a company is a company. an agent for making money, first and foremost. any positive change they bring is a side-effect, and due to their ever greater power they must constantly be policed, at least by releasing unpleasant information like this.

<comment><USER32> And in my opinion as a young talent, Google is highly overrated when it comes to creating good software. Sure they have some hits, but a lot of it also is kind of bad.

To be regarded as the best of the best, I think they make pretty shitty software.

<comment><USER33> I feel similarly about Facebook. I feel it with some justification, but I'm probably wrong. To do what they do at the scale they do it, for it to even work let alone work pretty much perfectly, pretty much all the time for pretty much everyone is a goddamn miracle. But there are so many little things about FB software (mostly the UI/UX) that annoy the shit out of me, so I get grumpy and think their software sucks.

Having worked at Google, I think it's worth saying, their software is fucking astonishingly amazing. The magic tricks that go into the simplest things are mindboggling, and what's been built behind the scenes to enable it all is pretty incredible.

Also, um, a lot of their software is far from shitty: Gmail, search, docs+spreadsheets, new photos, youtube to name a few. If you think any one of those are "pretty shitty", well...I dunno what to tell you.

<comment><USER34> Here's my list of things that you mentioned which aren't shitty:

        search

<comment><USER35> Can you name any other huge scale user facing software product that isn't shitty by your standards?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Managers evidently aren't supposed to approve more than one peer bonus for the same single act. I work at Google and hadn't heard of that policy before (then again, I'm not a manager) but it came up in an earlier thread.

</comment><comment><USER37> Googler here on a throwaway. I personally know Erica and followed her career. it is quite frankly bizarre to see her biting back against Google given the opportunities she was given.

Erica was a tech stop employee, which is Google's help desk. in terms of technical ability, hiring standards for tech stop are lower than for SRE, where she ended up. every non-erica tech stopper, including me, who wants to transfer into the technical side of the org is required to pass a full suite of interviews, same as an outside candidate. it would be obvious from examining her submit history that Erica is not really meeting this bar. and yet a door was opened into SRE somehow.

she stayed a few months in SRE, underperformed, and spent a lot of time ranting on internal platforms. again, this is verifiable because commits at Google are public. she chose to join a team of about 50% women working under a female director, so I have a hard time believing discrimination is the major factor here. now she is gone and believes she was wronged and is telling everyone so. the similarities to michaelochurch are strong.

<comment><USER38> > _she stayed a few months in SRE, underperformed_

If that's the case it looks like she wasn't aware of it; especially if you're suggesting a door was opened for her maybe there's some more transparency that's needed in the process.

> _the similarities to michaelochurch are strong._

IIRC he _was_ wronged and he got an apology for it: [https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/07/03/my-name- is-c...](https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/07/03/my-name-is-cleared/)

Aside from Erica and her situation do you feel the salary sharing was a good thing? Did it negatively impact Google?

<comment><USER37> Nobody really believes michaelochurch received an apology from upper management. the lawsuit potential alone means that even if there was such an apology it would never be in email. he really actually seems to be crazy.

I personally really appreciated the spreadsheet because I am anti-capitalist, but I find Erica's version of the facts to be distorted in a self-serving way. I find it hard to believe this would meaningfully impact her career.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So here's a devils advocacy for not having transparency around money:

On average everyone thinks they're above average

([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority#Reference...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority#References))

Two people of equal value and skill will both think they're better than the other person, and thus deserve higher compensation. How do you reconcile that with salary transparency? Seems like you'll be making more people unhappy.

Would wages turn into status goods, where both of those people continuously ask for raises because in their view they're underpaid, and eventually get denied, which will probably offend them and cause them to leave?

Secondly, does this actually solve any problems that simple backchannels between employees don't? People already talk about salary at lunch breaks or over coffee; the advantage is that those are private conversations between friends, rather than your salary being broadcasted to everyone for them to judge. What problem does this actually solve?

<comment><USER39> You may want to ground your advocacy in real-world data. This is a widely discussed topic. You might want to start with [http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/07/the- case...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/07/the-case-for- making-wages-public-better-pay-better-workers/242238/) .

The salaries of public sector workers are public, as are the CEO and other parts of upper management in public companies. Everyone's salary is some countries are available to the public.

Quoting from that Atlantic article:

> The worse the individuals' pay was relative to the median, the worse their > satisfaction. Those at or above the median, however, experienced no change > in job satisfaction or job search intention.

> These economists conclude that pay transparency just makes workers who are > on the low-end of the pay scale feel worse about their jobs, so it > accomplishes little. Linda Barrington notes, however, that this contention > misses a benefit of being unsatisfied: the likelihood of moving on .... to > another job, which would match that improved performance with better pay

Regarding the second, backchannels, again we can look to real-world examples to show how difficult or delayed those backchannels might be. Consider Lilly Ledbetter, who was hired as a supervisor in 1979. It wasn't until (quoting from [http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1874954,0...](http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1874954,00.html) )

> Shortly before she was due to retire in 1998, an anonymous co-worker slipped > a note into her mailbox at work comparing her pay against that of three > other male counterparts. Ledbetter was making $3,727 per month, while men > doing the same job were paid $4,286 to $5,236 per month.

Quoting now from [http://www.nwlc.org/resource/lilly-ledbetter-fair-pay- act-0](http://www.nwlc.org/resource/lilly-ledbetter-fair-pay-act-0) (emphasis mine):

> Her co-workers bragged about their overtime pay, but _Goodyear did not allow > its employees to discuss their pay_

She filed an EEOC complaint, which the Supreme Court said wasn't allowed under the law because it the discriminatory acts of the past decades were older than the statutory 180 days for filing an EEOC complaint. The result was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, which resets the clock after each paycheck made from the result of a discriminatory act.

Here's another article, [http://www.financialsamurai.com/never-tell-anyone- how-much-m...](http://www.financialsamurai.com/never-tell-anyone-how-much- money-you-make/) , which says, basically, never tell anyone else your salary.

Since it's easy to show existing cases where people _don 't_ talk about their salaries though back channels, your belief that "people already talk about salary" may be true for some, but surely is not universally true.

Plus, how many of those people are not telling the full truth?

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> It is important that things like this come out into the open.

When the typical doe-eyed college senior steps into the real world and is tempted to drink Eric Schmidt's kool-aid about changing the world (and how the honor of working at Google offsets the lower wage), such disclosures will help him understand that Google is just another money-making corporation. No more, no less.

<comment><USER41> Can you elaborate on what you mean by "offsetting the lower wage?" Isn't Google pretty well known as being one of the top paying tech companies?

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Not that it matters and it was already said elsewhere, but peer bonus can be awarded only once for one thing. And it makes sense in a 50k+ company, where some social interaction happens and a single person can become peer-bonus- celebrity easily. It's not a good thing to incentivize :) Also if I were a manager sifting through some kind of peer bonus app I'd too be tempted to mark all as rejected after a while.

There was a book recently, Work rules! by Laszlo Bock who happens to be a head of people operations. He describes exactly those inequality patterns. It's nothing unusual, some of it is accepted (some people earn more for their higher value) and some not (woman not asking for a raise so easily). Seriously, just go and read a book, not some stream of contextless tweets gathered together.

<comment><USER43> I just finished Work Rules! and was going to say the same thing. There's a whole chapter in there explaining why it's smart _not_ to pay everyone exactly the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> These big tech companies only love "transparency" when it's other people's data they want to look through.

</comment><comment><USER45> Collecting evidence is the right way to approach situations like this. However, when the position is so politically entrenched, extra care _must_ be taken so that opponents cannot dismiss the data due to poor collection practices.

Unfortunately, that care was not taken in this case, and of course, you see opponents dismissing the data. The worst part is that this effort may actually prevent proper data collection in the future: "remember what happened last time we did that?"

</comment><comment><USER46> Wouldn't it be better to __try__ to create a global movement within the industry for employees to feed accurate data to glassdoor?

Sidenote: Most of the people around here knows glassdoor but i have worked with a lot of people who never heard of it..

</comment><comment><USER47> a thing bothered me yesterday and it's still bothering me today and so now i want to tell a story.

One Sunday, some former coworkers & I were bored, talking about salaries on the internal social network instance. A spreadsheet was created. we put our salaries in the sheet, realized that it was created on a public to the world spreadsheet, so I copied it to internal. I then put a form on it and posted the link to the form and the spreadsheet on my internal social network account.

It took off like wildfire.

It got reshared all over the place. People started adding pivot tables that did spreadsheet magic that highlighted not great things re: pay. I did some general housekeeping stuff to the sheet (normalizing the gender field where it could be, exchange rate stuff, that sort of thing).

More reshares.

More people adding pay.

It became a thing.

I was invited to talk to my manager on Mon or Tues. Higher up people weren't happy. She wasn't happy. Why did I do it? "Don't you know what could happen?" Nothing. It's illegal to retaliate against employees for sharing salaries. "Wellll....".

Meeting ended.

Sheet kept going.

People were thanking me for it. They were also sending me peer bonuses. here's how peer bonuses work @ former co:

If you did something good, someone peer bonuses you, you get $150 net in your next paycheck. An important thing I learned during that time: peer bonuses are rewarded at managers discretion. My manager was rejecting all of them. Wasn't sure if this would be good for the company. Wanted to see what the outcome was. Mind you once a PB is rejected, that can't be undone.

Meanwhile, one of the other people involved, a white dude (good friend I won't name, he can name himself if he wants), was also getting PBs. His weren't getting rejected. I told him mine were. He was pissed. Wanted to tell everyone what was happening. I declined. A smattering of people knew what was going on. Backchannels being what they are at former co. (lol IRC #yallknowwhoyouare), it got around. Rejecting PBs was so unheard of, ppl didn't know it was possible. There was outrage when they found out. Shock that I wasn't talking abt it. Meanwhile, spreadsheet still going, getting spread around, pointed questions being thrown at mgmt about sharing salary ranges (hahah no). Most people agreed that it was A Good Thing. PBs kept rolling in. Rejections kept rolling out. One PB eventually got approved. Way after everything died down. Because the person worded it in a way that was vary vague. Any that were outright about the spreadsheet got rejected. 7 total in the end I think?

Higher ups still pissed. Some I used to support as an exec tech would pointedly not interact w/ me anymore. ¯_(ツ)_/¯ Before I left, about 5% of former co. had shared their salary on that sheet. People asked for & got equitable pay based on data in the sheet. The world didn't end. Everything didn't go up in flames because salaries got shared. But shit got better for some people.

I explicitly gave ownership of the sheet to someone else before I left so it couldn't be taken over by mgmt when I was gone (can happen).

I am thinking of this because of everyone celebrating the fact that Google put Ida B. Wells in the doodle yesterday. Ida B. Wells was great. She did stuff to affect change of such a magnitude that if I'm half the woman she was, I'm doing pretty good. I don't claim to come close, but from time to time, I do stuff that will make things better for people at the expense of the establishment. I'm a pretty big believer in justice and fairness and will fight for both if necessary. Fighting for justice & fairness INSIDE Google doesn't go over well. Salary sharing is only 1 example. Blogger porn. Real names. Many others. Shit WILL hit the fan if you tell a racist (a well documented racist) to go fuck themselves though. In defense of the racist, obvi. So sure. Rah rah, Google did an Ida B. Wells doodle. Guaranteed that if Ida Wells were alive & working at Google today, there'd be many private calendar meetings focused on "her future" there.

tl;dr the sharing of one doodle does not a bastion of support for justice and civil disobedience make.

<comment><USER48> Rich people problems! Why is this a thing and why on front page?

<comment><USER49> Because it's of interest to many hackers. Your personal disinterest is noted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Sooo ... it would be great to get a look on that sheet ;)

<comment><USER51> There are already public versions such as glassdoor.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Most employees at large companies are just cogs in a machine. At Google, they are lab rats.

</comment><comment><USER53> Isn't the reason why Erica Joy no longer works at google highly relevant? If she did this during a contract termination notice period requested by google, the reason for the termination might have something to do with whomever had any say in denying the peer bonuses. Which seems to be the whole point of the article, as the rest is pure speculation.

She did however mention that one bonus passed through, arguing it was too vague to be given because of the spread sheet. Hm.

</comment><comment><USER54> She shouldn't have been reprimanded for creating the spreadsheet. Upper management is always terrified of information they don't control.

</comment><comment><USER55> I am struggling with the response to this. My questions are

1\. Does the spreadsheet really cover 5% or so of google employees? If so it has pretty decent statistical validity despite selection bias etc?

2\. Is the spreadsheet accurate, or at least will the reporting differences cancel out?

3\. Assuming the above two are correct, and it seems fair to say yes, then whether she used Twitter, or is grinding an ace is totally irrelevant - <USER2> has a fair pay problem, and really needs to deal with it.

On a personal note, a company is _not_ a market. Class's theory of the firm says it eschews market discipline to achieve more efficient allocation of hard to judge resources. and as such I do not believe that saying "negotiate better" is a valid option for a company of this size. It's bad for everyone but the good negotiators.

</comment><comment><USER56> It is unfortunate that a large amount of the discussion is being distracted by the stringing-together-tweets thing. Yes, it was lame to do that, but isn't it more worthwhile to talk about the content?

I think most of us probably work at a company that discourages salary transparency (most people do in general). I think we could have a more valuable discussion about how our experiences compare/contrast to the content of the tweets, and save the "omg a bunch of tweets _are not_ an article!" comments for when someone writes a blog post about _that_ and shares it on HN.

</comment><comment><USER57> It's very common that people with similar skills have different salary, especially in a big company.

Big companies have the rules in salary increase rate for the current employees, but are willing to pay more to hire new employees from other companies.

For example, A's salary is $5000 and yearly increase rate is 5%. Two years later, A's classmate B is hired. B's salary is $6000. A's salary is $5512.5.

Similar thing happened to me. Luckily I got an exceptional salary increase years later. But eventually I left that company after 6-year service.

</comment><comment><USER58> For some reason I was under the impression the spreadsheet was set up to detect gender/ethnicity based inequality in salaries. Not sure where I got that impression as the tweets do not mention it explicitly other than suggesting that some people asked and got increases.

At the end of the day, this is what I am curious about - was there inequality in pay, and if so, what was the difference.

<comment><USER59> The use of the sheet was orthogonal to discovering her peer bonuses weren't being approved.

<comment><USER58> True... but the peer bonus aspect seems to have overtaken, for me, a more interesting metric (pay inequality amount from spreadsheet data).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> The problem I see sharing salaries is that people tend to overestimate how good they are. So inevitably everyone will have salary envy and no one will be happy.

It also would make explicit who is most valuable to the company.. which can be dangerous

<comment><USER61> > The problem I see sharing salaries is that people tend to overestimate how > good they are.

Absolutely. Gather 10 people from a company in a single room and I really doubt they will be able to agree on it. Especially when it's not even about how good they are, but how much value they provide. I have seen this issue in a team of 3 people I managed, it's hard to imagine what it will look like with 100+ people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> > Salary sharing is only 1 example. Blogger porn. Real names. Many others.

I can't tell from context whether she was supporting or stopping "blogger porn" and/or "real names."

<comment><USER62> "blogger porn" and "real names" refer to two cases where Google made an unpopular decision internally and then later reversed itself: [https://plus.google.com/+googleplus/posts/V5XkYQYYJqy](https://plus.google.com/+googleplus/posts/V5XkYQYYJqy) [https://productforums.google.com/forum/m/#%21category- topic/...](https://productforums.google.com/forum/m/#%21category- topic/blogger/jAep2mLabQY)

I take "fighting for justice & fairness" to indicate that she approved of the reversals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Where is the data? Or at least a summation of it? What was the discrepancy? Was it adjusted for experience?

</comment><comment><USER64> You've just given their analytics bunch of traffic from HN which looks like it came from Twitter. :P

</comment><comment><USER65> Don't be evil (with exceptions).

<comment><USER66> Be evil, pretend not to be. Google is evil and knows everything about everybody and shares it with various orgs including three letter orgs. The only thing positive about Google is the fact that it releases a lot of code out there for people to use. Other than that, Google is a corporate overlord.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> This is nice and all, but where is a link to the actual spreadsheet?

</comment><comment><USER68> That may be shallow, but I can't take her seriously because of the medium she picked to convey her story.

This is unreadable.

</comment><comment><USER69> link to the spreadsheet?

</comment><comment><USER70> Can someone please tl.dr this

First we had articles spread over dozens of pages for the laugh, now we have articles split into 160char segments, grrrrrr

<comment><USER71> She created an internal spreadsheet allowing Googlers to add their salary information.

Lots of people helped tweak the sheet adding data visualizations, comparisons, etc.

Google management told her they didn't like it, she pointed out that you can't be fired for sharing salary information.

Lots of colleagues were giving her "peer bonuses" for setting this up, but her manager kept blocking them, something which is apparently unheard of to the point that most people didn't know they could be blocked.

By the time she left, 5% of staff were apparently using the sheet.

Even more TLDR: Nothing particularly happened except that Google showed they dislike colleagues talking about salaries.

<comment><USER72> What's a peer bonus?

<comment><USER73> I've read that you can award a $150 bonus to another colleague, at which point a manager can approve or block the award. The second part,- manager blocking her from getting the bonus is what sparked the additional controversy.

edit: sibling comment says $100, could be either or.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> This is exactly what happens: jealousy and people thinking that they somehow deserve the money more than the person making more...blaming of on "sexism"

</comment><comment><USER75> Nothing good comes from knowing other peoples salary. Only jealousy, resentment, unhappiness, and greed.

<comment><USER23> Or an actual understanding of market position and--in the case of less privileged folks--a way to smoke out systemic bias.

You know--things that any worker should want to know.

<comment><USER75> Maybe it's different here. In the UK it's considered vulgar to discuss money or how much you earn.

<comment><USER23> Have you paused to consider who would benefit from instilling that idea in you? Because it's not you who benefits.

<comment><USER75> It certainly is me who benefits.

In 2 previous jobs, I found out what others at the company were making. OK, they were managers, but still, it just made me pissed off. It didn't make me happy by any means.

As others note, people tend to generally think they're above average. Can you not see that exploding their delusion might not be such a great idea? Some of them have to be below average. A team who doesn't share salary info, can all be happy that they're all above average. If they start sharing salary, half will be below average and probably pretty pissed off.

The people who benefit, are people who are generally happy as they are. Would you like to know how much money your neighbours have? Why should it matter?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> To be honest, what exactly did she want to accomplish with this? Where I live people are very hesitant of sharing their salary and doing something like this would be considered very rude. All it can possibly lead to is drama about salaries. Drama about why some people getting payed more then others. Should Google now start paying each and everyone exactly the same until everyone is happy? No of course not, it's no secret companies have different salaries for different employees. What matters is that YOU feel ok with what you're getting payed, not what others are earning.

<comment><USER77> The reason people are very hesitant about sharing their salary is because we have constructed a culture where it is taboo to share what you make. That we have these ideals about how terrible things could be if you knew what others were making in comparison to you.

Her manager talked to her saying "Don't you know what could happen?". Well management couldn't fire her for that, but could make her work life less then ideal. Possibly holding back bonuses out of spite? Worse job assignments?

The huge job salary scandal that Google was a part of kinda shows hows they can't be trusted to be honest about salaries and supportive of their workers.

You feeling ok with what you are getting paid is not what matters. What matters is getting fair market value for your worth. Many people make less then what they are worth because they either don't know how much they are worth, or are even too afraid to argue for what they feel they are worth. Companies exploit this and use salary negotiations as a way to hire employees for the absolute least amount possible.

We applaud companies for making record breaking profits, but we don't applaud them for decreasing their profits a bit in favor of increasing all their employees spending power.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> What happens is that your spreadsheet won't be properly adjusted for all factors, people will look for bias, claim discrimination, and get a big bully to fine your company (and look caring and compassionate while doing it)

<comment><USER56> If a manager and company have any justification for pay differences that are not due to protected classes, then they have nothing to fear. If they do pay people differently because of protected classes, they may run into trouble, but I think that's okay.

If most companies were transparent, employees would be a lot more knowledgeable about what leads to more pay. I think we would see more negotiation and engagement and healthier conversations about money. People would be upset at first, but once we start collectively understanding the legitimate reasons for pay discrepancies, and we eliminate the illegitimate ones, I think most people would be happier.

<comment><USER78> Of course they have nothing to fear, because these prosecutions never serve a political agenda, the judicial system has displayed a commitment to integrity, people don't assume the accused are automatically guilty, and trials are so cost efficient that people only settle when they've done something wrong.

<comment><USER56> Even political agendas and sensationalist trials need some leg to stand on to be successful. If you hire honestly and set pay honestly and fairly, with recorded justifications, it is unlikely that your company would suffer any negative repercussions of pay transparency. However, this doesn't mean " _absolutely no company anywhere_ will run into legal trouble due to this"

There are always exceptions, but they are just that: exceptions. The existence of an exception or outlier does not disprove what generally holds true for everyone else.

<comment><USER78> No, they really don't. I've seen it happen many times in finance, baseless accusations extracting large fines because settling is almost always cheaper than fighting in court. In something like hiring policies which can be discretionary, the problem is 10 times worse.

<comment><USER56> If that is the case, is that the fault of hiring and pay transparency, or the justice system?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> So... here's A problem with this.

Are you verifying that the users are actually who they say they are when they share salaries? What if I were to go into the form and say that I was you, and that you made a billion dollars more than everyone else. Would that cause drama?

This just seems like a horrible idea. Feelings will be hurt. Productivity will be lost. Someone will quit. Maybe someone will benefit, but it's almost certainly not good for your team or your company.

People agree to work for salaries. They put down numbers like what they earned at their last job, or what they are looking for in the new job, and then employers make offers based on that. If someone agreed to work for a number, and is getting paid that... why make drama?

<comment> saiya-jin naive and oversimplified view... are you an employee or employer? I don't have issue negotiating salaries hard, but I personally know very bright people, who for various reasons failed at that, and once they learned other people's salaries (which happens eventually to most), they got extremely frustrated, felt strong injustice and some left. I have more sympathy for community-based approach rather than selfish everybody-for-themselves in this.

and no, you don't just come with any number you would like to see to an interview. if you overshoot too much, you probably won't be hired, depends on recruiter and company.

<comment><USER79> Well I manage a team, I have direct reports. I can tell you that Sally and Steve and Joe all have the same job title, but Joe is a rockstar and earns more, and Steve is a slacker who got the job because he knew someone. So when the averages come out, and Sally gets pissed because she's not making what Joe is making... that's what causes drama.

Pay really does, more often than not, reflect the individuals contributions. Why? Because as Joe's manager, I want to keep Joe. I know what market rate is for his position, and I do what I can to make sure he is paid above it. Steve... fuck that guy, let him make below average... he didn't deserve the job in the first place, and we'd all be better off if he quit.

Anyway the fact that it's not by name (so you can compare yourself to another person) makes it worse in my mind. If you are just going to share the salary for your position, we'd need to make different positions for Steve, Sally, and Joe... It would be Title Blah, Rank Joe. Everyone is different.

All names changed of course.</comment></comment></comment>


Never Heard of It - <AUTHOR> http://alistapart.com/column/never-heard-of-it <comment><USER3> Thank you so much for posting this. I developed a bad habit of avoiding admissions of ignorance at the very start of my career because I felt shunned or slighted when I was honest about my lack of knowledge. It was terrible. For a long time I felt trapped, I felt like I had to lie or mislead to be taken seriously and that very lying hurt my ability to learn more.

If someone at the start of their career asked me about having this problem now I'd instinctively tell her or him that it's not worth working with the people you find yourself being dishonest around. But how do you find the good people? It's hard, and it's when you are least experienced that you will have the most trouble differentiating between the knowledgeable and the hangers on.

This is a huge huge problem in our industry. And I think a lot of it stems from the fact that 3 years ago when I knew nothing but the HTML & CSS I picked up on hobby projects and a couple college CS classes, what was I? I was a web developer. What am I now after 3 years of real projects, working with devs that know far more than I do, reading a ton, going to talks, and taking on increasingly more responsibility on projects? I'm still a web developer. In that context it's very challenging to be the person who is new to the field because everyone wants you to be the expert, and can be mean when you're not.

<comment><USER4> Oh man, I'm glad you've stopped. People must have been able to see that from a mile away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Sass's new placeholder syntax is pretty great, isn't it?"

You say: "I haven't taken a look at it yet, what do you like about it?"

They say whatever.

You say: "Wow, that does sound pretty great, I'll definitely have to check that out." And then you do so, sure.

Human psychology is such that they often will actually react by liking you BETTER than if you had (presumably truthfully) said "Oh, yeah, it's great." Because you demonstrated that you valued their opinion, listened to their opinion, and then told them that they were right on!

<comment><USER6> It's a bit more of embarrassing if you're the Sass consultant and the client is the one bringing it up. At least, that was what I gathered from the article.

<comment><USER7> Yes, but it's just an ego thing.

<comment><USER8> It's more than just ego - if your value proposition to the client is that you know more about Sass than they do, admitting ignorance undermines your value to them and your credibility as an expert. This, in turn, could (at least in your mind) threaten your contract, and your chances at securing future contracts.

<comment><USER9> A SASS consultant? Is there such a thing?

I don't think there is any shame in learning from clients. In effect, whenever you talk to a client about requirements, you are asking them to teach you about their problems domain. As a consultant who develops things whether web sites or software, your value to the client is not in the completeness of your prior knowledge, but in your ability to execute upon their requirements and deliver the solutions that they need. So if they can teach you the occasional technical trick, this is just fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting that this comes from a woman. In my experience this is mostly men that systematically cover up not knowing or not understanding.

I always know that when I have to talk to a group of women I have to be well prepared. Men are generally easy to bullshit, they won't ask questions like "could you explain exactly how that works?", at least not in front of their peers. Women seem to have less of an issue with it, especially when there are no men around to give them condescending looks.

<comment><USER11> Women suffer from imposter syndrome[0] more than men and seem somewhat less confident about their abilities in a variety of metrics (e.g. they contribute to wikipedia articles related to their area of expertise less than equally qualified men. They feel less confident speaking at conferences. The ADA initiative has a good piece on this [1] )

\---note: this is not anything to do with actual capabilities!---

Regardless of what causes this difference (cultural, social, biological, monkey-based evo psych, whatever) I would bet it is a factor here. So I posit that men _may_ cover up their lack of knowledge, but it may also be a _confidence_ issue - perhaps the men actually feel like they know already, and the women are less sure of their own knowledge.

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

[1] [http://adainitiative.org/2013/08/is-impostor-syndrome- keepin...](http://adainitiative.org/2013/08/is-impostor-syndrome-keeping- women-out-of-open-technology-and-culture/)

<comment><USER12> Yes, it's great to speculate on these things, as long as we rigorously discourage people from speculating that men are better than women in any dimension. We can have an academic discussion on the differences between men and women while avoiding sexism.

<comment><USER13> Should we rigorously discourage people from speculating that women are better than men in any dimension?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The smartest person in the room is usually the one asking a lot of questions about the stuff they don't know. Particularly if there's an expert there to answer them in a manner that provides more insight than your typical Google search.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've always appreciated interviewing job candidates that would respond with an honest "Hmm, I actually don't know" rather than trying to BS their way through a question for which they obviously didn't know the answer. Expecting even great developers to know 100% of everything is unrealistic.

<comment><USER16> Oh mannnnnnnn do I wish I met some more interviewers like you. I have mounds of experience with programming but not all of it is web-focused, and when I went through interviews I was constantly shut down because I didn't know a particular js or testing framework (RoR world, where there isn't a prescribed consistent stack that is generally used on all projects).

Finally I got to a corporation who looked at my track record & audio master's degree, said "damn you must be smart!" & hired me on the spot. I had finally gotten an offer for an RoR position as well at almost the same time but I can't tell you how many interviewers flat-out turned me down for not knowing some random piece of pseudo-hobbyist tech.

Anyone applying for a job in one of those ecosystems should spend ~3 hrs a day Googling these things & coming up with some talking points. I wish I could recommend just saying "I don't know" but I can tell you most interviewers don't get it. Better to just say a couple cursory things you read on the library's wiki page, then "I haven't used it in production though..."

<comment><USER17> 'I don't know' is never a good answer. If someone asks you about some specific javascript testing framework, for example, and your answer is simply 'I don't know', that implies that you know nothing about javascript testing. Replying 'I don't know about X, but I've worked with Y in the past, and heard about Z' is an answer that shows that you are familiar with the problem space, which is vastly more important than knowing some random piece of tech.

<comment><USER16> heh I agree with you conceptually but I've been in talks that are like (given X is a concept/library/framework) "I don't know about X, but --" "Oh you don't know about X? We don't want to know or understand anything about people who don't BELIEVE in X. You're disGUSting!"

But I never said I personally don't agree with the technique... so the response I go with is "Well, I agree with the philosophy there but my previous employers didn't budget any time for X." which they seem to absolutely hate anyway.

The reason I ultimately went corporate was because the hiring practices were more algorithm/concept-based (web services, AJAX practices, software design principles) rather than library or language-specific. I was hired into a Java team without even knowing Java. About 3 months later I found I could program on any part of their stack if they really needed me to.

Hiring practices that are not based on assessing a candidate's capabilities strike me as egotistical and pessimistic. I'm going to keep reading theoretical Comp Sci texts to see if I can get to the next phase of my career rather than joining the learn-every-framwork-under-the-sun-OR-ELSE movement.

<comment><USER18> Look at it another way.

Would you have wanted to work with people who are so short-sighted anyway?

As anyone who conceptually can't understand that it doesn't matter that JS testing framework 1 is going to be similar to testing frameworks 2, 3 & 4 is probably going to be populated by a whole load of crap, probably mono- linguistic, developers.

A lot of development jobs & the developers that work in those jobs, suck. And they're going to be pretty painful if you care about code.

I was at a talk last night and the speaker was talking about how to help new developers when they first start in a company and he started going on about giving the new developers access to the live servers & FTPing the changes to the live server, etc., etc.

All I could think is 'right, that company is now a never work for, avoid people who have worked there'.

No automated deployment? Having to give new developers access to live servers? In 2013? Pathetic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There's a Japanese saying I came across recently while reading the book Tokyo Vice:

"To ask a question is a shame for a moment. Not to ask the question is a shame for your whole life."

(The author of the book, a newspaper reporter covering crime and the Yakuza, gets very far in his career by asking "dumb" questions.)

</comment><comment><USER20> This post hit the nail on the head for me. This ( _the first few sections mainly_ ) is something I have been doing for years and am trying to get better with. It makes me happy to know I'm not the only one that does this. Great article, Lyza!

</comment><comment><USER21> I appreciate the post addresses the fears in admitting you don't know about something, but I also think it's fair to attack the validity of the question itself assuming the original question was asked in a similar way to how it was presented.

> Sass's new placeholder syntax is pretty great, isn't it?

This question could be considered a leading question, especially when considering the context: I don't write CSS at all, and never have heard of it - why are you assuming I know what it is? I regularly write CSS, but don't know how to use Saas - why are you assuming I use Saas and find it useful? I've used Saas in the past, find it confusing, and have decided to stick to CSS - why are you assuming a tool you use is a tool I should also want use and like?

Just ask the question in a way that doesn't make assumptions!

<comment><USER22> > One of their developers was giving an informal presentation about their > progress

The example wasn't an interview question. It seems like a perfectly normal question you'd ask a fellow developer in the course of working on a project.

Every time you ask a question you're making assumptions about prior experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I do this sometimes, but no longer because I fear looking ignorant. Unfortunately, I've realized that most people are really bad at explaining things. It's not their fault, teaching is hard, but I often find asking questions to the wrong person can lead to a hard to escape, but well meaning tech rant that I can't remotely discern because it relies too much on domain knowledge. I often find that it's easier to just look it up on my own.

<comment><USER24> I do this a lot in math class, actually. The professor goes "so X leads to Y, right? RIGHT?" and I just nod and say yes or otherwise he won't get on to the next thing. I'll understand it better when I can read it in the book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> A lot of it has to do with the culture of shame that causes us to posture in the first place. We bullshit because we're afraid of what the other person's reaction will be like.

I feel fortunate to work for a company that has a zero-tolerance policy for shaming others and their code knowledge. In fact, it's much more common to hear something like "I'm not familiar with that - could you teach me?" instead. Weekly, we show off new tools or techniques we've discovered so the chances of being left in the dark are slimmer. It leads to a lot more open discussions and a better overall base of knowledge across the entire company.

<comment><USER26> Something that has been bothering me lately about my company is that the technical founders will make snide comments about old parts of our code base, parts usually written by people who aren't at the company any longer. I'm generally pretty well respected so I don't get these sorts of comments about my code (at least to my face!), but it still makes me less comfortable working here.

The other day, one of the founders was joking about how bad some CSS was on a particular page, not realizing that I was the one who wrote the CSS. I just laughed. I wrote that CSS 4 years ago when I had no idea what I was doing, and it took 4 years for anyone to notice a problem with it. It doesn't matter how smart you are. It takes time to develop skills and good practices, and shaming other people is really counterproductive.

<comment><USER27> At least you were doing some form of code review.

Generally when doing web work our team is ultimately pushed for time. The solution normally complies with the request, but most of us are embarrassed with the code, and hope for a time to sort it out later, only to never get that time. There's always a flaw.

<comment><USER26> Well, I wouldn't call demeaning comments about code (that we aren't actively looking at, written by someone who isn't present) a "code review." Usually words like "shitty" and "really bad" are thrown out without any specifics given. And the work environment is not so different at our company. The CEO wants it done yesterday, and he cares more about it working than what the technical founders think of your coding style ...

I actually quite like my job, so I shouldn't be complaining so much. I just wish that some of the people I work with weren't so judgmental.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> When you're new to the game, it's quite easy to admit gaps in your knowledge and pick up on what you're missing.

One reason why this remains a persistent problem, I've found, is that the more experience you gain, the more likely people are to treat you like a guru - <USER2> worse, _the guru_ \- which makes it more difficult to say "Sorry, I've not heard of that... could you fill me in?".

<comment><USER28> Pfft. If you're 'the guru', you're even more free to admit you don't know something.

BRIAN:

I'm not the Messiah! Will you please listen? I am not the Messiah, do you understand?! Honestly!

GIRL:

Only the true Messiah denies His divinity.

[http://web.archive.org/web/20071002103358/http://www.mwscomp...](http://web.archive.org/web/20071002103358/http://www.mwscomp.com/movies/brian/brian-18.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> My first job out of college I worked for a man that had left the world of mainframes for the then-new world of the IBM PC. His reasoning was: "It's such a small box. It shouldn't be hard to know everything there is to know about it."

2 years later, he realized just how wrong he was.

With the truly stupendous number of potential things to know about today, not knowing something is the far-more-common case. And there shouldn't be any shame in not having heard about something.

<comment><USER30> Actually the original IBM PC (5150/5160) _was_ simple when compared to a big iron systems of the day

I recall we had the full IBM hardware and software guides for our IBM PC and they where a couple of small A5 binders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> One of the best pieces of wisdom I have received that relates to the IT industry hugely is "no matter who you are talking to and how experienced they are, there is always something that you know that they don't and vice versa".

</comment><comment><USER32> Great article. I'm a big fan of admitting I'm not familiar with something!

It's scary - but it's so much better than _actually_ knowing something and having your expertise dismissed because you've already blown your credibility.

Looked at another way, I suppose my readiness to admit I don't know things is slightly egotistical: when I say I know something well, I want motherf----- to believe me.

Being up front about what you don't know well is kind of the price you have to pay... well, that and actually knowing stuff in other areas.

</comment><comment><USER33> Admitting ignorance often may be a good pragmatic practice when you are trying to get something specific done where that knowledge is important but it's not necessarily great for your career.

I have met numerous people in my career who seem incredibly impressive when you first meet them, like they are so smart and know something about everything but if you try and pin them down on specifics you realize that they are mostly full of hot air and are just parroting something they heard somebody else say. These people can often get promoted fast, assuming that they can do it convincingly because for every person that called their bluff they left that sparkling first impression on 50 more.

I wonder if it's that they are so good at BS that they have convinced the organization that they really are an expert or whether the organization actually values people who can convincingly BS for more senior positions? If you are in a position negotiating a large contract for example, it's definitely a good thing to look like you know what you are talking about.

In many , many cases you can get away with this BS because the issue itself might not actually be very important. If you can say "uh huh yes, I am familiar with framework X" and the conversation moves on to something else because it was never really about framework X in the first place, admitting ignorance may not be the best strategy.

<comment><USER9> I had a guy like that working for me after I was given a team of 16 network designers and engineers to manage. The guy in question was leading a team of 4 network engineers. A couple of the engineers came into my office and complained that this team leader did not actually appear to know anything about network design. I contacted HR and asked for his hiring resume and also wanted to know who interviewed him. Four of the five interviewers were still with the company and all 5 were non-technical people. Alarm bells. I read the resume and it was all kind of vague. I brought him into my office and gave him a kind of technical interview. He was evasive and vague about things. If he had been a jobseeker I would have sent him a polite letter saying no. But he had been on payroll for over a year, was widely considered to be a technical rockstar, and made 20k pounds more than me. One thing that this guy claimed was a CCIE. I checked with Cisco and they had no record of the guy.

I went to my boss, and laid out what I knew. He mentioned that the guy had already been to him complaining about me. I pointed out that the guy had ordered the new style company business cards and put CCIE on it. This means that he was defrauding our customers when he handed out the cards. I explained that every CCIE has a CCIE number and that if he gave us a number, we could check it with Cisco. My boss said that because it was now a sensitive HR situation he wanted to handle it. He advised me to go out for a long lunch that day.

When I got back, the guy's desk had been cleared which was very unusual because in the UK people normally work out their notice period, even if they take a job with a competitor or are laid off. My boss called me in at the end of the day, and thanked me for my investigation and then said that he managed to convince HR to raise my salary by 20k pounds.

Working in large corporate environments in more than one country, I have seen this kind of thing again and again. One particular case was the CEO in New York of a multinational technical company that I had joined. He only lasted two years though because the company was spending too fast.

Now I am always suspicious of people who are considered rockstars or geniuses. If they were really so smart then maybe they would apply that intelligence to sweeping stuff under the rug and pulling the wool over management's eyes, like a certain operations manager at a multinational Internet SaaS company that I once worked at. Technically he was pure incompetence but he managed to hide it for several years by staying online 24x7 and hacking his way around issues in secret until he literally went nuts and collapsed due to lack of sleep and 24x7 stress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Being a part of a company like a tech startup is an exercise in knowledge sharing. I know I learned this lesson when I did an internship. For the first 3 months imposter syndrome hit me hard and I wanted desperately to prove myself as a good developer, not to admit any spotty parts of my knowledge for fear of looking stupid. And then, like the article states, quickly googling it in my own time. It started seeping into my work - when I hit a problem I couldn't solve, I'd spend days of time googling and trying things through trial and error when I had the best resource all around me: the other developers who'd seen this stuff 100 times before.

My manager at the time noticed this behaviour after a while and basically told me that the whole point of the internship is to learn, and no one would be surprised or disappointed if I didn't know some minutae about the field I was working in. In fact, most people enjoy sharing their knowledge, it makes them feel smart and useful.

This doesn't just apply on an internship - you might have been hired into a company as a respected, talented programmer, but the situation is still the same - you're there to share your knowledge with others, and be shared with in return, and use that cumulative knowledge to build a product.

Once you've 'looked stupid' once by asking a question, you'll quickly realise it's not so painful after all - and it saves the company a lot of time if you go 'actually, I've not heard of that', and it takes your colleague 5 minutes to explain, than having to Google for info and decipher Wikipedia articles and arcane documentation every time.

</comment><comment><USER35> Good post. It's a developer-specific flavor of Imposter Syndrome that I've struggled with too. Must learn all the frameworks! Now! And my designer side wants to master ever style I see on Dribbble until Photoshop stands up and starts clapping.

A book that helped me overcome it is called Mindset, written by the psychology researcher Carol Dweck. I can't recommend it highly enough. Apparently the problem gets _worse_ as you gain skills, not better, if you don't consciously take steps to counter it.

I was just chatting with a friend this weekend that I also recommended the book to because he identified Imposter Syndrone as his major obstacle in life, even though he's highly accomplished and his blog is constantly on HN. Talking to him made me realize that it not only affects more people than I realize but that it probably also affects generalists more than specialists, since being T-shaped means by definition that you can only pick a few areas to go deep.

<comment><USER36> Good old Impostor Syndrome.

Sometimes, I feel as if I have no idea what I am doing. I mean, I only know Photoshop, Illustrator, HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP. I can only design websites, program them and launch them. I am such a fraud. I can't even use .NET or Ruby! How can I call myself a web developer? And I keep using google to find answers or keywords I forget! If I wasn't such a fraud, I could write code on paper, and it would be perfect!

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I think this is a measure of confidence and maturity.

If you are confident enough, mature enough in yourself and work in an atmosphere that's mature enough not to criticise for it, saying "nope, that's new to me, is it something I should learn/look up?" is a good thing.

</comment><comment><USER38> This reminds me of an issue I had with a coworker. Personally, I'm reluctant to answer questions about the behaviors of a codebase I work on (e.g. "what kinds of input can you give in field X of dialog Y?") without reviewing the code first. There are far too many combinatorial logical possibilities, not to mention the fact that a mature codebase becomes so fractured and diverse that nobody really knows what's going on at any given code location.

Meanwhile, my coworker would confidently answer with whatever he thought was correct. He would often be close, but he would also, alarmingly often, be completely wrong, to the point of describing behavior that had nothing to do with the product in question.

As luck would have it, none of his lies/misrepresentations ever mattered. Whatever prompted the questions ended up being unimportant, or the support issue was resolved through other means. He ended up promoted to manager, at which point the department imploded on itself under his watch. To my knowledge, he never had any idea how incorrect he was, since he was simply wildly confident in himself.

</comment><comment><USER39> Owning up to posturing

I think it's good advice to be aware of doing this but you can go too far in compensating. Don't derail other people's speech by riddling them with questions or admissions, but if they ask you if you know be honest.

In other terms, nodding to a speaker can mean "please continue", I think it rarely actually means "I understand completely".

</comment><comment><USER40> I say it all the time; it gives folks the chance to show off, educate all of us. Its a conversational ploy that's useful even when you DO know.

Pointless to argue sex bias; who cares? It happens all the time that we feel our ignorance is on display. I revel in it, ask questions, find out if the other guy really knows what they're talking about.

</comment><comment><USER41> Question about phrasing: "This is the first time I've heard of that" sounds better to me than saying "I've never heard of that before". It feels more like I'm grateful to the person who has introduced me to the topic rather than dismissive of this thing they may have just made up.

</comment><comment><USER42> Great point here:

"I go through periods of self-doubt about my qualifications as a web developer. I have a sense I'm not alone in this. Our field is by nature a generalists' field, where expertise involves synthesis of concepts and technologies, not complete mastery of a single, static topic. It's hard to know how to tell if you're good at your job."

I'd say, I'd agree fully but you can look at it as an advantageous position, in my opinion.

The ability to bend a lot of different concepts/technologies that were put together by experts into something that solves the problem puts you in an important place.

I'd say show love for the open source community and the people who know everything about a particular framework or technology, but really it comes down to asking, "No, not familiar, what are the advantages of this [new thing] over what we've been doing?"

</comment><comment><USER43> I generally enjoy admitting ignorance and asking questions that seem dumb as a way of educating myself. You do have to be mindful of who you do this with. The person you're speaking with has to have a certain level of maturity themselves in order to not consider you stupid for your admission of ignorance.

In an ideal situation, you're speaking with someone who will allow you to probe them on the subject with a series of "stupid" (sounding) questions till you have a good basic understanding of the topic.

Unfortunately, many people are not like that. They will simply think that you're stupid and move on to the next topic. Sometimes these may be people you want to make a good impression on, for a variety of reasons, so some diplomacy is required.

</comment><comment><USER44> I can think of at least two employers who gave me the job because of my honesty when admitting to my ignorance of certain job-related knowledge during an interview. It's a really great trait for recent graduates, many of whom will nod along and say, "Oh yeah, I've used such-and-such before." My first two jobs out of college the boss told me after giving me the gig that a big part of me getting hired was that I didn't appear to be over-stating about my abilities and it was clear what they were getting by hiring me. So if anything, young developers should just remember to be honest and that you can't be expected to know everything right off the bat. Employers will appreciate the honesty.

</comment><comment><USER45> I think this definitely comes with experience, and therefore confidence. I own up to not knowing things _all the time_ , but I doubt I would've four or five years ago. It just becomes easier when you're confident in what it is you _do_ know.

</comment><comment><USER46> There are too many topics to be an expert on everything. I've found that honesty leads to better conversations and higher trust long-term relationships.

"That's not really my area of expertise, what do you mean by that?"

"I haven't looked into that much yet"

"I'm sorry, I don't know that word"

"I've been meaning to look into ____, can you give me the 5 second overview"

I can separate the world easily into two types of people: those who will asks questions if they don't understand, and people I'm unlikely to trust.

</comment><comment><USER47> There is a new significant technology released every week. Sometimes there are several in one day. When people seem surprised that I haven't heard of their new favorite tech it makes them seem inexperienced or dumb to me. Actually I think you can almost take any two random developers and there is a good chance they are each working on technologies that the other has never heard of. The thing is new technology comes out as soon as people think of it and type it in.

</comment><comment><USER48> This is the right attitude to have about learning stuff related to your field. But, I think it is very important to really know your field very well if you want to be good at it. It may be really obvious but I had to write it[1].

[1] - [http://serenecode.org/2013/11/proper-education-is-a- must/](http://serenecode.org/2013/11/proper-education-is-a-must/)

<comment><USER49> I had a discussion with some coworkers while I was an intern (not all that many years ago) about IPX (Internetwork Packet Exchange). I had to admit I didn't know the protocol. There was an immediate and severe negative reaction from everyone in the room, upset that I didn't know IPX, upset that I never learned it, upset that I apparently hadn't been paying attention in class the day that was taught. Problem is, it never _was_ taught, and of all the protocols I _did_ take the time to learn, I learned the ones I was likely to run into most often in life. IPX isn't commonly used, and it certainly wasn't taught at my school.

That's the reason it's hard for some people to admit they don't know: because no matter what, there's this fear that everyone expects you should know it already. No matter how obscure. It's really easy to brush it off the first time something new comes up, or the second or third time. By then, it's embarrassing to admit you have no idea what they're talking about.

<comment><USER50> I didn't think IPX/SPX was used anymore. I sure wouldn't expect an intern to know anything about IPX/SPX outside of maybe its existence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> When I was in neurology, my favourite sales rep was the guy who would answer a question with "I'm not sure. I'll find out and get back to you". He didn't always get back, but he usually did, and you were better off for it. Much better than the sales reps who gave you a bit of hot air masking that they didn't know the answer.

</comment><comment><USER52> This is a common cognitive bias, overestimating familiarity with expert domains. Sometimes called the curse of knowledge, or the terminology illusion (specific to overestimating familiarity with jargon).

Unfortunately, it happens naturally and automatically, and is thus very difficult to overcome.

</comment><comment><USER53> I find myself doing this as well. But often it is with people that just won't shut up with their technical mambo-jambo of how great something-something is. Asking questions would just make them talk for even longer, so I shut up, nod and am on my way as quick as possible.

</comment><comment><USER54> Great point. Not only is it personally empowering to be open with what you don't know, there are frequently 4 or 5 other people who are happy when you ask for clarification.

When I'm on sales calls, I now go out of my way to ask those questions of my own people.

</comment><comment><USER55> Here's one thing I've learned about knowledge/implementation of technology:

I've gained a lot of trust from clients for being knowledgeable in the field of emerging tech. I've earned a lot of money by actually using it to provide solutions.

</comment><comment><USER56> This post hit a lot of nails right on the head, for me at least (I even played midfield).

</comment><comment><USER57> Why is the top of your heading _A List Apart_ hidden behind your translucent navigation bar at the top.

.killer-logo { margin-top:55px;} That might do the trick.

Edit: 42px would be best as your logo is cut off at the top of the letters.

<comment><USER58> It's a design choice. I get why they did it, but it really bothers my eyes ... something about _almost_ being able to read something make my visual system go haywire.

</comment></comment><comment> plus- I feel terrible because while I can relate perfectly to the author's fears, I'm finding I envy her ability to write so well.

</comment><comment><USER59> This is completely off-topic, but Lyza Danger Gardner is a pretty badass name.

</comment><comment><USER60> A simple rule I go by: This brain is for processing. Not storing.

</comment><comment><USER61> "Just-in-time googling". That made my day, thank you!

</comment><comment><USER62> This is what I was looking for. Perfect way to phrase it.</comment>


Ask HN: Does a potential founders financial history or credit rating matter? - <AUTHOR>

I have a friend who is considering a 'strategic default' on his home.  He is a software developer who I think will eventually try his hand at a start-up, most likely through the y-combinator/tech-stars type approach.
It got me wondering if this could potentially back-fire on him in the longrun because I know part of his plan is to relocate to the bay area once the rubble settles.
My question is this - if you are a potential business partner would you hold this against him? What if you were a vc/angle and he pitched his start-up idea? Does this affect his credibility or tarnish him or the idea in any way? <comment><USER2> The problem is that it does not tell a story. It may indicate that they are financially irresponsible, but it also may indicate that they are willing to (and have) bet it all on an idea. The first being a bad trait for a start-up the latter being a very good trait. Overlooking the guy that would bet it all out of worry of him being the guy who cannot manage money may eliminate some people who have exactly what you are looking for.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you think the richest american's are being financially irresponsible too, or just shrewd?

[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/09/business/economy/09rich.ht...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/09/business/economy/09rich.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&ref=business&src=me&adxnnlx=1280692832-V2NzsDsHxhiDPxlE+qG4Qw)

<comment><USER2> I think that you summed up my point, it does not tell the whole story.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - appreciate the feedback from everyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It shouldn't affect the idea or the startup directly, but it will come into play when he goes to sign a lease on office space, get a business line of credit, apply for a merchant account, etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> no.</comment>


Arm unveils 1mm x 1mm 32bit chip: "years of battery life" - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/technology-17345934 <comment><USER2> ARM Cortex M0+ processor specs:

[http://www.arm.com/products/processors/cortex-m/cortex-m0plu...](http://www.arm.com/products/processors/cortex-m/cortex-m0plus.php)

Advantages over 8-bit and 16-bit processors for embedded solutions, according to ARM:

[http://www.arm.com/products/processors/cortex-m/cortex-m0plu...](http://www.arm.com/products/processors/cortex-m/cortex-m0plus.php?tab=Moving+from+8/16-bit)

<comment><USER3> Interesting that they only make comparisons with PIC and 8051. AVR still blows them away on many angles; particularly energy efficiency, community, ease of use on not-windows, and price. (MSP430 too, for efficiency and price.)

I'm fooling around with the lower power ARM chips on weekends, and they seem like a great option when you really want to shoehorn in a full operating system somewhere.

<comment><USER4> I don't understand the connection on why we need such an efficient chip for implementation in devices which are plugged in.

If the economic benefits were so strong for those devices being connected that should have already happened.

What am I missing?

<comment><USER5> You really don't care as much when its got mains power but not all of these devices are plugged in. You will see them a lot in simple hand held consumer electronics like garage door openers, remote controllers, wireless mouses, kitchen timers and so on. In battery powered devices saving a mA make a world of difference.

<comment><USER6> mA may matter for something like a phone but really the war in the 8bit space is over uA and nA.

Many 8bit mcus end in places where their battery is expected to have a life time measured in years. Last I looked I think MicroChip is leading the way here in terms of sleep power. Their PIC XLP series only draws ~20nA while sleeping.

There is more competition in the 16bit space with the MSP430 from TI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> ARM is a brilliant (if not the poster-boy) example of why the UK government should be investing in new technology companies rather than car manufacturing and banking.

<comment><USER8> ARM employs about 2 000 people [1]. They're definitely a huge boon for the British tech community and competitiveness, but justifying government support for such a small employee base would be untenable.

[1] [http://www.arm.com/about/company- profile/index.php?setcookie...](http://www.arm.com/about/company- profile/index.php?setcookie=classic)

<comment><USER9> Northern Rock employed 5000.

<comment><USER10> Bank bail-outs aren't about employment, they are about protecting people and other business from losses in assets in the banks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Seems like a fairly straightforward evolution, they are claiming 11.2uW/MHz vs. 16 for the non-plus M0. Sounds like the instruction set is the same. I'm curious whether the M0 has been getting significant design wins over the established low-power microcontrollers like PIC, MSP430, etc.

<comment><USER12> It looks like the trade-off is peripherals: the M0+ (as far as I can tell) doesn't have the goodies a generic PIC at the same price-point does.

<comment><USER12> Replying to myself: judging by the Freescale chips out there, the peripherals will probably get added by IP integrators. Should be interesting.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, that's how the ARM microcontroller market works. I imagine NXP's peripheral set will be quite similar to the ones on their existing Cortex-M0 chips. Freescale will presumably base theirs on what's in their M4 parts, albeit scaled down. For another point of reference you could look at STMicro's Cortex-M0 implementation as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well, strictly speaking the Cortex A9 is supposed to be 1mm x 1.5mm, but that's:

1\. According to ARM's promotional materials. No corroboration from licensors, as far as I'm aware.

2\. Without caches. If you look at those pretty pictures of Intel chips, those huge swatches of regular rectangular stuff are caches, and they take up space.

</comment><comment><USER14> Hope that when the "smart grid" or whatever you want to call it does come around, it comes with the electricity equivalent of net neutrality.

<comment><USER15> Wow. Let's have government bureaucrats control not only how we use the Net, but also when we can use our appliances!

Why not just use nuclear to produce abundant energy?

<comment><USER16> The idea behind a smart grid is usually some form of the local utility company taking money off your electric bill if your appliances are smart about not using energy at times of peak load. Nothing about the concept means the government has to be involved.

<comment><USER15> _Hope that when the "smart grid" or whatever you want to call it does come around, it comes with the electricity equivalent of net neutrality._

The post I was responding to was specifically calling for it to be government controlled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Link to non-mobile site: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17345934>

I'm a bit surprised this hasn't been done before.

Can this chip be solar powered (I mean, obviously, with a small solar cell)?

<comment><USER18> No reason why should not be solar powered. Around here all the parking meters are solar powered, just for cost of installation reasons. Wiring electricity in to 50bn devices would be a pain, unless they are electric anyway.

<comment><USER19> Just curious, wouldn't a place that needs parking meters already be on the grid? Assuming we use parking meters to earn back the costs of building the parking lot or to stimulate the use of other forms of transportation than a car in that area.

On the other hand, having autonomous off-the-grid parking meters might be easier to install and maintain by a third party. Plus it allows you to start growing parking meters everywhere, even in the middle of nowhere. Let them pay!

<comment><USER11> The ones I've seen have been installed as higher tech replacements for traditional mechanical parking meters. Solar power means the old meter head can just be removed from the pole and the new one attached, with no need to worry about running underground electric service where none was before. I'm sure the savings in installation cost more than makes up for the addition of the solar panel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Pair it with bluetooth 4.0 ant implant inside my body. I will charge it myself once in a while using inductive charger.

<comment><USER21> Why not just use energy harvesting. You move & you're warm.

<comment><USER22> But the warmth isn't on a temperature gradient so it's difficult to exploit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Quick question: under specs for the M0+ where they say,

>Enhanced Instructions >Hardware single-cycle (32x32) multiply option

Does that mean their hardware can multiply 32-bit by 32-bit numbers in a single clock cycle?? I took a computer organization course where I implemented a simple hardware multiplier and it took a lot more cycles than that, so I was curious.

<comment><USER24> You can create HW multiplier using only NOR+AND elements. It will consume a lot of silicon, but will work fast enough.

BTW, most FPGAs have HW multiplier prebuilt block, because you will loose lots of flip-flops or LUTs (or both) implementing one yourself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> How does a 1mm x 1mm chip actually get used? I'm guessing that the actual package would have to be much bigger to enable mounting on a board?

<comment><USER26> Generally the package is big enough to get all the connections out at a scale that won't irritate manufacturing.

There are tiny packages though, NXP (one of the ARM builders) has a 2mm x 2mm package with a similar ARM in it, but they can only get 16 pins out at that scale, 4 are power and ground, one is clock leaving you 11 pins to rule the world. (data sheet: <http://www.nxp.com/documents/data_sheet/LPC1102.pdf>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27>

</comment><comment><USER28> this is mostly for msp430 I feel, msp430 is 16-bit and kind of strange to deal with, I'm happy to see this M0+ coming along to replace that.

</comment><comment><USER29> I don't need years of battery life: I need 32-36 hours (of use, not standby). Then I can go from charging daily, like in the nineteenth century where you have to wind your watch up every night, and Sherlock Homes can tell a watch belonged to a drunkard by scratches around where you insert the winding key; how different is it to fumble with the power adapter jack? - ahem, to charging whenever it is CONVENIENT for me. It still wouldn't quite last through a long weekend at a lodge with just one inconvenient power outlet if you use it a lot EVERY day, but most people don't and if you do, you still only have to find a quiet period to charge it ONCE during the long weekend, like whenever the social activity dies down.

How many people keep multiple chargers at the different places (home/office) they are, or even take one with them ALL the time, just so they don't get left stranded. All this is fixed if the machine has a longer cycle than you do, over a typical 1-2 day cycle. Then you can pick the most convenient time to charge up from 20 or 40 or 60 percent or wherever it's at by then, you can work on it it at a cafe without plugging it in after working somewhere else you couldn't plug it in the night before, or go away for the weekend with it without any charger at all, if you know you're back in the ofice Monday and are sure to use it less than that.

In the meantime you don't worry, you aren't inconvenienced.

<comment><USER30> These chips are not going to be used in phones.

<comment><USER29> I was talking about my laptops -- terrible sorry this wasn't clear! I thought the cafe/home/office example made it clear. Who works all day on their phone?

<comment><USER31> They aren't for laptops either.

Think about something more like a toaster or a temperature sensor.

<comment><USER32> Or a pacemaker - something drawing power for a very long time, and where recharging/replacing is literally painful and power failure is deadly.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Making the obvious code fast - <AUTHOR> https://jackmott.github.io/programming/2016/07/22/making-obvious-fast.html <comment><USER2> Great work on the SIMDArray extensions, always nice to get speed while maintaining a functional style.

BTW, I don't think you need a third party library like Nessos to get that streaming behavior (iterating over the items in a single pass). Seq will do the job just fine. For example this code:

        let arr = [|1;2;3|]

        let sumSquares =
            arr
            |> Seq.map (fun x -> printfn "%i map" x; x*x)
            |> Seq.fold(fun sum x -> printfn "%i fold" x; sum + x)

will produce this output in F# Interactive:

        >
        1 map
        1 fold
        2 map
        4 fold
        3 map
        9 fold

        val arr : int [] = [|1; 2; 3|]
        val sumSquares : int = 14

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice article!</comment>


Show HN: Personal website generator, full demo with no signup - <AUTHOR>

So many new services get launched every week, I love trying them out but there's always a signup form in the way.
Just wanted to share a new approach I'm trying for my own side project. (qiip.me is a personal site generator)
To try it out, just use the URL. For example:
http://qiip.me/try/github/mdo
This would fetch a github account and enable me to try different themes. You could also do:

  http://qiip.me/try/github/ed-lea/dribbble/edlea
 Check out the home page qiip.me for other services supported. <comment><USER2> I really like the simple clean design. On the other hand, I would never use this as-is. It's simply not a service I have any reason to use. However, I might use it if I were building a business and needed a skeleton that pulls people in by giving them individual websites.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a really cool idea, and a pretty solid implementation! A tiny bit rough around the edges but you might be onto something.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sorry, but I don't get it..

<comment><AUTHOR> This is meant more as a tool for me to show people directly what their site would look like.

For example, without asking you to sign up, I could build a link where all you do is click to try <http://qiip.me> out

But for regular visitors to the site, you just click on the icons on the home page which does the same thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> great idea !</comment>