Ask HN: How to tell quickly if someone is professional? - <AUTHOR>

Professional = takes ownership and gets things done. No hand-waving, accountable, etc. I would suggest punctuality is a strong indicator, but I was wondering if HN can come up with better ones. <comment><USER2> In my mind, a professional displays:

1\. Discretion.

2\. The quiet soft-spoken voice of reason (and incentive).

3\. The weight of wisdom.

4\. A higher sense of purpose other than being liked.

5\. A way of saying much with few words (the "genius of compression").

6\. The ability to discern between "the idea" and "the packaging".

7\. A great fear of ever saying in private what they would never say in public.

8\. An aversion to announcing things in advance.

Rather than being "on time", a professional seeks to be "before time". Rather than trying to "get to the point", the professional "starts with the point". A professional is more concerned with examining and testing and adjusting motives, than learning methods.

Above all, a professional gives value to "voice". The idea that playing a violin well will eventually result in greater resonance, that every note contributes to the tone of the instrument. The professional chooses to produce true notes as much as possible, knowing that false notes played in practice will eventually come to light in the character of the instrument. A professional understands why orchestra conductors insist on punctuality, the first and second and third order effects thereof. How "bottomless wonders spring from simple rules... repeated without end." - Benoit Mandelbrot.

Ask a professional why they chose to take a particular course of action, and they will be able to tell you "why". Professionals are rational, and their rationality is proactively forthcoming. Professionals phrase things in the positive.

Most of these characteristics seem to come down to "words" and "voice" and "reasons".

<comment><USER3> Careful, you just described me, and my bosses characterized me as 'abrupt' for years, and they valued 'people skills' more than my ability to keep their software and servers running. (Yes, both.) We survived it, but I'm not sure they would have if they'd gotten their 'people skills' person instead of me.

That's not to say I haven't improved in that department over the years, but I still start conversations with the meat instead of 'How was your vacation?' (Yeah, I got scolded for that once.) It's not even that I didn't care about their vacation, it's that I had very important work matters to deal with (I was at work!) and they come first.

<comment><USER4> I've had similar problems before, where a focus on fixing things was derided because it wasn't "Friendly". I've actually noticed a correlation between how much people value superficial interactions, and how valuable that person is compared to others in their field.

That is, if a manager is more concerned with "Hi, how are you"'s then "The server is literally on fire, I need to get into the server room to put it out", they are much more likely to be incompetant then the average manager, and know it, which is why they're trying to buff their 'soft' skills.

This only applies to superficial reactions, not stuff like "When you attack people as your opening sentence, it makes them defensive" style stuff. If it actually matters, it's not what I'm talking about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Doesn't gossip, unless it's harmless teasing. Does not do anything to spite another colleague, only interested in getting things done. Doesn't let his ego get in the way. If his proposal is passed for another team members, he still pitches in as much as ever. Likewise, he doesn't walk all over people who gave losing ideas, and listens to them as much as he would have. Moves discussions along to make _decisions_ , understands that conversations are _not_ productive unless something new is decided upon. He should move like a shark, but not in an evil way: keep swimming, or sink.

<comment><USER6> That seems to be more of a complete description of being professional than an indicator - I presume the OP is looking for things that indicate a person will do these things before they actually do them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's not possible.

No matter how professional someone appears there's always a chance they're a complete flake in reality.

The best you can do is determine quickly that someone is _not_ a professional, and the basis for that is going to have to be a variety of factors.

There's no one thing that will serve as an accurate litmus test all around.

Punctuality is a good start, but I wouldn't put too much stock in it. Personally, I think it's way over-rated.

For something like an interview, punctuality is important as a sign of respect and for practical reasons...

If you interview someone, you should consider punctuality but also bear in mind that crap happens. I once had an interview and I got stuck in the subway, where there are no phone signals.

Who's to say if you are writing off a brilliant worker due to bad luck.

In terms of normal punctuality for work, I think it's vastly over-rated.

Places generally expect you to be slightly early for work, so I don't see anything wrong with the assumption that you will sometimes be a little late. As long as everyone gets to work around the same time, everyone does their work,everyone works their hours, and people are on time for the truly important stuff....I don't see the problem with even regular "lateness".

Anyway. I digress...

If anything I think how they are dressed is a better indication than punctuality, but that also has problems.

You have to look at a lot of things...I would worry less about whether they are a fit for some hypothetical objective mold of "professional" and worry more about how they fit with what _you_ think is important, and how they fit with _your_ culture.

All that matters to me is competence, work ethic, and how they fit in with the group....I'll take that over some nebulous concept of "professionalism" any day.

</comment><comment><USER8> I doubt punctuality is a strong indicator of anything other than how reliable the public transportation system is.

<comment><USER9> No. Public transport might be unreliable, but if unreliable it is unreliable it is so in a _regular_ way.

If you value others time, you can use that regularity and be punctual in spite of unreliable, traffic, public trsnaport etc.

<comment><USER8> The problem is that I value my own time more than I value other people's time.

<comment><USER9> So do I but,

1\. I carry a Kindle with me. I read a lot and I can do it as well waiting in a office/lounge/Airport as at my bed.

2\. I don't value my time more than collective time of four people waiting for me to start a meeting/meetup/lunch.

<comment><USER10> This reminds me of an idea I had for a product: place value on your and your colleagues time by creating a market for it. The market runs in the calendaring application - you are allocated a certain amount of everyone's time to take for meetings. If you want or need more than your allocation, you have to trade for it. That way you are forced to invite only the people you really need, it quickly becomes obvious whose time is most important, the overall amount of time spent in meetings is limited, and people become cognizant of the "value" of others' time. It could be built as an outlook plugin, even.

<comment><USER11> no link handy, but a similar thing was tried with email before. You had to offer points for someone to read your mail, and readers would natutally read the highest-paying emails first. The results sounded cool, similar to what you were predicting-- everyone got more conservative with others' email-redaing time. With the email version, you "traded points" by reading (or replying? I forget) your mail.

I'd love to try your calendar version!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I like asking people when the last time they've done irreparable harm to data was. (deleting a database table, formatting something they shouldn't have, etc...) Those who say never are liars. Those who have agony in their faces as they answer but can't tell me what they've done to prevent the situation from occurring in the future or those who don't care are pretty unprofessional. Those who regale us with heroic stories of accepting the blame for their mistakes, fixing it in the best way possible and putting safeguards in place to minimize the possibility of it occurring again are pros in my book.

<comment><USER13> I've accidentally truncated a database table in a dev environment, bringing all sorts of testing and development to a halt and making my manger's life miserable for a few days. (Due to some really bad menu design in an admin tool. Instead of a right-click for "Renaming" a column, there should have been an indication that a table truncate would be happening in there somewhere.)

I would never have agony in my face about it, perhaps because the event wasn't "irreparable." The database was just reloaded from production. My first answer to your question would be "never" because the event really wasn't consequential. In fact, I'd question just how "professionally" run an organization is if a data deletion event is of dire consequence. Anything important should be backed up and easily restorable.

Some decades back, someone did a study of companies that had some disaster happen. (Fire, flood, etc...) Of the ones that lost their data, only something like 3% of them survived the next year. Digital data is the most easily backed up corporate asset and probably the most important.

(To keep it from happening again, I'd use a different tool entirely, if given a choice. In that case, I wasn't!)

<comment><USER12> A very professional answer! You'd be surprised at the number of organizations and individuals that don't have some sort of backup solution in place, so the question will also filter out those. Even if you have backups or the data isn't 'irreparably' lost I'd imagine you agonized a bit from causing your coworkers a few days of pain, or if you need to restore from backups, perhaps a few hours of downtime? I guess I should change my question from using the word irreparably.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> By your definition of professional I don't understand why you want punctuality. Three months into the last job I had, I told the company: "I'm more productive when I'm more productive. I'm not going to abuse off course, but I'm not getting here at 8am sharp every day." They said I could come at any time I wanted, or telecommute if I wanted, as long as I got things done. One time I spent 4 days in the office only surfacing from my desk for food and smokes because someone screwed a deadline. I made 2 weeks wort of work on three days. I got a bonus, an all paid weekend retreat, and they payed me back the amount of redbull and coffee I had.

Why do you care if someone is in through the door of the office at 9am or at 12pm as long as their work doesn't suffer from it? In the case of meetings and the such I do understand the need to have everyone be punctual though, and that should be stated before hand. If you have a meeting, be there on time, if nothing time sensitive is on the calendar, then let people do what they find more productive, within reason off course.

<comment><USER2> If you ever played in an orchestra with a great conductor, you would understand why things like punctuality are important.

In fact, it doesn't matter what the discipline is whether it be punctuality or something else, but the fact that discipline is valued. You might see these things in and of themselves as pointless (and you'd be right), but you'd be ignoring the 2nd and 3rd order effects.

<comment><USER4> I don't argue that punctuality is unimportant, but I think it's lauded as a virtue far more often then it deserves. It's only a virtue if being late has a negative impact beyond "The department looks empty and the boss' boss judges".

Being late to a scheduled meeting is unprofessional. Turning up at 9 instead of 8 because there's really no impact if you do so? Not unprofessional. Expecting someone to turn up at 8 because "I said so"? TOTALLY unprofessional, and a jerky thing to do.

<comment><USER2> The point is not that punctuality is a virtue, but that a professional is capable of adhering to certain agreed disciplines, regardless of how important, or virtuous they may or may not be. A professional does not make the mistake of judging these activities for their intrinsic value, but sees them as an opportunity to develop discipline, which is useful and valuable for more important activities.

For examples see: the military, professional orchestras, rowing eights, ivy league traditions, and even children keeping piggy banks.

<comment><USER4> While I agree that a professional is capable of adhering to certain agreed disciplines, I also think that discipline is a sparing resource and spending it on showing up at a set time for no other reason then being "professional" is a waste of that resource.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My biggest indicator has always been, "do they do what they say they'll do?"

If they want to meet for coffee and offer to buy you that coffee in exchange for your time, do they do this without you prompting them? If you end up buying your own coffee, and they simply forgot, do they acknowledge it?

If they say they will email/phone you by a certain time, do they do this? If not, and they eventually do get to you, do they acknowledge/apologize for not keeping their word?

For me, to _quickly_ find out, it always come down to these little things. Sure, people forget to call/email/buy coffee all the time, that's acceptable. But, do they take accountability for that slip? Do they take responsibility for it without you prompting them?

If the little things are handled professionally, I've never had an experience (yet) where the big things aren't...

<comment><USER16> Definitely this, for me. Does someone talk about doing things or do things?

Also wanted to say: talking about meeting for coffee went delightfully meta there, considering your username.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> One of my personal metrics for low resolution professionalism judgement is spin off of the classic "wtf's/min" standard for judging code quality.

My own unit is "Yes's/min". I find that when I'm explaining something to an individual who responds with too many "Yes's/min", that individual is usually (of course not always) not appreciating the nuances of the topic being discussed. Having an alarmingly high amount of certainty around a new or just introduced topic, I find, usually implies a lack of professionalism.

<comment><USER18> Your heuristic will fail you when you are dealing with people who are smarter than you are. It is awfully hard to gauge what topics are actually new to someone during a discussion unless you ask them or they outright tell you.

<comment><USER17> Yep, thats why I only use it as a low-res heuristic. Theres no real substitute for spending time with and individual and really getting to know them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Seth Godin has a good point about professionalism. Being professional is doing the same thing and getting the same result over and over.

These days more often than not this is not what you're looking for. You're looking for the fresh angle, the different point of view, the purple cow.

You're looking for passion. For love. These are two words you seldom see together with professionalism.

EDIT: the word "amateur" has the same roots as "amore" and literally means "love what you do".

<comment><USER16> Just to quibble a bit.. really, if you're looking to hire a professional contractor, you don't want fresh or creative. You want someone who can deliver to a spec on time and on budget.

A joke among architects is to call plumbers|electricians|framers "creative". You don't want purple cow plumbing, and that goes for a lot of professions. ;)

<comment><USER20> With all respect to people who do them, I think that those kinds of proffessions should be ultimately done by machines and technology. People are good at creativity and generating new ideas; machines are good at repetition and precision.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is a valuable question, but the replies are going awry of what draws me to the question. What if all you have to go on is a 'reply-to' email and their first and last name?

Not a complete list, but fishing for suggestions:

Context--they sent you a business related email, and appear roughly 'professional' to you, but you want to make sure.

Their message/website/page/example project. You be the judge.

Do they reply to their contact form?

Is their contact information available and current?

LinkedIn, github, any other free, populous site membership--what is their public face?

<comment><USER18> Being part of the social web is not an indicator of professionalism. However, you may learn about someone's professionalism based on what they have online if they participate. Keep in mind many good professionals have life outside of their work and don't have the time or interest in open source projects or giving free advice on sites like stack overflow.

<comment><USER22> > _Being part of the social web is not an indicator of professionalism._

Not at all?

I'm not saying you need to be tweeting what you had for lunch or anything but having some presence on the social web is probably a good indicator in a broad swathe of fields. For example if I'm after a graphic designer and they're on LinkedIn|Facebook|Twitter or somesuch then it's an indicator that they're clued in with modern advertising, likely to have their finger more on the pulse, likely to be happy corresponding via the 'net, etc..

<comment><USER23> No, not at all. Not any more than having a phone number or email address. Maybe even less.

<comment><USER22> I'm fascinated that people on HN find that taking part in online social networks (like HN) is an anti-indicator of professionalism (in _all_ fields).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Depends on what you mean by "punctuality" if you mean arriving at work at the same time every day then I would say you are dead wrong. If on the other hand you mean being respectful of others time and not being late for explicitly scheduled events or calling ahead if you will be, then that may be true.

</comment><comment><USER25> Demonstrated Performance

(the only indicator that really matters)

<comment><USER21> Anybody notice that OP asked "How to tell quickly...?"

<comment><USER26> Shouldn't take more than a couple minutes to look up online - or to call somebody who knew and have worked with that person before.

<comment><USER27> eh, I think that following references rarely results in an accurate picture, especially following up on references that the applicant gives you.

Have you _ever_ given a bad reference? I've given lots of references, and I've checked lots of references. I've never given a negative reference, and I've never gotten a negative reference when I checked someone else.

This is for two reasons. 1. when the applicant lists references, s/he is going to list people who think positively of him or her, and 2. if some random guy calls up and asks for a reference for someone who used to work for you, you have a relationship with your ex-employee. You have no relationship with this new company. You have nothing to gain (and possibly significant liabilities) from handing out a negative reference.

<comment><USER28> If you do some research and cold-call their previous employers/clients, you'll usually find out if the relationship was a negative experience for them. If you get a couple of these, and they've come to that conclusion independently, then you have your answer.

<comment><USER27> that solves the first problem (the applicant only choosing to give you the contact info of people who are likely to give them positive marks) but it doesn't help with the second issue.

I don't see any case where it's in the best interest of anyone to say negative things about a past employee. And I don't think you can count all "company policy is that we simply confirm they worked here" messages as negative, because sometimes that really is company policy.

When asked for a reference, have you ever said anything negative about a past employee or co-worker? Have you ever heard anything negative about someone you were considering hiring after cold calling a previous employer?

<comment><USER28> I haven't, but I know quite a few people who have checked references and gotten a negative response - in one case derisive laughter followed by an incredulous "Really? They put me as a reference?". Obviously it depends on whether it's a big shop where you'll get HR stonewalled, or a smaller place where you'll have the owner or a coworker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> You can often tell more about a person by their questions than by their answers

</comment><comment><USER30> Professionalism is the practice of getting things done in a respectful manner. That's going to be hard to detect with an indicator.

</comment><comment><USER31> I assume this is going to be done in an interview.

One thing you could try is to see how the person handles constructive criticism. Try to get them engaged in a discussion about what they did wrong and how they could do better in the future. Pick something you have actual knowledge of so you can better tell if they are BSing you.

This can be difficult to do in an interview because you often don't know anything about the person. However, even if you have them pick an example of a screw-up from their past, you should be able to get a general sense of whether or not they try to be accountable for their actions. A bad sign would be if they pick an example where they didn't actually screw up or explain their failure as completely out of their control.

</comment><comment><USER27> first, I think "professional" is too broad a brush to evaluate at once, even using your definition of professional.

For instance, I'm very good about taking ownership and being accountable. I'm, uh, somewhat less good at actually getting things done on time. I mean, I won't make stupid excuses or try to shift blame, but I am quite often late on actually getting the damn thing done because of my own personal failings, so if you just measured a willingness to accept responsibly when accepting responsibility is unpleasant, you'd think higher of me than you ought.

"what is the most costly (to your employer) mistake of your career?" is a good interview question to probe the willingness to take responsibility. I know I've made some expensive mistakes, some of my worst were simply because I typed the wrong thing out of fatigue or inattention. (as I have grown older, I think one of the most important things I've learned is how to tell when I am likely to make a mistake, and when to log out.)

I'd argue that a person who claims not to have made expensive mistakes is likely the type to dodge responsibility. (this is eminently true in the ops world. I imagine it's true elsewhere, but I've got a lot less room to speak.)

You could also give them a hypothetical where, say, they could have prevented a mistake but it wasn't something they actively caused. Then ask them if it was their responsibility. "If you hired a guy who did something stupid that cost us a lot of money, is it your fault or his fault?" I'd never hire anyone for management who thought it was the hiree's fault.

showing up on time, in my experience has nothing to do with a willingness to take responsibility when something goes wrong.

As for "gets things done" eh, I'm not the right man to ask about that. When you figure out a better answer than "hire them as a contractor and see" let me know.

</comment><comment><USER32> For me, a designer is professional if he tells me "if you add one more thing in the menu, it won't work" or "remove that 'more' link after each paragraph" instead of "you should really use another tone of blue" or "I don't like the font you are using". I have no idea about programming, but I guess a professional in that field would be arguing about the software architecture, instead of what to use - php or ruby.

So generally, professionals are people who help you achieve whatever goal you have, instead of arguing what tools to use.

</comment><comment><USER33> Ships!

</comment><comment><USER34> Check out their track record. Observe them, listen to them. Do they give you a vibe of understated competence and confidence? Or do they relentlessly hype themselves and speak in vague buzzwords? Ask questions, dig deep. "Drill down" into their area of alleged expertise. Do they answer your questions easily and with insight? Or do they engage in an avoidance strategy? Keep poking like this, the answer will become obvious.

</comment><comment><USER35> "Those who know don't talk and those who talk don't know"

Be careful of those who talks a lot trying to prove you that they are professionals. Professionals are generally in demand, they should be busy doing work, they don't try to higher their status because they are already rewarded. Those who sucks try to trap you with words.

Not an indicator for professionals but should be helpful to filter some.

</comment><comment><USER36> I don't know if I agree with the word professional. It does signal things like: wearing a suit, talking the talk, playing politics well, turning up on time, etc...

The only things that are important to me are that the person is honest, a hard-worker, intelligent, a clear communicator and has common sense.

</comment><comment><USER37> Ask what he/she did wrong in his/her life and things at which he/she failed.

Don't be fooled with "quiet soft-spoken voice of reason" and other outside behavioral decoration. These things can be learned.

School where I learned this: odesk.com.

</comment><comment><USER38> my take:

anyone who does things with the wisdom of an 80-year-old sailor, the efficiency of a 45-year old BMW factory worker, and the enthusiasm of a 3-year-old with finger paint

</comment><comment><USER39> If it's a superficial analysis (ie interview), then punctuality, dress and preparation on their part (investigation prior to the meeting) is valid. If they haven't inquired about the dress code, then they should assume it's formal. If you have a minute to do a slightly deeper analysis then Google is your friend: how do they present themselves on social networks, do they have a blog, have they commented in forums (do they troll) have they posted code (usually a goldmine). If the profession is technological and they have _no_ web presence whatsoever, that's usually a red flag in itself.

</comment><comment><USER40> Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice:

<http://www.acm.org/about/se-code>

</comment><comment><USER41> They are comfortable answering: "I don't know."

Cheers

</comment><comment><USER21> Takes one to know one.

</comment><comment><USER42> I know very quick method: Ask "why?" repeatedly.

</comment><comment><USER43> Put him in uncomfortable situation and tell him to do something you expect he really loathes, something what just sometimes "needs to be done, no matter what". If he balks or talks too much, he's not a professional. Example? Give photographer a video camera and say you have an vision of some cheesy shot (look at clientsfromhell.net for ideas) and see what get's delivered.

<comment><USER44> I'm not sure who is more of a professional, the web developer who gives the client their requested BLINK tags and Comic Sans, or the one who tries to dissuade the client and avoids work from similar clients.

<comment><USER45> Easy answer - one who tries to dissuade the client. A professional will not always do what is asked, but that doesn't mean they don't do what is right.

<comment><USER13> There are two senses of the word "professional" here. Some people are professional like doctors or engineers. They will not always do exactly what is asked of them, because there are real-world consequences. Sometimes they will educate the client instead. Some people are "professional" like prostitutes. They will pretty much do anything enthusiastically, so long as they are paid.

More value is created by the first sense of the word, IMO.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Xbox Series X 4K gaming console - <AUTHOR> https://www.xbox.com/consoles/xbox-series-x <comment><USER2> Legit question: Who is the market for console buyers these days? Lower-tech consumers who don't want to use a store-bought or home-built computer?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It looks like the spec would be similar to high-end PC?</comment>


Game Over, Groceries: Inside Amazon's Acquisition of Whole Foods - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/amazons-acquisition-of-whole-foods-gameover-groceries-71098afa07c9 <comment><USER2> I wonder at what point and how strongly some people may resist this kind of takeover. We've all lived through Walmart eating our local mom and pops, now it's time to see if Amazon can eat our local/regional chains.</comment>


SAS vs. WPL copyright case filed in Eastern District of Texas - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/document/complaint-filed-sas-institute-inc-vs-world-programming-limited-et-al <comment><USER2> Ugh, another "structure, sequence, and organization" copyright claim. So stupid.</comment>


The Hardest Part of Working at a Growth Startup - <AUTHOR> https://staysaasy.com/scaling/2020/06/27/hardest-part-of-startup-scale-yourself.html <comment><USER2> CEOs tend to hire sub-par "experienced" replacement who often don't care as much about the company as the in-house manager that they've just replaced. I found many larger-co managers to be far too hands off, and having difficulty keeping up for a variety of reasons, partly due to the more chaotic nature of a growth startup. They try to impose a process to help slow & order things - but inherent complexity can't really be gotten rid of, so this effort often ends up destroying a major competitive advantage the startup enjoys, which is adaptability and fast execution.

If a senior exec hasn't gone through rapid growth AND its aftermath, they're not truly qualified for the job.

Ironically the best of the best companies are very resilient to incompetence, so it doesn't really matter who you hire.

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems like there's an even better solution, not mentioned here, which is: if you are masterminding growth but you are having to frequently fight for your life, rather than getting better at fighting for your life, become a founder. You already know how to achieve revenue growth. Now no one can push you out.

I mean that's basically the deal with founders: all the time people who are inexperienced get thrust into a leadership position, and the company sinks, or they rise to the occasion. And if they've bootstrapped without VC equity, then the only way they're leaving is if the company goes bankrupt.

I'd rather do the hard thing one time than the slightly less hard thing multiple times, without having to explain away multiple firings - the cost of the situation in the article, which no one wants to pay.

<comment><USER4> Great points, but not everyone wants to be a founder. Some people join high growth startups to move up quickly in corporate so they can hit executive level positions faster in their career. In this case, they probably still value job security and are significantly more risk averse than someone who would jump straight into being a founder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some of the comments here are focusing on the "fired" and "CEO" aspects of this post and missing the bigger picture:

The hardest part of working at a growth startup is that it is _exhausting_.

The downside and upside of this are two sides of the same coin: you're basically working at multiple different companies throughout the growth process. People who get comfortable at a given point in time are left behind when the company continues to scale. People who are scaling themselves have frequent opportunities to take on more responsibility and choose their own adventure.

You aren't literally "re-interviewing for your job every year" but you do need to grow with the company or the company will hire externally to fill the needs that have emerged.

\--

A related note is that not every individual thrives at all of these stages. You don't need to "constantly scale yourself" if that isn't what you want to do. Move on when the time is right or join companies at the level of maturity that you prefer.

Some people love the initial launch and scrappy small team vibe; some people hate the chaos and prefer more structure. Some like being told what to do; some hate hierarchies and "bureaucratic red tape!". Some like to build from nothing; some like to refine and optimize what exists.

Be aware of your optimal environment, needs, and goals then try to find roles and companies that are a good fit.

<comment><USER6> "A related note is that not every individual thrives at all of these stages. You don't need to "constantly scale yourself" if that isn't what you want to do. Move on when the time is right or join companies at the level of maturity that you prefer."

OP here, agreed on that. Another interesting thing I've noticed is that some people thrive at several different stages – e.g. great at ideation in the early scrappy days, and also great when you need new ideas during later growth stages, but less likely to thrive in between. There aren't really black and white answers.

Thanks for reading!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think the issue about all of this going unspoken is the real problem, especially with first-time founders. As with any performance issue, none of this should come suddenly and unexpectedly. The CEO should be setting expectations around what kind of growth you need to be creating within the company, and if you're not then it'll be more understandable that you may be replaced or demoted.

That said, I really think that early on, it's much better to give execs the title of "Head of X" rather than director or VP. It indicates that you're in charge, which is the important thing, but it can prevent the need for demotion later. If you just call everyone a VP even though you're a 20 person company and most VPs have 1-2 reports, it can become a problem when you need to hire someone over one of them. If they're just the head of X, then you can either explain that they've been performing at the director level, so now you're going to calibrate their title to that and hire a VP to help mentor them, etc., or you can just make the "Head of X" titles more specific. For example, if you have someone who was Head of Marketing early on, you can tell them that they've been doing a great job as a generalist marketer but now you need them to focus on a particular area (e.g. you're now "Head of Content Marketing"), and you're going to hire a manager to oversee the department.

<comment><USER6> Hey @awillen, thanks for reading!

The "Head of X" idea is an interesting one that I've seen gain traction recently for the reasons you've described. As with all things, at least half the battle is just managing expectations well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think this article hits on an important problem, but it's the second article I've read so far from this blog that seems a little short on solutions. You probably /know/ that you have to "scale yourself up" if you're in this situation -- that's not the hard part! The hard part is...how?

You have to hire someone more senior than you. Someone who has already done the thing you've been trying to do. That's it. That's the only way. And if that someone who's more senior than you, if they don't respect you?

Well, that's is the challenge of leadership. Servant leadership and leading with the humility to deserve the respect of those who are technically "more senior" than you are is I think when leadership is put to the test. For some, this is not a huge change of pace. But for others, this is a huge challenge.

</comment><comment><USER9> > even founding CEOs are not immune.

Especially founding CEOs are not immune with < 25% making it to the end.

See the founders dilemma:

[https://hbr.org/2008/02/the-founders-dilemma](https://hbr.org/2008/02/the- founders-dilemma)

</comment><comment><USER10> I really enjoy these articles and I can relate to a lot of them personally. Last time it was posted I went through a rabbit hole of reading through a bunch of it.

I am wondering why HN in general doesn't seem to like these articles? I don't get it.

<comment><USER11> I see them as a combo of common sense and struggle porn.

First little bit is talking up the stakes of how bad things could be. Hype up the difficulty level.

The "how to scale yourself" section is just a quick blurb of common advice you see everywhere. "Keep learning" and "ask questions" is advice I've seen in the last 50 LinkedIn posts I have read.

<comment><USER12> Struggle porn is a fantastic characterization, alas when I googled it of course there's actual struggle porn :{

<comment><USER11> Learn to use incognito when safe search is off?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Do people who have been let go in this manner get looked down upon by future prospective interviewers? Or is it understood this happens regularly?

<comment><USER14> Officially, people aren't "let go" from high ranking positions. They're either gently demoted into a lesser role with the expectation that they are expected to find another job, or they "step away to spend more time with their families" or similar excuses.

As for future prospects: Potential employers know that unemployed people are easier hires than employed people, so compensation might be lower. They might also be concerned about the reasons for the person's dismissal, especially if the person's tenure was short (1-2 years).

On the other hand, an unemployed person is available to be hired ASAP, which can be attractive to fast moving startups who can't afford to wait for months of recruiting, interviewing, negotiating, and then notice periods. Some times you'll see these people hired into consultant roles first as a sort of trial run before real employment. In fact, many people who are dismissed from high- ranking startup positions voluntarily switch to consulting for a while anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The authors are trying hard to stay anonymous for some reason. They're giving a bunch of advice but it sounds like they're rehashing the same old stuff that you hear everywhere, like they're trying to SEO or something. I doubt they've ever even started a business, much less a successful growth SaaS company.

</comment><comment><USER16> Okay. What's the solution?

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't believe this to be true for the most part, but if it is, then quit immediately and find a real job.

The 'benefits' are generally not worth it for someone to have to asses you everyone once and a while wherein you can get axed.

You have to ask yourself some very serious questions as to why you're there in the first place.

It's fair if you have to hire your boss or something like that, ie you're 23 hired as 'C-' something and now they need someone who actually knows what they are doing, but that's if it's within expectations, and they don't need to fire you.

For founders with tons of equity, it's understandable if there's a shift in responsibility, but not getting axed unless there's an obvious issue.

Unless you are saving babies or literally stopping the Nazis from taking over the world, you don't need to be 'patriotic' to your team. Just professionally loyal.

<comment><USER18> Every job you get assessed periodically and can be fired if you're not performing up to par. In a growth startup, performing up to par as an executive means being able to scale to the next level if needed. You get a fancy title, a bunch of equity and the chance to jump a few management levels if you can keep up. The reason they wouldn't want to keep someone who got "demoted" around is because they too often will have an axe to grind and cause issues.

<comment><USER17> This is really not the right description for a few reasons.

1) In normal circumstances, you get hired to do 'job A' it's not unheard of to get let go quickly if you can't do 'job A' but rare to get leg to after some time. Getting fired after a review because after 3 years, somehow you're not 'qualified' to do your job doesn't happen that often. Layoff, yes, but fired, no.

2)_It's not a helpful analogy because at a startup if you're 'VP or Head of A' \- the job of managing 0 people, to managing 3 to 10 to a division is going to obviously change tremendously.

So it's more like 'We hired you to do Job A, now it's Job B, you're not quite qualified so you're out'.

If this is a scenario you think you could be in, you need to quit now, there's almost zero chance it's worth the time or effort to be there.

A lot of the equity may be unvested. What has vested and not exercisable may not be within reach for the staffer to actually afford to buy. There may be wash-out rounds later that will dilute the leavers significantly while those who stay get issued more equity.

It's understandable that a company wants to have more capable and senior people in roles as they scale, but that doesn't mean the individual has to go - they can 'hire their boss', they can do other strategic things. Technical people for example can go on to technical leadership roles instead of classical product or management.

If a company also wants to put someone in the role of VP of whatever, knowing they're going to need someone considerably more senior in the future, and effectively will have to let go of said person ... and that mutual understanding is not there to begin with ... then it's also a problem in management.

The only role for which there is essentially a tacit understanding from the start would be CEO as there are serious discussions and expectations there, for most other roles there is not.

Finally, I would say that for more senior roles, jobs are not as easy coming as they are otherwise. Young people tend to not grasp how impactful changing roles and careers can be. If you're 23 and you have to go back to 'writing code' like you did 'just last year' \- that's fine. Probably. But for most other people it's an existential calamity. It's a really, really big deal.

While Valley people do understand the concept of 'getting let go' \- even then, it's still not looked well upon. Systematically companies like to hire people that are in that role already and employed. Outside the Valley failure is not well recognized and they will not care about 'how much said person learned'. It could be a career ending/destroying situation.

If you were hired for a senior role, but expect there's a decent chance you'll get let go as the company grows - you've been duped and you're at the wrong company. Move on.

<comment><USER19> >Finally, I would say that for more senior roles, jobs are not as easy coming as they are otherwise.

I went through this when my company was acquired. I led an Engineering team of about 30 people. About 6 months after we were acquired, the company moved its own people in and I got moved into an IC role after about 4-5 years of being "no code". At that point, I realized I had no interest in a) being the mentor for my new boss who was not technical and very junior and b) writing code any more. 15 years of coding was enough for me, so I moved on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This article gave me a queasy feeling like we've reached a terrible form of late stage capitalism.

The steps seem to go like this:

1\. You work your ass off in a growth company only to be told that you, the person who partially made the success possible in the first place, can now be replaced with someone better, even though you have already done a great job.

2\. This is normal and expected and not just the sign of a company with abusive policies.

3\. This is spun as a good thing for the employee, somehow.

This sort of capitalist bullshit is why even high-paid specialist roles like professional athletes have workers unions.

Because if the company had their way they'd throw you in the trash the moment they could find someone better than you, despite your contributions making the company's success possible in the first place.

Now you're kicked to the curb with no/bad equity, and if you don't like it you can screw off to the next abusive venture-backed employer, who operate the same way.

<comment><USER7> "Now you're kicked to the curb with no/bad equity" \- where did this come from? In this situation, in which you've done such a good job that the company has effectively outgrown your skillset, you almost certainly have equity (it's unlikely this all happened in <1 year) and it's almost certainly good equity. That's one of the reasons this isn't so bad, and to a degree you should be okay with it - you're a part owner of the company, and especially if you were an early exec, you probably have a meaningful amount of equity. If someone else can help grow the value of your equity significantly faster than you can, that's a good thing for you.

<comment><USER15> If you are not a founder, you have <5% options (likely <1%) which are not preferred and if you are no longer with the company, they will be diluted with every funding round and restructuring. You will have no control over this. This is "no/bad equity".

<comment><USER7> Of course you're going to be diluted - that'll happen whether you're at the company or not. Obviously you'll get refresher grants if you stay, but in this case if you leave you can go somewhere else and get equity there, so you're not necessarily losing out (and in fact you're diversifying). If you think that dilution means that you have bad equity, you should never join an early stage startup in the first place. Dilution is going to happen, but it's not inherently a bad thing - your piece of the pie is getting smaller, but if it's because the company's growing very quickly, the value of your shares are going up. The percentage of equity you hold isn't what matters - the value is.

<comment><USER21> You are making some strong claims when this is very dependent on the exact scenario. My bet would be that you don't want to be replaceable because if you don't hold out to the IPO, the startup (and any new partnership they make) have every incentive to claw back as much money as possible. They could do this even if you stay but when you stay you need to be assertive enough to defend your position. I don't know how well everybody does at asserting their position from a technical role when you aren't in the room where the decision making happens. The only way I'd ever work at a startup with the goal of making a bunch of money based off of those shares is if I absolutely knew they couldn't and wouldn't fuck me over. I have no faith in any person in this world apart from very few. I would rather "grind" for the money i.e. work 8hr days and make it to my money goals quicker than 99% of the outcomes of choosing the startup path. That said, you can get good experience but the most important experience you get is knowing where you stand in any organization.

<comment><USER7> That's a fair point of view, but to your point, you're not going to work at a startup with the goal of making a bunch of money from shares, so you're probably not the target audience for this post.

<comment><USER21> I suppose you might think my comments off topic? I'd make a similar comment on a post titled "The Hardest Part of Investing in a Ponzi scheme or "The Hardest Part of buying a car to work for Uber" or "The Hardest Part of Selling for Amway". The statement itself is a deception, because the answer to the easy question for 99% is don't fucking do it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Reasons I love open source - <AUTHOR> https://opensource.com/article/18/11/reasons-love-open-source <comment><USER2> It's nice you enjoy learning on github; just be aware it's another data silo that blocks indie search crawlers [1].

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18413684](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18413684)</comment>


Show HN: Fractal.parts – View and design fractals - <AUTHOR> https://fractal.parts <comment> EventH- It would be really nice if the tutorial walked you through creating a sample simple fractal, like the Sierpinski triangle or Koch snowflake.

<comment><USER2> Yes, tried to create but due to lack of instructions and poor UX abandoned the site quickly.

<comment><USER3> Agree. It'd be good to be able to unpick the really good ones on there and understand how they were created. I just made nasty looking splodges and then gave up :-/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Related -- a tool for creating fractals:

 _Context Free Art_ \- [https://www.contextfreeart.org/](https://www.contextfreeart.org/)

</comment><comment><USER5> It would be cool if the preview was shown and auto-updated every time a change is made.

<comment><USER6> JWildfire, a Java desktop application to author "flame" fractals (a slight generalization of these IFS constructions) has a nice realtime preview and a subtly less maddening user experience.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Author here. Happy to answer any questions.

<comment><USER7> Firstly, I think this is a cool idea. Fractals are fun to look at and play with. Please take this feedback as being positively-intentioned :)

During the tutorial I clicked Add and some boxes were created. I dragged them around on the canvas. I have no concept of how the resulting image [0] relates to what I created. It doesn't look like the kind of fractals (Mandelbrot etc) that I'm familiar with.

I also didn't figure out how to do anything other than move some boxes around. Probably I just missed something.

[0] [https://fractal.parts/i-dont-get-it](https://fractal.parts/i-dont-get-it) <\-- if you click the "Attractor" (what does that mean?) toggle in the top right you can see the "Template" I created in the editor.

<comment><USER8> The fractals on this site are not "escape-time fractals" like the Mandelbrot set, but iterated function systems[1], a more discrete fractal variant that starts with an initial generating set and then replaces each element with a smaller copy of the whole set (a good example would be ferns).

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice work! @epenson: unfortunately, it only took a few hours for someone to create [https://fractal.parts/swastika](https://fractal.parts/swastika) and get it on the gallery :(

<comment><USER10> It's an ancient symbol. Let's just enjoy the fractal-ness of this entry in the gallery, and not allow the idea to be misappropriated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Tried to publish with Firefox, got the following error (in console):

TypeError: t.t0.response is undefined Create.js:139:16

Please fix your site for Firefox; it's sad when people only test with Chrome :(

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about the trouble. Should be fixed now ([https://github.com/ElliotPenson/fractal.parts/issues/51](https://github.com/ElliotPenson/fractal.parts/issues/51))</comment></comment>


IPad 3 design revealed as new wave of parts leak; Retina Display pictured - <AUTHOR> http://www.bgr.com/2012/02/09/ipad-3-design-revealed-as-new-wave-of-parts-leak-retina-display-possibly-pictured/ <comment><USER2> I'm praying that the retina display really does happen, not because I plan on buying an ipad - but because it will _finally_ get laptop manufacturers to stop producing crappy 720p displays.

<comment><USER3> I'm hoping that it gets them making higher resolution screens all around, laptop and otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not sure why the headline was changed on this submission? Original says "possibly pictured".</comment>


Show HN: Cast.sh An adorable instance of your terminal in the browser - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/hericlesme/cast-sh <comment><USER2> Suggestion: Add an example video so we can see what this actually does.

<comment><USER3> It is very simple: When you run it it will create a web server (listening on port 5000) by default; when you visit that server with your browser you'll get a terminal to your system (the same terminal / user that was used to originally run the server).

<comment><USER4> Then what is adorable about it? I was imagining cute animals would appear in the terminal. This is not the case?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Come up with an interesting idea, spend n number of days working on idea, get to the front page of hackernews, have thousands of eyeballs on your thing...Spend 0 time on the readme and have everyone take a half second glance, not know what the thing is or does and move their attention else where. Let this be a lesson to everyone to spend some time on your readme's...[https://github.com/matiassingers/awesome- readme](https://github.com/matiassingers/awesome-readme)

<comment><USER6> Humorous Readme Driven Development Lightning talk by Matt Parker. Well worth the watch. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23xzRCoDZf4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23xzRCoDZf4)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How is this on the front page with basically no README and no screenshots or video?

<comment><USER8> It says _adorable_ and doesn't show the goods. Nerdrage... rising!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What do you mean by adorable?

<comment><USER10> Calling it adorable without a front and center screenshot is an odd choice.

<comment><USER11> I visited the README solely because "adorable" was a provocative word and I wanted to see a screenshot of said adorableness. Give the people what they want!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm sure it is an interesting engineering exercise, but I struggle to think of a situation where I would fire a browser to use the terminal instead of just opening a terminal.

<comment><USER13> The name might be a hint as to the utility. If you wanted to display your terminal on your massive television using, say, Chromecast, you wouldn't have the option, but you _can_ "cast" a browser window.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > <link rel="stylesheet" > href="[https://firstname.lastname@example.com/dist/xterm.css"](https://email@example.com/dist/xterm.css") > />

Just a heads up, xtermjs has now updated to version 4[1]. You might want to consider for an upgrade.

1: [https://github.com/xtermjs/xterm.js/releases](https://github.com/xtermjs/xterm.js/releases)

</comment><comment><USER15> "Show HN" without a proper README or any screenshots of whatever that is supposedly adorable.</comment>


Rejected YC Winners Voting - <AUTHOR>

I want to throw an idea out there.
How about we set up a seasonal voting mechanism, that allows us to track who of us were rejected, and who of the rejects we consider the very best - a true gem that YC missed.
Anyone up to programming that? <comment><USER2> I think the time would be better spent working on implementing the idea and winning. Once you win, you can stick your tongue out at YC as much as you want. :-)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm currently working on a site to help anyone who was rejected from YC (the YNot's), and anyone else, a place to collaborate, find a co-founder, and assist those looking to move to SV. I was also planning on adding a section so people could demo their startup, have them voted on, and receive feedback. Nothing badmouthing YC, but just a place to keep rejected spirits up and give them some incentive to continue working on their startups.

<comment><USER4> Drop a line if you need help. (email@example.com)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for offering to help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This would have to be the worst place to share your idea. Amongst young,capable, and eager entrepreneurs. i would steal a good idea in a heart beat.

</comment><comment><USER6> Hmm. The YC Miss Congeniality awards.

</comment><comment><USER7> Problem is that most people, rejected or not rejected, don't want to disclose their idea.

<comment><USER8> I don't understand this reluctance to share an idea for a startup. It's ridiculous, because it seems to be predicated upon the assumptions that no one has thought of it, and if they did they would go off and immediately implement it. What arrogance. You could tell them every little detail of what you have and mind and, because language is so vague, they could think it was something entirely different.

If you tell me about your startup, your first goal, before you can make me a user or (even better) a paying user, is to get me to give a shit about it, which is a formidable task.

<comment><USER7> I'm not saying it's rational, I'm just saying that is how people are.</comment></comment></comment>


Steam Sales 2015 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/steam-spy/steam-sales-in-2015-2e81a6bb0f5a#.mql5bit8s <comment><USER2> >Indiepocalypse is cancelled, you can stop worrying now.

I think I speak for quite a few people when I say _thank God_. I have nothing against indie games in general but the sheer volume of low-quality DayZ/Minecraft-inspired early-access survival game clones that were all broken in the same ways that were never finished by the developer have left me jaded.

<comment><USER3> That is true but I'm (as a customer) still happy with it since I got one single game out of it that I can't stop playing and this is a feeling I had not since...college.

The game is Rimworld and it's a early-access clone of prison architect. The game is far from done, the dev left for a long extended break but the game is still a endless source of joy. And I haven't even touch the mods.

The sheer diversity and new ideas that Indiepocalypse brought is a reaction to the mainstream sequelcalypse. I just can't see it anymore. I also don't buy those games anymore because I know they'll last for a weekend or two and then I'll be pissed that I wasted money even though I knew it won't be better then the one before.

Big studios may save us from low-quality but not from broken or cloned games. They are just more expensive.

<comment><USER4> Calling it a clone of Prison Architect is pretty weird. There's very little shared except for the graphics style. Even the basic "click to place walls" construction system is broadly different, given that in Prison Architect you have to lay down foundations and then build on top of that.

<comment><USER2> In the past they were more similar, at least the NPC art style was. When they first started Rimworld they used a sort of Prison Architect art style for their NPCs as placeholders until they got their own art in (which they have now).

If anything, both Rimworld and PA are "clones" of Dwarf Fortress.

<comment><USER5> Except Dwarf Fortress has so many mechanics (not a complaint) that almost any game could be considered a "clone" of Dwarf Fortress!

<comment><USER6> Meh, Dwarf Fortress is just a clone of Dungeon Keeper with worse play- balancing. :p

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > PC worldwide core games market is estimated to be around $27B in 2015 > (Newzoo). So, including Dota 2 and Team Fortress 2 revenue, Valve is > controlling around 15% of it. Pretty impressive!

Is anyone else under the impression this number is too low? I mean, sure, it's still impressive, but at this point I would honestly expect them to control 30-40% of the PC core games market at least. I'd find it easier to believe that the NewZoo estimate is inaccurate.

<comment><USER8> I would myself have guessed at least 50%, but that would be just based on anecdotal experience. I've bought the occasional Humble Bundle outside of Steam, but that's the only one for several years now. The same applies for all of my friends as far as I know.

<comment><USER9> I would have thought they would have had a commanding majority as well. Occasionally I'll buy something on GoG - but it's usually an oldy-but-goody for $5 or less. Almost every single game I have gotten through Humble Bundle has just been a Steam key.

I guess there's Origin, but I've only ever bought Mass Effect 3 from them.

Good luck even finding PC games in a box in a retail store...

EDIT: Derp, completely spaced Blizzard... that's where most of the missing money must be going.

<comment><USER10> Probably also forgetting about League of Legends. It's free, so no actual game sales are happening, but people spend a tremendous amount of money in-game.

<comment><USER11> The article also mentions that DLC and free-to-play games (along with in-game purchases, I'd assume) weren't counted in the Steam sales numbers, so the Steam marketshare shown could be a low estimate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Why does HN say I posted the article 3 hours ago at 4 AM? I submitted it before 10PM last night.

<comment><USER12> If someone reposts the link after your submission didn't get traction, it will get the time from the reposter but you'll still be credited with the submission.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would like to understand this in detail. Did one of the mods make a post about it?

<comment><USER12> I think dang wrote about this here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10223645](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10223645)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's an interesting link. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything related to reposts and giving credit to the original poster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ah! Double Y axis charts!

I have been arguing with another founder about the double-y and how we should not use it.

What are peoples' response to the charts in this post? Do you find them easy to read/helpful/giving good insight into the data?

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure how much you should count my input, but this was my first time to have seen a double-y axis chart and I'm still not sure if I was reading it correctly.

<comment><USER13> Don't worry, that's generally how most people feel, even if you've seen them many times. You have to pause and say, "...wait". I'd argue that the trends you actually see in almost all of them are misguided.

<comment><USER15> I'd say the bigger concern is spurious correlation. The two factors may very well be unrelated, or share a common cause (like drowning and ice cream prices -- they're both driven primarily by heat).

However, when talking about price and revenue it is legitimate to render them on the same chart, since revenue is a function of price. Steam in particular has proven to be a wonderful platform to demonstrate this phenomenon, as the elasticity of demand for games software is very high, and discounting even modestly generates far more revenue than you lose through the discount. Steam and the publishers benefit even more due to the low marginal cost of delivery, largely accountable to transmission costs and the marginal wear-and-tear on data servers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The numbers in the aggregated top list don't add up. ARK for example is listed with fewer revenues for the whole year than for June alone.

This does not add confidence in the validity of other figures in this post.

<comment><USER17> Also another post lists CS:GO as top selling of 2015 (5.6m copies) but in this post it doesn't make the list

[https://medium.com/steam-spy/preliminary-results-for- steam-s...](https://medium.com/steam-spy/preliminary-results-for-steam-sales- in-2015-43bb49a767bd)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Worth mentioning is the default pricing settings on Steam create _vastly_ different prices geographically.

We manually set out prices to match our store ([https://www.scirra.com](https://www.scirra.com), sorry can't help myself!). Bit of a PITA as we have to keep it updated regularly for volatile currencies, but we'd rather people buy from us directly.

Geo pricing difference is significant, so depending on per country volume actual revenues may be minus a significant figure if those numbers are based on USD.

</comment><comment><USER19> Mad Max seems higher on that list than I would have expected especially launching alongside Metal Gear. The power of a movie license I guess.

<comment> jon-wood If anything I'd say a movie license in the world of gamers is a chain around your neck, because there haven't been a lot of films that made the jump well. Mad Max did well because it was a legitimately good game, and while Metal Gear was a big deal, its not as big on the PC as in Sonyland.

<comment><USER20> And ET The Extraterrestrial is a legendary case.

<comment><USER9> The Lion King movie game on PC was almost enough to shake confidence in the viability of Windows as a gaming platform

<comment><USER21> Why? I loved it. Both it and Aladdin? - they also were dos games.

<comment><USER9> [http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2013/01/04/the-disnesy- disaster...](http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2013/01/04/the-disnesy-disaster/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Steam still desperately needs a competent recommendation engine. Simply recommending the biggest sellers is a terrible solution, but appears to be what they are doing now. I am worried that Steam doesn't want to pursue this, however, because big publishers wouldn't like it. My personal Steam interface wouldn't be trying to sell me the latest AAA titles at all, for example. And Steam has thus far been very much a 'for the big publishers' affair. Sure indie devs have made some great successes there, but those were all despite Steams policies and structure rather than thanks to it.

Steam also continues to face the threat of large publishers creating their own competing marketplaces, like EAs Origin. Since Steam offers nothing unique that a publisher couldn't reproduce themselves with little effort, drowning in a sea of clones wouldn't be terribly surprising. When Apple came out with iTunes, they demanded that music publishers do things like sell individual tracks, and cap those at 99 cents. They forced publishers to take advantage of digital distribution. So when music publishers wanted to compete, they found that they simply couldn't. Their board of directors would demand that they sell albums together. They would demand more than 99 cents a track. And users would never go for it. But with Steam, which places absolutely no restrictions upon the publisher whatsoever, that's not a problem. Origin showed that gamers loyalty to the franchises they like far outpaces any loyalty to Steam.. and why shouldn't it? Steam doesn't guarantee lower-than-physical-retail prices. They don't guarantee anything, really, for consumers.

I would love to see Valve start squeezing publishers and forcing them to take advantage of digital distribution. Cap new game prices. It is patently absurd to pay $60 for a digitally distributed title when distribution makes up the vast majority of the price of a retail title and digital distro drops the cost of distribution to nearly nothing. It would require big publishers to violate their distribution agreement contracts with retailers, just like iTunes forced music publishers to violate their distribution agreement contracts with record stores, but Steam would end up being much more robust as a result.

Back to the recommenation engine, though. My nephews got their first laptops for christmas. They're 9 years old and their parents are not technical at all. So they ended up with the cheapest Black Friday craptops you can imagine. There are plenty of things on Steam that they could play, but I didn't even install it for them. Because if I had, Steam would have inundated them with advertising for games that they don't have any chance of running, and, being 9 and used to tablets and consoles, they would not understand why they couldn't run something. Finding something they COULD play would be very difficult.

Alright, I should stop complaining and just build something to solve the problem. At least Valve doesn't seem aggressive against scraping Steam data and the like.</comment>


Redis at Superfeedr - <AUTHOR> http://blog.superfeedr.com/datastore/memcache/mysql/performance/redis/redis-at-superfeedr/#

<comment><USER2> The numbers involved in web scale computing at turns excite, amaze, dazzle, and frighten me. 3,500 queries a second times four servers. Crikey. I know at least one system that cost a million dollars which doesn't see 3,500 queries a week.

And then you look over at Facebook or Google and a system munching through five digits of writes in a second looks like a quaint little toy.

<comment><AUTHOR> So it's actually each of the server that sees this traffic :)

And yes, we're nothing (yet!) compared to what the big guys just. However, most of the tim they used their very own software to achieve that; I'm just using out-of-the-box redis, which makes this available to _anyone_.

<comment><USER2> _available to _anyone__

I get a real kid-in-a-candy-store feel from OSS these days, because it really, really is bringing down barriers for making wonderful things. Facebook solves some of the hardest engineering challenges the software industry has ever known. I sell bingo cards to sixty year-old women. We both use the exact same Memcached. How cool is that? (OK, so they might have about four terabytes more RAM attached to it than I do, give or take, but that's just an implementation detail. :) )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ok I revise my earlier opinion [1]. This is definitely one of the best posts I've read for the last few weeks. Engaging, front line, full of content (i.e. links to their code and other bits) and pleasantly written. More of the same please :)

EDIT: this is the first major posting I have noticed that pushes redis as a big big technnology. has anyone see other people using it? I ask because at the time Antirez first posted it my feeling was redis has the scope to be a really big, important tech: and this looks to be a step in that direction.

1\. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1140761>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks man, I'm honored. I wish I had more time to write on more of our infrastructure stuff! I think many people use redis, but don't necessarily advertise it, which is also one of the reasons of our "coming out" :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's a question: if you have a barebones join table like

      create table feed_items (item_id integer, feed_id integer, created_at datetime);
      create index idx1 on feed_items (feed_id, datetime, item_id);

how much slower is that covering index for your query of

      select item_id from feed_items where feed_id=42 order by datetime desc limit 10

than the mysql/memcached/redis trifecta, and why not upgrade your database machine to a 68GB EC2 instance? Writing's definitely going to be slower, but you can batch transactions every 10 seconds or so, and 9x the RAM will be a big help.

<comment><USER5> The first bottleneck on the MySQL set-up is the reading, not the writing. Even with the indices stored entirely in RAM (as the author pointed out in his blog post), the MySQL box can't keep up. (Consider the workflow of a software system that needs to parse hundreds of thousands of feeds on a continual basis. Each feed you download will have dozens of entries, and most of the time you'll have already processed the entry, so it can be ignored -- but the only way to know is to do a look-up.)

Regardless, A 68GB EC2 instance costs ~$1700/month. Four 2GB slices on Slicehost are priced at $520/month, with the cheaper set-up performing significantly better.

<comment><USER6> Can you explain/give pointers as to how the indices can be stored entirely in ram ?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the only way to is add RAM when your indices grow.. that's what we did up until now. There is absolutely now way a data store to keep this kind of performance as soon as you involve a disk, so, yes, the secret of whatever datastore is to _always_ keep everything in memory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _A few weeks ago, Antirez added 2 awesome features that made Redis an excellent candidate..._

You guys are incredibly brave for deploying and leveraging any feature to your infrastructure which is a few weeks old.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's part of what makes life fun :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to become motivated by outcomes rather than process? - <AUTHOR> I am a developer seeking to transition into a leadership role. Currently I
enjoy the simple pleasures of coding as one of my main motivators, however I am not intrinsically motivated by actually completing projects and getting results. Due to my aspirations, my values clearly need to change.<p>Does anyone have any tips as to how I can start using acheivement and outcomes as a motivational factor? I can think of fear-based motivation working (i.e. threat of what happens if the project is not done), but would prefer to operate from a more positive standpoint. I have looked into "results-focus", which seems promising, but has yet to really change my mindset. <comment><USER2> One process way I like of getting the right outcomes is making lists. It makes me feel like I'm making progress every time I check something off. Making plans and trying to figure out if they will work is also pretty interesting.

I think it's a false dichotomy if you think that processes aren't related to outcomes. If anything, I think processes ensure good outcomes.

</comment><comment><USER3> Results mindset may get you some results, out of pure luck since you can't control results, but the steess and agony it adds to life is not worth it. 20 years of misery to back this up.</comment>


Hipmunk is ending its operations - <AUTHOR> http://hipmunk.com/hipmunk-says-goodbye/ <comment><USER2> discussion was here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22048427](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22048427)</comment>


Shitty San Francisco - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-secret-history-of-america/shitty-san-francisco-42e0aeae47d4

<comment><USER2> I think the city has a terrible mayor. The city is full of homeless, its streets and sidewalks are disgusting, there are few public trashcans, public transportation is 'just okay' at best, cost of living is sky rocketing, and to top it all off taxes are huge!

Ed Lee, what in the world are you doing!?</comment>


Rather than use a flag argument, define separate methods - <AUTHOR> http://martinfowler.com/bliki/FlagArgument.html

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure this sort of logic scales. The examples he uses with a single boolean are simple enough because you're just writing two methods instead of one. What if, however, you have a signature that takes multiple booleans, either as formal parameters or as part of a struct? Do you write exponentially more methods, requiring the caller to be familiar with your naming conventions, just to free the caller from having to remember what the parameters represent? For that matter, what if you're passing in an enumeration? That's also a "flag" that is frequently used to switch behavior, and again, would require expanding one method into n, each with human-readable names.

If there's some a way to win big by doing this, I just don't see it.</comment>


Es-search: Search ECMAScript structurally - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jdonaghue/es-search <comment><USER2> This is pretty neat - does it actually support unknown identifier search though?

Like, I can see "if:a===b" as an example, but what if you don't know the variable names? Like "if:<ident>===b" or something?

<comment><USER3> you can, 'if:?===b'.

<comment><USER3> you can also search for partial expressions like so 'if:*?===b' will match on any if statement that contains a condition matching '?===b' where '?' is a wildcard

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's also [http://www.graspjs.com](http://www.graspjs.com) which also uses acorn.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is very nice. I wonder if this could not be used as a base to build a code refactoring tool too! Refactoring is often just find and replace with a complex find expression.

</comment><comment><USER6> Cool. A vim plugin and typescript type annotation support and I'd totally use it.

</comment><comment><USER7> What is this? I read: "Using a special syntax like CSS" and then saw: "if:<10%%(..." I gotta admit, it looks like it's just JavaScript, but harder to read. How does it make finding code easier?</comment>


Show HN: Snakes on a Hyperplane – A multiplayer 3D Snake game - <AUTHOR> http://tinyurl.com/snakesonahyperplane <comment><USER2> I see nothing and hear weird music and sounds. No keys have any effect.

<comment><USER3> I had the same thought: try pressing enter to respawn. Your snake is orange- brown.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> LD35 entry?

[http://ludumdare.com/compo/](http://ludumdare.com/compo/)

<comment><USER5> Awesome! Didn't even know this was going on. Actually, we built this as part of the 5C Hackathon: [http://www.5chackathon.com/](http://www.5chackathon.com/)

Extremely terrible source code here: [https://github.com/nhurwitz/5c-hacks-s16](https://github.com/nhurwitz/5c-hacks-s16)

I think I'll go ahead and submit us for LD35 anyways, though (if we're eligible). Good stuff.

<comment><USER6> Can you add a free software license to your project?

<comment><USER7> _Is_ it free software?

<comment><USER6> Not at the moment, but the author still can change their mind about that. It's also likely that the author doesn't know that a lack of license makes code proprietary (thanks to the Berne Convention).

<comment><USER8> By virtue of being uploaded to GitHub, it can at least be legally cloned and forked.

<comment><USER6> Sure, but what does that get you? It's proprietary because you don't get _any_ of the four freedoms (even freedom 0, because you technically don't have the right to run the software without explicit permission -- and you can forget about modification and distribution). Yes, you can copy the code, but what are you going to do? Frame it?

<comment><USER9> I didn't know this. Is this "implicit copyright law"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I adore this. Good work!

There seems to be a bug that is crashing the rooms. I think it might have something to do with consecutive 90 degree turns.

I'm glad this got unflagged. Thumbs up to the HN mods.

<comment><USER5> Hey there, glad you like it! We had a lot of fun building it out in a nice little 12 hour sprint. :)

For some reason the sockets seem to hang unpredictably and I don't have time to debug at this instant, so I've just set the server to be killed and restarted every 10 minutes - you were probably playing during one of those restarts. Refreshing the page should work fine.

I'll push an actual fix in the next couple days.

Thanks to the mods for unflagging! Not sure why it was flagged in the first place, but we'd love to receive constructive feedback from whoever flagged it.

<comment><USER11> >Not sure why it was flagged in the first place

Probably because it's a tinyurl. I'm surprised submitting it was even possible. I almost flagged it myself but I saw there were some comments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Love the music, who is the artist?

<comment><USER13> The song is Windowdipper by Jib Kidder

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think we killed it? Seems like it's not working and the console says the websocket is refusing to connect.

<comment><USER15> Can confirm, it doesn't work on my end.

<comment><USER16> We're working on it now -- this was a Hackathon project developed in 12 hours so we haven't had time to load test it yet, but it'll be up shortly :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you change direction twice very quickly, you can go back through your own tail.

<comment><USER5> Not anymore ;) Good find!

<comment><USER9> There is precedent for this technique:

[http://wiki.armagetronad.org/index.php/Double_Binding](http://wiki.armagetronad.org/index.php/Double_Binding)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wish the walls wrapped around, would be interesting :)

<comment><USER5> Thought it was a great idea, so I've implemented and deployed it. Let me know what you think!

<comment><USER18> Not the one you're replying to but I just played it (without having read comments) and thought that was a neat feature :-)

<comment><USER9> Try [http://milksnake.c3.cx/](http://milksnake.c3.cx/) !

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I went to the page and saw nothing and heard random crash-y sounds for minutes, the whole time I thought it was poking at Windows 95 for crashing all the time. I thought that was hilarious

<comment><USER8> Well, those are Windows XP sounds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Amazing work. :) Love the start screen!

</comment><comment><USER21> Cool! But controls are really hard!

</comment><comment><USER22> Die to lag quite a bit</comment>


BitXBay Distrubted Market - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bitxbay/BitXBay

<comment><AUTHOR> This or OpenBazaar (www.openbazaar.org) look to be the future of Silk Road style sites.</comment>


Scott Aaronson on Google's new quantum-computing paper - <AUTHOR> http://news.mit.edu/2015/3q-scott-aaronson-google-quantum-computing-paper-1211 <comment><USER2> If you came here like I did, thinking "HEY! That's old news!". You are correct. This added bonus is an interview of Aaronson for MIT News about his response to the google paper (which he previously blogged about). The original blog post has an update from Aaronson:

" MIT News now has a Q&A with me about the new Google paper. I'm really happy with how the Q&A turned out; people who had trouble understanding this blog post might find the Q&A easier. Thanks very much to Larry Hardesty for arranging it."

EDIT: It is definitely worth the read. A concise laymans summary of the original post and outline of the issues still to be overcome by D-Wave.

<comment><USER3> Yes, this is much easier to understand and to get the specific points of contention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> TL;DR version: If there's any quantum phenomena going on in that device, it is only happening within the 8-qubit domains and not between them.

Bonus food for thought: how much more of a speedup factor would an ASIC farm provide compared to a general purpose CPU for that particular use case if you threw $150M on it?

</comment><comment><USER5> "There were $150 million dollars that went into designing this special-purpose hardware for this D-Wave machine and making it as fast possible. So in some sense, it's no surprise that this special-purpose hardware could get a constant-factor speedup over a classical computer for the problem of simulating itself."

I kinda wonder how much money scott thinks goes into most chip hardware ;-)

(I think the special vs general purpose argument is certainly true, but citing the money numbers to bolster it seems ... silly)

</comment><comment><USER6> I saw this headline and immediately thought "that's some pretty special paper."

It's been a long day.

</comment><comment><USER7> > "A mainstream media article about quantum computer that starts with a > reference to D-Wave can be safely ignored"

marcosdumay, HN, 1 hour ago

<comment><USER8> I think there's an obvious exception for MIT's news, especially when talking to Aaronson who has loudly been challenging D-Wave's quantum claims for years.

<comment><USER9> My general rule is to ignore anything that comes from MIT news as low quality anyway, so no conflict there.

<comment><USER10> Now that someone has said this I realise I've been doing the same for quite some time. It looks like a PR department with a university attached. Edit: it's not so much that it's usually just low quality, it's the offputting way they always state "MIT researchers prove that...", and whenever I dig into the area it's clear there's an active research community with leading figures in less fashionable universities that get no mention from the MIT press corps. The other top US universities don't seem to do this, at least nowhere near as much as MIT. Then again, maybe it's the general press and public who have bought into MIT fetishism and they're the reason these stories get picked up so often. (Saying all that, Aaronson is pretty awesome though)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Forensics detective says Android phones are now harder to crack than iPhones - <AUTHOR> https://www.androidauthority.com/android-encryption-forensics-1078668/ <comment><USER2> I don't understand how any the cracking tools work on any of the modern handsets. Are they extracting the key (DEK) from memory? Have they exploited a vulnerability in (Google) fscrypt, or LUKS? Or are these unencrypted phones? Or unencrypted cache partitions?</comment>


Show HN: Starlet – A chrome extension to quickly find and execute bookmarklets - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/starlet/hccekcphbicopdpfemiiboihegiigdbc

<comment><USER2> I was thinking about doing something like this, but mine would be a bookmarklet itself that would search in the user's gists for any gists with "bookmarklet" in the name.

[https://gist.github.com/fiatjaf/f6d6fd5d23421eae95d7](https://gist.github.com/fiatjaf/f6d6fd5d23421eae95d7)

<comment><AUTHOR> For running gists like bookmarklets, check out backtick.io, which is an inspiration for starlet.</comment></comment>


The jury is in on the Tesla Model S (compilation of video reviews) - <AUTHOR> http://www.treehugger.com/cars/jurys-tesla-model-s-rocks.html

<comment><USER2> Encouraging. It's still a rich person's toy, not a practical car, but can't say I'm disappointed that he's sticking with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's another step forward in their strategy of starting up-market at low volumes and progressively lowering prices and increasing volumes.</comment></comment>


First Wave of Spiking Neural Network Hardware Hits - <AUTHOR> https://www.nextplatform.com/2018/09/11/first-wave-of-spiking-neural-network-hardware-hits/ <comment><USER2> 82% accuracy on CIFAR-10? Is this a joke? State of the art on CIFAR-10 is 98.5% accuracy. That chart showing them near the top of a top-1 accuracy graph is borderline fraudulent.

Why not compare apples to apples? Take a CNN architecture that gets >95% accuracy, shrink it down until it only gets 82% accuracy, then run it on commercially available non-spiking NN hardware like a Movidius Myriad or Apple's Neural Engine and measure the speed and power consumption.

<comment><USER3> The chart is only covering so-called VPUs. This architecture claims to be best in class, but it's definitely unfair to omit how well state of the art models perform on standard hardware (IE, [GCT]PUs).

<comment><USER2> TX2 is on the chart and it is a GPU. But reading between the lines, the TX2 numbers on the chart are for ImageNet, not CIFAR-10. The TX2 is classifying 224x224 images into 1000 classes. Brainchip is classifying 32x32 images into 10 classes. But accuracy and power consumption are directly compared on the chart almost as if the tasks are similar. That's why I say it's borderline fraudulent.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for clarifying. I only looked through several of the chips before assuming they were all the same. I agree, and I don't see what case would lead me to want to be stuck with one particular model for one kind of data, _especially_ of the error rate is dozens of times higher.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't get the appeal of neuromorphic spiking chips even in academia. We don't have a definite , final spiking neuron model, and these architectures are too constrained to use them for finding it. We also have very few real- world applications for spiking neurons that exceed their ANN counterparts. There are multiple groups working on them and apparently are racing to compete with each other, but for all of them, the cart is before the horse.

<comment><USER5> > We also have very few real-world applications for spiking neurons that > exceed their ANN counterparts.

You are being generous. "Zero" does not qualify for "few".

On a more serious note:

> I don't get the appeal of neuromorphic spiking chips even in academia. We > don't have a definite , final spiking neuron model, and these architectures > are too constrained to use them for finding it.

I think at the moment there are some people that simply want to grab a bunch of the IP rights and position themselves in the hardware market. I think they know that their networks are not up to scratch yet, but they also believe that somebody will figure out how to implement backprop in a spiking network soon, and then they are in a good position to build something worthwhile. On the theory side, there are some papers coming pretty darn close that have come out in the last year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article makes a lot of apples to oranges comparisons that are confusing:

1\. The article makes the claim this is the first SNN processor, but then states they will first make an FPGA. They already reference existing processors, that have real debugged and fully functional ASICs, which already exist and are clearly the first SNNs. This is not the first SNN based FPGA design, nor the first functional SNN ASIC. For context, the existing SNN ASIC TrueNorth taped out in ~2012, and NeuroGrid in ~2010.

2\. They compare Cifar-10 results to ImageNet on the same chart. This is not apples to apples, as an architecture can get bus bound with larger image patches, weights and activations, etc. Once it becomes bus bound these architectures can lose efficiency.

3\. They talk about low power (<5W) architectures being compelling, but this does not include the TX2 (10-20W with the GPU going), and TrueNorth and NeuroGrid are at least an order of magnitude smaller (i.e. <<500mW). They omitted mobile chips and Qualcomm's Hexagon which is extremely compelling at the ~1-2W range.

4\. One of the neat things about the TrueNorth and NeuroGrid architecture is that they are asynchronous; when little activity is happening the chip can draw less power. Even the TX2 has some property of this by dynamically scaling power for the GPU, and perhaps I missed this but it does not seem supported by this architecture. Idle power draw can be important!

Once you remove a few of those datapoints and compare apple to apple this architecture seems less compelling. For what reads like a sales pitch, they could do a better job being straightforward about why this makes sense. And if it doesnt make sense, it will be yet another failed "AI" chip.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think sophistication of developer ecosystem and migration costs of moving code are important.

</comment><comment><USER8> Does anyone know how these things actually learn? I saw something in the article like "data passes over the network and creates reinforcement" but how well does this work, and how?

<comment><USER9> A common algorithm used in Spiking Neural Networks is called STDP (Stochastic Timing Dependent Plasticity). I do not know what exactly brainchip uses though. It is also possible to gradient descent your way through some SNNs although this is very inefficient. Also it is possible to directly convert many CNN architectures to equivalent spiking architectures. (i.e. Learn a CNN using gradient descent then approximate it as an SNN).</comment></comment>