Why Your Startup Can't Find Developers - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcolabs.com/3018568/why-your-startup-cant-find-developers <comment><USER3> _" I know one well-known startup who has been trying to fill a role for over four months, and has gone through two dozen candidates, simply because the founder mandates 80-hour workweeks."_

I'm rather surprised that this wasn't a heading topic on its own: _Don 't Expect People To Work 80-Hour Workweeks._ Bleary, burned-out, sleep-deprived, stimulant-addled engineers do not produce decent code no matter how many hours you make them stay at their desks. Obviously. You _bloody idiot._

(...The startup founder, I mean, not the article writer.)

Although really this folds into "You've Got To Pay If You Want To Play" to make a larger point: _If You Want Good Employees, Don 't Treat Them Like Shit._ Another of those blindingly obvious things that employers all over the world just can't seem to wrap their little heads around.

<comment><USER4> You don't even have to go outside of HN to find this attitude: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6445484](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6445484)

<comment><USER5> I find that post you linked disgusting. Now I see why we need laws for things I feel are obvious. I feel like that person should be reported to the authorities or something. Not hiring people because they refuse to regularly work over 40hrs/week should be illegal. I mean, sure I understand crunch time as release-to-production draws near. I have slept in my cubicle overnight before to make sure a critical production-change went smoothly, but that's _my_ choice when I deem it necessary or a manager I respect is in a tough-spot and would really like me to help him/her out. In what world does any manager think they can demand >40hrs/week from me on regular basis? Unless I own a significant part of the company, I'm just an employee and as such >40hrs/week for a regular employee is an indication of a problem.

<comment><USER6> > I find that post you linked disgusting. Now I see why we need laws for > things I feel are obvious. I feel like that person should be reported to the > authorities or something. Not hiring people because they refuse to regularly > work over 40hrs/week should be illegal.

It's interesting that you're so adamant about having the ability to make your personal choices here when you're advocating to take choice away from others.

The article states that the employer demanding 80 hour work weeks cannot find anybody to fill that role for 4 months and counting. Employers have to compete for labor just as employees have to compete for jobs. If somebody offers an 80 hour per week job without offering adequate compensation (multiple times the market rate, a large percentage of ownership, etc), then they'll fail to fill that role.

Your personal feelings are no justification for trying to create laws and interfering with other peoples' voluntary transactions in the marketplace.

<comment><USER7> I probably shouldn't respond, considering the (very stoner) name of "throwaway420", but the employer is in a position of power, so it is not unreasonable to want laws that draw bounderies around your commitment, especially with salary workers.

Fortunately, we work in an employee driven industry, so employers who demand extraordinary commitment can't find employees.

<comment><USER8> For now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Developers—the good ones—don't want to work for you. They want to work for a cause. They want believe that their work will have real meaning; real impact. This is not instead of a good salary, this is in addition to.

But it's an important addition and often overlooked. It's why among all of the food delivery service startups recently, I have my eye on SpoonRocket. They are on a passionate mission to provide healthy meals at the same price and speed of fast food. That is something to get fired up about. That could have a huge impact. That could change the diet of millions of people.

Please, don't settle for a mission statement. Please don't stop at the point of a good idea and early revenue. Have a mission—a real one. It's not just to romance investors or customers. The biggest impact you'll see is in your people.

<comment><USER10> _Developers—the good ones—don 't want to work for you. They want to work for a cause._

Disagree strongly. Solving interesting problems, improving my skill set and my career, and doing good work for the people immediately around me is enough for me. Negative cause (e.g. working for an unethical company, or in the war industry) would be a problem; but the difference between neutral and positive means little to me. I'm older, though (30).

When I get to ownership level, perhaps starting my own thing, I'll care a lot about macroscopics. However, most of us start out as employees and there's more than enough rewarding in mastering the micro-scale stuff. As long as I'm not being asked to do anything wrong, I'm not going to get emotionally involved in how a company affects the world until I'm an owner; until that point, it's just a distraction.

Macroscopics, in my observation, just mean more Kool-aid; and there are just as many good people at companies doing less sexy (macroscopically speaking) but still important things. In fact, I worked (briefly) for one of those "change the world" startups-- a New York ed-tech that's devolved into being a sidekick to mainstream publishers-- and it was all marketing bullshit; the rank-and-file believed in it, but the executives were the most unethical people I've ever met (and that includes drug dealers).

<comment><USER11> The point is - good developers want to _care_. They can get a good salary anywhere, but can you also make them _care_.

Some will want to work for a cause, some get fired up over cool algorithms, some care because they're best mates with the rest of the team and can grab a beer together.

But they want to _care_ passionately about their work. That's the bottom line.

<comment><USER12> > good developers

I'm sure plenty of people feel passionately about something, but I don't see how that makes them "good" in any technical sense.

The Spocks will always be a better developer than McCoys.

The best developers I've ever known move around a lot, or work at places like Goldman Sachs. They have a clique, and it's well above any loyalty to some hip corporate mission statement.

<comment><USER10> _The best developers I 've ever known move around a lot, or work at places like Goldman Sachs. They have a clique, and it's well above any loyalty to some hip corporate mission statement._

Exactly. They care more about keeping their skills sharp than "change the world" mission statements, so they'd rather do machine learning at a hedge fund than grunt work for some 23-year-old kid whose family connections bought funding.

They start thinking about the big-picture passion stuff when they're owners. Before that point, it's not relevant. You care more about growing your skill set and doing good work for (and mentoring) the people around you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'll add a reason: you're looking for someone you don't need.

Not every startup is Google. A lot of companies have CRUD applications of minimal to modest complexity which, even if actively used, are nowhere close to facing performance and scalability barriers that would require _deep_ technical expertise.

These startups don't necessarily need "engineers" with computer science backgrounds, but that's what many of them are searching for.

<comment><USER14> So, so, so true. I've been looking for jobs in a city outside of the typical developer hotspots (Dallas) and it is absolutely insane for me to see every ad seeking something like a "programming virtuoso" (an actual quote) for fairly basic web dev. I got an email from a recruiter looking for a "top-level web developer" and then saying they would be recruiting at a nearby college job fair. (A tiny, rural college.)

Why does every business need to pretend that they are getting the best of the best? Obviously, I want to get there someday, but I'm still early in my career. I know I'm not top-level anything. It would be disingenuous and frankly delusional for me to claim such!

<comment><USER15> And, to top that, they won't even be paying good money. They just want a virtuoso. For peanuts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The author raised the point that very often young founders only want to hire someone in their own image. I believe it's more of a problem of those young founders have never worked with anyone who are NOT of similar backgrounds than they are. In some cases just spending a couple years at a bigger company with a more diverse workforce would completely shatter the "most productive engineers are 20 something CS grads who can code 80 hours a week on Red Bull" stereotype. Sure those people may be motivated by different things in life at that point, but one quality of being a good leader is the ability to gather different people with different backgrounds and motivations and still utilize them to the max and achieve the common goal. A company that's run purely on Kool-aid may have the short-term "enthusiasm" but is not going to survive the ups and downs of a long journey.

<comment><USER17> Efficiency is not lines of code produced, it's the experience to choose the right technologies and approach the first time: when to choose a stable, behind-the-curve technology and when to take a calculated risk; when to do something that's good enough and when to do spend more time to make it robust.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> _" New graduates can command $100,000 a year in Silicon Valley. Hired has found that bumping the offer up to $120,000 gives you access to 30% more candidates."_

This is something many people on HN have been saying for a long time in response to the question of whether the US needs to create more H-1B visas: companies have a hard time finding qualified employees because they don't want to pay enough. It's nice to see the numbers quantified in this way (even though this is only anecdotal evidence from a single recruiting firm).

<comment><USER19> Maybe the execs are having trouble raising the money required to hire these people. Another thought is that the VCs are putting arbitrary limits on $/head.

<comment><USER18> If they're setting arbitrary caps on salary, then they're not playing by the rules of the free market, and they shouldn't be whining about a "shortage". (I can't find someone who is willing to sell me a new luxury car for $10,000. Is that a problem? Is there a shortage of BMWs?)

<comment><USER19> That's exactly what they're doing. It's a lie of omission regarding the execs' price sensitivity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> You can't find developers because everyone in the Greater SF Bay Area is looking for the perfectly seasoned developer that has deep experience in their given stack.

It reminds me of a grownup having Play-Doh time with toddlers. The grownup takes the time to make some recognizable object (a dog, a human figure, an ice cream cone) and then the toddler starts grabbing for it. This is how many young companies act with talent. They don't want to invest in people, they don't want to bring on interns or junior folks. They want high-output plug- and-play rockstar senior devs. And they want them on their terms.

Some of you might see things differently, but that's the impression I'm getting from all of the listings I'm seeing in my job search (for a junior dev role.) There are some companies that are making the long-term investment in finding the less refined talent and developing it, but they are hard to find.

I hope other people see this trend and that I'm not just entirely saturated in the pungent juice of sour grapes.

<comment><USER21> Well said.

If properly picked and hired, junior-level inexperienced engineers can be a gold mine. Employers need to retune their hiring process to value intellect and potential over straight-up experience and know-it-all-ness. This is a tricky proposition, since many hiring managers are terribly inexperienced with hiring and don't know how to do much more than coding challenges, "explain to me how DNS works" questions, etc. These hiring managers are trying to compare their own skills against this new hires and they will reject the hire if it doesn't match up. Huge fail. The gold miner hiring manager, however, asks more open-ended questions to probe the intellect of the hire. The gold miner doesn't expect a "full-stack hacker" and is tolerant of "I don't know" responses. The more important question: what problems has this person solved and how did they solve them?

If you want to see how to hire and structure your team, a good example to follow is the military. Consider the typical platoon of Infantry soldiers: you have one senior leader/manager, one senior subject matter expert and all-round ass-kicker, four SME-and-ass-kickers-in-training, and about 36 junior guys who are there to learn. The junior guys make a fraction of what the senior SME makes and their skill level is also fractional. No worries. They are there to learn, develop, and do their best. Treat them well, not like slaves, , respect them, and develop them. Most of them will leave after a few years for a new job elsewhere. That's okay. You got something from them (work) and they got something from you (experience). You, the leader, will identify a few promising individuals amongst them and groom them to be SMEs in training, giving them the added responsibility and pay increases that they deserve. Like an Infantry platoon, your team will eventually hire experienced SMEs from outside the company to bring in fresh skills and ideas. If this team building is done right, you can build a loyal, organic organization that grows and trains it's own and you can do it for about the same cost as going out and hiring three or four absolute badasses that will probably leave as soon as the next shiny, well-paying thing comes along.

<comment><USER20> Love the platoon analogy. I've seen it work firsthand and it works in all sorts of different places - especially startups!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > On the other hand startup CEOs tends to be prejudiced against developers who > work for less cutting-edge large companies like Dell, Accenture, or > Salesforce. Mickiewicz points out that Uber's CTO was hired from VMware.

In what world is VMWare not cutting edge? Sure, they're a big successful company, but that's because they solve a complex problem.

Also, hiring a CTO from a large tech company is nothing like hiring an ground- level engineer - there's no way VMware's CTO spent his days coding before he went to Uber.

<comment><USER23> I'm not really sure what the point the author was trying to make. vCenter is _not_ a cutting edge piece of software when you compare it to modern cloud offerings like AWS or even OpenStack. vCenter is, however, very good at what it does, and in many ways does a lot of things that new cloudy offerings will probably never do.

One thing I can say about Thuan, having worked for him at VMware for a long time, he always tried pushing things. My guess is Uber saw that and figured he'd make a good fit.

<comment><USER24> Having actually worked on vCenter, I can tell you that it is at best adequate for what it does, but the code is amongst the shittiest I have ever worked on.

<comment><USER25> Behind every successful commercial software product is a horrible codebase.

<comment><USER26> This should become a law, like Brook's, Sturgeon's or Greenspun's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> "Too many twentysomething founders look for employees just like themselves. "So you discriminate against anyone who is in their 30s or 40s or has a family," says Mickiewicz. "But the most talented and experienced people will be in their 30s and 40s."

It's always a relief to see an article like this not just calling out age bias, but putting it at the top. There are other good points in the article too, but it's important to note that Bay Area tech culture skews heavily towards white dudes in their 20s. There are plenty of people pushing back against the "white dudes" part, but we could use a little more pushing back against the "in their 20s." Especially since someone who's 35 today was born in 1978 and was turning 12 in 1990, right around the elbow of the explosive growth curve of home-available computing. You could have maybe made an argument that someone who was 35 in 1995, born in 1960, was a bit late to the game to profoundly grok the web then (I think that argument's wrong, but you could make it without being laughed out of the room). But in 2013, a 35-year- old engineer is someone you want to look for because that's probably going to be someone with perspective and a mature skill set. There are plenty of smart 20-year-olds out there, yet there is no substitute good for experience.

</comment><comment><USER28> Hiring people that come from a similar background as founders is the biggest problem on that list. It's part of the reason there's a serious lack of diversity in tech and startups today. Truly recognizing that people unsimilar to you are capable, smart, and successful is a learned view. One that founders may not have had time to develop because they have to be so focused on themselves to start a company.

Once you develop bad hiring habits they become part of a start-up's culture, making a lot of people very resistant to doing something differently. For instance, if all you're doing is interviewing and not looking at the bigger picture, you may not even realize you're doing something wrong.

<comment><USER29> I've had interviews where I basically get asked "Are you fun to drink beer with?", but with more words.

And all I can think is "What a fucking waste of time this is."

Hire the people that you need to get the job done, not because they have the latest in hipster underwear.

My Requirements for hiring; 1\. They can do the job well. 2\. I can understand what they are saying. 3\. They have a bath/shower at least once a week whether they need it or not.

The amount of people who fit into categories two and three is surprising high. These are the people I desperately want to hire but I can't.

<comment><USER30> "These are the people I desperately want to hire but I can't."

I desperately want to buy a 3-bedroom in London for £20k but I can't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> > _"Hiring Google engineers is generally a really bad idea. If you work at > Google you have access to an entire set of tools and technologies that you > won 't have in a smaller startup environment."_

This seems like a sensible and underrated assertion. I have no idea if it's more true for Google than other large startups...but yeah, great companies have great toolsets...that's in part why they're great. But that infrastructure isn't available elsewhere and an engineer's reliance on that isn't easily tested. It seems akin to my experience in journalism, that some very accomplished reporters have had very accomplished support staff (researchers, fact-checkers, handlers), but may flounder when forced to do that work themselves.

<comment><USER32> I wouldn't go so far as to say that large companies have great toolsets, but they're definitely pretty different from what's on the outside. I've spent a ton of time learning internal tools and that knowledge won't transfer when I leave my company. Frameworks are different, infrastructure is different, and the process and scope of responsibilities is different. Building something inside a large company is a pretty different skill from making it from scratch. That's my experience anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> <<Hiring in your own image

For most/many founders this is closely related to "hire people you would want to hang out with on Sundays", another common hiring "mistake/tip".

The hiring pool shrinks considerably and diversity of perspective/ideas and any other attribute you value likely goes out the window.

</comment><comment><USER34> I verbally accepted a job at a UK based start-up once, it was 3 days per week as that was all they could afford at the time.

It was not until i got the contract that it stated a minimum of 40 hours in the 3 Days, so they wanted me to work full time hours in the 3 days for 3 days pay.

I turned it down. I still see the founder around and he is still looking for dev's.

<comment><USER35> Wait, so he was asking for 13 hour 20 minute days?

<comment><USER36> I played D&D with a guy who did forty hours in two, twenty-hour days. He'd arrive at midnight, work until eight PM, then sleep (on site) until 4 AM, then work again until midnight. From what I heard, the sleep was more of a legal fiction to get around OSHA regulations than actual sleep.

I guess it paid decently enough, since he never complained about, but he pretty much slept for the entire following day. He never knew until Sunday which two days he would be in, so scheduling gaming time was a pain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> > Why Your Startup Can't Find Developers

Relying on recruiters.

Recruiters are notorious for buzzword searching and resume stacking. And Googler's probably don't respond to interview requests because they don't trust or respect recruiters (just a hunch).

Find other ways to advertise your jobs, like old fashoined networking, message boards, social media, etc.

<comment><USER38> I'll second that one. I'm actively searching to get me and my family out of TX back to the SF Bay area. I'm a .NET guy, so I know the deck's a little stacked against me, but dealing with recruiters is rapidly becoming mind numbing.

"Must have 2 years of T-SQL." Ok, I've written my share of SQL for ASP.NET and desktop apps on MSSQL Server. Add it up and it's about 4 years, plus the last year or so with EF. Here's my resume.

"We can't send this to our client, you don't have T-SQL." Umm... SQL on MSSQL Server _is_ T-SQL. "Now you're lying to me." Ok, this is where our professional relationship ends. Thanks for your time.

Then there's that job where I pitched in on some Java stuff that needed doing. Similar to C#, I can grok. We got that code out the door, and it's still working. Yay. "Hello! I want to tell you about an opportunity requiring 10 years of J2EE and [insert other Java tech buzzwords]." <sigh> I'm not a Java guru anywhere near that level. Let me rewrite that project so Java isn't on there anymore. Doesn't matter. My resume is now in some resume bank that farms it out to non-perceiving headhunting companies.

Yeah, I'm getting a little cranky now. I'll stop.

<comment><USER39> Have you talked to the bigger companies? Microsoft is here, for one, and are unlikely to turn up their noses to a .NET developer. Plenty of places have dozens of recs open. Don't talk to the stupid recruiters, talk to the companies themselves.

I'm not dismissing your larger point that a good engineer can quickly take on a specific stack - engineering is what is important in a good employee, not knowledge of a specific API.

<comment><USER38> Phase 2, which I'm implementing tomorrow, consists of basically that. I'm figuring at least Microsoft, Amazon and Google. We'll see what else I can find. Any recommendations?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Another disconnect is start ups tend to advertise "team lead" roles where you have the responsibilities of a manager, developer, and operations all at once while paid entry level salary. No thanks, but nice try.

<comment><USER41> I think this is a result of fear and marketing - if you have team leads, then you can still advertize a flat corporate structure, and startups are afraid to offer the management title because it means giving up control, which is a bit crazy - you'll give up 15% of your company for 100k, but not a bit of control to a manager who is just trying to do what he can for your company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'll tell you how to find the best people. It's not easy, but it works.

For a while I tried a very simple policy:

You come in when you want and go home when you want. Take as long as you want for lunch. Got errands to run that are important to you? Don't ask me, go do it. Need to go out of town to see a concert in the middle of the week? Have a good time. Bring pictures. In general, everyone in this group was allowed to be an adult and manage their time as they wished. There was no such thing as vacation time or sick time accounting. If you need time off, take it.

The only requirement was that the work get done, get done well and on time (within a schedule that was discussed by all and agreed-upon).

That's it.

What happened? Well, a few people abused it. They tended to be in the younger end of the spectrum and perhaps thought this was a license to fuck off and get paid. They didn't last long. The rest of this small group was great. They got their work done without a lot of supervision, were happy and actually went out of their way to push the project forward. It was an excellent experience and a great way, as far as I am concerned, to filter the idiots from the professionals.

This isn't easy to manage. That seems like an oxymoron. You are not actively managing people yet you say that it is hard to manage? Well, the problem is it takes a little bit of time to settle into a stable state. Every addition or change to the team creates a step change that needs to be allowed to settle. Once you have a stable team it pretty much runs itself and it runs well. Until then it can be a little chaotic.

I've done this once and was happy with the results. When you are under the gun and trying to put together a new team it is easier to go with a more conventional top-down approach and pretty much dictate what each person needs to do, when, how, etc. Not the best environment but sometimes you have no choice.

That said, in general terms I firmly believe in making people responsible for an area or reaching a certain milestone and pretty much leaving them alone. They should come to you if they need help or guidance. Other than that, if you are working with professionals there should not be any need to hover over them every day to see how they are doing.

</comment><comment><USER43> As is common, Joel said it all back in 2000:

"Whaddaya Mean, You Can't Find Programmers?" [http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000050.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000050.html)

</comment><comment><USER44> Why can't your startup find developers?

1\. You want to be stingy on salary and benefits, and avoid paying above market rates. You quibble over meeting trivial salary requests. Your company doesn't have proper review processes and doesn't give raises frequently enough. You don't provide equity in your company to your most valued employees

2\. Your interview process sucks. You hand off the candidate to 5 different people, the interview lasts all day, you require too many interviews before making an offer, you have puzzle questions, your interviewer is non-technical and has never used the technologies you're hiring for, you rely on agency recruiters, you and your co-founders aren't involved in hiring, you don't spend enough time on hiring, it takes weeks for you to get back to candidates, it takes days for you to make an offer, you forget about scheduled interviews, your people doing the interviews aren't at work the day candidates have scheduled to come in, you ask inappropriate questions during interviews, you lie to candidates during interviews, interviewing is combat and not collaborative

3\. You hire for "culture fit" which means you only hire people that fit whatever your version of the status quo is. You signal that older people or non-hipsters need not apply. You discriminate against people old enough to have spouses and children. Your office has a culture offensive to women and/or minorities. You have the words "rock star" or "ninja" in your description. You prefer "yes men" over free thinkers. You hire only people who are like you

4\. You demand that every employee commute to your offices because you have an antiquated "asses in seats" busywork mentality or a "no remote work" policy. You treat remote employees as if they are second-class employees. You demand relocation to the Bay area or it's a 'no hire'. You don't provide relocation assistance. You don't help with visas

5\. You require educational credentials for jobs that don't and shouldn't require them. You set up qualification barriers for great candidates. You don't respect candidates who have experience outside of your specific technology stack

6\. You have a toxic office environment. Your offices are shabby and "Class B." You make people work in grey cubicles, Office Space-style. You don't provide catered lunch. You pay no attention to, and invest nothing in, office equipment. You don't provide up-to-date equipment and developer hardware

7\. You require ridiculous hours that make work/life balance out of the question. You don't offer generous holiday time. You tell people they cannot take holiday time because it's "crunch time." You resent employees who take holiday time they are entitled to

<comment><USER45> I kind of object to #6. Not every company _can afford_ to rent or purchase the nicest wonderfulest offices ever. Plenty can only get offices out in some godawful office park where everyone has to, GASP, bring their own lunches or buy one off a local shop or food truck. That doesn't mean your company is bad, it means you've got fewer hipster pretensions -- though I would ask companies to please locate nearer to downtown centers rather than out in the exurbs.

<comment><USER44> I think that's reasonable, but note I didn't say expensive real estate. I've seen some pretty nice office space in converted warehouses and repurposed industrial areas. What I'm talking about is putting devs in a cube farm and stuff like that. I also don't think it's _absolutely essential_ that you cater lunch (if you're in a city with lots of dining options and off-site opportunities for employees to eat together), but if you're in the exurbs it probably is at this point. Top devs expect these things, even if they might be willing to work without them for a certain startup.

<comment><USER46> I had to pick up a contract from a mobile gaming startup yesterday. 30 grim cubicles crammed together, shit literally everywhere on the floor like piles of cables, papers, discarded hardware...

There was even a gargantuan flatscreen that looped their product commercials and one of the guys sitting beside it I could see the flashing, seizure inducing graphics reflecting off his 2 screens and glasses. No windows, and unbearably hot from all the machines. How do you not go mad in that environment

<comment><USER47> i'd be worried about occupational health and safety in an environment like that. In fact, you can sue the employer for such an environment as unsafe. and if it turns out that they didn't do their due diligence to provide a good env, they might even have to cough up compensation. Food for thought!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Is that really the salary structure in the bay area these days? It used to be that a senior developer's salary was easily 2x a junior developer's salary, but I thought senior and lead developer salaries were in the $130-$150k range in the bay area, at least for java developers.

<comment><USER49> Jeeze, I wonder why we don't see more start-ups appearing in other areas - <USER2> mean, there are lots of college towns pumping out brilliant engineers and coders that cost a lot less to live in. Your users don't care if you're located in Cambridge or Waterloo or the Bay area.

<comment><USER50> There is a field called economic geography that works to explain your question. It's too complex to summarize, but the short version is that SV has lots of startups, lots of investors, and lots of hackers in a small space, so people who want to do those things move there, creating a cycle.

See also [http://paulgraham.com/maybe.html](http://paulgraham.com/maybe.html), [http://paulgraham.com/cities.html](http://paulgraham.com/cities.html), [http://paulgraham.com/hubs.html](http://paulgraham.com/hubs.html).

<comment><USER49> Yes, but that's why I'm mentioning college towns. Lots of hackers in any town with a top-rate software/engineering department. And a start-up is just a hacker with a bit of extra ambition.

Investors and start-up culture sound like the missing ingredient more than any shortage of technical know-how.

<comment><USER51> Austin is much cheaper than SF and SV but salaries are still in the $100K to $130K for talented devs.

<comment><USER52> Surely the TX labor laws are worse for the employee than CA's, though? It might make sense.

<comment><USER51> Well, we don't get 8 weeks of guaranteed paternity leave if that's what you mean. But Texas has some nice protections for employees. Non-compete agreements, for example, are almost unenforceable in Texas, which is nice.

<comment><USER45> Also in California, actually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> $100k-$120k for undergrad? that's crazy. I guess this is one of the reasons why Facebook and Twitter decided to open offices in Vancouver _specifically_ to hire undergrad. Undergrad salary here can be half of that.

<comment><USER54> It does say 'In silicon valley'. But even after price adjust, that does seem WAY too high for a junior developer.

<comment><USER55> Yep FB offers undergrads from some universities 100-120k, plus 50-100k signing bonus, plus $100-125k in stocks from what I've heard.

<comment><USER10> Those numbers, in general, are high. You might get that if you get them into a bidding war.

In general, a publicly traded company is not going to give that kind of package to an undergrad. Maybe $110-120k in salary, but the stock amount is more likely to be around $80k vesting over 4 years.

<comment><USER56> 100k-ish stock vesting over 4 years is pretty standard among the big SV companies for new grads. It can be a lot more though if you're not a new graduate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I've given up on salary.

I work as a W2 contractor (and 1099 at very high rates) and I always let my bosses know if they want me here after 5pm then they better be ready for me to charge it.

I might have to pay for my own benefits but I have full control over my hours this way. It's a nice compromise between salary and freelance, even if I do have to deal with a recruiting agency (just don't work with mom-n-pop recruiters and you'll be okay).

</comment><comment><USER58> Here I thought the problem was we were in Phoenix, and we had hired all the Python Developers in the area. (with a few exceptions for those who work at NASA)

<comment><USER59> Phoenix has a pretty thriving tech community. I'm in Chandler, and in the last week I have gone to a Cassandra meetup at GoDaddy and am going to an Amazon cloud meetup at the Amazon offices in downtown Tempe tonight.

I run into Ruby and Python devs all over the place. The problem is, like this article touches on, the jobs advertisements I've seen for Python seem to be written for the "hipster" crowd (I've even seen some with "ninja", etc in the title).

Then they end up wanting to pay $30k less than the competition, so most people I know chose to go work at Intel, Freescale, Microchip, one of the aerospace companies... somewhere that has a professional atmosphere, pays well, and you get to work on interesting tech.

<comment><USER58> At the risk of getting flamed as an arrogant bastard. Which I am. The python talent in Phoenix is for the most part not talent.

The guys who want $75K would not fetch $50k in San Jose, and the guys who want $100K would not fetch $70k in San Jose.

I have been lucky to get some really great guys, but most of the guys are script kiddies who have never done anything hard, and are too high and mighty to learn to do the hard stuff.

We aren't competing with LimeLight very often for tech talent. We are competing with Silicon Valley. Because unless you have roots in Phoenix, if you are talented you aren't staying here.

I am very aware that if my guys wanted to leave Phoenix they would do well in Silicon Valley, and I'm very glad they choose to live here.

<comment><USER59> I can only speak to my experience, but I've turned down offers from Google and Netflix to stay in the Phoenix area. The cost of living (relative to salaries) in the valley is crazy, and you're competing for housing with people who just happened to "be around" when their company IPO'd. In Chandler I can afford a nice house near parks and good schools and I don't have to worry about earthquakes.

Speaking to your troubles hiring, I can only generalize based on some job ads that I've seen. Like I mentioned before, some ads just seem too targeted at the "early 20s fresh out of school" demographic that companies think they can lure in with free soda in exchange for 80-hour weeks. Senior devs just don't go for that, so they ignore those ads and go interview at Honeywell instead.

<comment><USER58> The quality of living is different.

I am working mostly in Python these days. When I was in Silicon Valley I could go talk to Guido. When I had questions about AppEngine from Google I met with the PM's.

Phoenix doesn't have that. Also the place I rent in Tempe is with in 10% of the price of the same thing in San Jose.

<comment><USER59> That's more about personal connections than the quality of life of a region, right? Granted, geographically if you happen to know those people it makes it hard to connect with them, but most people can't just ring up Guido when they have a Python question.

As far as Phoenix-based Python developers, there appears to be a Python meetup group, 'DesertPy': [http://www.meetup.com/Phoenix-Python-Meetup- Group/](http://www.meetup.com/Phoenix-Python-Meetup-Group/)

As far as real estate... I don't know about your specific situation but as a whole the valley is much more expensive than the Phoenix area. San Jose, through Cupertino, up to Mountain View... on average you're easily paying twice as much for the same square footage (I just checked San Jose on Zillow. 2,000 sq ft is easily 600k).

<comment><USER58> The Buy is better than rent in Phx, opposite of San Jose.

"nice outside" doesn't happen much in Phx. In Silicon Valley you open the windows and let the breeze in. In Phx you kick up the AC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Back in the mid-90s when just out of school, working at MSFT, a buddy and I calculated that we were making about $15/hour after calculating all the long hours we worked (it wasn't 80 hours, but 60 was quite common).

...then the dot-com boom came and we all went and worked elsewhere. Which was good because our stock options never went up much after 1999 (to justify the salary anyway).

BTW, it was still one of the best jobs I've ever had working for someone else.

</comment><comment><USER61> While I was reading this I kept thinking that although the points are sound it fails to point out the upside -- that making these kinds of mistakes also effectively signals the presence of undesirable traits in the leadership.

<comment><USER62> And consequently, the author is doing developers a disservice by telling employers how to _pretend_ not to suck.

Or would be, if there were the slightest possibility of them listening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Just go through an open source mailing list and find people who seem to know what they are doing. Somewhere they probably have a consultant page, or git profile of work. Done, hire them remotely. If they need extra people tell them to find somebody they know who's competent and hire them too. No office, no recruiters, no insurance/rent to pay and no investment needed to buy hardware.

</comment><comment><USER63> I would add that the low barriers to entry to become a startup founder (and to raise several hundred thousand dollars) leaves us with few great people to be employees (this goes for engineers & business folks alike).

<comment><USER18> Not all great developers want to run a startup. The founder of a startup has to do all sorts of stuff that most developers don't like doing: management, marketing, endless meetings with investors, etc.

<comment><USER64> plus getting 90% of the exit money while the employees who built the company get to split 10% 200 ways (all of the non-funding allotments).

<comment><USER30> Yes, that's how lotteries work.

<comment><USER65> Work at a tier A company and buy lotto tickets give you the best of both worlds, corporate + startup!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> It's nice to see the fallacy of options is finally sinking in, and people are refusing to take a pay cut for the mystical unicorn of a fast exit.

</comment><comment><USER67> Google stopped asking questions like "how many golf balls fit into a plane", but they didn't stop asking puzzles and programming trivia questions.

If you know how to ask these questions, and what insight you're looking for from them, they can be very insightful. Here's the different types of questions and puzzles you should ask, how, and what insight to get from them: [https://www.sandglaz.com/blog_posts/104-How-to-interview- and...](https://www.sandglaz.com/blog_posts/104-How-to-interview-and-hire- junior-developers)

</comment><comment><USER68> >> Founders typically look for candidates who have a similar educational background to themselves and live within 25 miles of their office.

I go back to the stories of google rejecting mid-level management applicants because their college GPA's were 3.0 instead of 4.0 or they went to Georgia Tech instead of M.I.T. Seems like everybody makes these same mistakes.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/15-google-interview- questions...](http://www.businessinsider.com/15-google-interview-questions- that-used-to-make-geniuses-feel-dumb-2012-11?op=1)

</comment><comment><USER69> Startups can't find (good) developers because they don't understand how high the demand is. Unless you're in the big league with the big money, you _will_ have to settle.

</comment><comment><USER70> It's trivially easy to find developers. It's very difficult to find developers who are competent and responsible, let alone rock stars.

<comment><USER71> Why should a "rock star" work for you ?

How about creating the rockstars rather than hoping for one to fall into your lap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> There's a local startup here that I would absolutely love to work for, except for one thing. I have a lot of experience in their technology stack and some domain knowledge. They won't hire be because I'm not willing/interested in churning out 60 hour work weeks every single week. So.. alas, double-lose.

</comment><comment><USER73> another interesting question is how to find the good candidates. We use the usual ways: personal connections, head hunting agencies etc. we have also started to target top talents on meetup groups, hackathons & local technical bloggers.

If you have another creative & efficient way to find candidates please share.

<comment><USER74> Unfortunately, Hired isn't in Tel Aviv yet, otherwise I'd love to help!

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> The photo is certainly appropriate.

</comment><comment><USER75> well done.

</comment><comment><USER10> Find, or entice to join after an offer is made? Two different processes.

The first can be solved by getting one's name out there: writing a tech blog, hosting meetups, coming up with novel perks. The second is harder and more objective.

Most startups give mediocre salaries, but people know that. There are two things about startups that damage them, though.

1\. Low equity. Once the VCs get involved, equity allotments become so low that their motivational effect is pretty much nil. I feel like the current culture of startup mediocrity has a lot to do with the fact that seriously skilled people aren't interested in the laughable equity amounts they get in post-A startups, unless they can treat it as a 9-to-5 day job and have almost unlimited autonomy.

2\. Low autonomy, which surprises people. You're more able to have a global effect on the company in a startup-- that's pretty much impossible for a big corporation-- but the amount of day-to-day personal autonomy people have over their own work and careers is often less in the startups. Big companies can't compete on options and usually pay market (because they _set_ the market rate) so the good ones give their good people decent projects. A lot of startups have micromanagement and, worse yet, an increasing number that have that MBA douchebag culture are popping up (and if you work for a startup with MBA douchebag culture, you get the worst of both worlds between big and small companies; the risk and division-of-labor uncertainty of a small company, usually run by someone too unstable and arrogant to last more than 6 months-- which isn't even that hard to do-- in a large one). New York is full of startups run by MBA types who couldn't hack it in real finance but made enough contacts to raise VC.

I'm pretty sure I'd have no trouble hiring good developers. I'd run open allocation as far as possible, and I wouldn't give out _any_ equity, but replace that with a far more generous profit-sharing program. There wouldn't be far-off payouts with messy tax implications as with options, but bonuses would be 200-500% in good years.

<comment><USER76> > I'm pretty sure I'd have no trouble hiring good developers.

Honest question -- you have a bit of a reputation, I'd say mainly from your Hacker News rants. Do you think that those will help or hurt your recruitment prospects?

<comment><USER10> _Honest question -- you have a bit of a reputation, I 'd say mainly from your Hacker News rants. Do you think that those will help or hurt your recruitment prospects?_

In the short term, it makes me unfundable (but that's OK, because I'm not interested in raising money right now-- too many douchebags in the game) because I've brought out too many unpleasant truths, but would be neutral-to- positive if I were the one doing the hiring. In the long term, I think it's favorable, because I think (hope) that the culture will evolve to a point where I seem prescient rather than pugnacious. If I'm wrong, and the startup culture devolves, then, I don't want to be a part of it anyway.

<comment><USER52> I have a lot of respect for your no-bullshit attitude towards VC-funded companies. I don't see why that would appear as a downside to employees. Most of what I've read is you talking about what a shitty deal it is for the employees; obviously you're imagining some kind of fairer compensation and I think that's nothing but a plus.

<comment><USER10> I agree. But I think that traditional VCs would be reluctant to fund me. I'm a known publicity risk; so they'd have to find a way to sell it as upside (we're so forward thinking that _this guy_ endorsed us). LBJ had a darker view of that dynamic, "I'd rather have him in the tent pissing out than outside of the tent pissing in".

In the long term, everything I've said will seem prescient. But I'm pretty sure my chances of getting VC funding right now are zero. Those chances were never strong, because I wasn't born into that kind of connections, but I've pissed a lot of people off. That's OK, because I'm interested in starting something when the scene is clotted with douches. I'd rather wait 5-7 years for the douche tide to go out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> Companies put up barriers for applicants, then wonder why they can't find anyone.

A big thing for me is references. I have good references but I don't like to bother people. These are often from bosses who I worked with four years before and have only had sporadic contact with since, I don't want to be asking for favors every other contact.

Some companies, in e-mails before I even talk to anyone want me to send them references. I mean it's not like people ask for references as the last step before making an offer.

So what I have to do is when I'm looking for work, contact all my references, make sure my phone # etc. for them is current, and ask if they'll give me a reference - they always say yes. I figure I'm then good for the next few weeks/months in terms of that.

But it also means I basically have to make the major commitment of saying I want another job. Then I go looking and look until I find one.

If people were not so free with asking for references before I even talk to someone on the phone even, I could look for work at my leisure. If a headhunter contacted me, even if I wasn't looking, I could talk to the company. If they said they were almost set with the decision and just wanted some references, then I could do that as a last step.

Really it limits when I am available to hear offers. I am only open for offers every 2-3 years, in the weeks and months I am looking for a new job. I'm not open 18 months into a job, because I'm not going to hassle 3 old bosses for one company which hasn't even decided if they want to do a phone interview with me yet.

Of course I can always say I don't give references until later in the process, but usually it's some HR drone handing me a sheet and telling me to fill it out. If I don't put contact for references they tell me I should fill that in. It's like I'm sloppy for not bringing contact information, or have something to hide in not wanting to hand out reference information freely. People can say "tell 'them' so-and-so" but there's no them, there's an HR information sheet and some HR drone only peripherally connected with the hiring process.

It's not a big deal for me, it just limits my availability for talking to a 4-6 week cycle out of every 100-150 weeks. Companies throw up these barriers against themselves, then wonder why they can't find people.

There's other things as well. I work from 9 to 5. But companies want me to come in at 10 AM, I wait around 30 minutes for the first person to talk to me, then they want me to talk to someone else etc. Then two people who I have to talk to before getting hired are busy or not there. Also, if I schedule one a vacation day during the week, my current company might wonder what I'm doing. How am I supposed to make time for these long, drawn out interviews during the work week?

Then of course there is specialization. Wanting someone who knows a language like C++ is fine. Even wanting someone who knows OpenGL is fine. Or even more specifically, OpenGL ES if OpenGL is too general. But then they want people who know who Objective C for Apple hooks into C++ with OpenGL ES, as opposed to someone who has maybe been doing Java and JNI hooks into C++ with OpenGL ES. Or if that is not specific enough, then something even more specific.

Or it might say BSCS required. So if you're a few classes short - tough luck.

The entire interview process is geared towards company's establishing their dominance in the relationship from the get-go. You go hassle your old bosses, asking them to put in a good word for you. You come here when you're supposed to be working. And so on. Companies throw up these barriers as if there is a huge excess of good programmers they can pick and choose from. When that pool dries up, do they think, gee, maybe we should change how we interview? Of course not, they just complain how they can't find talented developers, and lobby Washington so that foreign programmers don't have to hop through the immigration hoops everyone else has to.

They don't see a lack of talented programmers, they see a lack of a large pool of talented programmers they can put over a barrel. Because otherwise they would have changed how they do interviewing.

While they only have the option of griping about lack of talent, we have options beyond griping about interviews. With the cloud, growth of mobile and app stores etc., as everyone says, now it's easier than ever to get your own personal (or partnered) income stream going. Hopefully mine grows to the point where the spectre about potentially having to go on a job interview ever again diminishes to nothing. I dislike enough the more easy interviews about whether I will consult on a project for a few months.

<comment><USER78> >The entire interview process is geared towards company's establishing their dominance in the relationship from the get-go.

<comment><USER45> Worth highlighting, but we don't have greentext on Hacker News ;-).

>implying implications

<comment><USER79> >Worth highlighting, but we don't have greentext on Hacker News ;-).

we do now: [http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/178736](http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/178736)

<comment><USER45> >just installed the script

>greentext now displays

>newfriends learn to triforce eventually

<comment><USER79> >flawed victory...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> I know recent grads making close to $200k (everything included) simply by working at Google...

</comment><comment><USER81> When In was younger I didn't trust people older than I. As, I got older I became one of those people. In my twenties, I had absolutely so patience for computers. I felt like I was wasting my time looking into a computer terminal. To be absolutely honest--all I cared about was getting laid--oh, and a little bit of beer money. As I got older, my physicality changed. I now cherish the time I can spend in front of a terminal. I still believe the best minds are kids in their twenties, but don't rule out 40, and 50 year olds. Their is a few exceptions though; I would never hire a 'know it all'\--young, or old. Eighty hour weeks? Fine, but let them work from home.

</comment><comment><USER82> Because bright people will never end up in a sweatshop?)</comment>


Rails gets more mature (Upcoming Rails 2.1 Features) - <AUTHOR> http://railspikes.com/2008/5/2/rails-gets-more-mature

<comment><USER2> The rake gems:build and rake gems:unpack are a subtle addition, but pretty awesome.

[http://ryandaigle.com/articles/2008/4/1/what-s-new-in- edge-r...](http://ryandaigle.com/articles/2008/4/1/what-s-new-in-edge-rails- gem-dependencies)

</comment><comment><USER3> _Necessary directories created if they don't exist: Neither Mercurial nor Git track empty directories._

While true, you can just put a .gitignore in the "empty" directory, and it's empty for all intents and purposes.</comment>


Show HN: A curated compendium of free PC games, updated daily - <AUTHOR> https://neogratis.com <comment><USER2> Nice work!

I'd get rid of the "generic" screenshots on the home page and replace it with the latest games like on the archive page and links to the most common categories.

Personally I'd like to see "best of week/month/year/all-time" and tags instead of categories (so I can find co-op + platformer)

Best of month/year might be even etter for the start page so new visitors see the good stuff (and maybe one game they already know is good, but not only games everyone knows already, so here you have to pick thte time range wisely or mix it manually)

Oh and embed some youtube video containing gameplay. Doesn't have to be a good one, just so you can quickly judge how the game feels.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great idea! Suggestion: Maybe feature today's game on the front page?

</comment><comment><USER4> I remember playing the Spaceplan demo a couple years ago, really fun little game!

One of my favorite browser games from several years back is Skrillex Quest:

[http://jasonoda.com/games/skrillexquest/](http://jasonoda.com/games/skrillexquest/)

<comment><USER5> So... that was a weird way to spend 30 minutes

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Links to reviews of the games. This might be a lot harder as they would probably be in print.

</comment><comment><USER7> Also, please put the number of games in each category. Or if there are new games in the category this week or since your last visit?

</comment><comment><USER6> As it is early days for the site, possibly do tags instead of categories and make sure the search handles it correctly.

</comment><comment><USER8> Would be nice to be able to filter by platforms available.

</comment><comment><USER6> Suggest a game form?</comment>


How would you interview people for your startup? Would you focus more on low-level implementation questions or higher-level application ideas? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Neither should be primary.

Honestly- The best thing that you can do is to figure out how they're going to get along with you, and how well they can find solutions to problems.

They say that the first few employees really determine the culture of a startup, and you want people who can adjust to whatever job is necessary, and solve problems quickly and move on to the next thing in the ever-growing list.

I read an article online (Was it Joel? Seth? Not sure), who argued that there are really two types of programmers- Problem Solvers, and Cogs.

Cogs are the people who can tell you every line of code in a TCP/IP stack, or squeeze amazing performance by reprogramming your server-code in assembler. They're the people you bring in to solve problem foo-

"We need a guy who kicks butt in SQL to optimize this thing" Let's find one."

That's great, and that's amazingly useful.. But not for the first few people for a startup.. For a startup, I'd worry more about coming up with solutions to problems that we have. Someone who can pick up Lisp or Ruby or (insert language of the week) in a few days more useful in those crucial early weeks than someone who can eek every bit of performance.

Focus on the hard stuff first, like building something people actually want to use. THEN, hire people to help specific elements.

With any luck, by that point you'll have created a corporate culture that encourages flexibility, and they'll come around ;)

-Colin

</comment><comment><USER3> It would depend on the job I was trying to hire them for. But if I had to choose, I would choose ability to implement over having high-level ideas. That's my job anyway, and honestly I believe execution is more difficult than having high-level ideas.

In practice, I try and hire people that have blogs wherein they showed knowledge as well as serious and deep thinking about the type of problems I want to hire them to solve.

The only person I've ever truly thought did an excellent job I hired this way. I didn't know him. I didn't look at a resume. I had one conversation with him. I just read his blog, and I could tell from his writing that he would do a good job. Actually, his blog was just his fiction writing and he was a UI designer and coder but I could still tell from his thinking. He was so smart-- a structured, logical, deep and creative thinker. It was clear to me that he would do a good job. He did. I tend to be a perfectionist, and he was the only person I've ever hired that did a perfect job. I had absolutely no criticisms about him. He always exceeded my expectations. It was amazing. I love working with the best people--nothing is more fun.

If they didn't have a blog, I'd tell them to write down their thoughts every day for a few weeks and then I'd read it. I believe that you can't tell anything about anyone except how they behave over time. People lie and misrepresent themselves. But it's pretty much impossible to misrepresent yourself over a period of time.

I might try and give them a few of my problems to work on as well. But, if someone isn't the quickest thinker and can't answer a problem I give them in an hour-long interview I really don't care. What if they're amazing problem solvers but they just take overnight? One of the smartest people I know is like this.

With a blog, or writing over time, you also get a sense of how well they can articulate their ideas--if they have amazing ideas but they can't articulate them well, then the quality of their ideas doesn't matter. If for some reason they're terrible writers but still smart, you can just have them create a podcast. If they can't do either, then they can't articulate themselves enough to be useful to a company.

Watching their thinking over time, you can see how many ideas they generate, since you don't just want people that will only solve the problems you have. You want people that see things you can't and generate ideas themselves.

I don't care about how well people fit in. A start-up isn't a clique of best friends, although you certainly need people that you can be bluntly honest with and can be bluntly honest with you. It's better if you like them, of course, but I'm never trying to build any kind of culture except a culture of excellence--well, excellence on deadline.

Another thing I've always wanted to try is just to hire someone for two weeks and give them non-critical tasks to do. I could see if they met deadlines and how they actually worked. The best way of finding out if someone can do something is to watch her do it.

<comment><USER4> Although blogs are a good way to see if someone is a good fit, you're probably excluding a lot of sharp people if you use that as your first filter.

I'd also argue that how people fit in is important. If you don't care about fit when you hire, you end up with a company of individuals instead of a team.

I do agree that the best interview is one where the candidate actually does the type of work that is to be expected of him/her.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Depends.

For co-founders, you shouldn't even have to interview. Find the best people that you have worked with before in school, or on the job. You can then be assured of their creative and intellectual abilities, as well understanding how you'll work together as a team.

For other positions, you're obviously going to want to look for smart people, but a key thing for a small startup is to look for smart people who can do many different things well. For example, I'd be more inclined to choose a s/w eng who has done well designing a web app, and has designed embedded software for a consumer electronics device than an eng who has worked only on web apps for their entire career.

As for the second part of your question, I'd agree with e1ven - neither type of question is key, although they do help establish technical ability & creativity.

But my experience diverges from e1vens' in at least one respect - you don't need to choose between problem solvers and cogs (at least as he has defined them). I have worked with people who can give you tons of detail on specific technical areas, but can also come up with great solutions outside of their technical domains or pick up language X really quickly. It's rare, but people that have both qualities certainly exist.

</comment><comment><USER5> I would ask them real problems that I was currently struggling with and see how they responded. Seeing how they work through it and how compatible their solution would be with my own thinking would be invaluable imo.

</comment><comment><USER6> Both, plus I would make sure they fit into the culture of my startup. Trust me you do not want to be stuck with a bad apple at such a fragile stage.</comment>


BB84 Protocol, the first quantum cryptography protocol, explained - <AUTHOR> http://youtu.be/UVzRbU6y7Ks

<comment><USER2> I don't get how this is better than keypair cryptography.

<comment><USER3> RSA cryptography can be broken quickly by quantum computers. There are other public/private key schemes that might avoid that problem, though none are widely used. Some of these rely on NP-complete problems instead of merely BQP problems like factoring.

Quantum cryptography, if correctly implemented, _should_ be theoretically unbreakable, not merely "hard" to break -- much like a one-time pad.

<comment><USER4> I know of no one time pad algorithms for message authentication, which is a critical component of basically all real-world cryptographic systems. IMHO talking about bare XOR as "theoretically unbreakable" misleads newbies as to the important concepts in modern cryptography.</comment></comment></comment>


Blockbuster Could Have Bought Netflix for $50M - <AUTHOR> https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/netflix-blockbuster-meeting-marc-randolph-reed-hastings-john-antioco.html <comment><USER2> It still would have been a bad deal, because there is no way that Blockbuster would have given them the freedom and the funding necessary to execute their pivot from a DVD-by-mail service to a streaming video service.

<comment><USER3> Blockbuster did put lots of money into developing streaming technology and absolutely saw it as the future. But they were too early and gained no traction. By the time the moment arrived they no longer had the money and energy. But overal I agree Netflix wouldn't have been Netflix if it had sold out early.

<comment><USER4> I'd love a list of all the too-earlys ..

<comment><USER5> My favorite is Microsoft Terra which was designed mostly to show off their SQL database. THey had no idea about the power of personal data that Google would exploit much later with Google Earth.

<comment><USER4> Ah well, very similarly DEC made altavista to show off so never thought of it as a product. Then Google came.

<comment><USER5> Really? I had no idea Altavista was from DEC.

In school in sweden we actually had a computer class where they taught us to use altavista. This was before Google blew up.

<comment><USER4> altavista history is "fun"

[https://digital.com/about/altavista/](https://digital.com/about/altavista/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you will look hard enough, you can find FOMO in so many different things.

If you were lucky enough to purchase 100 shares of McDonald's when it was at $22.50 on its IPO date, you would have spent $2,250. Based on McDonald's closing stock price on October 28, 2018, the investment would be worth $12.89 million.

We can also talk about Bitcoin but I think you got my point

<comment><USER7> A colleague was big on Bitcoin in mid-late 2009. I declared it to be stupid and didn't bother. By the time I realized that was a mistake it was too late, the days of normal people mining coins was long gone.

I've convinced myself that I'd have lost my wallet long before it became valuable anyways. It helps me sleep at night.

<comment><USER8> I tried out the WWW when it was ~1000 pages mostly at CERN, and was unimpressed... These things happen.

The thing with Bitcoin is that we were _right_ \-- it is stupid. But that didn't stop the early adopters from making lots of money. That's highly annoying.

<comment><USER9> Were you right? Only time will tell. I'd expect more humility from someone who just admitted to having been horribly wrong about webpages being a big hit... on a webpage.

<comment><USER10> Yes OP were right. Bitcoin could never scale to the point of being used for every transaction. Thats a different thing than realizing it would have a bubble with massive profit potential.

<comment><USER9> "Used for every transaction" is a high bar; I suppose USD and the gold dinar have both failed, oh well.

If we used a more reasonable metric, like "will bitcoins being worth significantly more in ten years than they are today," OP may well be wrong. You can think I'm crazy for saying that, but neither of us can really know at the moment.

<comment><USER11> USD works as currency because it has a pretty stable and small rate of deflation, a property that the fed tries to maintain. It works to trade value and gives a subtle nudge to promote trading.

Bitcoin had the mission statement of being a currency, which it has failed at. It's instead a highly volatile (and potentially highly profitable) investment.

So someone could be right that Bitcoin would not succeed (at being a useful currency) and still have been wrong to not buy in (they should have gotten in when the getting was good for the very reason it would fail to be a currency).

But it was and is more like gambling and less like "mattress money".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > _Randolph writes that he 'd been closely watching Antioco during this > conversation. Throughout, the Blockbuster CEO appeared as a polished > professional, leaning in and nodding and giving every indication of someone > who was listening attentively. Now Randolph observed as an odd expression > crossed Antioco's face, turning up the corner of his mouth. It lasted only a > moment, he writes. "But as soon as I saw it, I knew what was happening: John > Antioco was struggling not to laugh."_

Great article but it seems unnecessary to accuse Antioco of being arrogant just because he turned up the corner of his mouth for a moment. There are tons of investors who pass up on great investment opportunities every year. Most of them aren't arrogant, they are simply normal people who don't have the benefit of perfect hindsight.

<comment><USER13> And more to the point, success in business is determined just as much by blind luck as anything else. If Antioco had sprung on Netflix, who knows how many other things he might've sprung on too? And even assuming Netflix worked out, who's to say the other investments wouldn't have killed Blockbuster in the process anyway?

This whole genre of articles confuses me. Is the message be open to new things? Is it about other investors feeling regret for things they've passed on, or worry about the things they didn't? I don't understand this at all.

<comment><USER14> > This whole genre of articles confuses me. Is the message be open to new > things? Is it about other investors feeling regret for things they've passed > on, or worry about the things they didn't? I don't understand this at all.

Myth-making, mythologising. The genre is "business, but written as adventure/thriller" I guess? Comes across as attempts to imply that it's all epistemological. It's just turning things into a good story though, you're maybe reading too much into it? (Although every one of these I've read seems to go something like:

"I should have been terrified. But I was calm, I knew what I had to do. My whole life had been building up to this meeting with Corpocorp.

The team was gearing up for the battle that lay behind those huge frosted glass doors. I looked at them, and tears pricked at the corners of my eyes. 'Goddamn' I thought, 'this is the best bunch of guys ever put together for business purposes', and my heart swelled with manly pride.

Joe Spiff had been my first hire. He was the best money talker I'd ever met. I looked at him now, laser focussed on the dollar bill held between his fingers. This was his routine, I'd seen him do it a hundred times. He'd sit and stare at that bill for ten minutes, unblinking, not moving a muscle. Then he'd just...crush it between his fingertips, quick as a flash.

Lawyerman Pete was _[contd.]_ ")

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was part of an e-commerce company selling DVDs in the mid 90s, watching: Amazon enter the space, a bedroom porn operation start to rise in the adult dvd mailing market, and Netflix getting a start. We were ripping the movie trailers off the DVDs and encoding them, streaming them on the product page. All we had to do was rip the whole movie and make licensing deals with the studios we were sourcing our products from, and BAM, we coulda been Netflix too.

<comment><USER16> I hear that's not far off from what these streaming services do in reality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Check out the podcast "Business Wars" by Wondery. They have an 8-episode miniseries on Netflix vs. Blockbuster that I really enjoyed and highly recommend. It includes this story, as well as some of the other competitive developments that, as crazy as it sounds now, at the time almost looked like they would bring a victory to Blockbuster.

</comment><comment><USER18> My wife, when we first met in the mid-90s, used to get DVDs at Blockbuster and always returned them late and paid the late fees with no complaints, which were huge. The first time I went with her to return some they took her money and then told her she was no longer allowed to rent them there anymore.

She was pretty bummed out about that but I was shocked by how much their late fees were and explained to the manager that my wife was paying them way more than their customers who returned them on time and they may want to reconsider. Her response was about as snotty as can be. She said something like "We need them back on time for our good customers". We left laughing because that just seemed crazy and we knew she'd be saving literally $100s per month.

But I was puzzled about why they'd do that. It made no sense at all to me. She was giving them a lot more money each month than their "good customers" which I thought should have put her at the top of that list. And the manager, who was so rude, clearly got a sadistic joy out of telling people "No more DVDs for you!" like the "Soup Nazi" on Seinfield.

Before we'd met I'd never even been in a Blockbuster so that was my only real experience with them and I remember well thinking their customers would flee like rats from a sinking ship when a viable alternative came out.

As soon as I heard of it we bought a Roku and ditched our "Dish" satellite service and after using it I knew Blockbuster was going to take a big hit from that little black box. It was just a few years later I read they were going out of business. By then I'd seen people lined up at "Redbox" dispensers and the Blockbuster where we lived had already closed up.

I have to admit that seeing Blockbuster die like that warmed my soul like a bowl of good hot soup

<comment><USER19> I think the problem here is that you are assuming that the amount that your wife was paying made up for the lost sales of unhappy customers when titles aren't available. The math is not revenue for someone else to rent at normal rate vs. the revenue for your wife to hold onto the title, but rather the revenue from a customer that keeps coming back vs. the late cost revenue minus the the lost cost customer revenue.

<comment><USER20> Having seen the rates for late rentals, I think your parent comment is "more" right. Unless blockbuster was running such a tight ship that a single rental's delay would upset the applecart ... but I remember waiting for DVDs and cassettes and unless you hit the sweet spot (a few weeks after the release, or maybe just on the first day of release), there was always a wait and/or the associated frustration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I could have stuck with my little bitcoin experiment in 2011.

<comment><USER22> Thank you.

I have about a dozen different "If only" moments in my tech life, from turning down job offers to not making tech experiments into real businesses (Twitter and Docker, parking payments by mobile and a really good enterprise marketing system)

I regret them all because I think they all _definitely_ would have made me bajillions. including leaving running a bitcoin miner machine in the corner of my office instead of turning it into a build server.

But frankly I probably would not be a billionaire by now had I done any or even all of those great ideas in hindsight

It won't stop me trying for the next one, but it will mean if I duck out with even a small win it's a big triumph

<comment><USER21> The only salve I have to apply for my missed bitcoin burn is the absolute reality that I would have unloaded a thousand of them as soon as they got to be worth a couple of bucks. That would have been way worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think the part in this article where John Antioco is perceived as arrogant is a little misguided. It's important to remember that a natural gas pipeline company based in Houston was vying to put Blockbuster out of business with their own "Broadband" unit, and it indeed was laughable.

And we all know what happened to Enron.

</comment><comment><USER24> GameStop is a very interesting stock bet right now. It could easily go to route of Blockbuster (most obvious route), but it could do so many things to not be another crappy retail experience. Not confident they will turn it around but there's certainly an opportunity for a brick-and-mortar game shop done right.

<comment><USER25> With GameStop's several year history of bad public opinion and what appears to be decaying market share, I wouldn't bet on it. The current management is clearly willing to accept the status quo and won't take the actions necessary it "turn it around."

New management could signal that good changes are coming, but it could also signal that specialists have been brought in to carve the assets up before bankruptcy. I'd say it's far more likely that GameStop ends up like Blockbuster and Sears, even if they _potentially_ could turn things around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Yeah, and we could've all bought bitcoins for pennies when we first learned about them. The biggest barrier to understanding past decisionmakers is that we know how it turns out and they didn't.

</comment><comment><USER27> And Yahoo could have bought Google for even less. I would love to hear from the people who turned these kind of deals down

<comment><USER28> Me too. Although the thing is it probably made sense at the time. Also, it's far from guaranteed that Yahoo would have made a success of Google, or Blockbuster of Netflix, so whilst there can be an entertaining schadenfreude to stories like this it's not something you can take too seriously.

<comment><USER22> This is the crux of it - if Google had asked me to be employee number one there is a very good chance Brin and Page would have gone back to academia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "The Innovator's Dilemma."

It's been the downfall of many a commercial empire.

</comment><comment><USER30> Lycos could have bought Google for 700k. If you bought a share of Home Depot in 1982 you'd be a millionaire. Can't think of a more banal form of what-if- ism than looking back at missed market opportunities.

<comment><USER31> You could easily be a millionaire multiple times over working a normal job for 38 years too.

<comment><USER30> Yep!!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Tried to post the same thing a couple of days ago [0], but no discussion happened.

[0]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21010244](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21010244)</comment>


Start Eating Mussels - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/deep_ecology/comments/1ylj3i/why_you_should_start_eating_mussels/ <comment><USER2> Problem: mussels can bio-accumulate lethal naturally occurring toxins, and it is difficult to evaluate their safety.[1] I grew up around commercial fisherman in Alaska. All sorts of wild food was commonly hunted or gathered, but eating wild mussels was not done. They were supposed to be safe most of the time, but it was regarded as not worth the risk. CDC continues to document cases of PSP in that region.[2]

Please don't gather wild mussels unless you really know what you are doing.

Per US Dept of health:

"If the water isn't red, does that mean the shellfish are safe to eat?

Not necessarily. Paralytic Shellfish Poison can be present in large amounts even if the water looks clear. Also, the toxin can remain in shellfish long after the algae bloom is over.

Can I tell if shellfish are toxic by how they look?

No. Shellfish containing toxic levels of Paralytic Shellfish Poison don't look or taste any different from shellfish that are safe to eat. Laboratory testing of shellfish meat is the only known method of detecting Paralytic Shellfish Poison.

Does cooking the shellfish make it safe to eat?

No. Paralytic Shellfish Poison isn't destroyed by cooking or freezing."

[1] [https://www.doh.wa.gov/CommunityandEnvironment/Shellfish/Rec...](https://www.doh.wa.gov/CommunityandEnvironment/Shellfish/RecreationalShellfish/Illnesses/Biotoxins/ParalyticShellfishPoison)

[2] [https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6045a3.htm?s_cid...](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6045a3.htm?s_cid=mm6045a3_w)

</comment><comment><USER3> My favorite nonprofit, GreenWave, is focused on growing mussels for these reasons as part of a vertical aquaculture system including scallops, seaweed, oysters, and clams. Their system provides protection to vulnerable shorelines, cleans the water, and provides protein-rich nutrition with few inputs. [https://www.greenwave.org/](https://www.greenwave.org/)

</comment><comment><USER4> We used to eat mussels off the beach all the time but now it seems like there's a near continuous red tide that makes all shellfish toxic. I'm not sure if it's pollution or just climate change.

What I do wonder though is if the aquaculture mussels are being grown in the same seawater, why are they safe to eat?

</comment><comment><USER5> > "We didn't so much evolve to eat fish, but we did evolve to eat mussels. > Neanderthals 150,000 years ago in Europe were found eating mussels. Mussels > can simply be grabbed, whereas catching fish requires a level of technology > and intelligence we seem to have reached only in more recent eras. It's the > seafood our ancestors ate."

I know this is an old post and everything, but this is pure nonsense. Modern day humans didn't descend from Neanderthals; they were a branch of early hominids that died out. Yes some Neanderthals genes survive today due to some inter-species breeding, but citing Neanderthals as a reason to eat mussels as if it were their only food source and simultaneously claiming that we didn't evolve to eat fish is just pure bs.

</comment><comment><USER6> Just put them into a pot of boiling water with a beer, salt, garlic, and butter. Very good!

</comment><comment><USER7> How did you stumble upon this old post?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm in Italy right now in holidays, met an old italian guy that told me that growing mussels is pretty easy and really cheap

I just tipped "Reddit how to grow mussels" on google, and this was the first link</comment></comment>


Basic Income Impossibility Theorem - <AUTHOR> http://alrenous.blogspot.com/2016/05/basic-income-impossibility-theorem.html <comment><USER2> This theorem assumes that having basic income does not afford for more meaningful wealth opportunities, which is pretty much the economic reason it's brought up. In fact the author of this article never mentions or refutes this point, so someone didn't do their homework.

<comment><USER3> This isn't actually any kind of "theorem".

Besides the criticisms here and in the comments on the original site, the author is completely ignoring the fact that there are also people who would choose to work under UBI who don't work now (because that would mean the total loss of existing benefits). Would that be enough to counteract the number of people who chose not to work at all under UBI? I think it would. Whether that's true or not, ignoring it completely (as the author does) is engaging in a straw man argument, not a "theorem".

Under a properly-run UBI system, a person would never be worse off economically by choosing to work.

I understand the argument that there are people who would just watch TV all day. Yep, those people exist, but, IMO, most of those people are _already_ doing that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > On the margin, someone will stop working. There will be less wealth.

Because apparently all work is generating equal wealth, and this is not offset by people becoming entrepreneurs or investing into their own education to work higher-wage jobs once finished.</comment>


Annotated walkthroughs of example Twilio applications - <AUTHOR> https://www.twilio.com/docs/tutorials <comment><USER2> Jarod from Twilio here. Twilio Tutorials are a new documentation format we're releasing today. We heard from lots of Twilio developers, and non Twilio developers that the way they best learned was just having a colleague run through some code with them... a sort of annotated walkthrough of why and how they built something. What we're launching today is straight from the brains of hundreds of web developers who told us what they wanted. We hope it helps pave the path to production, and we 'd love to hear what you think of it. If you have any feedback for our team we'll be lurking on this post to field questions and hear ideas.</comment>


Creating Loading Bars with Python - <AUTHOR> http://thelivingpearl.com/2012/12/31/creating-progress-bars-with-python/

<comment><USER2> I really hope I don't need a loading bar or command line application.

<comment><AUTHOR> You never know...</comment></comment>


A Response to Hello World - <AUTHOR> https://www.doxsey.net/blog/a-response-to-hello-world <comment><USER2> See also HN discussion about "Hello World":

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21954886](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21954886)</comment>