Google R&D team's goal: Make renewables cheaper than coal "in a few years" - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1757927/new-google-rd-team-charged-with-making-clean-renewable-energy-work-for-the-market <comment><USER2> This stuff is the reason I'll never hate google the way I hate Microsoft. Ok, hate is a strong word, but I just don't like or trust microsoft. I think the world is a worse place because of it. I Think the world is a better place because of google, but there's still a healthy portion of sceptisim that comes with that feeling.

The reason I mention this is because right now, it's all about google becoming the next Microsoft, but I don't think that's fair on google.

<comment><USER3> I think your hatred of MS is misplaced. The world is almost certainly a better place because of them. Maybe not as better a place as possible, but certainly better. The "MS is evil" meme always struck me as an immature response to MS's imperfections, few companies have done as much to put computing power into the hands of people, and that has had an amazing impact on the world.

As far as google, they'll lose more and more of the fire from their early days as they get bigger and older, but they still have a fairly strong ethical core for any company their size and I think that will help as they age.

<comment><USER4> I don't think you are giving enough credit to the companies and services that never were (because of Microsoft). Infact an uncharitable reading of what you've written would be that you assume no microsoft means some kind of industry void.

It is certainly pretty disputable that computing adoption was in anyway accelerated by the exsistence of Microsoft since they have essentially been rent collecting and pushing up prices for everyone to join in.

<comment><USER5> _the companies and services that never were_

BeOS. Sweet lord, what BeOS could have been...

<comment><USER3> BeOS seemed like a very cool experiment but from what I've heard it was sunk by its own faults, most especially from being nearly impossible to develop for.

<comment><USER6> Be (the company) offered to give BeOS away for free to any OEM, but none would touch it... because the contracts with Microsoft at the time meant they had to pay a Windows license for every _machine_ sold, even if BeOS and (not Windows) was installed on it.

It wasn't a good time to compete with Microsoft.

<comment><USER7> That, not the whole Internet Explorer tangent, was the thing that ticked me off the most. The thought that any money for the Intel box I bought to run NeXTSTEP went to Microsoft was unbelievable. If the gov had put a stop to that one practice earlier, it would have been a different game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Getting solar this summer (live in MA which has very nice tax deals) and one of the interesting things I noticed in the process was how much of the cost is the install. Saw one company that is making the install process significantly cheaper which results in a better win overall than if the cost of the cells were dropped by half. Same goes with the idea of transparent cells. Even if they have a very low rating they can go in every window and get installed for "free" when the new windows are installed making the payback much faster.

<comment><USER9> Do you have a breakdown of your own costs? Even in percentiles that would be interesting.

<comment><USER8> Yah I did a full breakdown and worked out all the numbers* to calculate the time period till payback (4-6 years) after which there will be some end large profit from the tail end of the MA SREC's and then small but continuous "profit" from very little to no electric bill (depending on my AC usage). After all the work I did my numbers were very close to the quotes I got.

After the immediate state rebase + fed and state tax rebate I am only paying ~3cents/Watt

Any particular number you want to know? Say the system costs 24K, MA does a straight rebate to the installer so you would only have to write a check for say 18K, and come next tax year get 6K from the fed and 1K from MA back so the 24K system would cost you ~12K. The SRECS pay that back between 3-7 years and that is guaranteed $300/MW till 2020 so by doing the install this summer I should pay it off around 2018 and have extra income until 2020. Oh and it doesn't count against property tax for 20 or 40 years (forget which).

The main reason I am doing the switch is that it is a small investment that is _extremely_ stable with 1) a 100% return with interest in ~6 years on the electricity 2) increasing the value of the house by ~20K (more than post tax check!) and 3) will continue to generate electricity/tax free income for as long as I live in the house potentially the equivalent to the initial cost several times over. Not a bad small investment.

* Electric usage est, electric cost growth est (power costs more every year in MA), sun hours (obtained from various government sites) est, SREC payback est, power est, angle of house and roof.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the detailed response. I'm surprised by how much of the cost is being deferred by subsidies, but maybe that will pay back in terms of spurring innovation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think Gladwell is wrong. Historically, there have been many cases where researchers have been unaware of relevant work, because it was done in a different field. Search could improve there. If search is the quest for knowledge, then the scope for improvement is unlimited.

Sinking to more consumer-oriented search, anticipating what you want before you know you want it is another (creepy) way for search to improve, that Google has specifically talked about.

</comment><comment><USER11> The goal is very noble and I'm all for it, but there is this problem that the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow, and electricity isn't infinitely transportable, nor easily stored.

<comment><USER12> Someone I know who runs a nonprofit related to helping remote fishing villages and the like in his Asian country, claims supercapacitors are less than 5 years away.

"If" that is true, then a time-shifting bank of such supercapacitors could presumably solve the very real issues you raise.

<comment><USER13> What do remote villages in Asia have to do with supercapacitors?

<comment><USER12> He is someone who works full time in researching alternative energy solutions for those fishing villages.

Wind or solar solutions that he specifies have to be rugged and easily maintained without access to fancy tools, and batteries can wear out quickly in high-temperature environments.

Thus he has been researching supercapacitors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The problem with this is always that they are "a few years away", or that we can run the entire economy from biofuels "in ten to twenty years".

It has been going on for what, 20 years now? It is never going to change until we ignore them until they actually bring about their ideas.

<comment><USER15> Yes, but in the last 30 years, we've went from prohibitively expensive 4.5% efficency cells in 1954 and $1500/watt in 1955 to a test 500kW installation in 1977 to $9.00 in 2007 to, in an ideal situation, 8.5 cents per KWH today.

<http://inventors.about.com/od/timelines/a/Photovoltaics.htm> [http://greenecon.net/understanding-the-cost-of-solar- energy/...](http://greenecon.net/understanding-the-cost-of-solar- energy/energy_economics.html) [http://www.reddit.com/r/Frugal/comments/hn7jn/while_were_on_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Frugal/comments/hn7jn/while_were_on_the_subject_of_solar_power_i_am_a/c1wqx9g)

We could start building a 100% solar/nuclear solution in the US today. The technology is there, and it would only be the construction time. Our energy costs would go up, but not significantly. However, if the technology keeps on this curve, unsubsidized solar will be cheaper than coal soon.

We aren't doing this today because the power companies know that the curve is coming soon. Why invest prematurely, outside basic research projects?

<comment><USER16> Upvoted. Same with Wind. Learning curves are bringing costs down below that of coal and nuclear.

Solar is already in plenty of niches - from highway signage to parking kiosks. Every niche helps increase production, which reduces price per unit.

This is why I support subsidies - unlike for oil or nuclear, they're actually working to get costs down.</comment></comment></comment>


Is it possible to create an AI with HTML? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> HTML is a markup language, not really a programming language. So I'm going to say no but I'm sure there are those smarter than me who can be more definitive.

<comment><USER2> Actually make that not really* a straight up _NOT_

<comment><USER3> Agreed

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Kind of like asking is it possible to make an AI from twine.

</comment><comment><USER5> No, you also need CSS.</comment>


Ask HN: Why Do You Downvote? - <AUTHOR> I have been curious about how other people parse their way through HN. I think new accounts can't even downvote. It is common to see people ask about the downvotes even though the second last rule on the guideline [0] says not to question it.<p>I try to not downvote to disagree. I downvote misinformation, statements that are egressive towards a person and not the point they are making, responses that say "This.".<p>[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html <comment><USER2> >I think new accounts can't even downvote

You need 501 karma for downvoting, that exact number is undocumented on the FAQ page.

[https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news- undocumented/blob/m...](https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news- undocumented/blob/master/README.md#downvoting-comments)

For anyone else that curious about undocumented stuff, here are some previous discussions with that github link.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16437973](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16437973) (Feb 2018)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212822](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212822) (Feb 2019)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20292361](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20292361) (June 2019)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23439437](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23439437) (June 2020)

</comment><comment><USER3> I downvote egregious misinformation, but not honest mistakes. A correction in a comment is more appropriate in those cases. Disagreement and differing opinions do not get downvotes from me - they are part of what makes the discussions interesting. But comments that are actively rude or try to take people down a peg do get my downvote. So do people who clearly are just pushing a personal agenda unrelated to the current discussion. I sometimes try to picture the comments as a real conversation... if you would have said the same thing in a group sitting together real life, would that have been a comment that fit into the conversation? Or would it make the group give you a 'WTF?' look and slowly back away?

At the same time, when I receive downvotes, most of the time they are correct - if I post a comment when I'm in a bad mood, my tone gets snarkier and I get downvoted more often. And that is fair. So I tend to just accept them, move on, and try to be more aware of my communication habits in the future.

</comment><comment><USER4> The one thing I don't like is when comments become "dead", which I understand happens after too many downvotes.

The reason I dislike this, is that besides obviously racist or otherwise inappropriate comments, there are regularly normal seeming comments that are dead. Now, there may be reasons for this I am just not privy to, but I feel it hinders discussion when some opinions that don't seem problematic are just silenced like this.

[Edit]: And rereading my own comment, I think I want to clarify that I am not talking about free speech issues or political discussions here, but I regularly encounter factual seeming or explanatory comments in technical discussions that are dead and it just baffles me.

<comment><USER5> When you see a dead comment that you feel shouldn't be, vouch for it. With a couple of vouches it'll become live again and can be responded to.

Usually when I see a perfectly good, but dead, comment I check out the user's history. I usually see one of two situations here:

1\. It's clear that they have a pattern of making nasty, off-topic, often vulgar comments. I'll still vouch for their good comments, but at least I can understand why they were dead to begin with.

2\. If their history is of mostly normal comments except one bad joke at the start of their posting history that got them hell banned, then I'll vouch for them and let them know what's happened.

<comment><USER4> Thanks, that's actually a good point.

I knew there was an option to vouch for comments but just assumed I did not have enough Karma to do so. But another comment in this discussion mentioned the "hidden" flag button, which you only see if you click the comments timestamp.

And sure enough, the vouch button is just there. So the problem may just be that you have to know where to find it. Which I now do. And hopefully everyone who didn't and reads this now as well.

<comment><USER6> I suspect the intention was to create a small barrier to entry for the "heavier" features, to reduce petty usage. It only takes a little exploration to find (no offense, I didn't know about them for a while either).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I view downvotes as an incomplete feature. If you disagree with some content -- because it is misinformation, or useless, or maybe you just disagree with the argument -- you should be able to explain what's wrong with it. I would much rather have a system where a downvote required a reason, so instead of a downvote it would be more like a comment which can also -1 / 0 / +1 the karma of the parent.

<comment> kube-system The downvote button is not a disagree button. If you disagree with something, add your own comment. That's the point of a discussion board.

Downvotes are for comments which are not worthy of a response because they are not honest attempts at discussion.

<comment><USER8> > The downvote button is not a disagree button.

That's wishful thinking. In practice that's just what it is. I'd be in favor of some magical gui change that would fix that, but it doesn't exist.

<comment> kube-system There are some GUI features that address this. For instance, there is no downvote button if you reply to someone, or if they reply to you. But ultimately, the use of the button is up to the community.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A lot of times I decide not to contribute because I am afraid of being downvoted into the abysss, usually all it takes, is one reply to interpret my own comment wrongly or assuming things I don't specificy. Then the HN readers will read my comment and the disagreeing reply. At this point, I get downvoted (or upvoted) based on the interpretation of my comment by the reply.

So if I don't spend 20minutes making sure my reply is perfect, I will get downvoted.

Let's see if I get downvoted here too, as I wrote this on the go without checking all my facts.

<comment><USER4> So, out of curiosity: Why do you care if you get downvoted? Are there negative repercussions when using the site?

But you know, making sure your post is factual correct, nicely worded and thought out seems to be a good consequence. Reading that I actually wish I was afraid of downvotes so I put more effort into some of mine.

<comment><USER10> If you use HN pseudonymously, then downvotes aren't as impactful.

But if you use HN as a funnel for brand building, talent acquisition, or as an authoritative voice for your company, then they can be costly.

<comment><USER9> ^ This, especially if you want to get somewhere near Ycomb in the future!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I downvote primarily bad faith arguments. If I disagree, think you're wrong, etc I tend to respond (or upvote quality responses).

For instance, I downvoted a comment yesterday that said something along the lines of "you can get a cs degree and spend your life optimizing a companies ad revenue, or you can go into physics and work on problems like this" referring to an alternative gravity model passing some early tests for feasibility.

Obviously not all cs degree holders work on ad revenue, some work on important, impactful things. And I personally know physics majors who work on designing plumbing systems for a small company renovating houses in my area. It's a bad argument, and it detracts from the quality of the conversation.

</comment><comment><USER12> I downvote comments that I think are bad. Comments that are useless, unhelpful, non-constructive, etc.

For example, a few from the ruby post that was on the front page recently:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23990533](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23990533)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23995632](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23995632)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23991570](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23991570)

<comment><USER13> I'm not sure why you are getting downvoted here - you have given concrete examples of comments that are bad. Whether one agrees with you or not, this is exactly the kind of answer that OP was looking for.

<comment><USER6> I think it's clear the downvoters probably didn't agree that those examples are bad enough to be downvoted. (I have no opinion).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I concur with all the points you already mentioned and will add "stray too far off-topic into bikeshedding".

It only takes a handful of comments to go from meaningful discussions about the article to talking about vim vs. emacs etc.

</comment><comment><USER6> I consciously try not to downvote even if I strongly disagree with somebody or have negative emotions about their expression. I downvote if I think a comment is low-value. Examples include:

\- Inordinately combative, mocking, sarcastic, or otherwise negatively emotional comments.

\- Low value comments likely to provoke or distract.

\- Comments complaining about downvotes (e.g. "I'll be downvoted for saying this, but...", or, "Why am I being downvoted? Is it because [I'm right | they're irrational | they have the wrong politics | etc]". There's even an example in this thread! This is essentially self-victimization, underdogging, etc. For the same reason, when I am downvoted, I never comment on it - I just accept that that's how people feel about what I said and try to learn from it rather than be bitter about it.

</comment><comment><USER15> I notice I get downvoted every time I bring up an uncomfortable situation with anything that touches on the ethical side of automation.

I never get discussion on the issues I bring up. At best I get hand-waving.

Even though I admit the questions are hard and the problems are going to be difficult. But it is concerning that we aren't even thinking about the issues that come with "near-automation".

As for myself, I would like to think I only downvote people who seem to be unnecessarily combative. But, being a human, I'm willing to accept that my judgment may not be 100%. Or that I may have perceived the comment wrong. That would be my ideal, however.

</comment><comment><USER16> I never downvote anything anywhere ever. I don't understand how can downvoting make any constructive sense. You are meant to flag whatever is spam, offense or blatant misinformation anyway.

I also believe many people would feel very bad if you downvote them so you should better have a serious reason. The fact you disagree or don't like them (let alone don't consider what they wrote interesting/useful for you) is not enough.

<comment><USER17> I was about to say you can't flag comments so downvotes are the only option, but I realized I have only been assuming that for years and never really questioned it. Looks like if you click on the "n [minutes|hours|days] ago" link on a comment, there is a "flag" option there. Now I know. So the questions is, why even have a downvote button?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am pretty frustrated with downvotes, it seems a lot of users downvote for very different reasons that I do and so here are some reasons I downvote:

\- blatant misinformation,

\- posts that I feel are way off HN standards (for example just throwing expletives, writing "fr1st", generally wasting vertical space with no content),

\- focusing on HN voting mechanics and generally complaining about downvotes (no, I don't want to hear why you think your post is being downvoted, if you can't take downvotes as what it is -- voice of multitude of people that may be right or wrong, stop posting)

\- extremist claims with no proofs -- the truth is almost always somewhere between extremes. Claiming the truth is an extreme of universe of possibilities should be taken with huge caution and usually just means the person is blind and deaf. In my personal experience, people who really do know the topic will usually start their answers with "that depends" or "it is complicated", and there is very good reason for it. The world is complicated and here on HN we try to understand it a little bit better with all its gory details and not create groupthink closing asymptotically to extreme views.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h > generally complaining about downvotes (no, I don't want to hear why you > think your post is being downvoted, if you can't take downvotes as what it > is -- voice of multitude of people that may be right or wrong, stop posting)

I sort of agree, but I also dislike comments being downvoted without any replies; it becomes a blind "people dislike and/or disagree with your comment, but good luck figuring out why".

<comment><USER6> I agree that people should engage more, to avoid the case where a comment is downvoted but it's not clear why from either the comment itself or its replies, but I think that case is somewhat rare. More importantly, complaining or positing reasons oneself that inevitably portray the downvoters as irrational doesn't help achieve that goal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> After being a member here for years I recently got the ability to down vote after making a well timed post. I've only used this power a little bit, and I think only on way off topic comments or jokes. I hope over the years I've up voted a lot more, and mostly on things I found insightful, even when I disagree, because that's the community I want to be a part of. Voting to agree or disagree is not really the best way to foster effective exchange of ideas. I hope that is what HN is still for. I've learned a lot here over the years thanks to the insightful and differing viewpoints one can find here.

I think I've also used this power to down vote completely incorrect information a few times.

But I usually read when not signed in and then I can't vote at all. And honestly, I think it was a pg comment that talking about voting and karma is boring. Either the post is valuable or it's not.

</comment><comment><USER20> Why do _I_ downvote? I downvote to do my part in making invisible the comments that I don't want floating around here. Any voting system is meant for voters to help decide what's important and what's not. That's the case with HN too.

It's all fine and dandy to say that downvotes shouldn't be used for disagreements (which, on the other hand, pg himself has said is fine to do), but no voting based system can prevent that. Voting by the masses by itself is a flawed system that depends on the attitude, mindset and knowledge of the voter.

There are many users on HN who downvote to express disagreement or dislike for certain comments. I too downvote some comments that I disagree with to prevent them from surfacing up because I do not value those comments. If upvoting is meant to help "useful content" (as perceived by the reader) surface to the top, then downvoting is meant for the opposite purpose. Whenever I see a downvoted comment whose content I believe I agree with or that others may have aggressively downvoted to express disagreement, I upvote them.

Nobody, in my recollection, has ever said that upvotes shouldn't be used to express agreement. So using upvotes to express agreement while saying that downvotes shouldn't be used for disagreement makes no sense. We don't live in utopia. Not every comment is worthy enough to stay visible in a black font with text replies to express disagreement and go on with lengthy arguments. We are not objective beings who don't care about that number on the top right that has no tangible value.

Looking only at the downvoted or flagged comments in this thread will show what the broader community wants or prefers.

Edit: After having said all this and admitting that I do downvote comments that I disagree with, I also believe that downvoting for this purpose is probably not a good idea for one's mental health and emotional quotient. Most of the time, I browse HN comments without logging in (so no voting at all), and that's a way to _just observe_ and experience HN.

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't have hard analytical data here but on highly partisan tech issues (Microsoft, Open Source and Licensing, Language strengths and weaknesses, etc) I've noticed there is often a significant swing in the direction of the voting over time with the first voters (who are presumably quickly refreshing the HN new page and responding immediately to everything) being the most hyper-tech- partisan, anti-Microsoft, pro-GPL, anti-TypeScript downvoters (but not commenters) pounding well-intentioned comments quickly into the gray, followed later in the day by the more mainstream HN voters and commenters who appear to be much less dogmatically anti-Microsoft, etc., and who commonly flip those initially grayed out comments back into positive territory and frequently well up into the comment rankings.

<comment><USER22> I'd love to see visualizations over time for the voting on comments. What I've seen often is as soon as I post something, it gets immediately downvoted, often multiple downvotes. Doesn't matter what I post. It could be pro-Company, anti-Company, pro-Language, anti-Language, right, left, doesn't matter. Immediately down. Then throughout the day, gradually the upvotes come (presumably from people who actually read the comment), and the comment long- term ends up around 1 or 2.

I've seen this initial drop followed by slow and steady upvotes over and over and over. The mods/admins must have tools to plot votes over time and I bet the visualizations are very interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The great thing about the downvote feature is that is perfectly individually subjective, and thereby its affect on comments is an emergent property reflecting the subjective sentiment of the community. Perhaps more importantly, by only enabling downvotes after some period of time, new users are acclimated to the culture here (say, versus reddit), and thereby dampen culture swings.

To the OP's question, since the aggregate effect of downvoting is suppressing the visibility of a comment, I think of a downvote as my personal "delete" button.

<comment><USER6> >its affect on comments is an emergent property reflecting the subjective sentiment of the community.

Thank you for making this point - you stated it perfectly. Regardless of what you think downvotes "should be used for", the fact is that they are used to "downvote", _whatever that means_ , and that alone is valuable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't have the option to downvote yet but I don't feel it detracts from the experience.

</comment><comment><USER25> > I try to not downvote to disagree. I downvote misinformation, statements > that are egressive towards a person and not the point they are making, > responses that say "This.".

I think vast majority of downvotes that I see on HN are more or less like that. Absolute trolls and disrespectful ones are on top of the list.

Usually the ones that people complain the most about are off-topic comments that get downvoted. I see them specially happening when the post itself is also kind of off-topic. Those posts tend to be open ended discussions. And if you are late to the discussion it's possible that the discussion is already headed to a more specific sub-topic. Some new comments are then considered off-topic by some users.

Upvote is more powerful. I personally try to use upvote to keep what I believe is relevant on the top. And that's what I see most of the users do as well. But, I also don't mind if my comment get downvoted. There is nothing negative about downvotes. It's just other users telling me that this is off-topic right now.

</comment><comment><USER26> Generally, I try to avoid downvoting when there's been an honest attempt to add to/start a discussion, or when I merely disagree with someone.

So the only things I generally downvote are literal spam (this makes up the vast, vast majority of content I downvote, however small that number is) and deliberate misinformation.

</comment><comment><USER27> I downvote for personal attacks, comments that are clearly off topic or add unnecessary snark or derisive language to the topic at hand, or very clear disinformation. That maybe leads to me downvoting maybe 1 out of... hundreds of comments I read on here a week.

</comment><comment><USER28> I don't see many people admitting that they downvote opinions they disagree with, but I will. It's a simple way for me to assert "I disagree," even if the act will have no visible impact (unless many others do the same). It also lets me track which comments I've downvoted (via the "undown" tag) vs. those that I have upvoted.

Sometimes it's difficult to decide whether I should upvote or downvote a comment. Opinions are often nuanced, and there are many cases where I may disagree with some points but agree with others, or recognize that even though I disagree with the commenter, that person has put forward a strong or well- articulated argument.

<comment><USER6> I _never_ say this, but I'd genuinely love to hear the rationale for people downvoting a comment whose only apparent crime is saying "I downvote comments I disagree with". (I don't deny there may be another reason to downvote this comment aside from simply disagreeing with it, but I don't see anything that sticks out).

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I downvote anything I don't like and I upvote what I do like. Most of the time I'm upvoting someone who already made basically the same comment I was going to make. No point in saying the same thing again in another comment, just upvote. If someone says the opposite of what I was going to say, I downvote.

I never understood people acting like downvoting is some huge crime or being downvoted is some great slight. It's a little arrow on a web site. It makes a number in a database go up or down by 1. I don't care how many points my comments score, and neither should anyone else. Speak your mind, or don't, and move on with life.

<comment><USER30> The reason people frown upon the downvote is because we explicitly _don 't_ want people using it to express dislike. Rather, we should use it as a way for the community to self-police content that is not in line with our values as a community. Although it's unavoidable to some extent, I really don't want HN to develop a strong filter bubble where only things I agree with get shown. I want to see dissenting opinions and ideas. I often _upvote_ things I dislike because they were well though out and challenged my thinking.

It's not about scoring imaginary internet points, it's about deciding what is and isn't acceptable in our community. For me the bar for "unacceptable content" is a lot higher than just "dislike."

As others have mentioned, if I disagree and think it's worth the time to engage, I'll respond and hopefully we have a fruitful discussion. Like/dislike doesn't really come into it. If I really dislike it I just close the tab or ignore the comment.

<comment><USER20> > The reason people frown upon the downvote is because we explicitly _don 't_ > want people using it to express dislike.

Who's "we" here and on what basis are you able to speak for that group? It has been stated by pg himself a long time ago that it's ok to downvote to express dislike or disagreement.

> Although it's unavoidable to some extent, I really don't want HN to develop > a strong filter bubble where only things I agree with get shown. I want to > see dissenting opinions and ideas.

HN already has a strong filter bubble on various topics. Yes, it may seem better than some other communities, but any place that constantly allows new users to view or participate will have them (the new users) see some sort of filter bubbles established and enforced by the ones who have been around for longer (and have these as blind spots that they cannot recognize).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Most often for obvious bad-faith arguments, such as clinging to misinformation or logical fallacies despite having them pointed out as such. Sometimes for extreme rudeness toward another commenter (not a public figure). Never for mere disagreement. Also never for "not adding enough to the conversation" because I think the hostility toward short comments and "small talk" here drives every conversation toward pompous verbosity. There's nothing wrong with a "lighter" conversational style.

</comment><comment><USER32> I downvote for the following reasons:

1\. Outright abusive language, personal attack on someone, sarcasm or obvious self promotion.

2\. Irrelevant to the actual discussion even if it is otherwise well written. Some examples: humor/joke without any other valuable discussion, talking about a totally different topic.

I never downvote even if I disagree with someone as long as they are not in one of the 2 categories above.I also don't downvote if someone makes an honest mistake or is wrong about something.

</comment><comment><USER33> Wait, you guys can downvote?

<comment><USER20> That comment brought a smile to my face after seeing so many memes with that phrasing. To respond to the actual question though, sometime after you cross 500 karma points, you'll be able to downvote comments too (posts cannot be downvoted).

</comment></comment><comment> non-entity Generally stuff that violates the commenting guidelines (which unfortunately can found in abundance each day now).

I still think it would be an interesting experiment to remove voting from comments altogether. I actually dont see much value in voting comments in general, since the provide such a wealth signal, especially as highly political articles find acceptance on HN.

</comment><comment><USER34> pg says you can downvote if you disagree.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314)

This was brought to my attention by the mods (dang) and they agree with it and enforce it yet they haven't documented it anywhere such as the guidelines. strange

</comment><comment><USER35> I downvote sarcastic, jokey, snarky, or flippant comments. There are no shortage of sites where peanut gallery comments are the norm, and I think we should continue to discourage them here as much as possible.

</comment><comment><USER36> I downvote when I feel like a comment doesn't belong to HN, be it quality, insults, etc.

<comment><USER37> Or stuff straight against the guidelines. Like shallow dismissals, or comments that try and pull people into arguments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I only downvote trolls, it acts as more of a moderation feature for me

</comment><comment><USER39> Not sure if I can say any general reason why I downvote sometimes. Perhaps mostly when people complain about being down-voted ...

I've come to the conclusion that one needs to have a healthy distance to ones points, and realize that it's just a gamification of discourse that is helpful up to a certain point, but that it quickly gets counterproductive when that's mostly all that people care about.

I sense that many people are extremely strategic about what they submit or comment on, where they comment etc, and therefore get sensitive about the downvotes as well. Unfortunately it is a seemingly unavoidable consequence of introducing scores in any context.

Better just accept that people downvote you for whatever reason, don't worry too much about your karma (what on earth for?). Care about the content instead.

</comment><comment><USER40> I can't downvote (yet!) but if I could it would be rare and would be for one of these two reasons:

1) Extremely rude, disrespectful, or hateful.

2) Pushes conspiracy theories as truthful. Like anti-vaxxers.

One of the reasons I value HN is to read opinions that are the opposite of mine. Sometimes they bring up points that I've never considered, other times they make me think more about my own positions. At the very least I might better understand the reasons for other opinions.

I would rather read a news story on HN with the opinions than just read it on a "regular" news site, even something reputable like NYTimes. I feel I learn more about the topic.

</comment><comment><USER41> Personally, I never downvote based on whether I agree with someone. I only downvote for low-effort comments that do not contribute, things like "lol" or 5-10 word comments with no evidence/explanation. Even if someone needs citations, I'm not going to downvote them, I'll ask for further evidence/citations, which in itself often gets downvoted.

I've been downvoted a number of times for posting well-written, thought-out responses which other people disagreed with. I've often been downvoted below zero within a minute of posting, just for playing Devil's Advocate. I think these downvoters react negatively to things they disagree with, and the downvote button for them is much simpler than actually dissecting and responding to an argument.

Do we want to live in a society where even the most technically minded forum, where objective truth should stand triumphant, falls to reactionary downvoters and fake news?

<comment><USER6> Note: The parent was significantly edited while I was writing.

>for posting well-written, thought-out responses which other people disagreed with

I could write a well-written, thought-out argument in favor of segregating blacks. I'm not suspicious of you - I'm just saying, maybe you're making too much assumption about how valuable your writing is, since you've only used "well written" and "thought out" as evidence.

>just for playing Devil's Advocate

Do you announce that that's what you're doing? Do you think there is such thing as a comment that deserves downvotes, but that wouldn't if it was written the same word for word with the exception of being announced as a thought exercise? (Not rhetorical - I suspect my personal answer is yes).

>within a minute

A minute is a long time.

> They are coddled and react negatively to things they disagree with

This is a broad and specific accusation to level at people just because they downvoted you. It's also a very convenient way to convince oneself that one is "the better person".

<comment><USER42> None of that should really matter. Either it adds to the conversation or not. Conversation being the key word. Even if its a poorly thought out or written argument, if its mistakes generate good replies, its good for the goose.

<comment><USER43> The problem is that beside the comment, I am only left with one feedback lever, up or down.

Just image if I were given two feedback levers instead:

\- This comment adds to the discussion/This comment does not add significantly to the discussion

\- Agree/Disagree

<comment><USER42> Why do we need to signal agree disagree? If you disagree, reply. The reader doesnt need comments sorted by most popular sentiment, that just reinforces bubbles.

I don't upvote things I agree with, I upvote unique contributions to discussion that arent the platitudes spread everywhere else, even ones I disagree with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Because I think sometimes people make comments on here that aren't very good.

</comment><comment><USER45> This is an example of a comment that should be downvoted.

<comment><USER6> I vacillated, but then upvoted you because I love a good paradox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I was going to give you an answer but then I would likely get down-voted. See the problem?</comment>


Announcing Kafka Streams: Stream Processing Made Simple - <AUTHOR> http://www.confluent.io/blog/introducing-kafka-streams-stream-processing-made-simple <comment><USER2> This looks great. Some open questions -

1\. How does it scale horizontally? if I am consuming from say topic with 100 partitions - do I have to deploy this on library on multiple nodes? or expectation is we need to embed this inside spark streaming/ storm/ samza/ any other real time processing framework?

2\. Is RocksDB instance local to your consumer/ thread/ node? or can state be stored across nodes? What happens when joins are needed across the partitions?

I have been doing real time processing for a long time now - and this does capture most of the typical things you end up doing with kafka with spark/ storm etc- so this does look a significant step forward.

I am just trying to understand where it exactly fits.

<comment><USER3> Disclaimer: I work for Confluent (www.confluent.io). That said, let me clarify that Kafka Streams is a component of the Apache Kafka open source project. There's nothing proprietary about it. The reason the links below point to docs.confluent.io is because the Apache Kafka docs for Kafka Streams are not ready yet; but they will when Kafka 0.10 is released, which will be the first official Kafka release that includes Kafka Streams.

> 1\. How does it scale horizontally?

See [http://docs.confluent.io/2.1.0-alpha1/streams/architecture.h...](http://docs.confluent.io/2.1.0-alpha1/streams/architecture.html#parallelism- model).

> Do I have to deploy this on library on multiple nodes?

Kafka Streams really is a normal Java library. You include it in "your" Java application just like you'd include a library such as Apache Commons, Google Guava, or JUnit. There's no "deploying" of this library -- i.e. no need to pre-ship it to machines; also, you don't install a cluster or anything like that for Kafka Streams. It's a purely client-side library.

Interestingly, many folks I have talked to seem to be confused initially about the "library" aspect because I suppose, in the big data world, one has simply become used to (and pigeonholed by?) frameworks like Spark, Storm, etc. that you must deploy and operate separately (and which then dictate how they want you to write your own apps against them).

Does that make any sense?

> 2\. Is RocksDB instance local to your consumer/ thread/ node?

Yes, it is local. But local state stores (RocksDB is but one choice for implementing these) are also replicated for fault tolerance. Details at [http://docs.confluent.io/2.1.0-alpha1/streams/architecture.h...](http://docs.confluent.io/2.1.0-alpha1/streams/architecture.html#state) and [http://docs.confluent.io/2.1.0-alpha1/streams/architecture.h...](http://docs.confluent.io/2.1.0-alpha1/streams/architecture.html#fault- tolerance).

Regarding joins: We have documented some information at [http://docs.confluent.io/2.1.0-alpha1/streams/developer- guid...](http://docs.confluent.io/2.1.0-alpha1/streams/developer- guide.html#joining-streams).

I hope this helps! If these pointers above aren't sufficient, please drop us a note to firstname.lastname@example.com ([http://kafka.apache.org/contact.html](http://kafka.apache.org/contact.html)). We really appreciate any such feedback (code, docs, whatever) to ensure people have an easy and fun time to get started with Kafka as well as its upcoming Kafka Streams library.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great job, Confluent! I'm really impressed by the helpful documentation and blog posts!</comment>


Success at Work, Failure at Home - <AUTHOR> http://scott.a16z.com/2014/01/17/success-at-work-failure-at-home/ <comment><USER2> I very clearly remember the week this clicked in my brain. Being very successful, really crushing it, and whining to my wife that the company should give more vacation, and her reminding me that I had been at work on Christmas Eve. My whole perspective collapsed around that instant. I could see the hit in career path I was going to take by changing my perspective, but I decided to do it anyway. And I have always been glad I made that choice.

The challenge is there will always be people who are willing (either consciously or unconsciously) to throw away their family and personal relationships in order to pursue success in their career, and it is difficult, if not impossible to compete against them with the 'balanced life' bit set.

<comment><USER3> I've often wondered about this, whether it's possible to still be a big career success and compete against those who are willing to give up their whole personal life for it. I'm not entirely certain I've got an answer, but the solution that comes to me is to make use of certain competitive advantages you have that they don't:

1.) When you're heads-down on a goal, you often miss other things that are going on in the world, like technology shifts or social changes that may affect your business. Someone who makes time for a social life will be much better informed about these, because they have more information coming in from friends and acquaintances.

2.) People who work all their time often get very good at repressing their emotions, because emotionally, it really sucks to work all the time. That blinds them to an important source of information, which makes them make poor global optimizations about their time usage because the rational brain isn't as effective as the emotional brain at processing large amounts of not- directly-comparable information.

3.) People who get used to working all the time often get very impatient and feel they must be doing something productive with every moment. This makes them unsuitable for jobs which require that you sit back and wait.

The biggest example I can think of of people using these against their competitors is Warren Buffett, who's famously built a massive investment firm by being "patient capital", that's willing to wait out the periodic panics and take advantage of them. While the rest of the financial industry runs around like chickens with their heads off, he sits back in Omaha, with a normal middle-class lifestyle, and waits for their emotions to get the best of them and make them do something. And then he swoops in at reduced prices, buys, and waits for the price to come around again.

<comment><USER4> It depends on your definition of success and what you want to optimize for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm facing many of the challenges Scott is talking about. I churned through the first part of the essay and thought "yes! yes! yes, yes, let's get to the solution!" But the second part of the essay falls short for me.

It's a bit like the depression and the broken hand cartoon[1]. I _can 't_ disconnect. I _know_ I'm supposed to turn off my phone, do household chores, and take my wife out to a nice dinner. I know taking the time to do these things makes me happier and more productive. It's not that I don't know this, it's that actually doing it requires enormous discipline, but after spending 80 hours a week slowly changing reality by a sheer force of will, I have no more willpower left for anything else.

I also know I don't _have to_ feel like I'm changing reality by a sheer force of will, and in fact, feeling this way is a sign that I have a lot to learn about leadership and about life. But that's not something I can just decide to change either.

The problem is very real. The solution, at least for me, is as elusive as ever.

[1] [http://www.akimbocomics.com/?p=573](http://www.akimbocomics.com/?p=573)

<comment><USER6> > The solution, at least for me, is as elusive as ever.

If you define "the problem" as "I want to work 80 hours/week + have a healthy family life", well, yes, that's always going to be elusive. I.e. impossible.

Pretty sure the answer is to just not work 80 hours/week.

> but it's not something I can decide to change either

It is probably convenient for you to think that, but unless you have some sort of mental health condition (delusions of grandeur, etc.), I doubt it.

One way or the other, you're making choices you want to make.

And that's fine, but you might as well be honest with yourself/others about why you're making them, and that you must implicitly be okay with the trade offs.

<comment><USER7> _It is probably convenient for you to think that, but unless you have some sort of mental health condition (delusions of grandeur, etc.), I doubt it._

So what would you say to the young [insert famous and wealthy figure here]?

<comment><USER6> What would I say? Just what I'd said; that searching for a "solution" that allows working 80 hour weeks + having a healthy family life is futile because, IMO, it doesn't exist.

At least when you have kids. I could see a spouse being okay with "5-10 years of hard work" for lots of freedom after that.

Hard to make that sacrifice with kids though, because after 5-10 years, they're basically not kids anymore.

Ironically, if the 5-10 years works out, and the kids have a guaranteed life of luxury because of it, they _might_ be grateful.

But I don't think it usually works out that way.

(Note that I'm only focusing on the "80 hours/week" thing. If you can pull off "changing the world" (or at least your pocket book) on 40 hours/week, more power to you.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My wife and I are going through this right now. My wife has a senior director position in a multi-billion dollar financial company, and I am a programmer at a startup. We just had a child several months ago, and it's been very hard trying to balance work and life. It's actually the hardest thing we've both had to do in our lives.

Her job is a minimum of 60-hrs per week, but luckily I'm able to limit my work to 40-hrs per week, my company has been incredibly supportive. But truth-be- told my productivity has been affected by at least 50% over these past few months, especially after my wife and I both went back to work. There's been a lot of guilt from both our ends, due to how much slips through the crack both at work and at home because of trying to raise our kid as best as we can.

The key, I hope, is to keep focused as a team, meaning we try to pick each other's slack with no resentment. It's tough living and raising a family in Silicon Valley, due to the demands of work, and given how expensive things like houses in decent areas are.

<comment><USER9> You're a new parent, you're working 40 hours per week and somehow your employers are _incredibly supportive_?

I don't know what the psychological term is. Cognitive dissonance? Stockholm syndrome?

<comment><USER8> After working the first few months and taking days/weeks off whenever I wanted to, I took an entire month off with full pay and no PTO days. They didn't even question it. If I need to take more time off on the order of months, it wouldn't be a problem. On top of that I had to push out some deadlines by a couple of months. That's incredibly supportive in my book.

<comment><USER10> How do your cow-orkers feel? Would any of them like a month off on full pay to pursue a personal project?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One thing you can do at home is the cooking (including buying the food and the washing up). It is not hard to do if it is something you always do.

Serve up a great meal prepared from actual ingredients and enjoy eating it - plus the conversation that goes with it. If you can do this then you are likely to succeed at home.

If you can make cooking something you enjoy then that becomes an 'inline hobby', i.e. something to care about, enjoy and look forward to doing. It does not need extra time. You can feel good about yourself for doing it if what you serve is well appreciated. But you have to do it as soon as you get in, put your feet up, watch teevee, allow an hour to pass and it all goes wrong.

<comment><USER12> > But you have to do it as soon as you get in, put your feet up, watch teevee, > allow an hour to pass and it all goes wrong.

I totally agree with this. If I plop down on the couch right after getting home from a day of work, inertia tends to keep me there. I'll become almost annoyed that I'm hungry and begrudgingly get up to microwave something really fast. If I go straight to cooking and doing other chores as soon as I get home I tend to eat a much better meal and feel much more relaxed once I do sit down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think this is an example of a problem I see with a lot of hard-working cultures like startups. You're always optimizing your productivity _locally_.

It's easy to just say "oh, I'll work harder _now_ " because, simply, you'll get more done than you would otherwise. Today will be more productive. Most importantly, the increased productivity is _viscerally_ obvious.

But working too much, making sacrifices at home, having problems with your family, not having enough breaks--all that saps your productivity on a global state. Sure, at any given day, you will accomplish more by working 12 hours than 8. But, over time, you will start accomplishing less _per hour_ , largely without noticing it. And while working longer will still optimize locally, you will actually become significantly _less_ productive overall!

This is not a character flaw or anything like that. It's just a result of the fact that local improvements are so much easier to see and understand than global trends. So to counter it, you have to think ahead of time and ideally keep some metrics to measure this explicitly. (Of course, I'm not sure what such metrics would be--measuring productivity is extremely tricky.)

There's a particular study that gets linked that found working a single 60-hour week is an immediate improvement, but working consistent 60-hour weeks is actually strictly worse than mostly sticking to 40. But it's so easy to trick yourself into thinking that you _have_ to work those 60 hours because you need to finish more _now_. It's definitely something you should watch out for.

EDIT: [http://legacy.igda.org/why-crunch-modes-doesnt-work-six- less...](http://legacy.igda.org/why-crunch-modes-doesnt-work-six-lessons) is the article I was thinking about.

<comment><USER14> i agree with the spirit of this but the flaw in this reasoning is an assumption that all hours are equal. Working __consistent __80 hour weeks _is_ the reason we got the Mac as well as Facebook. The extreme outcome possible due to one locally focused push could far outweigh any other strategy and could also be the maximum of the global state.

<comment><USER15> And what's your proof that without 80-hour weeks we wouldn't have got the Mac or Facebook?

All of those people were also wearing underwear, so if correlation is all the proof we need around here, then I've got me a new business book to write: _Steve 's Secret: What Every Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Has In Common_

I can even try to get data on whether boxers or briefs lead to better marketplace success, and gin up some fake controversy. It'll be the next NYT best-seller. Eric Ries, watch out!

<comment><USER16> Thank you for stating that, it's one of my biggest pet peeves as well. The startup culture is one of doing regression on the 0.001% of the companies who become unicorns, while completely ignoring the failures.

I really want someone to start putting together stats of successful businesses that were built working at most 40 hours a week without wrecking homes, by people who knew how to use their time wisely. People who didn't fart around at the office, hanging out with the guys watching anime at night and doing whatever other freshman dorm-room behavior you constantly see the worst performers do at the coworking spaces.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Key question: did Ironport succeed _in spite_ of his family sacrifice, or _because_ of it? It's not fair to recommend spending more time with the family without addressing what the consequences would have been.

<comment><USER18> No matter what, you're always going to be at a disadvantage to someone who is willing to sacrifice more than you, whether that be health or family or anything else. I liked the article but it completely danced around the obvious conclusion which is, "maintaining a healthy relationship with your family is going to cost you time and energy which is going to at least somewhat lessen your chances of success and you have to be okay with that."

Edit: I've realized that my last sentence was somewhat ambiguous, I want to make it clear that I in no way support neglecting your family for a chance at economic success. When I said you have to be okay with it, I meant being okay with the _risk of failing_.

<comment><USER19> _No matter what, you 're always going to be at a disadvantage to someone who is willing to sacrifice more than you, whether that be health or family or anything else._

Not always. If you're in a line of work where your own competence matters, sacrificing your health or family life will burn you. It doesn't take long.

The relevant issue is that most white-collar workers (even programmers in many dysfunctional organizations) are private-sector social climbers by trade and practice, and competence matters a lot less than image for them. If appearance matters more than capability, extreme sacrifice can help you.

<comment><USER18> >willing

There was an important word there that you seemed to miss. I didn't say that he who sacrifices more will always win, but they do have more options available to them, so to speak. Please don't think I'm advocating sacrificing health and family in the name of success, far from it. I just don't like this post facto moralizing that glosses over the difficulty of choosing between working late on something that might be critical to the success of your enterprise and going home to see your wife and kids.

<comment><USER20> I think this discussion highlights something very important about any Darwinian system, be it inter-species rivalry or free market competition: evolution has no higher ideals. Whatever is best at domination will dominate; whatever is best at spreading will spread.

People put so much faith in evolutionary processes as if they believe that evolution honors some kind of Platonic ideal. Evolution is a cold process, and it does not give a shit about you or anything you hold dear, unless what you hold dear is conducive to dominance in the specific arena under discussion.

Not to say natural selection is bad or good... I'm just pointing out that it's a value-neutral process, and I think it's a good idea to remember that, especially when we get the urge to derive norms of behavior from evolutionary evidence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > And that part about sitting on my ass in front of the TV with a cocktail? > This ran counter to all of her efforts to teach the kids about pitching in > as a family. The message of everyone helping to cook, clean, and be > responsible for the household fell completely flat when daddy wouldn't so > much as take out the trash or change a light bulb.

Take out the trash and change a lightbulb by all means, but seriously if you're providing for your family, it counts.

If his children don't think he's pitching in by paying the rent /mortgage, then something's very wrong.

<comment><USER22> Really depends on the kid's age. Younger kids (less than 10yrs) are not able to grasp the concept of money or earning money, so explaining that dad is out making money for a roof over their head and putting food on the table is not going to cut it. At that age, they just want close interaction with their dad.

<comment><USER23> I'm happy to be proven wrong and of course this is only anecdotally but I was watching sci-fi movies at age 10 and I could grasp, at least on the surface, the underlying technology and it's purpose. When we say "kids dont understand money" I'm thinking they should start to get it at about 7 and certainly have a basic grasp by 10.

<comment><USER24> most likely you didn't grasp but just accepted without questioning of feasibility

<comment><USER23> I didn't grow up with a lot of money so, again anecdotally, I'm pretty sure I had a great respect for what money could afford by that age.

There's a difference between saying kids aren't capable and kid's aren't commonly knowledgeable or taught. I'll agree with the latter but I'd disagree with the former.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I dare say I'll get voted down for not being constructive, but I find the self-help entrepreneurship work-life balance stuff on here really self- involved and kind of tasteless.

<comment><USER26> While I agree with the emotion, there is meaningful discussion to be had. As a sidenote I believe you'd do better to express your opinion without rebuking HN's readership as a whole, under the risk of making your comment just as tasteless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I want to relate this to Richard Branson's family advice to Elon Musk sprinkled throughout a recent Google Hangout[1].

> I hope he can find some wonderful people to help him. He's got five children > at home, all boys... he just, uh, he needs to... uh, yeah, I hope you can > find lots of time. You just got to find lots of people to help you.

I can't imagine the kind of family life Elon Musk can have if he has five boys while running two companies. He advises young entrepreneurs to work 70-80 hour weeks as a clear no-brainer way to get ahead. Hearing the hesitation in Richard Branson's voice in the quote above says a lot about this I think.

[1]: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy9y_YSpYxA&feature=share&t=5...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy9y_YSpYxA&feature=share&t=55m50s)

<comment><USER28> At what point in the vid do they talk about family?

<comment><USER27> 55:50

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's easy to write about what you should have done _after_ you've made it through the gauntlet.

<comment><USER30> Also after you're already loaded. Paraphrasing: I did this and now I'm filthy rich. But if I had to do it again I'd spend more time with my family. By the way, now that I'm rich I do spend more time with my family.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I pretty much am thankful a few times a week that I've never had children. It looks like most of his difficulties at home were due to child rearing tasks; it would otherwise be easy to spend money on things like the yard and housecleaning and laundry, and if spending time with your wife isn't enjoyable in itself, you are doing it wrong.

I guess I should be glad at least some people have children, though.

</comment><comment><USER32> When I was working at HP, just after graduating from college, the CEO (Lew Platt) announced that he would be stressing work-life balance among employees. He specifically said that he wanted to accommodate working mothers, and especially single-parent families. He officially blessed the idea of job sharing (such that two people could each have a part-time job) and flexible hours, to help in that way.

The particularly poignant part of this story was that he learned the importance of such flexibility the hard way: His wife died from cancer, and he was left taking care of his children by himself. Suddenly, he realized how much work it was to raise children, and he decided that HP should try to take into account people's personal needs, such that they could be with their families and have jobs.

I don't know how deep those changes really went, and I don't know how many of them have continued until today. But those announcements and attempts to help people balance their personal and professional lives have stayed with me for about two decades.

Sure, I work crazy hours (as a freelancer, and also trying to finish a PhD) -- but part of the reason I work late at night is because I value spending time with my wife and children. I cringe when I see startups (and other companies) expecting people, explicitly or implicitly, to sacrifice their family time for the sake of the company except in unusual circumstances. And yet, there's no doubt that for many of these companies, success often does demand more than a simple, 40-hour week.

I'm glad that the original author realizes now that he could and should have spent more time with his family. But I do wonder if he is willing to tell the people working at his startups, "Hey, that program can be debugged tomorrow. Go home and spend time with your children. Software can wait, but they can't."

</comment><comment><USER33> I've learned to define success as the whole package -- a brilliant career that results to me coming home to an empty house or a house full of people who resent me is not success.

I try make work a 40-hour a week thing, which is often a losing battle. But you need to try and make those 40 hours as productive as humanly possible.

</comment><comment><USER34> Enjoyed this post - reminds me of something i wrote last year on the same subject [http://paulstamatiou.com/simplify/](http://paulstamatiou.com/simplify/)

</comment><comment><USER35> This reminds me of car ownership... When you ask people if they like their car, most will say yes they do; that is until they decide to get a new one. It's then that they quickly come up with a large con list to warrant an upgrade. Afterwards, they will almost always say that last car was never any good. After all look at the current car vs. the con list of the last. The thing is, they'll be doing this again with their new car until they outgrow it or find problems with it too.

And my point is: Hindsight is always 20/20 when your current perspective _conveniently_ matches the narrative for your newly made situation.

</comment><comment><USER36> As a founder, it appears as if our startup's success or failure depends on us cofounders. This drives me to work insane hours as some sort of ego self rationalization tells me that more work will make it succeed.

In general I have seen the work/result correlation hold true. And yet, we all know how luck plays its role. I personally like to think some events are meant to happen or not. Especially when it goes bad - when my startup lost a client in the early days for example it was extremely tough... but we learned so much that the next bigger one went well. Would working more hours have changed anything, I doubt it, so there is more to it than work.

More than this, working many hours is sometimes just a way to reduce anxiety of success or failure, at least for me. What's tricky is understanding which hours not to do, how to make more of the ones I do, and being confident that cutting the hours won't affect the bigger picture output too much. Easier said than done.

</comment><comment><USER37> In my view, this applies not just to CEOs, but other people too. I've seen many around me and myself included, concentrate work so hard to achieve what we thought was best for ourselves and to keep our family happy. However, it would take a toll that our mislabeled 'needy' other halves would bear the brunt off. Switching off from work is absolutely necessary to keep a work life balance going and its necessary to keep in mind that there are other things that are just as important, like our spouses, family and our health, without which all the hard work is essentially meaningless. I personally tell myself at the end of the day that the work never ends, there is always something to do, and it can wait for tomorrow.

</comment><comment><USER38> If you have children and a career, then you have two jobs. Sorry, you don't get a "break", and you shouldn't expect to "unwind".

This isn't going to be popular, but its selfish as hell to think that you "deserve" something because of all the hard work you are doing. You don't. The universe is indifferent and life isn't fair.

The only thing you can do is make every moment count and do the things that make you happy. If you are feeling the need for a cocktail and an hour in front of the TV, then I'm going to say that you aren't happy.

</comment><comment><USER39> Thanks Scott. Great post, really resonated with me as a recently (successfully) exited founder. You were the most helpful, empathetic, & constructive "No" I got from a VC.

</comment><comment><USER40> > When we started pulling consistent coding weekends, we brought in the entire > management team to serve the engineers: We brought them food, washed their > cars, got oil changes, took in their dry cleaning, and arranged for > childcare for their kids in the office.

Sorry, but while admirable, this is not normal. I may differ from most of HN, but I simply don't see the point in making these kinds of sacrifices as an engineer just because I get free dinner or childcare. It isn't healthy...or worth it.

<comment><USER41> That's not the point. The management team is showing solidarity with their team by serving them in the only (more symbolic than economically valuable) ways that they can.

It's a symbolic (but real) sharing of the sacrifice, not a straight up bribe.

Same reason I've come in on Christmas night (we scheduled the work after the families are reasonably in bed, but the calendar still said "12/25") to spend time with my teams doing major site maintenance activities, or why I travelled with the team for a major as-the-ball-dropped New Year's Eve datacenter migration. It's not because I'm especially good at carrying servers or building SAN racks...

The engineers make the sacrifice because they believe it's necessary for the product/company to succeed. They feel better about it because their executives are physically present there with them rather than on a golf course or diving into their pools of gold coins...

<comment><USER42> But who plans a New Year's Eve datacenter migration? What kind of major site maintenance is needed on Christmas?

It's one thing if it's an unplanned emergency. It's another entirely if it's planned. Planning for work on Christmas or New Year's Eve would be enough to convince me to find employment elsewhere.

<comment><USER41> Well, _we_ planned a NYE DC move (5 years ago I think), and years before that we didn't have the capability to do certain DB tasks with the site on-line, so we also planned the 2300 on 12/25 work. (And back in 2004, we couldn't even do releases with the site on-line, so we did regularly scheduled releases on Mondays starting at 1 AM with the outage starting at 2 AM...)

How does this happen?

Suppose we find ourselves running a high-margin e-commerce business and needing to take downtime sometime to accomplish some maintenance work. When should we schedule it? Managers and directors of teams in my Ops org researched the expected bookings during various windows and suggested those times. _They recommended them to me._ I spent some of the planning effort double-checking and making sure the teams would be signed up for that, and got a consistent message of "This is what Ops does; we all knew what we were signing up for when we took this job." (Side note: Of the 9 people on that DC migration trip, 8 still work here, 5+ years later.)

On the 11PM on 12/25 outage, we were upgrading OS on a few key infrastructure servers that were singletons. (We relied on DB and file servers in a way that didn't give us the ability to do maintenance and serve traffic at the same time.)

On the DC move, we were literally decommissioning our main DC and moving those services to a new DC in the same town. We bought and brought online as much duplicate gear as we could, but the core transactional systems were a singleton and needed to be moved, not replicated, and that was going to be 4-8 hours of downtime. My teams chose to put that downtime into a time when we'd lose $1MM of high-margin bookings rather than $3MM of high-margin bookings.

Our CEO, without me asking, was also keeping tabs on the migration (from his house) and sent IMs and emails congratulating and thanking the team for our work when we wrapped things up around 4 AM on 1/1\. So, I got to see both sides of it: doing what I believed was right as a leader and being present and engaged when they were doing a less pleasant part of their job, and I got to feel what it was like to get clear engagement and genuine thanks from above, even though it was technically "just" a symbolic gesture. He could have sent that mail at 10 AM the next day, but knowing him, he was keeping tabs on the work not to check up on us or because he was petrified of a multi-day outage, but because he wanted to be able to be the first one to thank us.

Side note: these experiences allowed me to better understand what Ops goes through, and have caused us to prioritize (and since complete) architectural projects that permit us to do almost every bit of periodic maintenance with the site online. We haven't taken planned downtime in several years now, because we've made those improvements. From a pure dollars-and-sense standpoint, those projects "shouldn't win" over larger business opportunities that we have, but they did win, in significant part because they were the right thing to do for our people, and having been there, I can argue for them from a position of first-hand knowledge.

There is an awful lot of negativity and anti-company sentiment whenever inevitable situations come up where, on an instantaneous basis, either the employee can get what's best for them XOR the company can get what's best for it. I don't personally see these situations to be quite the same as Walmart opening at 5 PM on Thanksgiving Day, but I'm open to the idea that others see them as being exactly the same thing.

I understand and respect the perspective of someone who would never do planned work on a holiday, or even those who would never do planned work on a weekend. It's a perfectly reasonable point of view, and I will happily employ those people in roles that don't require off-hours work. Those people will presumably not choose a career in operations, or at least they probably shouldn't.

It is always the case that I speak for myself and not my employer, but it's worth calling that out on this post in particular.

<comment><USER42> Thank you for the detailed response. It's a good outcome that the sacrifices of systems teams are more widely recognized in your company now; at many companies they are not.

Online maintenance is how we do all our maintenance. Getting to that point as early as possible is essential for redundancy and failover, anyway, so it is both good for the company and good for the systems team.

<comment><USER41> Online maintenance is huge, and it's somewhat easier to design for now than it was 10 years ago.

It's very nice to be able to schedule releases at a human/humane time and there's really only one point in our release process now where it's impossible to very obviously and fairly automatically revert and regroup. That one point is clearly called out, and the decision is easy to make when the site has been operating on live traffic for 60 minutes with zero perceptible technical and business metrics degradation.

I'd not consider online maint capability to be a necessary part of an MVP, since any time you spend on it is unlikely to help you understand whether you even HAVE a business, but I'd prioritize it pretty highly in the very next phase of company development.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> "All I do is talk to people all day long and so at home, I'd really prefer not to talk much"

interesting how people feels different about that. I am the same as the author. But my significant other is the opposite. She spends the day talking, giving lectures, and when she gets home, she wants to talk even more, with someone that responds, because all she does is talk to people that just listen the whole day. Turns out to be a good match. we get home, she talks, I listen.

</comment><comment><USER44> From my observations of having worked around many CEO's is that the job, by its very nature demands total dedication. I believe that attempting to start a family and a funded company at the same time is a sign of a lack of objectivity. It's as if the individual actually believes they can harbor two mistresses at the same time. It's simply not a wise idea. Just an observation. Not trying to make anyone out to be the bad guy.

</comment><comment><USER45> It seems like I read a story like this several times each month. It is good advice. We all know it deep down. Yet the "I'll sleep when I'm dead" culture of constant work persists. How do we change that? I ask honestly as someone who is reformed. It took nearly losing my marriage for me to establish balance in my life and work. How do we set up an enduring culture of respect for _actual_ balance?

</comment><comment><USER46> A simple tip is to look for activities that regenerate, rather than medicate. "Sitting with a cocktail" isn't a solution to anything, it's treading water at best. A classic regeneration activity for couples is dancing. Meditation is another great choice, but isn't for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER47> I've seen plenty of startup CEOs that add value and some that subtract value.

The ones that _subtract value_ just push to meet arbitrary deadlines and don't pitch in.

The ones that _add value_ actively remove burdens (go get lunch) and look to keep people from burning out (send people home or off to the beach).

</comment><comment><USER48> Urges me to startup before all the relationships kick in my life! Being young certainly helps.

</comment><comment><USER49> This guy seems like a total piece of shit. He gives little respect to his family or his employees.

</comment><comment><USER50> Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER30> So what I'm reading here is why CEOs shouldn't go to the office on weekends and check their mail at dinner. What's glaringly absent from the second part of this article is not asking the engineers to come in on weekends, either. Those guys have families and their negligible equity certainly doesn't justify 80-hour weeks. It sounds to me like the author would rather have gone home on weekends while the engineers stayed at the office.

<comment><USER51> Each time I read madness as 60h/w, 70h/w or the wtf 80h/w I am really happy to live and work on EU. I think I would fall in depression really fast if I had to sacrifice (because over a certain limit, to me, it is only sacrifice) so much of my time and passion. Also in my opinion, ever over a certain limit (For me is 50h/w), the productivity of an engineer just vanish. I prefer work to live against live to work.

<comment><USER52> And just think, Americans (and Canadians) also get _much_ less vacation time than Europeans! Geniuses!

<comment><USER53> I guess the European peons did learn some lessons from all the centuries of oppression under the feudal nobility. The Americans never had that experience, so they bought into the company line hook line and sinker.

<comment><USER54> If you're going to attribute history to why the workforce in Europe is the way it is, then the American expectation of the peons to work all the time is because the US never got over having slave labour.

BTW that line of thinking is ridiculous. Europeans and Americans learned about feudalism the same way, from history books. No one who was around when labour laws were going into effect has first, second or third hand knowledge of feudalism, slavery or working conditions during the Industrial Revolution.

<comment><USER55> In addition to slavery, Americans also had The Frontier. A man who didn't like the wages offered had the option to go make a homestead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It seems like he felt a need to put in long hours as some sort of morale- improving service, but he actually damaged the team by doing so.

Bosses should limit themselves to 8 hours in the office, except during times of crisis (and, even in a startup, to be constantly in crisis mode is bad management). If the work calls for more, do it from home. Why? Because if the CEO works 12 hours per day, the VPs are going to feel a need to work 13, the middle managers work 14, and the grunts have to work 15. Now you have everyone working an inefficient long day, and less is getting done (and less reliably) than if people were working sane hours.

You should lead by being available when people need you (which is not the same thing as being a doormat; your willingness to drop other things or sacrifice must be appropriate to the level of the need) but putting in mindless face time just sets a bad example. Low-level investment bankers have to suffer long face time, but CEOs? If your company is going to be a sweatshop where people feel like they need to work 15 hour days or will lose face/status, then what's the point of building it?

Startups don't change our biology or remove the fact that virtually no one can work efficiently beyond about 55 hours per week for more than a couple weeks. (That number includes commuting, housework, errands, and assorted nonsense.)

<comment><USER56> I'm curious to see some sort of data on hours worked on startups if that exists. I would guess that the grunt workers feel that they are obligated to work ceoHoursWorked + 3 as you mentioned and the ceo imagines she has to work gruntHoursWorked + 3

<comment><USER19> If I were CEO, I'd probably work long hours, especially early on. But I'd do most of that time from home, so people can leave at 5 or 6 if their work's done. Not because I'm a nice guy, but because I'm realistic and know that working at a sprint pace when it's not needed is going to enervate people and leave them unable to handle a true crisis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I can relate to this.

I am a notoriously bad multi-tasker and when I'm concentrating on a project I had a really hard time paying any attention to my girlfriend. I also found it harder and harder to relate to the struggles that other people have in a normal life. Trying to add something significant to the world comes at a cost: I might not ever be able to have a normal relationship.

<comment><USER58> Chances are the world will keep on spinning without your product. Happiness should be your primary goal.

<comment><USER59> Why do you assume working on his project doesn't bring him happiness?

Also, though I'm sure you are well-meaning, advising strangers how they ought to live their life makes you sound like a prick.

<comment><USER58> Article is titled: "Success at Work, Failure at Home" and they say they can relate to this. Laments that "...comes at a cost: I might not ever be able to have a normal relationship."

I'm not saying working on their project doesn't bring them some happiness, but they hardly sound like they're as happy as they could be.

And I'm probably just a prick.

<comment><USER60> I agree with your prior statement (happiness should be your goal, and you probably haven't invented 'sliced bread'). You can't 'have it all' if your work makes you more happy than (or is more important to you than) your relationships/home, you should probably focus on that and divorce/leave/whatever so everyone can move on with their lives.

I read the article as a lament. Although maybe I misread and we're both pricks. :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Letting down his Harvard MBA spouse.

Yeah I can relate to that.

Humblebrag.</comment>