Your iPad app ideas? - <AUTHOR>

I thought a bit about what kind of new things iPad makes possible. Real-Time Strategy games will be fun with two people sharing the screen (others suggested this same idea). You could even use the iPad the replace menus in a high class restaurant.  What are your ideas? <comment><USER2> I'm not here to hijack this thread or anything but I created a group called 'iPad People' on Facebook this morning to discuss App Ideas. Or rather: to let ordinary people express their wishes for iPad Apps. Please consider joining the group, spreading the word & adding some ideas.

<http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=277104755137>

To prove that I do NOT want to hijack the thread here are all the ideas expressed in that group until now:

iShop: I'd like to have a nice shopping list app. iCal todo lists are just not as good. I think there's a whole collection of To-Do / Shopping / Productivity apps that can be built to fit this new form factor. The device encourages a little more interaction than the iPhone but still less than a full computer because of the lack of a decent keyboard.

iFingerpaint: .. for those spoiled kids who got the iToddler app! And for the grown ups a sketching app, and a photo editing app. Was actually preparing a submission for an iDoodle app or something similar to the existing iSteam app. I still like real paper for my brainstorming / doodling though. But the added screen real estate and multi-touch could give some nice interaction patterns, e.g. use the pinch move to crumble the piece of paper and toss it away.

iToddler / iAnnoyMyParents: Ever seen those platic toys with big colorful buttons that make funny sounds when your baby presses them? What about an app that has simple big icons, e.g. farm animals, a car, a plane, ... and when the child touches them with their hands it plays a sound / starts an animation. Guaranteed to drive parents crazy!

Offline Web Content Reader: Do you still print webpages for use in places where you don't have access to the internet? E.g. printing out a webpage or pdf for reading on the train / in the car? What about a simple web/pdf reader app that eats pdf or web archive files (created on your desktop with e.g. print-to-pdf or save-as-web-archive). You drop the files on the iPad app from your Desktop & the iPad can then display it offline in full gorgeous detail. I remember my Palm had such a sync feature now almost 10 years ago.

iClimb: What about an application where you post all of your climbed routes and share them with your friends? It would be nice to also post comments about the route, photo's, ... and a map to locate where the route is situated, so other climbers can get information about that specific route.

iShareMusic: The new SDK has easy file sharing built in. What about a combined Desktop/iPad app that scans your Desktop iTunes library & allows you to 'share' all of your music as a normal thumb drive instead of the annoying locked down iTunes connectivity. Want to copy music from a friends' iPad? Just plug in the iPad to your desktop computer, a thumb/usb drive mounts with all of the music on the device neatly organized in folders for easy copying. (DISCLAIMER: I'm not making any statements about the legality of this. Purely technical discussion.)

iPad for board games: I think one first massive category of apps will be turn- based board games. People have been playing board games for centuries (Think Chess, Go, etc ...). The form-factor is really inviting: it's basically a gaming board on which you can play multiple games. But with a twist: multi- finger & multi-people gestures will allow some really interesting physical gameplay.

</comment><comment><USER3> Being a college student I think a great note taking app is very necessary for the ipad. It would need to be able to switch from sketching ability (drawing pictures,and writing quick notes with your finger with different colors) to keyboard input with a seamless touch of an onscreen icon. The thing that would make a superior application for taking notes would be multiple-angle keyboard text input. Basically, with a swipe of the finger you should be able to dictate the angle at which text is entered on the screen (e.g. Swiping my finger at a 45 or 60 or 70 or 90 degree angle, or any angle, would thus make the text be input at that angle on the screen). This would be idle for entering text around a picture you have drawn on screen, or entering a note in the margin just like you would if you were taking notes with pen and paper. I think that ability would make the ipad the ultimate school electronic device hands down! Obviously, there should be an elegant start up screen holding multiple notebooks. For that I actually like the startup screen for the iWork apps that have been shown. Finally all this would be for not if there is not a very simple way to put your notes onto a home computer. Well this is my little idea, I think it could be an extremely useful app for the ipad for students as well as the corporate world. Not to mention, that if done write, meaning keeping it simple and not trying to make it more than it should be (because, think about it, a pen and paper doesn't do much, but they do what they do absolutely flawlessly) could be very profitable for the creators of such an app.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would like to be able to use an iPad at college for class notes and drawings. As well as this while im jotting the lesson is being recorded with the built in mic or a bluetooth one.

It would be nice to be able to group the notes to a Lesson name say 'Maths', 'IT' so you can have more than one and then the dates with a title of your choice (Lesson name). The ability to export the notes as an image and the recorded lesson for review.

This would then allow me to stop using paper in class and if I miss what the teacher said I can review with the recorded audio.

Does that sound any good. MD

</comment><comment><USER5> I can't wait to use it as an input device for my Mac. A huge touch pad that can connect via Bluetooth and be used to bring multi-touch to my iMac would be excellent.

</comment><comment> ipad-apps Here is a site using stackexchange platform for sharing ipad apps ideas.

<http://ipad-apps.me/>

</comment><comment><USER6> Ability to play a lot more games with 2 players on a single screen is good. Plus, it would be good for strategy games by linking more than 1 iPad.

<comment><USER7> I see a lot of classic board games being very fun to play on an iPad. Risk, Monopoly, etc... you can zoom in/around the board when necessary and zoom out to see the entire board. I can see it being much more successful than PC/handheld board game clones.

<comment><USER2> That, & a better iSteam were the first apps I could think of after watching the demo yesterday</comment></comment></comment>


The bizarre fish that evolved for oceans, but lives on land - <AUTHOR> http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/report_the-bizarre-fish-that-evolved-for-oceans-but-lives-on-land_1582177 <comment><USER2> More about this fish (inc. picture)

<http://www.fishbase.org/summary/SpeciesSummary.php?id=56805></comment>


Mustache 2.0 and the Future of Mustache.js - <AUTHOR> http://writing.jan.io/mustache-2.0.html <comment><USER2> "By the time the browser has downloaded, parsed and compiled your smart compiler, my dumb parser is done rendering the template."

Your dumb parser may be quick the first time, but when you have to render a template 100 or 1,000 or 1,000,000 times the cracks will start to show. One main benefit of parsing and compiling templates is that you can cache the result of that stage on the server.

If you want to be really smart about it, the client shouldn't even be downloading a .mustache template — it should download a .js file containing a pre-generated function which can be called with the context, returning the rendered template. Parsing the template on the client side makes about as much sense as parsing JSON or XML with a hand-written pure-JavaScript parser.

<comment><USER3> This is valid for server side templating.

In the browser you will not render thousand times a template. And the tens milliseconds you will save if you pre-compile the template is irrelevant compared to the hundreds milliseconds of network latency and page & js load time.

I wrote <http://beebole.com/pure> another template engine. With the version-2 we dropped the pre-compilation. The small performance gain wasn't worth the complexity.

<comment><USER4> "And the tens milliseconds you will save if you pre-compile the template"

Ten milliseconds here, ten milliseconds there, pretty soon you're talking about real time. Especially if I can manage to browser-cache away the page & js load time you mention.

<comment><USER3> My comment supposed you need to compile the templates once. In that case the whole app is compiled once in the tens msec. Not at each rendering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Please look at JSON Template. <http://code.google.com/p/json-template/>

It solves ALL of these problems. It has {.or}, the dot notation, and searches up the stack of contexts for variables.

I haven't been working on it for awhile, mostly because it does the job, but the codebase is small and easily hackable.

EDIT: It also compiles the templates and lets you change the delimiters! And has support for several other languages.

<comment><USER6> Mustache has an equivalent to {.or}

{{^something}} {{/something}}

The draw of mustache is that it does things implicitly. I don't have to worry about .section, .repeated, .or, |html, for example. Mustache does it for me.

That being said, one thing that mustache does need to address is the difference between conditionals and repeated operations as needed (handled by .section and .repeated in JSON Template).

AFAIK, the songs template would require a boolean to be passed in of the existence of songs in mustache, since mustache would implicitly assume that {{#songs}} was a loop and create multiple tables.

[http://json-template.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/doc/Introducin...](http://json- template.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/doc/Introducing-JSON-Template.html)

<comment><USER7> If you read the linked article, you'd see that I am calling for an {.or}-like construct to avoid having to use inverted sections for a fake else-case.

<comment><USER6> Got it. I guess the distinction is not that big of a deal for me, though it would be nice to have the inline {.or}-like construct (it saves one statement).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yes to else sections. The lack of else is just plain annoying after awhile.

Don't care on dotted access.

Context addressing is fine if we can agree on a method and keep the spec simple. Perhaps using Git's SHA addressing with things like HEAD, HEAD^, HEAD^^ or similar.

Yes to booting _dynamically_ changing delimiters.

Yes to stealing helpers.

For cross-language compatibility, we really should have a collection of test inputs and outputs.

We should adopt a directive thing like you have for the 'this' notation with {{.}} or whatever for lists. The original is a bit funny looking but I think this sort of thing would fix the delimiter issue.

Another pattern that I run into that's a bit weird is when I need to add markup around a list when its not empty. I end up having a context that returns a context with a rows object when there is data, or None when there are no rows. So it looks like this in mustache:

{{#genes}} open table {{#rows}} row stuff {{/rows}} end table {{/genes}}

I keep having the feeling there's a better way to make that work.

If I get another project finished up shortly I'll write these up in a branch of pystache.

<comment><USER9> > For cross-language compatibility, we really should have a collection of test > inputs and outputs.

<https://github.com/mustache/spec>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I move to jquery-tmpl because I never understood why there was so much resistance to the dot notation.

BTW, jQuery-tmpl is supposed to become "jQuery/DOM" free in a few, which allow to use it on the server-side as well (assuming Javascript).

<comment><USER11> This is a good point.

Most programmers are familiar with the common notations for nested structures (e.g.: a dot, or a slash). Mustache's solution requires a programmer to explicitly reference the parent context: [https://github.com/defunkt/mustache/issues/issue/6#issue/6/c...](https://github.com/defunkt/mustache/issues/issue/6#issue/6/comment/579313)

<https://gist.github.com/3c91441597ac650146b9>

Maybe this was to keep Mustache "pure", and avoid introducing a dot- or slash- syntax. "Turtles all the way down"?

I agree the syntax is clunky. But it does have some internal logic.

I'd argue that the bigger problem is: most people don't know the feature exists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> How are people using these JavaScript templating frameworks? What is the structure and flow of the application? They seem interesting but I don't yet totally grasp what benefits they provide.

<comment><USER13> They're useful for doing more on the client than server. If your UI runs only on the client then you just have to write a web service to communicate with. You just take the V out of MVC, or you have views that simply emit JSON/XML/whatever.

Most web pages would not benefit from this but many web apps can and do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I like the goals. I wish 2.0 was ready now. I'm only tangentially interested in non-JavaScript versions. Fixing the merged contexts and getting dot- notation are the killer new features. I'd use this as soon as it becomes available.

I hope you don't get bogged down waiting for consensus from the "mustache community". Better to implement and put a stake in the ground, I think.

<comment><USER7> There are enough forks that implement these things today, see the Network and issue tracker on gh:/janl/mustache.js.

<comment><USER14> The problem is too many forks. Over 100 now. As a practical matter, which one would you recommend using that would be the most accurate preview of the new feature set in Mustache 2.0.

<comment><USER7> If there were one I wouldn't be calling for 2.0 :D — Sorry, you gotta dig for yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yeah, I remember the first time I've installed and used Mustache with IcanHaz. It was.. really a pure moment. And then, x.y didn't work and I went crying. Even last week, I had to explain to a new developer why our templates doesn't have the x.y notation and instead have a {{#x}{{y}.. {{/wtf}} notation.

So, I'd be totally willing to help on that part :)

</comment><comment><USER16> I was curious about this one, but my use case would have been Javascript and Python, and when I looked a few weeks back, the Python version out there couldn't even handle all the examples in the man page.

I'll have to keep an eye on the 2.0 project.

</comment><comment><USER17> Hmm.. why not use something similar to like Django/Jinja syntax? {{ x }} for variable related items, and {% %} for logic related if/else/ifnotequal etc... things.

</comment><comment><USER6> As a user of mustache in multiple languages, I believe the most important priority of the mustache community is to have uniform implementations, which is what the mustache spec will hopefully solve.

There are some features that do not seem to be consistent across implementations. For example, partial templates are handled differently in mustache.rb and mustache.js.

It seems like there are attempts to "embrace and extend" the mustache language (handlebars and mustache.js), which is fine, as long as the spec is adhered to and the good features get folded into the spec.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for reinforcing this view. I want to make sure this is one of the overarching goals, which is why I listed it in the Design Principles.

The difference between .rb and .js stems from JS lacking File.read(). But a 2.0 spec could work around that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Rendering members of Arrays should also be in the spec. I believe mustache.js has support for changing the iterator rendering token, however mustache.rb does not.

{ "items": ["foo", "bar"] }

# From mustache.rb

{{#items}} {{{to_s}}} {{/items}}

</comment><comment><USER6> I propose we have a mustache convention at the end of November (grow a mustache month). Those without mustaches will be shunned and not taken seriously (those unable to grow naturals can wear fake stashes)!</comment>


Yahoo Imposes Weeklong Global Shut Down - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704304504574610710138598216.html?mod=rss_whats_news_us_business <comment><USER2> As a Yahoo, I assure you this is in no way "as the Internet company searches for new ways to cut costs during the recession". We do this every year, as do other companies -- like Apple, I believe.

<comment><USER3> But this time it is mandatory.

<comment><USER4> (another yahoo here) It is not, nor has it ever been mandatory. There are plenty of folks on my team who don't celebrate xmas working during the break, but some facilities are shutting down (coffee shop, cafeteria, front desks, etc).

<comment><USER2> This year the Sunnyvale campus is having some maintenance work done to the power systems, so it's actually completely shutting down, but with lots of people working remotely during that time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not really sure why this is newsworthy. It's a very common thing in the tech industry, and Yahoo! has been strongly encouraging employees to take time off during the holidays for years. The only difference this year is that the time off is actually mandatory for most employees rather than just being strongly encouraged.

</comment><comment><USER6> "For full access subscribe now!"

So..... shall we just stop linking there or do we all buy subs?

<comment><USER7> just click through the google results and you get the full story: [http://www.google.com/search?q=Yahoo+Imposes+Weeklong+Global...](http://www.google.com/search?q=Yahoo+Imposes+Weeklong+Global+Shut+Down)</comment></comment>


Do you use a Dating App? Please help my studies with this quick questionnaire - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1nzNROrBAirOX2NtQHmb9vgQaup6oVCmPmmzq1BYWvYY/viewform?usp=send_form

<comment><USER2> I think if you use one, it is increasingly likely that you use multiple.

</comment><comment><USER3> I do wonder whether people use multiple dating apps? I do use two myself

</comment><comment><USER4> next time, try beta.vizir.co for a sexier survey !</comment>


Why technologists don't want to work at a government agency - <AUTHOR> http://ben.balter.com/2015/04/21/why-technologists-dont-want-to-work-at-your-agency/ <comment><USER2> As someone who has worked for more than one agency, reading this list is like listening to a high schooler complain about getting up early for school. Yes it's a pain and there's lots of good reasons for change, but there's also probably reasons you're not familiar with (or care about) that make it necessary.

Also, some of these are really stretching:

>> 3\. You tether developers to their desk

Not having Wifi is a dealbreaker? I don't know about the author, but i became an engineer because i wanted to build things. If the problem is interesting, does it really matter if you can't go 'chill in the lobby' with your laptop?

>> 10\. New technologies are guilty until proven innocent

When managing anything that can vitally affect many people it's important to not just jump on the next bandwagon. This is engineering 101.

>> 13\. Speaking at conferences is tightly controlled

What? Are you talking about OPSEC procedures or travel limitations or what exactly?

>> 16\. You measure your hiring process in months

Your freaky fast startup is what...5..100 employees? Come on, an agency (while can be small) is part of something much much larger. Also many agencies require a full background check and/or security clearance.

>> 18\. Recruitment is unheard of

Just because you're not getting spam from NASA or your local gov about an 'exciting opportunity to change the world' doesn't mean agencies don't attend job fair, offer scholarships, and recruit talent.

>> 19\. You block half the internet - I honestly don't know how I'd do my job without social networks like Twitter.

Really? "It's not unsurprising that many government employees are out of the loop", like we can't or won't read/browse/learn things on our own time. Get off your petastle.

<comment><USER3> The stuff I'd actually complain about would be the assumptions about continuous integration and continuous deployment--while those are always long- term goals, a lot fo companies never do them. :(

Especially on 19, though, I feel their pain. If the .gov feels it's important to protect developers from their own curiosity and browsing, fat fucking chance they'll retain anyone interesting.

<comment><USER2> I can't deny that it does hurt, but it's not really a dealbreaker until that random forum that you think has a similar answer to what you're looking for is blocked - most of the time i just bookmark links to read on the bus/when i get home

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A lot of this also applies to big corps, and most of it is not even a problem IMHO. In fact some of those, especially point 15, are reasons why I would want to work in a big, stablished company rather than in a startup.

The bit about integration, testing, Jenkins et al. surprised me, because in my (maybe not very vast) experience, small companies and startups are much _less_ likely to test everything and just try to release as fast as possible. And I've had the same impression about process. Maybe I was just unlucky.

</comment><comment><USER5> #9 is just basic [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_concerns](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_concerns)

This guy has clearly never worked on anything but the most trivial of websites, he has no idea...

<comment><USER6> Actually, he works on some seemingly cool stuff at Github, ([http://ben.balter.com/about/](http://ben.balter.com/about/)) and I think #9 is a complaint about being unable to monitor code in production, which is a valid concern even if your test suite is well written and someone else is performing the actual deployment IMO.

<comment><USER5> ESR in a suit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder what the working conditions of the technologists building Singapore's smart nation or e-Estonia are like.

</comment><comment><USER8> Working in government is not always like this. I spent about 9 months contracting in the UK's Ministry of Justice

> You force developers to use tools designed for lawyers

Nope, we used whatever we wanted to.

> You distrust your employees

Nope, most people used OS X and had full control over their machine

> You tether developers to their desk

Nope, there is wifi throughout the building. I actually worked from home a lot, eventually only coming in for sprint planning and retros

> You prefer government-specific service providers

Nope, we deploy on AWS in prod, and spin up Heroku apps for sharing prototypes

> Temporary integration

Nope, we run CI on every branch, pull requests are not merged until green.

> Sparse delivery

Nope, Continuous delivery. Master is always deployable. We deploy whenever we want.

> You still see waterfall as a viable option

Nope

> You don't place process on a pedestal

Nope, use all best practise you'd expect in any modern software shop

> You erect a moat between developers and servers

Nope, our releases our deployed by CI but we can SSH into any box (via VPN and jump boxes)

> New technologies are guilty until proven innocent

Nope, use what you want as long as you can justify it, i.e. building a service in brainfuck won't fly

> You use open source as a verb

Nope, all development done in the open and service source code licensed under MIT

> Working in the open is a novelty, not a best practice

Nope, see above. We're spending taxpayer money, the software belongs to the taxpayer and we want to be fully accountable.

> Speaking at conferences is tightly controlled

Nope

> Geeks are the bottom of your food chain

Nope. Quite frankly the opposite. We have the best equipment in the department, are amongst the best paid, and wear whatever we want to the office where all other stuff seem to be required to wear business dress.

> Culture only happens outside of your working hours

Nope. As we are spending public money we can hardly have an open bar but we do our best

> You measure your hiring process in months

Nope, the slowest part of the hiring process is having a background check, which takes a couple of weeks

> Onboarding is an afterthought

Nope, you're up and running with all your brand new kit and logins on day 1

> Recruitment is unheard of

Nope, but the department has largely grown through referrals

> You block half the internet

Nope, nothing is blocked whatsoever

<comment><USER6> Judging by the author's resume, which includes university and work in DC, he's criticizing US gov't tech culture. It's nice to hear that things are better in the UK, though.

<comment><USER9> I worked in Higher Education for 4.5 years in the UK and this article was very much a blast from the past. Some universities really got it but I distinctly remember being told by the head of IT at a top London university that developers had no place in his opinion.

Unfortunately the funding to JISC was heavily cut a few years back and the Dev8D community that had developed (made up of developers at many institutions) lost its momentum to budget cuts and bureaucracy.</comment></comment></comment>


Iterating Grace [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://fusiondotnet.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/iterating-grace_digitized_small.pdf <comment><USER2> Background: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10663026](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10663026).

Interesting that this was posted here 6 months ago but was overlooked: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9707636](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9707636).

<comment><USER3> Yup I posted that. Tough luck :P . But the title didn't register I guess.

<comment><USER2> If you, or anyone, think that an overlooked post is particularly good, you should email us so we can put it in the second-chance pool (written about at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10537417](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10537417), with earlier posts linked from there).

Eventually we may build this into the software, but for now you have to email firstname.lastname@example.com.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > The decentralization of everything

Well, that's not what I see when I look at Google, Amazon, Uber, etc. Capitalism agglutinates money and power, and I'm afraid this is not going to change easily.

</comment><comment><USER5> Did anything come of this?</comment>


Issac Asimov: What Is Intelligence, Anyway? - <AUTHOR> http://talentdevelop.com/articles/WIIA.html <comment><USER2> A friend of mine used to be a welder. I always found his political views simplistic to say the least. He couldn't control his liqueur and one day he felt down from high up and his arm got trashed.

I always thought that he was going to end up as a looser, although I love him as a good friend.

Years went by and he never really got anywhere, of course supporting my theory and increasing my concern.

Then a friend suggested (for whatever reason I don't know) that he should take up system administration. So he took a couple of courses and lo and behold got an apprentice position at Maersk.

He blazed through the various Sisco certifications without any issues as such exceeding what was normally considered possible. Basically flooring those who hired him and our common developer friends.

I was puzzled and asked him how he was able to advance so fast and he basically said to me.

"You know it's not really that different from installing and welding pipes. I see things needing to be connected and I connect them"

The moral of the story.

Sometimes things that seem very complex and require a tech centric mindset is really very simple. The welder, electrician and the plumber also deals with complex systems, they just have different names for them.

My friend is still the simple minded person that I know (and love) but he sure know how to lay pipes.

<comment><USER3> Another moral here is: you were seeing him as less clever and less successful because he was "just" a welder.

A skilled craftsman who understands what he is doing, understands a bit of the market and the chances available to him can run circles around any struggling internet startup, if only because the equipment and training needed are typically not as easy to come by as a Rails or AJAX or web handbook.

<comment><USER2> Well my father is a plumber my mother a cleaning lady. So I don't really have those kind of prejudice just because of peoples trades.

It was more some of the other experiences I had with him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is the most important lesson my mother ever taught me. I (like her) have that same type of intelligence, the type that makes IQ tests and school exams far easier than they should be, and yet often isn't really that useful in life. I still find myself placing far too much importance in it when judging people, can only imagine how big headed I would be about it if she hadn't constantly reminded me how little IQ really means.

Stephen Fry made a similar, though briefer, point (I think in one of his auto- biographies, though I could be wrong)... Actually instead of quoting from memory I googled, it is indeed from his first auto-biography, and here it is:

 _"I actually went so tragically far as to send off for and complete a Mensa application test...It was only then I realised the kind of intelligence that wants to get into Mensa and succeeds in getting into Mensa and then runs Mensa and the kind of intelligence that I thought worth possessing were so astronomically distant from each other that the icing fell off the cake with a great squelch.It is occasions like this I thank God for my criminal tendencies, my homosexuality, my jewishness and loathing of the bourgeois, the conventional and respectable that these seem to have inculcated me. I could so easily given the smallest twist to the least gene on the outermost strand of my DNA have turned into... [one of those awful Midas types on politics forums boasting about my Mensa membership and 'high' IQ.]"_

<comment><USER5> I don't understand these meme of degrading IQ as having little real world value. That mentality seems to fly in the face of just about every observation one can make. It seems obvious that in general, smarter people tend to get ahead. Of course there are many counter examples, but overall the trend seems obvious. Why is it everyone must apologize, make excuses for, or somehow downplay their own intelligence? Maybe it's just a ploy to be able to say "IQ tests and school exams far easier than they should be" without coming off as boasting?

<comment><USER6> _I don't understand these meme of degrading IQ as having little real world value._

Haven't you read Lewis Terman, author of the Stanford-Binet IQ test, on the subject?

"There are, however, certain characteristics of age scores with which the reader should be familiar. For one thing, it is necessary to bear in mind that the true mental age as we have used it refers to the mental age on a particular intelligence test. A subject's mental age in this sense may not coincide with the age score he would make in tests of musical ability, mechanical ability, social adjustment, etc. A subject has, strictly speaking, a number of mental ages; we are here concerned only with that which depends on the abilities tested by the new Stanford-Binet scales." (Terman & Merrill 1937, p. 25)

Or perhaps you would prefer the point of view of David Feldman, a psychologist specializing in the scholarly study of precocious and highest-IQ individuals?

"Put into the context of the psychometric movement as a whole, it is clear that positive extreme of the IQ distribution is not as different from other IQ levels as might have been expected. . . . While 180 IQ suggests the ability to do academic work with relative ease, it does not signify a qualitatively different organization of mind. It also does not suggest the presence of 'genius' in its common-sense meaning, i.e. transcendent achievement in some field. For these kinds of phenomena, IQ seems at best a crude predictor. For anything more, we will have to look to traditions other than the psychometric and to variables other than IQ." (Feldman 1984)

The one independent science writer who has had access to Terman's longitudinal study files at Stanford points out that IQ tests are a great way to miss future Nobel Prize winners. Amazingly, Terman's study catchment area in California included two future Nobel Prize winners, but both were rejected from inclusion in the study because their childhood IQ scores were too low (Shurkin 1992, pp. 35, 395).

REFERENCES

Feldman, David (1984). A Follow-up of Subjects Scoring above 180 IQ in Terman's Genetic Studies of Genius. Exceptional Children, 50, 6, 518-523.

Shurkin, Joel N. (1992). Terman's Kids: The Groundbreaking Study of How the Gifted Grow Up. Boston: Little, Brown.

Terman, Lewis & Merrill, Maude (1937). Measuring Intelligence: A Guide to the Administration of the New Revised Stanford-Binet Tests of Intelligence. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

After edit: I see several replies elsewhere in this thread are citing Wikipedia articles as the last word on their subjects. It's important to point out that most Wikipedia articles don't reflect the best research literature known even to Wikipedia editors,

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/Intellige...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/IntelligenceCitations)

largely because the Wikipedia articles on human intelligence as a broad subject have been the subject of much edit-warring for years

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Race_and_intelligence)

and some editors continue to push their point of view, relying on unreliable sources, into multiple Wikipedia articles.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Race_and_intelligence#Case_amendments)

<comment><USER5> I appreciate the well-sourced comment, upvoted. Although I'm not sure exactly what you're arguing. All those points I agree with. Any discussion of IQ must be based on a realistic interpretation of its meaning. But this doesn't mean it has no real world value at all.

I would disagree with the focus on ability to do "academic" work as the only useful result from IQ. While academic challenges is the "tool" we generally use to measure IQ, it is likely to be measuring something that goes much deeper than just academic ability (g factor). This can be seen by the high correlation between different types of intelligence tests. The academic style questions are simply the tool used, since its assumed that most people have had (roughly) the same exposure to the concepts.

The most obvious real world result would be that people who have IQ, and thus have a mind that is able to perform academic work at a high level, would also be able to perform various "knowledge based" work at a similar high level. It seems pretty obvious to me that there is much crossover in the mental faculties needed to do academic work and "real world" work of business value. Since this is the direction the world is moving, it seems short sighted to want to dismiss IQ as having no real world value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would ask Mr. Asimov: Do you think that, given a reasonable amount of training, your "intelligence" could be applied toward automobile repair? Or do you truly believe that your mechanic friend had a different sort of "intelligence" that made him better at car repair, while your brand of "intelligence" lent itself toward academia?

<comment><USER8> I second this one. Mr. Asimov could easily become a mechanic if he were to apply himself. His mechanic, most probably, would never become an academician.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This reminds me of a prevalent attitude I encountered in college where it was assumed that disciplines required more intelligence as they got more abstract. It's a persistent and seductive intuition that this is the case, but as Asimov points out it is only a matter of convention. Some geniuses can be very bad at dealing with mathematical abstractions and very good at performing in a specialized domain. Gifted athletes come to mind.

Wittgenstein puts it this way:

 _I can play with the chessmen according to certain rules. But I can also invent a game in which I play with the rules themselves. The pieces in my game are now the rules of chess, and the rules of the game are, say, the laws of logic. In that case I have yet another game and not a metagame._

</comment><comment><USER10> I think this essay makes a good point but largely misses the mark.

Much of what the vast majority of people do with their brains is a biproduct of training, and little of it can be attributed to intelligence.

In most fields there is some combination of motivation and intelligence necessary for success. It is my view that an IQ of 110-120 is more than sufficient for abundant success in nearly any field. 40% of the population falls in this range.

So Azimov's "discovery" that his mechanic possesses intelligence even though he lacks education just illustrates Azimov's own biases. I'd argue that the mechanic, if properly cultivated, would likely have been able to excel in a wide variety of careers thought to require far more intelligence than being a mechanic appears to Azimov to require.

Also, Azimov's description of the mechanic's work style suggests that he found it oddly crude but appreciated it in a mystical sense, as if it was so far removed from his own abilities as to be unfathomable, which is absurd.

<comment><USER11> An error that may change your outlook a bit-- only about 16% of the population fall into the 110-120 range (roughly 74th to 90th percentiles)

<comment><USER10> It doesn't really change it. One in 6 is close to saying one person in every household, and so intuitively it negates the notion that intellect sufficient to achieve at the highest levels is scarce.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> When I was in high school, I topped my class. Some of my classmates started to call me about questions in their quizzes. I could remember the exact descriptions of the quiz questions back in few months. So when they asked me about certain question, I didn't need my exam papers. They told me the number of a question, I could give both the question and the answer. I didn't remember the question on purpose, I simply did because I took the quizzes. I lived in an Asian country, where daily quizzes were more than 1 hour long,

My classmates admired my ability of remembering things. I enjoyed that feeling quite a bit. Yet, I couldn't take any intelligence test.I was afraid that the result of my test might look bad.

I often hear about Gene scientist saying that they have discovered certain gene that defines certain "ability" of people, for example, "good-looking gene", "criminal gene". It seems that everything is deterministic (to some extend) by genes.

It sounds like at certain time in the future, they can discover a "loser gene" such that a child can be tagged in his young age.

Gene technology is making Determinism more true than ever before. And that is a very horrible fact. If I knew that I would be a loser, I would have given up my life.

I was afraid of IQ tests, I still am. I want to try different things in my life, no matter if I am inherently good, or bad at it. IQ tests are evil. They are the ruthless lifetime sentence against endeavor.

<comment><USER13> Genes are a lot more complicated than that. Unless you get some really blatant genetic problem, like Down Syndrome, there's a very heavy environmental component to how you turn out. And that's exactly what you want, isn't it? You want your life not to be predetermined, or even predictable -- and that seems to be the way things really are!

Of course, some people do wind up with, say, a genetic predisposition to alcoholism or depression. But if you have something like that, wouldn't you like to _know_ about it? If you know that you're predisposed to alcoholism (or whatever) then you can _do_ something about it, instead of just letting it happen to you.

<comment><USER14> Apologies, but this attitude is quite annoying: "As long as you're healthy and a hard worker, you too can be a genius! It just takes time!"

If anyone bothered to try to answer the question "do genetics matter much?" by examining real-world prodigies, they would be forced to conclude "Yes, genetics are equally important to upbringing/environment".

Read through this, then claim genetics don't matter:

 _"This was Richard Feynman nearing the crest of his powers. At twenty-three ... there was no physicist on earth who could match his exuberant command over the native materials of theoretical science. It was not just a facility at mathematics (though it had become clear ... that the mathematical machinery emerging from the Wheeler–Feynman collaboration was beyond Wheeler's own ability). Feynman seemed to possess a frightening ease with the substance behind the equations, like Albert Einstein at the same age, like the Soviet physicist Lev Landau—but few others."

— James Gleick, Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman_

Fun fact: Feynman mastered Calculus by age 15. He didn't just learn it; he derived it himself.

<comment><USER13> I'm also irritated by the inaccuracy of that attitude, which is why I never expressed it. Of course genetics are a big deal. They just aren't the _only_ thing, which was the subject at hand.

<comment><USER14> Sorry! Didn't mean to imply _you_ did. It was sort of a tangent... a lot of people think that way, and so I sort of had a bone to pick with 'em. Cheers.

<comment><USER13> Ah! I withdraw my indignation. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> An example does not prove the point but Click and Clack of "Car Talk" both graduated from MIT.

Their 1999 Commencement address to the graduates of MIT:

<http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1999/clickclackspeech.html>

</comment><comment><USER16> I especially enjoyed the final part "Because you're so goddamned educated, doc, I knew you couldn't be very smart."

If you think about it, it's very similar when you try something new that breaks the conventional boundaries. If you have a huge education, you tend to avoid it because you usually learned this before. Sometimes, you need to ditch your education, to try something not conventionally accepted. In other words, education is key to find the things you should experiment.

It's like in art you have to know the rules to break them into an useful way.

</comment><comment><USER17> I totally agree, so far as _merit_ is concerned, but the value society places on intelligence is entirely economic (at least at the moment). And academic intelligence has great economic value because it scales: it's abstract, so can be applied broadly; and is information, so can be replicated and transmitted widely.

Asimov's books, textbooks and articles need be written once, but have been replicated many times. Likewise his insights and perspectives (including this article). And the nature of insight and knowledge is there's no danger of mining them out, because you can always make finer distinctions - so there's room for arbitrarily many suppliers, each in a minuscule specialization.

</comment><comment><USER18> Don't let that article fool you kids — I met Issac back in the day and while he may have been modest about his IQ it didn't make him shy about using powers of the mind to charm the ladies. He was also an advocate of using your smarts to get ahead...

</comment><comment><USER19> It's a nice story. I agree with his point about testing. But it seems to me he's just apologizing for his intelligence and education. I'd bet Dr. Asimov would make one hell of a auto repair mechanic if he dedicated his life to it. I'd let him work on my cars!

<comment><USER20> Hell, I'd probably let him work on my car even if he were terrible at it. (Then again, maybe not - what a waste of talent that would be!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> IQ-like tests reward speed, and as such all alternative/possible answers are not explored. In his story, he failed because he quickly devised the pattern from the deaf-mute and extrapolated gestures as the method of communication.

Deliberative thought is penalized in IQ-like tests and that is, in my opinion, a huge mistake.

</comment><comment><USER22> Headline: Man with extraordinary high IQ becomes extraordinary author.

I'm not sure what his point is. Intelligence, by even the crudest methods of measurement, is the core _human_ trait, and will help determine every important thing every human does. He assumed a mechanic was stupid because he seemed low-rent. Headline: The mechanic probably wasn't stupid in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER23> The problem with this is that we now have totally abstract IQ tests, the invention of which did not break the concept of intelligence as a measurable thing. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravens_Progressive_Matrices>

<comment><USER24> Interesting definition of "now" ;)

"J. C. Raven first published his Progressive Matrices in the United Kingdom in 1938."

"all entrants to the British armed forces from 1942 onwards took a 20 minute version of the SPM"

 _edit_ Just found a copy of and tried the standard test. Very easy once you see what they're testing in each group. Basic pattern matching and boolean shape operations for the most part. Last question was visual arithmetic. According to Wikipedia this only measures the "reasoning" component of Spearman's g. I can honestly admit that my reasoning is pretty questionable, having found myself in numerous questionable situations in my life ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> But Asimov's answer was an indication of intelligence -- not the opposite. Intelligence often means dealing at a conceptual level as opposed to a more detailed level. There's a reason that there's the stereotype of the absent- minded professor. He or she will publish an important paper and then leave their sweater at work. They've sacrificed one level for the other. Asimov's mistake answering the question was the same as forgetting a sweater -- he just didn't spend any effort thinking about it.

And as for his point that there's an educational bias to IQ tests -- that's just silly. The intellectual requirements of being a nuclear scientist are more stringent than those of being a car mechanic. The qualities we ascribe to intelligence map more to the former than to the latter. Next, IQ tests don't measure intelligence. Intelligence is qualitative, like beauty, not quantitative, like height. We use it to look for attributes of intelligence. Knowing a woman has high cheekbones doesn't tell you if she's beautiful, but it gives an indication that she might be, for what that's worth.

</comment><comment><USER26> I think the problem with IQ is the labelling. They give somebody Genius status without ever having to produce genius status work. In a place like america, there are suppose to be like 3 million genius(cut off 1%). I really haven't felt the impact of the many, just only a few.

</comment><comment><USER27> I also reach ridiculously high IQ score on tests (no, not online one ;p), but I know I am not smart. In fact I am very dumb. This proves that IQ test have a lot of flaws.

Besides that I don't think intelligence can be measured. I know neuronal networks are simulated in a very similar way, but it still can be used to explain the concept of IQ is nonsense.

It's the same nonsense with people claiming brain size related or genomes relate with what people mean when they talk about intelligence. There are people who had half or their brain removed (for example because of epilepsy) which disproved pretty much every claims made. Some of these people were able to live a pretty much normal live, studied, etc.

</comment><comment><USER28> _What is intelligence, anyway?_

Many view genius as having a high IQ. I view it as extreme form of insight rather than a measure of IQ, although a high IQ helps. I like to think of genius in terms of perspective and thus measure it by how rare and valuable a perspective is.

Your level of insight/understanding will vary from one domain to another. A financial genius like Warren Buffet sees how the financial world connects in a way that few others do, but that insight/understanding doesn't necessarily mean he'll see the connections that an artist sees and yet you might say that both are genius.

</comment><comment><USER29> Someone, please fix the spelling in the title, incredibly grating. It's "Isaac".

<comment><USER14> Who cares, and why? (Honest question.)

He certainly doesn't; he's dead. And everyone knows who we're referring to, so there's no ambiguity. Everything seems to indicate "it doesn't matter", and yet apparently it does to some. So why?

A nice example of how people are inherently illogical...

<comment><USER30> Dr. Asimov never liked it when his name was misspelled. My name is common and rarely misspelled, but I think I would feel the same. It's just a matter of respect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> On a bit of a tangent, but since encountering many such people in college, i've wondered why the intelligent ones tend to be more cynical, shy, closed up.

</comment><comment><USER32> an excellent lesson in humility.

</comment><comment><USER33> I read somewhere that I ought to comment on these links, which is a shame because most of them speak so well for themselves. Does truth need comments, opinions? I'm sure I'll warm up to all this, but sometimes an unfiltered observation is a good way to start.

</comment><comment><USER34> It's hard to definitively describe or measure intelligence.

But it seems beyond dispute that for any given task requiring it, different people will perform measurably better or worse.

And some people will become highly proficient at a wide variety of such tasks quicker than others.

</comment><comment><USER35> Asimov is fucking brilliant. So are his sideburns. +9,000</comment>


Employees: looking for "the great boss who cares about their development" - <AUTHOR> http://www.gallup.com/opinion/chairman/171302/employee-satisfaction-doesn-matter.aspx <comment><USER3> I company I worked at contracted a company to do "scientific" questionnaires of staff, so management knew which kind of personalities people had, what they wanted out of a job etc. We had to sit through an hour presentation, being told what makes us happy.

Everyone was forced to do the questionnaire and afterwards we had an opportunity to discuss the results with the company and our managers. All through the process, management stressed how much they were interested in how we can grow, how we can do better in the organisation and so on.

I asked: why don't just sit down with people over a coffee and ask them? I got blank stares. You could tell they thought we were all too stupid to know what we wanted and that nothing valuable could come out of that process. Completely idiotic.

<comment><USER4> I've worked for this company! Recently even.

We also had those wonderful quarterly AND yearly reviews that don't accomplish anything other than give management a way to fire.

<comment><USER5> Now I think I work here. $BIG_CORP_FEMALE_CEO_UNDER_FIRE?

<comment><USER6> It's probably happened at lots of large corporations.

<comment><USER4> Right.

I don't work for that one. It wasn't a tech company, it was an ISP.

I also did not get fired.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd believe Gallup if they weren't hacks and crooks.

Five to ten years ago they had a big program that they peddled to organizations about Employee Engagement.

They ended up paying the Justice Department 10.5 million dollars for crimes associated with contracting irregularities (aka bribes.)

Looks like they're going to turn their "survey experience" to another part of employee training.

It's really sad about Gallup. They've been riding on their good name that they developed 60 years ago. They're bad pollsters (they predicted McCain would win in 2008) and they're pretty blatantly partisan. Oh, as as mentioned above, crooked.

That being said, yes, I'm sure that employees want "a great boss who cares about their development." I knew that years ago. I also know that this "story" is a puff piece to sell Gallup consulting services.

<comment><USER8> I worked for them for a short time due to an acquisition. They're crazy. They think they're solving the world's problems with polling data and they force you to be psycho-analyzed and have a plaque at your desk displaying your traits.

Nuttier than squirrel turds.

<comment><USER9> It spreads too with things like [http://www.strengthsfinder.com/](http://www.strengthsfinder.com/) which are amazingly short-sighted. You mention you like solving some math-like problems and then surprise your strengths are analysis and math-related things!

<comment><USER7> Yes. It was "Strengths finder," which was almost as mumbo-jumbo as Myers- Briggs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think employees want control of their own life, more share in decision- making. Essentially, they want democracy, even if they can't articulate it. But in capitalist society, where the ownership of capital decides, this cannot happen.

There are attempts to tiptoe around this problem with holacracies and Agile methodologies and similar concepts, but the main problem still remains.

<comment><USER11> In theory workers co-operatives are this, but they have a habit of not doing so well in the real world. It is a really interesting question why this is the case. Why should a business owned by a capitalist for their own benefit be able to outcompete a workers co-operative?

<comment><USER12> _> It is a really interesting question why this is the case. Why should a business owned by a capitalist for their own benefit be able to outcompete a workers co-operative?_

Because 99.9% of typical workers _don 't have the money_ to build the business.

Take for example, Google Inc. origins in 1998. Both L Page and S Brin came from upper middle class families but neither of their bank accounts nor their parents' bank accounts had $25 million to spend on a business. It's also doubtful if either family could have been approved for a $25m unsecured business loan from a bank. Likewise, Google's first 100 employeees also didn't collectively have $25 million. On the other hand, VCs like Sequioa and KPCB _did have $25 million_ to invest. Later on, more investors bought IPO shares totaling $1.9 billion. There is no union of workers that can pool together that kind of cash.

Since a co-op by definition must be _owned by the workers_ , the question is no longer "interesting" with a mysterious answer. Instead, it's tautological. If you look at the typical workers' modest savings as the ceiling for funding a business, it's obvious why they can't compete with businesses built by investors/capitalists money. While WorkersOwnedSearchEngine Inc scrapes together $30,000 from their owners-workers' savings accounts to buy a 5th rack server from dell.com, Google Inc. can use a fraction of its $2 billion war chest to buy _an entire data center_ and also break ground on a brand new one.

<comment><USER13> That (access to capital) is the big issue for coops. I used to be a member of a UK coop in the technical space (poptel) and we did do some work with VC funding.

As long as the coop members have 50% +1 that ok but it can go wrong (thank you very much ICANN) as we found at poptel.

The other problem is the coop movement in general is very old fashioned and isn't really embracing technical changes. Which is a pity as if poptel had been brought out by the main uk coop we woudl have all had a very nice 6 figure payday.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is great stuff. Problem is there is the work the company needs you to do, and the work you want to do.

Both of these change overtime, for example in software development when the lifecycle of the project advances. As the project reaches maintenance mode, you can no longer design the architecture and implement things from scratch, its already done.

So the work the company needs you to do now is very different.

Then there is your personal preferences that change over time.

So the work you want to do and the one the company wants you to do will probably only overlap for a short period of time.

<comment><USER15> > So the work you want to do and the one the company wants you to do will > probably only overlap for a short period of time.

Similarly, there's only short period of overlapping of the work you want to do and the work doing which you would grow. I see too often programmers jumping around abandoning their half-written application or library once it is somewhat working, never learning what semantic versioning is about, what it takes to write good documentation, or how architecture works.

I've seen people _proud_ of having an opportunity to maintain (note: not to develop, just to maintain) big products. Such product was doing amazing things and was well-written, of course, but would you think you could take pride of maintaining somebody else's work?

<comment><USER16> I can easily imagine taking pride in maintaining a _well-written_ project doing _amazing things_. I believe most people unhappy with maintaining someone else's work are dealing with neither, and are furthermore discouraged from doing anything to make it better. Just complete the tickets as quickly as possible, and keep your head low.

<comment><USER15> Yes, but you wouldn't know in advance that this codebase you're going to be assigned to is well-written, or that it does amazing things (unless you're in its target users group or know the target industry already).

If somebody offered you a job to merely maintain an old, gigantic codebase, I don't think your first thought would be "wow, I'm going to learn _so much_ from this!", and there probably wouldn't be any way you could assess the codebase quality before accepting the offer so you could end up thinking that eventually. This is how things that you want and that could help you grow can be vastly different.

<comment><USER16> I mean, if you're a novice, it _should_ be your first thought. If it isn't, I consider that a failure of education. Jumping into writing something from scratch when you're not part of the target user group or know the target industry already is a great way to produce horrible code that you (or someone else) will hate to maintain.

This is why it's so important to grill your interviewers about the reality of working at the company, although I'll admit that I learned which questions to ask from bad experience. Asking those questions also happens to serve as excellent signalling to your technical interviewers, much more effective than being able to solve some silly logic puzzle.

And to be perfectly fair, you do learn so much from working on poorly written projects that are a horror to maintain. Failure teaches you which mistakes to avoid next time.

<comment><USER17> > failure teaches you which mistakes to avoid next time

As a recent grad who has been fired from two jobs, I would be afraid to join a poorly written project because I would worry that I would fail and then be fired.

Learning how to be successful is pretty important and teaches you things you cannot learn from lurching from failure to failure.

<comment><USER18> Even the jobs with poorly-written codebases teach you a lot. Only they're teaching you through experience what is or isn't maintainable.

<comment><USER17> Sure, but at a certain point, you need to learn a method to writing a maintainable codebase. Otherwise you never become capable of building a successful project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The term "Glass Ceiling" was created to help discuss the difficulties for advancement by women and minority / upwardly mobile individuals in the workplace. I'd venture a guess HN is likely stratified to a predominately middle-aged or younger demographic (US), albeit with a significant number of professionals with decades of longevity with technology. So, not the primary target of the concept, but a group that definitely has grown up with the concept being discussed as a social/professional issue.

However, outside of technology fields, from personal experience and numerous discussions with peers (anecdotes), I think I finally hit the right term to describe a different 'advancement' conundrum: "The Grey Ceiling."

To put the idea in blunt terms, there's no room for advancement and career development when the prior generation(s) are stuck in the workforce for whatever reason(s) - lack of retirement savings, dependent adult children or being part of the 'Sandwhich Generation' or significant debt accumulated over the years.

The Grey Ceiling has no incentive to assist up and coming professionals to grow, to increase their income, or become peers in the corporate environment. The Gray Ceiling sees youth as a threat - insofar as if a younger worker gets a raise it's less monies available for themselves. The Gray Ceiling is not a 'guidebook' or 'conspiracy' to keep the younger professionals from advancing, but rather simply a result of self-interest amongst a cohort of people.

Of course there are dozens of firms that take on mentorship and development type programs. Like becoming an i-Banking Analyst. Of course there's light at the end of the 80 hour work week tunnel!

<comment><USER20> That's an interesting term, "Grey Ceiling." It makes a lot of sense though.

In the "Great Recession" a similar effect happened when many who lost their jobs took new jobs that they were overqualified for. This blocked out entry level workers and recent graduates, especially when other companies also adopted hiring freezes.

A related situation can also be if a company stops growing. If you're not growing then the company doesn't have new opportunities for people to take on. There's few promotions then and work can be "maintenance mode" (as an early thread above talks about with engineers) for everyone, thus creating boredom and career stagnation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Funny thing missing from this thread: Money. Doesn't anyone work for money anymore? You know, that stuff that allows you to survive day to day? I guess it just sounds better to say that you go to work to "change the world" or "fulfill a lifelong passion" or "grow your career". Saying you're in it for money is crass. If I want personal fulfillment or engaging projects or ping pong, I can do that outside of work, AND I get to pick and choose what I want to do. Would you really do what you do for 1/3 of your life if you didn't receive compensation for that time?

<comment><USER22> Because after a while, more money doesn't motivate. Most of us are making levels of money where an extra $10k or so isn't really going to make as much of a difference in your day to day life as some of these other things.

<comment><USER21> "Most" of us? Maybe if most of us are execs and senior VPs. For the rest of us $10K is a big chunk of change--a significant percentage of compensation. $10K is about $500/mo after taxes, which could, for example, mean being able to afford to live in a much better neighborhood or send your kids to a better school.

<comment><USER20> There's a lot of studies that show that money is a poor motivator long term once you pass the essentials for life (which admittedly in the Valley is higher than many other places). As important, some of those studies show that especially in roles requiring creativity (like engineering, design, etc) it actually negatively effects motivation and output.

See Dan Pink's Drive for a good summary of many of this research, which has led to his Autonomy - Mastery - Purpose framework that is part of his more well-known TED Talk on the subject: [http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation](http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation)

Coincidentally, those 3 pieces of his framework hit on many of the aspects of this thread and especially the Gallup research on the desire for goals and growth.

<comment><USER23> This response has always seemed meaningless to the point of insult; and the conspiracy theorist in me wonders how much of "they don't REALLY want/need money" is motivated by the people who have to pay out.

(sorry, this comes off as very blunt, please take it as only a comment on the argument and not you, but I needed to use strong words to express the strength of what it makes me feel)

As you say, "essentials for life" are different in the valley, but are also different per-person. My essentials were MUCH simpler when I was living alone. When I got a fiancee in industry, my essentials became easier to support Now that she went into academia, it suddenly became a struggle.

Combine this with area of living, and what do you see? That the "essentials" are far more dynamic than your argument typically lets on, not only in terms of material differences like spousal compensation/how many children you're supporting, but psychological/learned response, e.g. "I have to get my used car repaired every year or so because I can't afford a new one off the lot".

Is that essential? Different people could probably make different arguments. Does it hurt when you have that thought pulling in next to someone driving a Porsche? You better damn well bet it does.

So to bring this back to the root: VERY LONG TERM maybe I could agree with you, but life isn't just a very long term calculation, the dominating thoughts day to day are (at least for the less zen of us) very now-focused, and expose many situations in which a little more money (as a parent comment said) would drastically increase the quality of life.

<comment><USER21> I fully agree, and thank you for taking the time to comment on what's now a very old thread. I'll put it even more bluntly:

Cavemen had "the essentials of life." That's not what I'm going for, and not what most people are going for. Every little bit extra helps.

<comment><USER22> But what are you willing to trade for it? Keep in mind that I'm not talking about people who are just above making ends meet; I'm talking about people who are already making 6 figures. I would imagine that most of us, the additional money, unless it is a very significant sum, like a 30% raise, would rather not have the additional stress and the additional responsibilities, and instead be able to use that time and energy on things that we want to do, like hobbies or being with family.

<comment><USER24> I am rather well paid. I push very hard in my job, to try and aim for monetary promotions. I live in such a high cost of living area, however, that even on my salary it is difficult to afford a house. and start a family, ESPECIALLY competing with double income households.

This leaves me with three options. Rent forever, at increasing rates. (not a feasible option). Buy a house now, ride the constant increasing prices like everyone already in the market, be glad I'm not a buyer any more. (trying, but very hard to compete when 10% above listing is common.) Save up and move the hell out.

In any of these situations, a 5%, hell, a 1% raise compounded over a decade, makes a _meaningful_ difference in how long you'd be able to sustain living in a better cost of living area (e.g. if I moved out into the country somewhere), if not also on how much I can put out as a down-payment or as a lifeline to keeping up with increasing rent.

Perhaps it's a sign of what would have in the past been comfortably middle class being more and more stretched, but every little bit counts; it's an oddly similar feeling to when I used to be far less well off a few decades back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> People want to be happy, it doesn't really matter how.

Often they don't really know themselves. But they're quite sure it'll happen if only they were able to become more impressive. They will be happy once they are promoted, treated with respect, and given more money.

A great boss feels like an ally, and often it's not the outcome that makes you happy but the hope of a better future.

I think there are many people in an organisation that can alleviate this desire. It's not just managers offering personal development or leaders inspiring people to be bold, sometimes it is your friends that make you see a better perspective on how your life already is. I think it's important to think about how you can make others feel good, and not just how you feel about your own position.

<comment><USER26> People are also designed to never stay happy for long. We will always need more to be happy.

<comment><USER27> Where do you get that idea from?

(There is more evidence for people evolving rather than being designed).

<comment><USER26> Designed by natural selection. People are naturally selected to never stay happy for long.

To be satisfied and satiated means you no longer feel the drive to compete. There is no evolutionary advantage in a creature that does not want to compete.

<comment><USER27> "Design by natural selection"

otherwise known as evolution. Design implies some kind of thought process before creation.

There are plenty of counterintuitive examples of traits that have been selected by evolution. Dogs seems happy all the time and they have not been made extinct yet.

<comment><USER26> >otherwise known as evolution. Design implies some kind of thought process before creation.

I apologize profusely for offending you with the word "Design." I accidentally implied the existence of a god which is a totally off-topic conversation and therefore must commit seppuku.

>There are plenty of counterintuitive examples of traits that have been selected by evolution. Dogs seems happy all the time and they have not been made extinct yet.

Sure, but for the specific case of humanity it is highly likely that the reason we do not stay happy is due to natural selection.

Dogs are a domestic animal and therefore a product of artificial selection. We as benevolent caretakers have have selected the dogs that are happy all the time and euthanized the dogs that are angry all the time. The evolutionary strategy dogs employ is a parasitic strategy and less common than the standard strategy most competitive animals follow. Dogs hijack our paternal and maternal instincts and cause us to give them resources, this caused them to evolve non-standard traits that make them happy all the time and unable to survive in the wild. The evolutionary strategy humans follow is more standard and thus we display more malevolent and competitive traits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> On the other hand, I don't want to be condescended to by managers that invite me to meetings about improving _me_ , assessing my personality, helping me "grow."

I want to help improve the _product_ , and the most fundamental way to engage me with that is to ask me for input and take my ideas & concerns seriously.

Just coffee and a chat every now and then is a great setting for that. No need for made-up agendas and bullet point lists and awkward quizzes.

<comment><USER29> On the third hand, if you have some kind of career goals, then you probably want to be making some kind of progress towards them. While it's not always possible to discuss such goals with your employer (eg. if your goal is "become the CTO" and your immediate manager's goal is also "become the CTO" then discussing this with them is likely to end poorly), it's important to at least let them know which direction you want to go in.

At my last job, I was the primary fire-putter-outer on a number of fronts, and it was very disheartening watching new projects (that I'd put my hand up for) get handed off to others while I was busy fixing up the previous efforts of said others.

<comment><USER30> > At my last job, I was the primary fire-putter-outer on a number of fronts, > and it was very disheartening watching new projects (that I'd put my hand up > for) get handed off to others while I was busy fixing up the previous > efforts of said others.

I've seen this happen at an even bigger scale. The site I was part of was very successful, and was therefore completely unable to get any time or capital to do independent (non-contract) projects. And some of the projects we wanted to do were to improve our IP holdings within the space we were working! Meanwhile, the _entire site_ that lost two contracts to rebids all got put on cool, independent, green-field projects. Completely bananas, and a symptom of a much larger problem of not rewarding success that eventually caused me to leave.

<comment><USER31> I've seen similar behavior and the theory I came up with is that managers are engaged/rewarded by being associated with successful projects and technical people that report to them are engaged/rewarded by new projects and challenges.

I speculated that from their perspective someone tied down to maintaining a very successful project (that continues to make succeed or make money) is in a great position politically and those getting the new green-field projects are being exposed to risk.

It reminds me of meetings–managers don't realize that they are a drain on the people performing the work because that's of course how they work and accomplish things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> All I want is work organization that doesn't get in the way of doing things that actually make money. It's truly unbelievable how even small companies adopted systems that impede sales and engineering, or worse make customers jump through hoops, because it makes life easier for some bean counter.

That other stuff sounds like completely optional nice-to-haves.

<comment><USER33> Having been through a similar knee-jerk of late, the important thing to remember (not that it helps) is that a publicly-traded company is a machine to make money. Not to make sales, not to make designs / widgets, but make money for the investors / owners.

Once I wrapped my head around that it helped somewhat.

<comment><USER32> These aren't public companies and it's definitely costing owners money. But this isn't the point. The OP is about employees' satisfaction and inefficiencies like an inflexible invoicing, warehouse or order management system are incredibly frustrating and demotivating.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I think there may be some confusion between satisfaction through perks with satisfaction through doing great work. I require certain perks - <USER2> time off with my family, time to educate myself further, a reasonably stocked cafeteria, quiet spaces - but I also need to feel satisfied by knowing the work I do is important - and what is "important" to me may not be important to anyone else and what is important to me now was not important ten years ago and will not be important ten years from now.

<comment><USER35> > satisfaction through doing great work

The org psych term for this is "engagement".

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_engagement

Operationally "satisfaction" is an all encompassing term, that doesn't really relate to specific factors. So while you might be "satisfied" with your bank manager, you may not want to marry her.

Engagement speaks of something more: A satisfaction (if you will) derived specifically from doing your work.

As an interesting aside, engagement is theoretically the other side of the coin of "burnout" and is physiologically thought to operate on the same mechanisms as "stress" (or "eustress" to distinguish it positively).

A "satisfied" state relates more to a relaxed, unstressed, disengaged mentality.

Favourite example from one of my textbooks was a lion chasing a gazelle: Both are physiologically experiencing the same thing, but the gazelle is "stressed" whereas the lion is "engaged".

<comment><USER35> Actually you could in fact take this a step further into behavioral theory, if you consider workplace satisfaction derived from doing work versus other sources (football tables etc). It could be said that too much satisfaction from the "other" sources "extinguishes" (or overrides) the satisfaction derived from doing the work.

Kind of like that classic experiment of the rat who is given a regular dosage of cocaine and soon starts to neglect any other activities beyond the consumption of cocaine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's kind of amazing how often this is getting talked about, but little seems to be changing.

A few examples:

1) Mary Meeker's Internet Trends 2015 -> [http://www.slideshare.net/kleinerperkins/internet- trends-v1](http://www.slideshare.net/kleinerperkins/internet-trends-v1)

2) Gallup, here and in some of their research -> [http://www.gallup.com/services/182138/state-american- manager...](http://www.gallup.com/services/182138/state-american-manager.aspx)

3) Deloitte's latest study on Millennials -> [https://getlighthouse.com/blog/deloitte-survey- millennials-2...](https://getlighthouse.com/blog/deloitte-survey- millennials-2016-takeaways/)

4) Reid Hoffman's book, The Alliance -> [http://www.slideshare.net/reidhoffman/the-alliance-a- visual-...](http://www.slideshare.net/reidhoffman/the-alliance-a-visual- summary)

Companies don't reward managers for caring about people's development, so it won't change until companies start to.

</comment><comment><USER36> _... please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait._ \- [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

The original title is, "Employee Satisfaction Doesn't Matter".

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I didn't use the original title because my belief is that it is misleading. Employee satisfaction does matter, but it depends how you define it - that was my take from the story. Imho quoting an actual fact resulting from their study was the objective solution compared to a debatable title meant to attract eyeballs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The problem is this is a hard problem. Developing staff takes effort, time and resources, while a ping-pong table just requires money.

Personally I am of the belief that work is work. Pay for what you expect and expect what you pay for.

<comment><USER37> Totally agree, the hard problem in all of this isn't people analytics or people ops, it's people. Dealing with them is hard because we're all so different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> If you get a great boss, stay where you are. There's not much more important, IME.

<comment><USER39> I've also seen assertions that employees don't leave companies, they leave supervisors.

<comment><USER20> And the data backs up that statement... [https://getlighthouse.com/blog/gallup-employee-engagement- su...](https://getlighthouse.com/blog/gallup-employee-engagement-survey- managers/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's pretty simple: If they don't care about me, why should I care about their product? I'll still come in and do the job, but why should I put in extra effort?

<comment><USER40> Related: [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140508133157.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140508133157.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I currently work for a small company in Denmark. The moment I decided to sign a contract with the firm, all my friends look at me and wondered: why? The answer was simple: I chose a boss, not an employer.

</comment><comment><USER42> I don't disagree, who could.

But this type of stuff is usually nothing more than a justification for taking away the free lunch, without actually doing anything about making sure people have meaningful and fulfilling work. You know, we're getting serious by taking away the free Cheez-Its... and making your boss ride your ass to work 12 hour days.

</comment><comment><USER43> I think this touches the odd phenomenon of our hedonic preferences. In a given moment there are probably a majority of people in corporate, public ("money making machines" as I believe someone referred to them as) who would state that they desire the increased vacation, provided meals, ping pong table version of happiness at work and truly believe that would make them better off. And it likely would to some degree, but as has been shown in economics over and over, outside of basic needs we have a remarkable ability to normalize our happiness back to a baseline level despite increases in material access (but we still crave). Thus this may put an employer in an odd dilemma if deciding where to place their "happiness" efforts for their employees. Employees would support "perks" and "perks" are easy. But to sustainably become a motivating and development-focused employer you need a ton of buy-in from likely apathetic managers, you need a top-down level of emotional maturity and management skill that is rarely seen in companies of scale, and you need to have the ability to operate in a longer term horizon (because payoffs and results take time) which few companies and leaders do. I guess the 'so what' from this is that we should take it upon ourselves to move beyond visceral preferences to act in our (and others') real best self-interest.

</comment><comment><USER44> Giving employees a reasonable amount of vacation is bad? Fuck you

</comment><comment><USER26> This article is wrong. Why is it wrong? It talks about fulfilling work and a great boss as if it's the ONLY thing that employees look for. BY common sense what employees look for is a huge multitude of factors combined together part of which includes "Free lunches, more vacation time, latte machines --- and don't forget a ping pong table." It is stupid to discard all of these things as inconsequential when the employee himself states that these are things he wants.

Engaging work is ONLY one factor out of many things that Employees declare that they want.

What this article is trying and failing to address is the fact that most employees become dissatisfied with their work EVEN when employers try to satisfy all these needs and wants. It hints at the fact that there is something that the employee wants that he isn't fully aware of. What is this thing that he wants?

Simple. The answer is: Career Growth. As humans our needs and wants are unlimited. It doesn't matter how many needs and wants are satisfied, the employee will eventually want more. Employees are looking for a continuous improvement in their well-being keyword being "continuous." The company that provides the employee with the fastest rate of unlimited growth is the company that retains the employee.

The reality is, nothing can satisfy an employee if his wants and needs are unlimited. We all fight for this plateau of ultimate satisfaction that we will never reach. If you want to retain employees you must give employees the constant illusion that they are making progress towards this nonexistent plateau.

<comment><USER45> Not all jobs can offer growth. It's in everybody's best interests if you just move on from such jobs once you outgrow them.

I spent two and a half years at my current job maintaining a legacy codebase. I looked for, and explored, growth opportunities at that job. In the end, I had to find them myself. Nobody at the company could really put in the effort it would have taken to keep me fulfilled, so I did it myself. I did lots of reading, experimenting, diving deep into fundamentals.

I am a much, much better programmer than I was when I started the job. The company did not give that to me, it couldn't have given it to me.

I eventually convinced the company to move off of the old legacy platform, that it was holding them back. I wanted to build them a new platform, but they decided to go with Magento. They're giving me a pretty sweet severance deal while I go out looking for a job.

I firmly believe that anybody can grow at any job. It's nice when the company can help you do that, but your own growth is your responsibility, and nobody else's.

<comment><USER26> >I firmly believe that anybody can grow at any job. It's nice when the company can help you do that, but your own growth is your responsibility, and nobody else's.

I'm not talking about personal growth.

I'm talking about growth in benefits, like salary or working environment. People leave companies or learn new skills to get more benefits. The company needs to provide better benefits, continuously, or the employee leaves. Simply buying a ping pong table or giving an employee "engaging work" isn't enough.

<comment><USER45> > The company needs to provide better benefits, continuously, or the employee > leaves.

This smacks of entitlement.

The employee won't necessarily leave, there are many reasons why they wouldn't. There's a whole world of jobs out there that aren't tech, these fields don't have the luxury of an expanding industry propping up salaries, providing a social ladder.

Even in tech, I don't see anything wrong with the decision to keep the same compensation, and turn over staff every few years. This only contributes to a thriving job market, and means more opportunity for people at the bottom to make their way into the field. More people coming in at the bottom means more demand for services, meaning more opportunity at the top for organizing and directing.

It would be wonderful to have the benefits of industry growth along with the security of one job for life, but we don't live in that world.

<comment><USER26> >This smacks of entitlement.

Employees should feel entitled. They generate 99% of our GDP while 50% of that GDP goes to the top 1% of the population. The capitalist employer / employee relationship is designed to screw over the employee. The word "entitlement" is a classic guilt tripping technique used by either employee or employer. Ignore it, because as an employee you will never get a high enough salary that can tip the scales. With 50% of the worlds wealth in the hands of the 1% (aka the employers), the metrics say one thing and one thing only: you are always entitled to more.

>The employee won't necessarily leave, there are many reasons why they wouldn't. There's a whole world of jobs out there that aren't tech, these fields don't have the luxury of an expanding industry propping up salaries, providing a social ladder.

If the employee isn't leaving and their isn't any growth, than the employee stays out of desperation or fear. The employee is essentially too afraid to take the risk to create growth. This is not the definition of employee satisfaction. Many employees are in this situation and many employees aren't satisfied because of it. It is very rare for a man to feel 100% satisfied without any continuous growth. Additionally, I am not talking about whether this situation is wrong or right, I am talking about what an employer needs to do to satisfy an employee. Whether the employer wants to do that is a different issue.

>It would be wonderful to have the benefits of industry growth along with the security of one job for life, but we don't live in that world.

Sure. I never said anything to the contrary. We don't live in an ideal world. But the context for my comment is "How to satisfy an employee" and I answer the question with what is required.

The conversation is sidetracking from my initial comment about the true nature of employment satisfaction into a technical argument on why such an idealist endeavor isn't executed. So what? Do you agree with me on what makes an employee satisfied or do you have evidence/logic to falsify my reasoning?

<comment><USER45> You know what keeps real employees satisfied at their jobs, not just the entitled ones that expect the good life to just come to them?

A sense of purpose. The feeling that what you do _matters_. The feeling that at the end of the day, you've accomplished something. Something worth giving 1/3 of your life towards.

You're hiding your greed behind classist nonsense. You don't want a sense of purpose, you just want that paycheck to keep getting bigger. You are very probably already in the 1% of top income earners in the world. Being that that cutoff is $34,000/year, it's not hard.

You should be focused less on fighting those with more than you, and more on working with them to do things that _matter_.

<comment><USER26> Classist nonsense? Greed? "Smacks of Entitlement"? Your language has been negative and insulting and I am highly offended. Your attitude is against HN rules.

>A sense of purpose. The feeling that what you do matters. The feeling that at the end of the day, you've accomplished something. Something worth giving 1/3 of your life towards.

You truly think that's all people want? Most people with jobs do not work on something they consider meaningful. To do so means they ARE LUCKY. If that's the case why are they working? What is the factor that is satiating them when the job provides Zero meaning? Salary. You're essentially claiming most employees aren't "real" because they work for money instead of meaningful work.

You know those quants at wall street who spend their days building algorithms that trade meaningless paper stocks that contribute nothing to GDP? They do it for half a million dollars annual salary, not for a job that matters.

>You're hiding your greed behind classist nonsense. You don't want a sense of purpose, you just want that paycheck to keep getting bigger.

I'm not even really hiding anything. All people want more money, including me. You're trying to paint me as some "greedy" person because I want more money when wanting more money is NORMAL. We are all imperfect creatures and we all want more money. To openly deny this desire means you are a creature of utter moral perfection and I question your honesty and the existence of such a creature.

What I really want is this: More money AND a sense of purpose. Isn't that what everyone wants? All you want is a sense of purpose and minimum wage. Ok, good for you.

>You are very probably already in the 1% of top income earners in the world. Being that that cutoff is $34,000/year, it's not hard.

Your numbers are loaded like the rest of your argument. You need 500,000 annually to be in the top 1%: [http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2011/10/19/what- percent-are-y...](http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2011/10/19/what-percent-are- you/)

>You should be focused less on fighting those with more than you, and more on working with them to do things that matter.

Who are you to tell me what I should do or what I want? You do not control what satisfies an employee. Majority consensus defines this concept not you telling me what I should do.

Also note that no employee ever really works "with" the employer as you put it. To do so means you get an equal piece of the pie. Hence the usual term is "Employees work FOR employers."

<comment><USER46> I think that half-million is in the USA, not the world. Most people in the world make a few dollars a day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I agree with the point, and appreciate the article stating in words what I've felt.

If a recruiter tries to push the 'game room and free snacks' angle, I immediately grow concerned that the employer is out of touch with employees and thinks that this leads to happiness.

Everyone really wants to feel their work is appreciated.

</comment><comment><USER48> I'd also throw in "and treats them with respect"

Otherwise you end up with someone who has their entire identity wrapped up in their work, which can be stressful no matter how much they "care about professional development"

</comment><comment><USER49> I don't want my boss to look out for my development -- I want my boss to make sure that I have a clear political field to advance my technical agenda.

Do that, and I'll take care of my personal development.

<comment><USER50> Those are one in the same. Development could be:

\- clearing roadblocks \- training and coaching \- assigning work \- forcing a change

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I'd just like to note that this article has given us a fine new phrase to put on the shelf of useful business culture metaphors, right next to bike-shedding and dog-fooding.

Bear-feeding!

</comment><comment><USER37> My approach to this is giving companies a place to start these kinds of discussions with people - [https://www.somewhere.com/for- companies](https://www.somewhere.com/for-companies)

Not people analytics or people ops, but a way to talk about how you think about and approach work.

</comment><comment><USER52> Couldn't agree more. More and more people should focus on finding the right boss instead of employer.

</comment><comment><USER53> I want to write and learn good coding for myself.

While the boss would be just as happy with crappy code as good code, as long as he sees that project percentage increase, it just makes me happier to do it right as much as possible, even if I spend my own time on it.

<comment><USER17> Here is something I don't understand: How does one effectively deliver on a project while writing crappy code? Doesn't trying to do that result in the codebase becoming so confusing that you don't know how to add things to it without breaking other things?

<comment><USER54> When writing crappy code you are either not thinking long term at all, or you are just "kicking the can down the road", in that you'll pay for it later when there isn't a time crunch.

Not that I've ever done something like that...

<comment><USER17> What I mean is, how do you keep it from catching up with you a week later?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Good article, thanks. Employees want to feel fulfilled, and engaged in their work. A huge part of that starts with leaders, NOT managers. The world doesn't need managers, they need leaders.

<comment><USER56> The world needs both.

Consider an expedition making its way through a jungle. There are a bunch of people hacking out a path with machetes. The manager makes sure the machetes are sharp, that everybody has enough food and water, and generally ensures that hacking continues unimpeded. The leader climbs a tree and makes sure the hacking is taking place in the right place.

Back to your point - yes, you're partly right, but at its root it's an agency issue -

Shareholder (owner) cannot or doesn't want to run the company, and so employs someone (an agent) to do it on his/her behalf. These agents are leadership roles (typically CEO, CFO, COO and CTO roles).

However, where these appointed leaders don't have a large-enough financial stake in the organisation, they will do things to better their own financial interests, rather than the interests of the shareholders.

That disconnect is called agency cost. A side effect is that these leaders become managers because bettering your own interests requires finesse (aka management). Sh*t, of course, flows downwards, and needs more managers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Employee satisfaction _does_ matter to a point, as a "hygiene factor" \- but yes the author is right, it's not to be confused with "engagement".

</comment><comment><USER57> Stated in another way: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1UayuSXBcg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1UayuSXBcg).

</comment><comment><USER58> This is a great opinion piece. Where's the sources for the data behind the rationale?

<comment><USER59> There isn't really any. This is the Chairman and CEO wanting to opine, probably to encourage sales[1]:

> What's more, companies should have all of their employees take the Clifton > StrengthsFinder assessment and make sure they build programs for each of > those employees to get the most of their innate talents and strengths at > work.

[1] From "Millions of Bad Managers Are Killing America's Growth" (linked to from the OP's article): [http://www.gallup.com/opinion/chairman/169208/millions- bad-m...](http://www.gallup.com/opinion/chairman/169208/millions-bad-managers- killing-america-growth.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> 2-way street</comment>


Company uses protein sequencing for material engineering - <AUTHOR> http://boltthreads.com/technology/

<comment><AUTHOR> Previous item that mentioned this but the blurb is kinda bogus - spiders have nothing to do with it [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9659276](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9659276) (spider DNA was used as an insipiration apparently).</comment>