Gravity Payments: Seattle company with a minimum salary of $70K - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/30/opinion/sunday/dan-price-minimum-wage.html <comment><USER2> This is almost 100% true. My friend was interviewed and was offered the job. In spite of all the articles that said everyone gets paid $70K, he was offered $65K. He tried negotiating his salary but they would not budge. If I'm not mistaken, they cited that his position was a special case. Regardless, my point is that the minimum salary is not $70k.

<comment><USER3> I find this a little hard to believe as you described. A company whose main reputation based on a $70k minimum is going to throw that away over a measly $5k a year?

Was your friend a contractor? Did he require a work visa? Was he based in the US and working at their office? Was he actually being directly employed by them or through an intermediary?

<comment><USER4> That reputation is probably exactly what someone in the chain relied on to make a few exceptions... because skepticism will drown out these exceptions quickly...

Just a random thought. I don't know the company or the parent in anyway so I am neither supporting nor dismissing anything.

<comment><USER5> This is rubbish, even one report can ruin a reputation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's an old story. And a good one! I'm glad TFA acknowledges the huge PR benefits that accrued for doing this. It's amazing actually we're still here talking about it.

In certain businesses, there's actually a lot to be said for only being willing to hire a person who can provide at least $70k of value.

It's also a bit of a misnomer to laud the owner of a company and 100% of its equity for taking a salary cut.

All that said I think that greed and what I'll call "celebrity" drives the income disparity between the median and the 90th percentile workers' salaries at a given company far too high.

As an aside, this sentence was so tongue-in-cheek it was jarring;

> _Jody Hall, a good liberal who worries about income inequality, owns a > nearby cafe, Cupcake Royale. She chooses Gravity to process her payments, > admires what Price has done and offers her own employees health care._

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure of numbers but I'd imagine a 70k salary would mean higher than purely salary costs (depending on company industry etc) after other expenses

<comment><USER8> What? Are you including a large private office in costs?

Obviously there is a cost past salary but it's not over 100%

<comment><USER9> correct.

in the US, there will be an extra ~10% above that for FICA/unemployment. The company will probably shell out another ~$12k for health insurance (I'm speaking averages here - I know some companies are very generous, and others aren't). Factor in some x% salary matching in to a 401k - say another 5%, and perhaps some other perks. Let's say there's another ~$20k on top of the $70k - that $70k employee may cost the company $95k.

If you then want to apportion office/equipment costs, you can do that too, but that $70k employee is not costing $140k (unless, perhaps, they're being very generous with some shares and there's a cost associated with that, and perhaps tuition reimbursement, company car and some other perks on top of what was mentioned above... maybe). Those sorts of things aren't generally given to someone in the US making $70k.

<comment><USER8> I know how the works. I own a business. The 130% above salary number doesn't math out.

<comment><USER9> sure - wasn't trying to correct you, just to add on in the same vein as you were posting, that's all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's incredible to me how simple it is to attract and retain dedicated, talented employees: pay them. You can see this clear as day when you walk into an In-n-out vs. a Mcdonalds, Chick-fil-a vs. KFC, or Target vs. Walmart. The employees are almost universally happier, friendlier, more efficient, and willing to go the extra mile to help you out. It's not about some sense of moral righteousness, it's just good business sense.

<comment><USER11> While I generally agree with the sentiment there is no such thing as a labour shortage, only a pay shortage, money is not a panacea.

For one, people's expectations change. I couldn't count the number of times I've seen a Bay Area software engineer 4 years out of college genuinely believe they're justified in complaining about their lot in life because they can't afford a 5 bedroom house in Palo Alto, all the while being driven around and being fed for free by workers making $20 an hour who have to try and live in the same area.

Look at the obvious internal strife at places like Google over efforts like Maven and Dragonfly. If it was just money motivating them, would you see that? Would you see people who leave over it?

<comment><USER12> It's the "Keeping up with the Joneses" problem, but nowadays the Joneses are flashing their material wealth on Instagram (and they don't tell you if it's real or faked).

E.g. this guy has pictures from yachts, but he's not enjoying it, he's working: [https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-lonely-life-of-a- yac...](https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-lonely-life-of-a-yacht- influencer)

<comment><USER13> "I want a house." isn't exactly yacht envy. It's a standard expectation in most of the country. Having a high-paying job in an extremely high cost of living area makes the economics weird. You're not rich until you can save up a bunch of that money and escape.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I worked a bit to integrate Gravity payments at a SAAS company I worked for a few years ago.

Aside from the technical aspects, I was struck by how much "Dan Price!" there was in everything I read. Here we have some more.

I think this whole 70k a year thing has been very clever. The guy is getting millions of dollars of publicity for giving about half the company a modest raise...

Not criticizing the guy - he seems kind. And whatever the personal gain he gets from this, he's acting as a "rising tide" here.

<comment><USER15> I don't think the move and the Jesus look are an accident. Read this piece by Esquire: [https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/a46922/dan-price-the- proph...](https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/a46922/dan-price-the-prophet- motive-esq-2016/)

He being portrayed as Jesus on multiple magazines is nauseating, to say the least.

<comment><USER16> Are you sure it's not an accident? ;-)

[https://hips.hearstapps.com/esq.h-cdn.co/assets/16/31/147016...](https://hips.hearstapps.com/esq.h-cdn.co/assets/16/31/1470166078-esq- september-2016-dan-price-01.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "For a while, it wasn't clear that the gamble was going to pay off.

But eventually it did: Business has surged, and profits are higher than ever. Gravity last year processed $10.2 billion in payments, more than double the $3.8 billion in 2014, before the announcement. It has grown to 200 employees, all nonunion."

Impossible to know whether this would work in different market conditions, but it's a good sign. One rationalization could be workers being more productive because they are paid more. I know this clashes with some economic models, but there's definitely a marginal argument for getting more for paying more.

<comment><USER18> In custmer service the scale is infinite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The Netflix model is the one that I would take if I ever ran a company. Pay every employee top of the market but fire quickly and decisively if they don't meet very high expectations. Every employee that survives at Netflix is very, very happy and motivated. Their engineering team universally is happy and extremely productive and I think it makes a lot of sense.

<comment><USER20> >Their engineering team universally is happy and extremely productive and I think it makes a lot of sense.

Who's word would you take for it?

Anonymous reviews on Glassdoor don't seem to agree with that.

<comment><USER19> I prefer listening to the opinions of the half dozens Netflix engineers and finance employees that I know personally rather than anonymous reviews.

<comment><USER21> The opinions of 6 people, with known relationships instead of being randomly sampled, out of the population of Netflix developers, is incredibly statistically insignificant.

<comment><USER22> Opinions of people I know and consider to be friends are of far more importance to me than that of anonymous randos on the internet.

I recently turned down a job offer at a company based upon friend's feedback and went to a lower paying job that had a lot of negative reviews on glass door. So far, at a month in, I havent seen anything backing the negative reviews. I'm happy at this point, and my commute is the best I've ever had. 15-20 minutes door to door.

<comment><USER5> Great, that is enough for you. That is meaningless to anyone else, who does not know you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "The payment of five dollars a day for an eight-hour day was one of the finest cost-cutting moves we ever made, and the six-dollar-a-day wage is cheaper than the five. How far this will go we do not know." - Henry Ford

(Context: before they were making $2.34/day)

[0] [https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2014/01/ford-doubles- min...](https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2014/01/ford-doubles-minimum- wage/)

<comment><USER24> Great article. I especially loved this bit:

> Ford employees would be "demoralized by this sudden affluence,"

I am always amazed at the ability of people to rationalize fucking over others as somehow good for them.

<comment><USER25> It's like how GitLab justifies paying people less in lower cost of living areas by saying that they don't want unhappy employees to feel like they should keep working there just for the money.

<comment><USER26> Eh that reasoning is weird but the location based income just makes sense to me. Do we really expect everyone to make silicon-valley salaries when they don't live in such ridiculously expensive areas?

<comment><USER24> I expect salary to be the same for same-skilled remote workers no matter where they live. I would expect that to result in most remote workers not living in Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER27> Why would you expect that?

It would certainly be nice if I was paid based on value generated (it would mean a big raise even in SV), but that's not normally how economies work.

<comment><USER24> Equivalent products have equivalent prices, barring transportation expenses. With remote employees, transportation is irrelevant.

<comment><USER27> Only within the same market.

The same apartment in Manhattan will cost more than in Houston. The same mixed drink costs more at a fancy restaurant as at a dive bar.

Demand is as relative to price as supply is. There is a lower demand for developers in Topeka, and so the cost of developers is lower as a result.

<comment><USER24> There's no "in Topeka" for remote developers, though.

If you could materialize a drink from a distant bar in your kitchen, and the drink from the dive bar was identical to the one from the fancy restaurant, would you pay more for the one from the fancy restaurant?

Consider a real-world example. You go to the grocery store and buy some strawberries. Some of the boxes are from a place where they're cheaper to grow, and some are from a place where they're more expensive to grow. Would you pay more for the latter? This sort of intermingling is common, and every time I've seen it, the prices are the same. The store doesn't even consider them to be separate products. They have the same bar code and ring up identically.

Barring difficulties with international borders or time zones, there is only one market for remote workers. It doesn't make the slightest bit of difference if the remote employee is in Topeka or Manhattan. Why pay more for the latter?

<comment><USER27> But remote developers aren't the only kind of developers, and people do pay more for strawberries grown locally.

The remote developer market is a piece of the developer market, and the developer market pays more for developers in SF than in Topeka, same as remote strawberries cost less (often because cost of labor is lower).

As a remote dev, you're competing with other remote devs who can out price you. If I can offer someone else 10k less for the same product, why wouldn't I?

<comment><USER24> People who want local strawberries pay more for them. People who just want strawberries and don't care where they came from won't pay more.

We're specifically talking about remote workers here. The fact that some companies pay more for non-remote people doesn't really come into it. If you're hiring remotely, it makes no sense to pay more for an equivalent employee who lives in a more expensive area.

<comment><USER27> Price discrimination often makes sense.

If you have two offers, otherwise equal, and one pays more, will you refuse it because that offer is less than what you would have been paid in another location?

If you're a remote dev with skill x, unless you want to take less money, you're going to compete with the many more remote devs with skill x in other more expensive locations. So you accept less money because you can afford to, and that's better than no offer at all (because it went to a different person).

<comment><USER24> As long as skilled, unemployed remote workers exist in cheap areas, I'd expect the salary to be lower than that of non-remote workers in expensive areas, and I'd expect remote workers in expensive areas to be unable to compete. Once you run out of remote workers in cheap areas, I'd expect salaries to rise enough to start attracting the ones in more expensive areas. But salaries would naturally rise for _all_ of them, because they're all ultimately in the same market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've looked for the reference, but I can't find it--An important point in earlier coverage was Price's reasoning for setting the bar at $70k/year. It's not just that this is a decent salary or a good salary. The idea, if my memory serves me, was there is a threashold. Below that level, every additional dollar adds significantly to your quality of life. It's the difference between having health care, and child care, and not just one or the other.

<comment><USER29> There was a popular sociology paper (since debunked) that picked that $70k/yr number.

It's obvious on its face that a single number for all demographics in the country (or world?) is an absurd claim.

<comment><USER28> What's interesting is the idea of an income threashold where each additional dollar meets a previously unmet need, and somewhere above that line, additional dollars have a different impact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I remember reading about these guys years ago. I'm so glad that it worked out for them, and they still maintain high salaries.

</comment><comment><USER31> A bunch from 2015:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9371854](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9371854)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9375978](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9375978)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10450541](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10450541)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10452546](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10452546)

</comment><comment><USER32> If I am am ever in a position to do the same, I may want to try it.

If you want excellent people, you have to start by paying above-market anyways. No matter the role.

And by having a flat salary, you take out a big contributor of stress and distraction.

Of course, the question is what you do with those employees who's market rate is above the flat salary rate? Not sure how I would solve that, but I am sure there are better ways than going back to negotiating every salary independently.

<comment><USER33> I would want to be compensated in kind. If they have enough money to double the least valuable employees from 35k to 70k, I would also demand double.

I don't think there are bad incentives from increasing mean of the pay distribution. But similar to the problems with minimum wage, this 70k wage minimum significantly compresses the distribution instead of just changing the mean.

This creates very bad long-term incentives for the company and employees.

<comment><USER24> I always want more money, but I don't see why I'd expect it here. If the company cut my pay in order to pay the janitors $70,000 I might be perturbed, but as long as my pay remains steady, what do I care if people lower down the pay scale make more?

Tech workers are paid incredibly well. Maybe that's because we create so much value, but our ability to do so is partly due to luck and circumstance. Certainly, the poor sucker emptying the trash cans for minimum wage puts in more effort each day than I ever do, and the company needs them in order to operate just as much as they need me.

<comment><USER34> the company really doesn't need the janitor as much as it needs software devs. the janitor is only worth employing because they free other workers to spend their time on more valuable tasks. if, for some reason, janitors weren't cheaper than devs, you would see a lot more devs emptying trash cans.

<comment><USER24> Literally all employees are only worth employing because they free other people to do other things. Devs don't directly contribute to any fundamental human need. We're valuable because our work can facilitate those who do take care of those needs.

The relative need is entirely down to supply and demand. And while I greatly appreciate being part of a group with limited supply and great demand, I don't see why this means I should object to other people getting more.

<comment><USER34> > Literally all employees are only worth employing because they free other > people to do other things.

this is true but it glosses over an important distinction between skilled and unskilled labor. skilled positions in engineering and sales (just for example) require specific skills and probably some baseline aptitude that can't be quickly acquired. that is, you can't just assign your engineers some sales duties if it becomes too expensive to hire sales people, and most sales people can't just pick up engineering tasks if it's too expensive to hire more engineers.

in contrast, most able-bodied adults can learn to sweep, mop, etc. in a couple weeks. maybe extend it to a couple months if they need to use heavier equipment to clean a large space. this inherently puts a ceiling on the value of janitorial work. if janitor pay gets too close to pay for a skilled role, it's just not worth hiring the janitor anymore.

you can see this dynamic play out in restaurants and convenience stores. most businesses like these don't hire janitors, because they would have to pay them as much or more than they pay the waitstaff, cooks, or cashiers. instead, the normal employees are usually tasked with cleaning the workspace at the end of their shifts.

to be clear, I am not contesting your greater point. the fact that some people don't perform extremely valuable work doesn't mean it's okay to treat them like dirt; it doesn't make them less valuable _as people_. but the claim that a software company needs a janitor as much as it needs an engineer just isn't true.

<comment><USER35> Assuming that everything you said is true (and it is), why should the engineers care? They are still getting the same salary they had before and likely still have a much higher top tier than everyone else. If they are able to put their ego aside, they would see they were not negatively affected at all. If I was an engineer getting a fair market wage at 70k, and then the janitor gets a raise to an above fair market wage of 70k as well, it does not affect anything in my life. I am not going to quit and go work across the street as an engineer still making 70k just to ensure the janitor there knows I am more valuable.

<comment><USER36> It does underline how for some people it's not about the absolute amount the earn, but about where it places them in the pecking order. Raise up the janitor and they're relatively speaking closer to the floor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is a great feel-good story. I do disagree with this, though:

"For a while, it wasn't clear that the gamble was going to pay off. But eventually it did...."

I think the final page isn't yet written. NYT seems to be declaring the whole thing a success, but they are picking the timeframe for deciding when things are final. Let's give it 10 or 20 years, see where they are at.

I won't be unhappy if it's the same, but I will be surprised.

<comment><USER38> I remember the naysayers of the time said that the existing $70,000 employees, and even some of those who were paid less than $70,000, would feel jealous that the lowest paid employee now was making the same as them. These people would presumably cause a fuss and then leave, and Gravity would lose their good employees and the institutional knowledge. One journalist managed to find someone to anonymously say that.

They said customers would know that the employees were "overpaid" and switch to another processor, although why this would work without those processors also being cheaper I never understood.

In this sense, the experiment is a success. At this point, it seems there will need to be a sudden change in the market to put them out of business, such as a very efficient provider with better customer service.

Nonetheless, most of what we pay in payments processing goes to parties like card issuers for their rewards programs and to the networks for their oligopoly rents. This means that the cost of the processor is relatively small. If they are making the kind of revenue that allowed this change in the first place, they will probably be able to keep making it until there is a real change in our processing system. That change would probably be regulation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Why do people have to equate any deviation from average with socialism? This is just a company trying out a different pay scale.

<comment><USER40> Due to ignorance and propaganda, uninformed people think that socialism is universal healthcare, higher pay, etc They don't know the meaning of the word nor how this ideology works.

<comment><USER41> > universal healthcare, higher pay, etc.

This is what's technically known as "socialism with Scandinavian characteristics".

<comment><USER42> Socialism as it is technically understood is state ownership of the means of production and all parts of the economy. The state controls how the economy is traded and who gets what.

Scandinavian countries are social democracies which very strongly embrace capitalism, and have strong social safety nets through taxation.

<comment><USER43> I've never formally learned Political Science so I could be off-base here, but doesn't it go like this?

Socialism: the workers own the means of production

Communism: the state owns the means of production*

*Granted, what I was taught in history is that socialism is viewed as a halfway point where communism is the ultimate goal, and that communism should involve ownership by the workers rather than the state— pretty much always, however, the state ends up with ownership (otherwise it's hard to maintain order in a by-intrinsic-nature oppressive society).

If I'm wrong, please feel free to critique and offer some readings? :)

<comment><USER29> Start by looking up the words in one of the many free online dictionaries.

Both mean state control of the economy. One of them means paying people what the state thinks they need and requiring them to work how the state thinks they can, as opposed to other strategies like competitive market forces.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> The gdp of the United States is 19.39 trillion dollars; the number of full time workers is 128.57 million. Divide the first number by the second and you get $150,812 per worker- plenty to give everyone 70k per year. This is back of the envelope math and obviously is not very precise but still, there's plenty of money to go around, and a lot of room for the minimum wage to go up.

<comment><USER45> Is labor cost the only input for GDP? That calculation assumes everyone is equal, when everyone is not. An aerospace engineer is far more valuable and rare than a guy that washes cars. A doctor is more valuable than a burger cook. Tim Cook is more valuable than a security guard at a mall.

<comment><USER44> You're confusing productivity with leverage. A person who harvests cabbage arguably already produces 70k worth of value every year- they just don't have any leverage to claim any of that value for themselves since they are easily replaced. It has nothing to do with how much value they produce. By the same token there are only so many technical jobs in any economy, and if the supply of those jobs increases beyond the demand you'll just see a lot of extra credentials and other filters placed to eliminate the excess.

Edit: and of course the extreme, canonical example of this phenomenon is people who have no jobs but hold lots of stocks, which allows them to extract tremendous economic rents from their leverage as the owners of the land, machinery and organizations required to make the economy run, but without personally contributing any value at all.

<comment><USER46> Hmm, I'm not sure I agree with the specific example given here. How can you say that a cabbage harvester produces $70k in value per year when they are paid much less than that, and every part of the supply chain for cabbage almost certainly enjoys tiny margins (cabbage farms, cabbage distributors, and grocery stores are not known as high margin businesses as far as I am aware).

You might argue that the excess value being produced by the cabbage harvester is being accrued by the consumer - that they are enjoying significant value from the cabbage that they aren't paying for. But I doubt that too - I'm almost certain that if the price of cabbage were to, say, double, that cabbage sales would plummet.

I'm not saying that jobs are not always compensated with their true value. You're right that frequently people extract much more or much less value than they produce. But I think that your example is not one of these, and I'm curious if there is research about how many* jobs actually fit this description.

<comment><USER44> If all the stockbrokers of the world or the people writing vision statements or selling timeshares or what have you went on strike, would anyone notice?

If all the food harvesters of the world went on strike, how long would the human race last?

Whose job is more essential?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Limbaugh is right about one thing: ongoing capitalism is predicated on labor's willingness to operate within a framework designed to efficiently capture surplus value created by employees, and concentrate it at the top of a company's hierarchy. In that particular sense Gravity is no longer an example of successful capitalist enterprise. Funny thing is, taxonomy matters not a little bit for those who are served by Gravity's model: the owners, employees, and customers. If it works for them without harming anyone else, it's not for us to judge.

<comment><USER48> Going further, the employees should actually get paid some share of the profits that they generate, not just a fixed salary.

<comment><USER33> That's how bonuses work. A good rule of thumb in finance is that you "deserve" 5% of the money you generate. You make 5m, you get 250k.

<comment><USER49> Do you mean as base salary or as a bonus? Lots of tech companies report earnings per employee, and the I'm used to hearing that number be in the couple hundred thousand range. Apple is at $400k earnings per employee. That would mean Apple should be paying $20k as yearly salary or as a bonus on average at your 5% rule. Sounds like bonus territory.

<comment><USER33> Well, ideally, your base salary is pretty low and your bonus is big. This is the model used in finance because the returns are very unpredictable and the standard deviation between the worst and best employees is very large. Bonuses also provide good incentives to employees.

But to answer your question, total comp should be around 5% of the money you book for the firm. So salary + bonus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> "A small Seattle company shows that capitalism can have a heart."

and then everyone forgets it exists, and someone 5 years later does something completely different like form a "B-Corporation" to prove the exact same thing

<comment><USER29> B corps are older than Gravity's thing

<comment><USER50> and charitable/purpose driven foundations which own companies are older than B corps

> capitalism can have a heart

yet people are still trying to prove this instead of using established solutions. I would say this is mostly ignorance along side a sales pitch instead of merely being discontent with what is available

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Producing half a million boxes of cookies with 6 people had me wonder if people truly care so deeply that the cookies cost 99 cents. I made 35 euro in a 5 hour shift.

I don't see a reason the company would go down if they paid the 6 employees 1000 or 2000 per day. I don't know about you but if I want the cookies I don't give a flying fuck if they cost either 99 cents or 1 euro. Does this behavior change when one earns more than 35 euro per day? I think it only changes when one buys more than 10 000 boxes of cookies. Then that 1 cent would be woah 100 euro - unacceptibal!

I think the minimum wage should be designed by dedicated government committee based on the price of the product and the amount of customers served.

I currently work a minimum wage job cleaning trains. I serve some crazy number of customers (I guestimate 100 k daily) who pay 50-100 euro for a ticket. If they paid 5 cent extra the cleaners could earn 1000 euro per day. Sounds like a joke but people are already paying this for cleaning the real question is why they aren't getting what they paid for.

Its all culture, it has nothing to do with what things cost nor what they are worth. Its just like this idea that people doing brutal physical labor should also work 8 hours and work that job till they are 80 - as if that is even possible.

I really think we need a committee who with a serious face have to sign off on each job. Give them nice bonuses that they have to pay back if their estimates didn't work.

<comment><USER51> Businesses will pay an employee what that employee can get if they walk across the street and take a job. There are altruistic employers that pay more but this would never fly at a public company or government agency where the business owners are you and me.

<comment><USER29> Government commonly pays people far more than competitive, usually in the form of extra paid hours for nonwork, at the office or in pensions.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask PG/YC: Why doesn't YC take a convertible note instead of equity? - <AUTHOR>

With the emphasis on convertible notes for startups (http://paulgraham.com/hiresfund.html), why doesn't YC take one? Why push one set of standards for other early investors but extract another for yourselves?<p>$20k may not be much, but in the context of a convertible note, even with a significant discount, YC's contributions could be properly valued by the market rather than set as an arbitrary standard. <comment><USER2> Probably because most of the value isn't in the money they are offering. Thus, offering a convertible note would undervalue their contribution to the startup.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure about YC's case. But, at the base of it: Convertible Notes = Debt. Even though they provide a chance at equity in the future, that is not guaranteed. I have heard more than a few Angel Investors indicate they are in the business of investing in companies, not lending money.</comment>


Influential Reinhart-Rogoff Pro-Austerity Research Riddled with Errors - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/16/reinhart-rogoff-austerity-research-errors_n_3094015.html <comment><USER2> From 2013, for those who remember it the first time it went around and thought this might be a new finding.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for that. I didn't see the previous posting, but it seemed important.

<comment><USER2> It was important. It's became part of the argument against austerity. The continued support for it, despite poor evidence that it's useful, has convinced me that austerity exists for something other than promoting the public good.

(That's not the only evidence which lead to my conclusion.)</comment></comment></comment>


How Capitalism Stifles Innovation - <AUTHOR> https://tribunemag.co.uk/2020/08/how-capitalism-stifles-innovation <comment><USER2> Somewhat related, I wrote a critique of money [1] a few months ago and in that I illustrate how removing the need for money could stimulate advancement in the arts and sciences. Rather than needing to secure grant funding, research projects would only need to source the raw materials they need. I argue that money is not the central object of study in economics, but actually material flows, and that abstracting economic problems into problems of money obscures the underlying issues with material flows.

[1] [https://jpreston.xyz/2020/05/07/abolish- money.html](https://jpreston.xyz/2020/05/07/abolish-money.html)</comment>


Programmer ability, what does "the best" actually mean - <AUTHOR> http://cvmountain.com/2012/04/programmer-ability-what-does-the-best-actually-mean/

<comment><AUTHOR> Naturally "the best" is subjective in many important ways, but its something I hear all the time. A pity that when I hear it, it's usually followed by "...and we're offering up to (M)" where (M) is below even the market average.</comment>


Announcing more functionality to improve customer engagements on Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://blog.twitter.com/developer/en_us/topics/tools/2017/announcing-more-functionality-to-improve-customer-engagements-on-twitter.html <comment><AUTHOR> TweetBot – among others – is apparently in trouble:

'After June 19th, 2018, streaming services at Twitter will be removed. This means two things for third-party apps:

Push notifications will no longer arrive Timelines won't refresh automatically'

[http://apps-of-a-feather.com/](http://apps-of-a-feather.com/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I missed [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16774271](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16774271)</comment>


Single Chinese facility has more DNA sequencing power than the entire USA. - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/16349434?story_id=16349434

<comment><USER2> The headline is almost certainly inaccurate. I'm fairly certain that Baylor, the Broad Institute, and Wash U (doing the Thousand Genomes Project) have more than 120 next-gen sequencers among them. This is not to mention the dozens of other medical centers with next-gen machines.

Perhaps it is true that this Chinese facility will have more Illumina-brand sequencers than have been sold in the US.

Edit: Here is just a taste of evidence to support my assertion: Illumina just sold 51 new machines to the Broad -- [http://investor.illumina.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=121127&p=ir...](http://investor.illumina.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=121127&p=irol- newsArticle&ID=1435009&highlight=) I'm beginning to wonder about the fact- checking...

<comment><AUTHOR> The author conveniently inserted a "so it is claimed" there, which probably means you are right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hopefully, China is going to contribute a lot to basic research in the next decade. Shipping cheap junk to the US isn't nearly has beneficial as doing hard science, along with R&D. If they pull it off, we'll look back in the year 2020 and laugh at how little we knew.

<comment><USER4> Well, R&D is certainly extremely important but extremely difficult to justify with the short focus of the modern corporate world (e.g. "What, you want me to spend _billions_ and in the end it may not even produce anything? How is that increasing share holder value?").

I also don't think you realize just how badly you're addicted to this cheap junk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Don't read this as a ding in some way on biotechnology in the US.

The machines were made in the US, in San Diego, CA and Hayward, CA <http://www.illumina.com/company/locations.ilmn>

China is just buying a bunch of them, but quantity is not a substitute for quality.

<comment><USER6> The most interesting part of the article: "Part of the reason for building his newest sequencing centre in Hong Kong is to reassure researchers from other countries that the facility will operate inside a reliable legal framework."

This is why, not matter how much capital you inject, more open societies ultimately prevail wrt. innovation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yikes! Reddit style submission title editorializing, through convenient quoting.

"tl;dr;hca: Too long, don't read, here is the conclusion I want you to arrive at"

<comment><AUTHOR> sorry... I didn't mean to suggest any conclusions, but rather highlight the part of the article that struck my interest.

I had a less sensationalist version, which was unfortunately >80 chars.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also, they are planning to conduct the largest-scale of correlations between intelligence and genetics so far.

<comment><USER8> History has taught me enough to be worried about that.

<comment><USER9> Well what if you could give your self a brain upgrade via gene therapy? What's so bad about that? I guess many would be upset as it would go against our ideology here in America that frowns on any suggestion that intelligence has innate components.

<comment><USER10> Fun error message - "This update failed to install successfully. Please try again after reboot"</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Looking at near-term medical prospects for increased longevity - <AUTHOR> http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/09/near-term-prospects-for-increased.html

<comment><USER2> Until we can cure old age, I don't want to cure death. Prolonged old age can sometimes be a curse.

<comment><USER3> Curing old age is not scalable. It's also not cost efficient. It'll get harder and harder to improve the longevity of the body. However, growing new bodies is a much more scalable solution. You can keep growing new bodies and then transfer your memories and what not into the new body. That can scale your life to infinity.

Then you can stock up on cheap commodity bodies instead of trying to make one body faster, more powerful, and younger looking (which will cost more and more for less increments in lifespan).

<comment><USER4> Putting aside any ethical qualms that people might have regarding growing humans for the purpose of extending one's own life, a rather more immediate issue springs to mind (although I will concede I may just be putting my ignorance of the subject on public display). Specifically, regarding the idea of

 _and then transfer your memories and what not into the new body._

Is any actual research into this being done? And, although I might be showing my Singularity-skeptical colours by asking this, has any actual research into this produced useful results?

<comment><USER5> So true. What I find confusing about Singularity-type dreamers is not that they dream, but that they're so arrogant about trivializing everything. "All you have to do is transfer your memory". Right. If the concept of Singularity allows you to call any imaginable technology trivial, I call BS.

<comment><USER3> Oh lighten up I wasn't totally serious.

<comment><USER5> Maybe you weren't, but most of these people are. It weirds me out.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Robotron: Eugene Jarvis' development of this iconic arcade game - <AUTHOR> https://arcadeblogger.com/2020/06/27/the-development-of-robotron/ <comment><USER2> Probably my favorite videogame of all time. And that's despite (or maybe because) of the fact that even after all these years playing it, I'm still not very good at it!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hard to argue with that assessment. Its certainly up there. Those early Williams games were amazing.</comment></comment>


"Hey Google, how many legs does a horse have?" - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/MKBHD/status/1122630624714608640 <comment><USER2> I tried to read the Wikipedia page to understand how the AI was confused, I didn't find anything that looks relevant.

<comment><USER3> Looking at the regular Google search page, it looks like it's getting the answer from here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:How_many_legs_does_a...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:How_many_legs_does_a_horse_have%3F), which is using it as an example of incorrect information without evidence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just tried this on my Google home. Yup, it says, "for a total of six" Too funny...

</comment><comment><USER5> It as back legs and fore legs.</comment>


Bank employee accidentally transferred $295M when he fell asleep at his computer - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/id/100806314

<comment><USER2> Something isn't quite write about this article. I have a close friend who works at Wells Fargo in the HNW (High Net Worth) department. A large portion of her day is moving around large sums of money for customers (say, when they are trying to buy a yacht or jet - seriously), and, when they are investing in very short-term instruments (in which the timing of the withdrawal/deposit, down to the hour, is very important).

The process of moving more than $1mm of money around (as she describes it) is byzantine, ludicrously manual, and involves advance planning as well as lots of layers of oversight. She actually will know a day in advance if such-and- such a customer will be sending money from one account to another, and almost has a flight plan laid out for all the things they have to do.

Either this German Bank allows individual employees, much, much more autonomy (and not just for $1mm, but $295mm!) than Wells Fargo or there is more to this story...</comment>


Steve Ballmer: Chrome And Safari Are Rounding Errors  - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/29/ballmer-microsoft-interview-chrome-windows-internetexplorer/ <comment><USER3> Isn't it an accepted journalistic standard of some kind to smooth out the many stutters and small grammatical mistakes everyone makes when speaking verbally? Exact, word to word transcriptions like this are actually a classic dirty trick for news organizations to try to embarrass politicians they don't like. (Ballmer does much better than most.)

<comment><USER4> TechCrunch seems to revel in the abandonment of accepted journalistic standards. Story embargoes for example.

<comment><USER5> To be fair to TechCrunch, embargoes are a dumb idea. If you don't want people to know about something until a certain date, don't tell them until that date.

<comment><USER6> Embargoes allow real journalists to do better research, to make sure they understand what they are writing about and to, in general, provide higher quality information than TC would ever consider doing.

<comment><USER5> Perhaps, but most bloggers wouldn't bother doing the research anyway. There are two kinds of news sources these days; blogs for instant facts, and real news sources (NYT, etc.) for actual thoughtful analysis. I would never expect the NYT to be first on any story, but I do expect it to be a good read. Usually my expectations are met.

Anyway, TC is not journalism, it's a blog.

<comment><USER7> There are two kinds of news sources these days; blogs for people who have personal experience of the topic, and real news sources (NYT, etc.) for reprinting press releases of those companies that don't compete with their parent media group.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _"And Microsoft's competitors are doing exactly what Microsoft is prohibited from doing – bundling an operating system and a browser."_

Yes, and ordinary people are allowed to step within 200 yards of schools. Other people, those tried and found guilty of certain crimes, are not.

I despair that even tech journalists can't grasp the basics of what is one of the biggest tech news stories of the last twenty years.

<comment><USER9> That is ridiculous. They got punished because they were ahead of the times, not because they were evil. What they did by bundling IE with Windows was the right strategic move. They understood that the browser was an integral piece of the experience before anybody else.

<comment><USER10> They got punished for making deals that locked Netscape out of the market by making OEM's pay more for including competitors products.

<comment><USER11> Intel gives incentives to OEMs to lock out AMD. Google pays Mozilla to lock out other search engines on Firefox start page and search bar (and it does not allow customization at install time). Apple does not allow 3rd party apps colliding with Apple produced ones on App Store. Any comments on these other monopolies' actions? Every company does the same.

<comment><USER12> The difference is Mozilla and Apple don't have 9X% market share.

<comment><USER13> And google doesn't have 9x% market share?

<comment><USER14> Well, no, actually, I'm pretty sure they don't.

You'd be surprised at how many people still use Yahoo for search.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Has Ballmer lost a finger? For safari+chrome to be a rounding error you have to be using a single digit of precision in a number base lower than 10.

</comment><comment><USER16> Wow, as much crap as my slashbot self has given Ballmer over the years, this interview really shows him having his act together.

<comment><USER17> He had some good points. The Chrome/Android split I agree with him on - <USER2> sure what Google is doing there - but I wouldn't bet on it being a long-term mistake like Ballmer is doing. He also continues touting Windows and the Windows Mobile platform. That's obvious, but what are they actually doing to innovate or compete? He just talks about attack vectors to the behemoth that is Microsoft. I still think that Ballmer just fundamentally does not "get it".

<comment><USER18> There's probably not much "reason" behind the Chrome/Android split. It's likely that they were both once someone's 20% project, and simply bubbled up through different portions of the infrastructure.

<comment><USER5> Google purchased Android.

<comment><USER18> Thanks for the correction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> _We have one and a half operating systems, Windows and Windows Mobile. Windows Mobile is kind of a half because it's not entirely the same as Windows. And everyday, I say I'd love to get those two things to share more._

Say, like Apple, Steve?

</comment><comment><USER20> If you believe webapps are the way of the future, then the browser stats are completely different. Then IE is a rounding error.

IE simply doesn't cut it with js speed/stability etc

<comment><USER21> Big if.

Wikipedia: Netscape began to experiment with prototypes of a web-based system, known internally as "Constellation", which would allow a user to access and edit his or her files anywhere across a network no matter what computer or operating system he or she happened to be using.

Industry observers confidently forecast the dawn of a new era of connected computing. The underlying operating system, it was believed, would become an unimportant consideration; future applications would run within a web browser. This was seen by Netscape as a clear opportunity to entrench Navigator at the heart of the next generation of computing, and thus gain the opportunity to expand into all manner of other software and service market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> He is focused on browser market share, when ironically that is precisely what's forced Google into this position. If IE6 wasn't a ridiculous percentage of the market, its brokenness wouldn't matter enough for another company to fix it.

Google doesn't care whose browser is used, they care about a sane foundation on which to deploy web apps. Steve shouldn't sound so hurt, it's not as if the entire industry hasn't been "asking nicely" for years to have IE catch up. They can't cry now that someone has taken them by force.

Steve also goes into all the wonderful things happening in IE8 and beyond. And they're irrelevant, for the same reason: IE6 is still the breaking point. Any "innovation" in IE that doesn't come in the form of a free update to IE6 that works on XP, doesn't matter.

</comment><comment><USER23> Most of the people I come in contact with don't even have the faintest idea what IE or Chrome is. They might complain that their "facebook" does not work anymore knowing nothing of the changes occurred to their browser. It's not relevant to the masses who is giving the browser. If Windows will continue to dominate the laptop/desktop market then it matters nothing if the browser comes from a different source because it is not the browser that costs.

Who wouldn't protect their own market share? I don't think any startupers will welcome a new thing that takes over their business slowly. When it's on a small scale it makes up a good story when it is global it's war. Good for the consumers though.

</comment><comment><USER24> It might explain why his software is hated so much, if it routinely rounds off 5+%.

</comment><comment><USER25> If chrome and safari are rounding errors, sign me up for some of that rounding action. On my site, year to date shows IE "rounding" down by some 20%. Most of it to FF, but Safari and Chrome are both growing. Seems like only yesterday Ballmer was dismissing FF as well. I'd say Ballmer's hubris has remained steady though.

<comment><USER26> you can't really blame him. ballmer's primary job is to be a cheerleader for microsoft.

ballmer also said that the iphone would get absolutely no market share at all. i doubt even _he_ believed that.

the practical upshot is that you can't trust high-tech ceos to tell you which way the wind is blowing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Chrome and Safari might be rounding errors, but resources wasted on supporting 'your' browsers definitively are NOT.

</comment><comment><USER28> Much as I like them, you have to question whether Google are going to be smart/rich enough to flank Microsoft. Or whether they can co-exist in some of these markets in the future.

<comment><USER29> My prediction is that Google will not be able to beat Microsoft, and it doesn't help that they are smart or rich.

IMHO, their strategy to making OS irrelevant by having everything run from Chrome OS might not succeed in the end.

Just one example: Some time ago, I wanted to become more independent from MS and store my files online, so I started to use Google Docs. It's quite usable for home use, but currently, I switched back to my old Office 2000, with the difference that my files are not only on my harddisk, but I share them on the cloud with Live Mesh. This is a some kind of foreplay for the next year, when MS will come with Office 2010 and also Online office. So MS will have both the native windows client and the online application, while Google has only the later. I really don't see how they can compete here.

The danger for Google lies in the fact, that all their online assets are copy- able, and MS are slowly becoming able to achieve that.

<comment><USER30> But to win this fight, all Google has to do is to be better able to respond to customer needs than Microsoft. Maybe you're right, and they're going to lose. Customers stand a good chance of winning either way, though.

<comment><USER31> The difference is that the feedback loop for Microsoft for, say, Excel is that they want to sell 50,000-seat site licenses to accounting firms and will do what they need to do technologically and commercially in order to do that. As an aside, Excel becomes a superset of what other users need. The feedback loop for Google's spreadsheet is... what?

Remember Google's users are not its customers, they're its _product_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> On the Ballmer side, he is such "great" at this kind of sentences that two of his greatest hits: (Google is a) deck of cards. (iphone) does not appeal to biz customers.

</comment><comment><USER32> If their market shares are rounding errors, MS's market cap is a dropped decimal. :-)

</comment><comment><USER13> Ballmer is misguided on several counts:

Chrome, firefox, and safari are much, much more likely to be used by the technically elite. These are the people who fix their friends' and relatives' computers, who design and build websites, who write about technology, they have the ability to influence the less sophisticated in browser choice.

More importantly, browsers are free (except Opera), and in the internet age the process of changing your choice of browser is about as difficult as posting to facebook. This makes browser market share potentially highly volatile. Firefox and chrome are slowly but steadily making gains in market share, and firefox is already within striking distance of becoming the dominant browser. There is very much the potential of reaching a tipping point where the featureset of IE becomes so outdated that it no longer becomes a viable browser choice. And if we ever reach that point, and I believe we very well could given the differential in pace of development of firefox/chrome/safari vs. IE, then the entire browser marketshare arena could be turned upside down overnight. One need only to look at the growth in popularity of twitter, for example, to see how fast things can change in the modern internet world.

<comment><USER33> Opera is free for personal use. It has been since version 8.5, released in 2005.</comment></comment>


Perhaps The Copyright Industry Deserves Some Credit - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/perhaps-the-copyright-industry-deserves-some-credit-for-pointing-out-our-single-points-of-failure-111113/ <comment><USER2> > _Graphics Interchange Format... was dropped from every usage all over the > net in the blink of an eye and replaced by a fresh-new format named Portable > Network Graphics._

If by "in the blink of an eye" they mean "over the course of about a decade, gradually, and with hanging-on remnants even today"....

<comment><USER3> The LZW patent has expired in 2003. GIF usage is now free.

Also, you can probably blame the slow adoption of PNG on Internet Explorer, which dictated what became a standard on the web and what not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> SOPA is bad news. Worse than Unisys claiming GIF. Worse than UMinn claiming gopher. Yes, we can replace the DNS system. But we can't escape the financial world:

Quick review in case you missed where BitCoins went: dollars will always have intrinsic value because the US Government demands payment in dollars. Tax payments are only accepted as an electronic transfer - from the institutions SOPA controls.

So SOPA is bad news because:

1\. You can't escape the bank-controlled economy, so you will always need US dollars or whichever currency is accepted in your country.

2\. You can't prevent large organizations (those with hefty legal departments) from issuing at-will takedowns on competitors.

3\. Takedowns won't be just for The Pirate Bay. Good luck winning your court case.

<comment><USER5> You seem to have a key unquestioned assumption, namely that alternative currencies and their associated economies will never reach a sufficiently large breadth of services to make it possible to do without existing national currencies entirely. I'd question that assumption. I don't think we've gotten close to that yet, but I wouldn't dismiss the possibility of it occurring in the future.

<comment><USER4> Good point. Any alternative currency must first achieve a level of legitimacy on par with FDIC-insured institutions and governments. By the time they do achieve that, I assume their board of directors will include enough ties to existing economies to make them no more an alternative (as in, capable of defying SOPA) than any existing institutions or governments.

I simply believe this is the only chance to retain freedom of speech. SOPA must be defeated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As much credit as we owe to thieves, for pointing out weaknesses in security of a house.

</comment><comment><USER7> So, when this bill is passed, presumably people will point the finger at MPAA/RIAA companies, and start taking them off the net?

<comment><USER8> This power is reserved for those secure enough against legal backlash to perjure themselves. Just like DMCA takedown notices.

Copyright holders with lots of resources can issue as many bogus DMCA notices as they like, safe in the knowledge that they can fight out or settle the (unlikely) lawsuit if it comes. Most people issuing fake takedown requests would expose themselves to a lot more risk.

<comment><USER7> I think you are correct here.

EDIT: However it has been shown that some of the content companies have been less than diligent in their issuing of takedown notices. This could easily backfire on them..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The P2P world is just full of unintended consequences:

How litigation only spurred on P2P file sharing: [http://www.itnews.com.au/News/279763,how-litigation-only- spu...](http://www.itnews.com.au/News/279763,how-litigation-only-spurred- on-p2p-file-sharing.aspx)

Discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=3227844>

In summary, as the penalties for filesharing increased, filesharing was pushed further into the underground, and filesharers adopted protocols like Bittorrent that are more difficult to kill with a court order than Napster was.

<comment><USER5> BitTorrent seems quite awful from that perspective. For quite a while, torrents required a centralized tracker to coordinate operation, which provided a single point of failure. Even now, with trackerless operation, BitTorrent has no directory or search protocols, no privacy protection or built-in anonymity, and otherwise makes it trivial for anyone to obtain a full list of IP addresses downloading any given torrent.

I wouldn't call BitTorrent "underground" or "difficult to kill" at all. For that, you'd probably want something like Freenet or GNUnet.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Most effective web launch strategy to gain fast traffic from no budget? - <AUTHOR>

We're a few weeks away from finishing off our property portal which promises a better experience to house hunters here in the UK.
As we are complete newbs at this and have moths in our pockets, we're short of ideas of how to do an effective launch with little or no money. We'd love to get some experienced hackers who've been there, done that, to give us a tip or two.
EDIT: Our website is: https://gaffsearch.co.uk if you'd like to see what we've been up to. Feel free to comment. <comment><USER3> I respect the effort you've obviously put into developing this site, but in all honesty I can't see why I, as a user, would want to use your site in its current state over Rightmove or Zoopla.

For me, the most important thing is knowing I have access to a large pool of properties and can filter them appropriately. On the latter, it's nice that I can filter by crime rate (if I don't know the bad spots in an area), but it's missing a few key filters such as furnished/unfurnished, term of let, garden, etc. The lack of properties is, in my opinion, a much bigger issue. When I do a search on your site and see 8 properties to let in BN1, but hundreds on Zoopla and RM, I'm probably not going to come back to your site (if you're relying on direct feeds it'll take a _lot_ of time and effort to build up your database and keep it clean).

While there are a fair few bugs and UX issues I noticed, overall the site looks quite nice. You have a couple of neat features not present on the major sites such as combined map+list view, but I'm struggling to see the real USP at the moment.

Rather than a big bang launch, I think you'd do much better to grow and iterate slowly and consistently. Reach out to and work directly with property agents - I'm guessing your main revenue stream will be lead generation, so at the end of the day the agents are your true customer.

</comment><comment><USER4> You are starting at the right place and asking the right crowd. You need to provide more details, what does no budget mean? What resources do you have at disposal to execute a marketing plan even when the budget is limited. What you did by posting here is comment marketing but even for this you need manpower. In the uk for property, there is zoopla and rightmove who have the large chunk of the market. Are you going after the estate agents or home owners? If I had to give you my take on marketing, 60% is your product, if it is easy to use and solves a headache for your target market, it should keep people coming back. This repeat traffic will have no choice but to share it with their contacts but you must make sharing easy. If you want viral help: Your internet marketing plan for viral growth must provide clear understanding of what your product is going to do for your users and it must deliver on this. If you can take away only one thing from this, remember: from the start, only push One Main Message to achieve viral growth. This should not necessarily be your unique selling point but rather your Unique Spreading Point.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply. I must admit, our resources are quite limited at this early stage as we're just two of us with day jobs.

[quote] if it is easy to use and solves a headache for your target market, it should keep people coming back. [/unquote]

We have aimed to do so, by providing decent information such as crime stats for the area, at users fingertips, and also having an intuitive approach to the search experience as a whole. Yes, the market is saturated, but we thought there's an opportunity in there if we approach it cleverly, but are short of ideas on how to make our website viral

<comment><USER5> I would recommend a couple strategies..

1.) Take a page out of the Buffer playbook and start guest blogging everywhere you can.

2.) If it is truly easy to use (more so than competitors) then I would demonstrate that. (Video, Gif, Vine video of someone searching, etc)

3.) Your core value proposition isn't immediately recognizable when one lands on your home page. Why should I use this site for my home search? Why is this better than the other guy? Etc...

4.) Reach out to agents in the area and offer to help them out in some way. Partnerships, referrals, asking them to guest blog on your site to build their rep, etc.

Just a few ideas, hope that helps!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As someone who (1) runs a SaaS product for UK letting agents and (2) has hunted for a rented property in the last 12 months I think you've done a nice job but as some others have pointed out I can't see why someone who is looking for a property (rent or for sale) would use this over RM/Zoopla.

These aren't necessarily all applicable/useful to you but some observations/niggles I've had, taking in to account my first two points above, are:

\- RM charges extortionate fees (I'm not sure about Zoopla) to agents. They're not happy about it, but feel they have no alternative (there's a reason for that - chicken and egg). This is from numerous comments made by my customers.

\- By relying on an API from a major property portal I would be worried - <USER2> will you have better data than them? If your USP is UX/ease of use then do you think they would let you get that far before they change their T&C's?

\- Because RM/Zoopla are expensive there are still a huge amount of properties not advertised on these portals. From my own experience, I wanted to go with a private landlord rather than an agent… I had to personally visit a huge number of properties that didn't fit my requirements (there was no way to tell in advance because they only advertised on classified sites/local paper) - there's an opportunity here - make it is for private landlords to easily list their properties AND make sure those listings are of good quality (interior photos not just exterior, etc)

\- Talking of quality ... Ensure all of your listings are accurate, plenty of photos, floor plans, council tax band, etc. Just forget about low quality listings.

\- OR, opposite of that, concentrate on properties that aren't adequately advertised elsewhere… does RM/Zoopla have a property with one low quality photo and a one sentence description? Go out of your way to get that extra information and focus on promoting those properties. When everyone else is looking at RM/Zoopla/etc and seeing the same properties you'll have a different inventory set to the rest with more detail.

\- DONT be like everyone else and focus on the entire housing market in the UK (a few other commenters have said the same). Focus on rented, or for sale, or quality listings, unique listings… focus on something you can do better than the rest.

\- There have been many competitors to RM/Zoopla. Most of them fail because, in my opinion, they can't solve the chicken and egg problem (either no visitors or poor quality property data) and end up launching an RM/Zoopla clone with a different UI.

None of this is to say it can't be done or you're doing it the wrong way… it can be and I'd love to see someone succeed, but it won't be done just on UI/UX.

</comment><comment><USER7> Not what you are asking, but having been through a property search recently, there are some key features I can suggest.

1\. Popup the floor plan in the hover window. 2\. Add the sq. footage (usually available from the floorplan) 3\. Add a 'hide this property forever' button.

2 and 3 were on that Globrix site, but Nestoria have decommissioned it now that they've bought it.

Also, an 'Arrange a viewing' feature that didn't feel like you were endlessly typing your email address and details into a black hole would be nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Will add these to the list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The ways I've done this in the past is to find a good community of people who you would consider potential customers and market directly to them. I would do this by browsing for property related forums and discussions and building a reputation there. If they let you, add a link in your signature to your website. Thats one way of spreading word of your new service.

</comment><comment><USER9> I noticed a few small things:

\- I found the map moving every time I hovered over a listing very jarring. Would it be better to just zoom out and keep the map static and not force a map re-center? I think it might still work the way you have it if you slow down the map move so it's not jumping around but slides more smoothly.

\- The scroll speed when I used my mouse scroller on the list appeared to be slower than what I would expect or see on other sites. You might need to adjust the javascript scroller delay or sensitivity here.

\- Friends is misspelled on the homepage

</comment><comment><USER10> What pain points are you solving for your users? That's going to be key.

Also, are you going after the ENTIRE UK house-hunting market, or a niche within that?</comment>


Ask HN: Making sense of your metrics data - what are your tools of choice? - <AUTHOR>

There are many methods for looking at data in an event based fashion. Flurry, Mix Panel, Google Analytics, Omniture, and in-house server logging come to mind.
There tools for stream based metrics/querying, which doesn't seem applicable to most startups, but if you one of these that would be cool to hear about.
Finally there are tools for enterprise grade business intelligence. I've never had to work with these, so I can't comment.
What do you use, what are you forced to use in-house solutions for? <comment><USER2> Mozilla uses WebTrends for most of its web metrics like visitor and session analysis. We use SiteSpec for multivariate testing. For everything else we use Kimball's dimensional modeling to build data warehouses and then build reports, dashboards, and analysis off of them. We make extensive Pentaho's suite of tools for ETL, multi-dimensional querying of OLAP cubes, report creation/publishing, and a website to deliver interactive dashboards.

I would strongly recommend that anyone asking these questions do some extended web reading or pick up a few books on the topics of ETL, Data Warehousing, and Business Intelligence. I feel it is critical to have experience these fields if you need to derive insight from data. Using open source ETL/BI tools can help a startup without blowing the budget. When they discover the value for their company, they can look for specialists to join the team or they can investigate support and contracting options available.

In particular, a good ETL tool like Pentaho Data Integration is invaluable to any company that has to do anything with moving data from one place to another. Even if you don't use it for traditional BI.

For our Socorro project, we are making use of a Hadoop/HBase cluster to store large amounts of crash report data. The next two versions of Socorro will be pushing significantly more analysis into MapReduce and Hive type queries.

We are also working on a new data storage and analysis backend for Test Pilot which is based on Riak. The interesting part on the analysis side is that it is performed by submitting MapReduce jobs vis a simple HTTP POST to the REST API.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We use flurry for mobile, google analytics for web and in house server logging for both. I use a custom stack of scripts, SQL and R to make sense of it.

What does everyone do for higher level analysis of their event logs? Lets say you have a concept of users, and a concept of most actions that they take, how do you build a picture of who you users are, what they are doing, what the main user segments are, etc?

Am I missing out on any specialized tools? Note, tools must be able to handle fairly large datasets, the tools I have seen that slice up SQL databases usually end up being too slow.

<comment><USER3> You could use a higher-end analytics service. Localytics is real-time, provides dynamic segmentation analysis and provides an API for the export of the full session-level data (not just aggregated charts), including events: www.localytics.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm currently developing a custom system to track all requests and events on my app that will allow me to map visits and see how users move through the site in addition to specific metrics.

We use google analytics but that doesn't provide the type of segmentation and exact event tracking I'm looking for. It may be possible, but I find the integration of specific event types will provide a lot of insight that google can't. Also I really want some specific data on demo users with the new registration less sign up I integrated.

</comment><comment><USER5> Other than things mentioned here, we use an in-house graphing solution built on top of Postgres and custom views. This is great because we log almost everything and it's easy to join across users, etc.

Tableau also seems fairly promising, though it is really slow on live db queries. Does anyone here use Tableau?

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't tried it, but now I'm curious too...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> We just starting using KISSMetrics <http://kissmetrics.com/> started loving it, you actually describe your app funnel.. Also has a beautiful A/B Split Test API</comment>


XKCD Geohasing - South Pole Station - <AUTHOR> http://blog.xkcd.com/2012/02/27/geohashing-2/

<comment><USER2> It's almost 100 years since Scott died on his expedition to the South Pole (29 March 1912). We live in a science fiction future.</comment>


Schneier's response to Eric Schmidt - <AUTHOR> http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/12/my_reaction_to.html

<comment><USER3> It's very nice for Bruce Schneier to express opposition to invasion of privacy. I agree with him. But unless I totally misunderstand Schmidt's comments, Schmidt is not suggesting people should not make love to their wives, for example, but rather, that if you are going to do something that you don't want the government to know about you, you shouldn't give it to someone that is legally obligated to tell the government about it if they ask.

Regardless of how Google feels about privacy, it's unreasonable to expect them to martyr themselves for our sakes when the Department of Justice or the FBI knock on their door with a subpoena. The way to protect your privacy is to not tell people things you don't want them to know(or to use Tor or the like).

Edit: fixed a minor typo

<comment><USER4> Eric Schmidt is an American business leader. He has the same First Amendment rights as anybody else. He is obligated to follow the law, but he is not obligated to do so without complaint, let alone make excuses for his activities and those of his government.

Schmidt could have said "We understand that Google collects a lot of data; we have privacy policies that protect that data and we fire anyone who abuses them. We take data privacy very seriously. But we're aware that people are unhappy that various governments can compel us to disclose data. We believe that this is wrong. We believe that a world where anonymous government employees can see anything you do is a dangerous world. We believe in the power of data, but we want to encourage society to take steps to prevent this kind of abuse."

But he didn't, of course. Instead he told us that the innocent have nothing to hide.

 _it's unreasonable to expect [Google] to martyr themselves for our sakes_

"Martyr", indeed. That is no mere hypothetical. Read this:

<http://www.signandsight.com/features/1910.html>

This is Herta Mueller, formerly of Romania, describing her life in the Ceausescu regime. There you could, indeed, face harsh reprisals, ranging all the way up to martyrdom, for refusing to spy on your fellow citizens.

I'm not sure it's reasonable to expect _those_ people -- Mueller's friends, stuck in a scary totalitarian regime -- to stick up for their principles and resist the state's order to inform on their friends. (Though many did resist, and paid the price for it.) But Google? Google isn't even human. It has no fingernails to pull out. It is an American corporation, whose leaders live in America, with enough legal budget to sue God himself. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the company's leader to use some of that power to lobby for good, instead of looking sheepishly at his feet, kicking the dust, and claiming that he's only following orders.

<comment><USER5> "But he didn't, of course. Instead he told us that the innocent have nothing to hide."

Please keep in mind you're commenting about a snippet of a televised interview. For all you know Eric Schmidt agrees with everything you wrote above. (He may have even said something along these lines and it was edited out.) He certainly did not say or even imply "the innocent have nothing to hide."

<comment><USER4> I stand corrected. He did not literally say "the innocent have nothing to hide". He literally said this:

 _If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place._

I'm not convinced, however, that there's a reassuring amount of daylight between these two statements.

<comment><USER6> Except that the former is plainly false, and the latter is pretty much indisputable provided you aren't walking up to the phrase with a preconceived notion that it's codespeak for something more sinister.

I should add that I very much agree with what you said about Google being in a position to make a much stronger stand for privacy rights in this country. I equally think that this is a pointless little shitstorm that detracts from the larger issue by making privacy advocacy look like petty language lawyering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What a fantastic last paragraph. Something from the original essay that was left out:

"A future in which privacy would face constant assault was so alien to the framers of the Constitution that it never occurred to them to call out privacy as an explicit right. Privacy was inherent to the nobility of their being and their cause. Of course being watched in your own home was unreasonable. Watching at all was an act so unseemly as to be inconceivable among gentlemen in their day. You watched convicted criminals, not free citizens. You ruled your own home. It's intrinsic to the concept of liberty."

Foucault argued that the very act of being watched was dehumanizing. Google shouldn't watch us because it violates our rights, but because it's _evil_.

<comment><USER8> Why is being watched evil?

EDIT: I hear this claim all the time on the internet: Collecting data is _evil_. So please, go beyond the claim, and give me an explanation. Why is knowledge about people inherently evil?

EDIT 2: I know you're not supposed to complain about downmodding, but this comment has been downmodded four times. If you disagree so vehemently, then try defending your position rather than censoring me :)

<comment><USER9> If something is 'inherent' it cannot be explained further almost by definition. I think this is what that paragraph is claiming.

It is claiming that invasion of privacy is evil in the way that hurting people is _inherently_ evil. You do not call on someone to explain why hurting people is evil. It is calling on you to accept that invasion of privacy is just evil.

<comment><USER10> This is exactly the problem. By saying something is 'inherent' you are essentially saying that there can be no debate on the issue. I believe that the whole notion of 'privacy' is actually a learned social construct, not something inborn like physical pain.

<comment><USER11> > I believe that the whole notion of 'privacy' is actually a learned social > construct

I, and many others, including Schneier think you are wrong. Privacy is a basic human need, a fundamental part of our psychology that is as deeply entrenched as all our other basic needs and emotions. We are not whole, happy, fulfilled human beings without it. I guess one can debate whether this fits the definition of "inherent" or not. But I don't think it's necessary to pursue it beyond this point because it doesn't really matter - once something is a basic human need, taking it away from them is wrong.

<comment><USER10> > Privacy is a basic human need, a fundamental part of our psychology that is > as deeply entrenched as all our other basic needs and emotions.

That is an assumption not an argument. Can you reference any studies or data to support your position?

The only place to find evidence I can think of would be to look at different cultures with differing level of privacy to see what inherent 'needs' there might be and what the results were in terms of people's mental well being. Totalitarian societies would not be a good example as they actually rely far more of secrecy than more open societies.

I would argue (without data I admit) that the desire for privacy is actually caused by the desire to avoid punishment, ridicule and/or social exclusion. If these could be avoided then I don't believe there would be much of a 'need' for privacy.

<comment><USER11> > I would argue (without data I admit) that the desire for privacy is actually > caused by the desire to avoid punishment, ridicule and/or social exclusion. > If these could be avoided then I don't believe there would be much of a > 'need' for privacy.

I think you deconstruct things far too much. If you removed all those things from society right now people would still "need" privacy because we have been programmed by thousands or millions of years of evolution to need it. We don't need it on a rational basis (although there are plenty of rational arguments one can make for needing it), we need it because our brains evolved that way and we're stuck with it.

If you find a culture that has no privacy and no compensatory substitute for it then I'll readily grant that people in that society don't need privacy and we can qualify "basic human need" to something slightly more constrained. But it won't change the fact that we are stuck in a situation where the vast majority of human beings DO need privacy and it is wrong to take it away from them.

<comment><USER10> > because we have been programmed by thousands or millions of years of > evolution to need it.

Actually I think our early ancestors would have lived with much less privacy than we do today. Many of the concepts of privacy don't even make sense the further back you go. Living in a tribe, spending nearly all your time outside and visible to other tribe members, with no/limited clothing, sleeping in large groups would offer limited opportunities for privacy.

If anything I would think that many of the traits of 'privacy' would have evolved more from the desire of others not to have to experience the 'private' matters of their fellow tribe members (i.e. see them having sex/naked/aroused or be interrupted by their loud conversations).

Even now they say that in small towns 'everyone knows everything about everyone else'. Only with the anonymizing effects of very large groups is the modern concept of privacy possible. So to me this all suggests that the 'need for privacy' is not a innate.

> But it won't change the fact that we are stuck in a situation where the vast > majority of human beings DO need privacy and it is wrong to take it away > from them.

I would argue that this is true primarily because of people's upbringing - <USER2> the same way that it would cause people discomfort to have to adjust to a world where they would routinely be naked in public.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I remember this essay from when it was new. To me, it is Schneier at his best, and it makes a perfect retort to the most pessimistic interpretation of what Schmidt said. And bravo to Schneier for doing so in a timely manner.

That said, I wonder what Bruce would say in response to a more optimistic interpretation of Schmidt's statement. What if Eric's sentiment was more along the lines of "if you don't want people to see you making love, then don't do it behind the bushes in Buena Vista Park"?

</comment><comment><USER13> You know, the government told librarians they had to turn over the lists of books people checked out from the library and so they stopped storing that information. They delete it.

I applaud the librarians for standing up to the government. Google... not so much.

<comment><USER14> Google (and the vast majority of their users) has a whole lot to lose by deleting search history while its competitors pursue personalized search. Librarians - nothing at all.

<comment><USER15> Then couldn't Google offer some sort of non-personalized version where such data was discarded that privacy conscious users could choose to use? This would bring me back to believing that Google isn't "evil"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In a world where watching other people is easier and easier, I don't think that asserting that not being watched is a human need is going to hold up. Data collection is only going to get easier in general, no matter what laws are passed. Cameras and listening devices are only going to become more prevalent, in spite of last ditch attempts by theater owners and angry police. Aggregation of everything that goes on around a person will become a tool that is so useful that those without it are like those refusing to use search engines today: able to get along, but at a noticeable disadvantage.

No amount of posturing and rhetoric about rights and privacy will long delay the world we're moving into; those are political activities, and the coming abolition of privacy is a technological and economic matter; politics can only weakly affect such things without becoming overwhelmingly invasive -- a solution more to be feared than the problem.

<comment><USER17> True. I think a big danger underlying people's general reservations about this stuff is government abuse of all this newly available data.

<comment><USER18> Corporate abuse too. If someone is out-spoken against Google, what's to stop Google from silencing them by threatening to reveal secret information about them (or to plant information about them, like child porn searches in their search history).

Not only that, but it makes it easier for 3rd party groups to try and gain information to silence opponents, Scientology being the first to come to mind.

In general, all of this information will benefit people, but possibly only people that 'keep their head down' and don't 'go against the flow.' For people that have strongly held beliefs that are against the 'norm,' it will make it easier for them to be attacked and (eventually) silenced. It will be the tool used to bludgeon people into becoming a homogenized society.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Good response.

While I think that it is worthwhile trying to increase privacy on the data collection side (eg Google recording search queries), the more important part is what happens after. Is it anonymized? Is it available to government organisations? What happens after they get it?

</comment><comment><USER19> I think Schmidt is really saying: don't be afraid of who you are.

Scheier's response is expectable from someone living in a fear-based society such as ours.

<comment><USER20> Has there ever been any society free of busybodies, thoughtcrime, and persecution? I think Schmidt is blaming the victims and advocating an inhuman degree of conformity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Does anyone have all the links in this conversation between them? I missed something and I'm having some trouble following but would like to catch up.

</comment><comment><USER22> Those with nothing to hide can't always see into the future Mr Schmidt.

<http://www.stockmaven.com/ibmstory.htm>

"This approach appears to have been used in the Netherlands when small-area tabulations of population data by religion from the 1930 Dutch census made up one of several data sources used in the development of the so-called 'dot maps' of Amsterdam," he says. "These maps, which showed areas of the city where the density of the Jewish population was the highest, were used in planning Nazi-inspired attacks on some of these neighborhoods in February 1941."

</comment><comment><USER23> Google = totally free lets not forget it => you give up some pricacy for service to be free in a way = not invasion of privacy but maybe price of service? Love to complain but if google does not make money, how can all thse cool apps be funded in practice. Advertising can be seen as privacy invasion too by the way. Money money money it's a ...</comment>


A few steps and mis-steps in the early years of Beethoven's Violin Concerto - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.bl.uk/music/2018/03/a-few-steps-and-mis-steps-in-the-early-years-of-beethovens-violin-concerto-beethovens-violin-concerto-in-d-op-61.html <comment><USER2> Composing classical music is very much like writing software except the computer is human and the program is sometimes hard to read.</comment>


Show HN: Pong – Basic uptime monitoring with email alerts - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rhardih/pong <comment><AUTHOR> I've been using the free plan on Pingdom for a long time, and it's a great service! They've recently decided to scrap the paid plan however:

[https://venturebeat.com/2019/01/07/pingdom-will-kill-its- fre...](https://venturebeat.com/2019/01/07/pingdom-will-kill-its-free-website- monitoring-plan-on-february-6/)

I can totally understand the move, and if my personal needs were greater, I'd gladly have converted to a paid account. Basically I just want an email if one of my hobby projects goes down. Nothing much more.

I already pay for a server, so I decided to put together a minimal Rails app that gets me 95% of the way instead of hunting for another free provider.

For now there's no auth etc. It's bare bones, but batteries included. All you need to run your own instance, is a host running docker.</comment>


I intend to replace Etherpad - <AUTHOR> http://bennoland.com/?p=184

<comment><USER2> Has anyone thought about creating an open-source version of this type of product?

That would ensure this "problem" happen in the future -- and you gets lots of brainpower in figuring out how to really improve on the basic theme!

What functionality would you like to see in a great collaborative online editor?

<comment><USER3> Yep I could like to build a Redis-based project doing this stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I guess it's a start but I don't like graphics, the fact it's full screen, the lack of the chat, when multiple clients are connected I see a strange "refresh" effect like scrolling on the top then returning, and so forth. Does not feel like a solid product with a nice UI currently so I think that before to add more features you should try to improve what you already have.

</comment><comment><USER4> OT, Is there any start-up that tried free (as in speech) model for SaaS product? It will be selling point, because you don't have to worry about company going out of business or that they decided to move on to something else.

We need a license that will a) protect the developer from competition as long as they're in business and b) protect users from the company killing the product. When devs are not in game anymore, it must be possible for users to run the software themselves and allow others to enter the market (fork the company, not just free software). id Software's approach by frequently releasing old versions of code in Affero GPL might work.

<comment><USER5> I don't know if they qualify as startups, but here are two examples:

Mint (<http://www.haveamint.com>) and FogBugz (<http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/>)

You can buy and self-host these products, with source code included.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Don't broadcast development intentions. That never works well.

<comment><USER7> I've read <http://sivers.org/zipit> and when I saw this I instantly thought about it. After that, though, I read the blog, tried out the program, and now I'm not so sure. It seems like it might be something Ben Noland is ready to confidently pursue. Also, I would say that it usually doesn't work well, not that it never works well. I'm not big on absolutes when it comes to things like creativity, business, and motivation.

One thing that makes zipit not apply is that it's already partly a reality in two different ways. First, he has a pretty good prototype, with good branding already. Second, his call to action has actually started some serious interest, from what I can tell. There are quite a few encouraging comments and suggestions here and on his blog, for something that was just announced half a day ago.

Ben, I hope you can bring collabedit to fruition!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wouldn't it be funny if this was exactly what google intended when they shut it down? Surely it helps Wave and future products if a bunch of engineers start building expertise with this type of tech.

<comment><USER9> You can (as we see) knock up a bare bones copy reasonably easily. The expertise is already out there. I'd say quite a lot of people are working on realtime collaborative comet stuff, and have been for quite a while now.

The hard bit is getting people to use it.

I wrote a fun multiplayer drawing applet (Java) back in 2000, but no one used it :( _sob_. Actually a few did, it was fun anyway :) One of my points is, this technology is nothing new.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It sounded like a great idea until... <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=979055>

<comment><USER7> Fortunately, he's a fan of etherpad, so if the open source product is good (might not be-sometimes open sourcing something doesn't work well), he'll be ready to commercialize it. People will still need support and hosting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> You are not alone. I spent hours last night working on my own that's been abandoned for a long time. You are a little ahead of the game right now, and it looks nice!

With the leader out of the way for a while, I can't help but wonder how many of these will pop-up, and how many geeks did the same thing last night :)

</comment><comment><USER12> Can you please put a video of your product in action (being used by multiple users) on your site please?

<comment><AUTHOR> Probably not today, but you try it out: <http://collabedit.com/display?id=44959>

You can also open multiple browser windows if no one else is there.

<comment><USER13> This is pretty sweet; it seems like a nicer way to do one-off pastebins than current sites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> a forever qualm about online code editor i have is that they don't do automatic indenting properly. I have never used etherpad, i'm not sure how well they did this, but textmate is a good example to model after :D

<comment><USER15> I agree wholeheartedly. The first thing I noticed with Bespin specifically that STILL hasn't been fixed as far as I can tell from using it for the last few minutes was the lack of auto indentation. It is such an important thing for a code editor. It HAS to be there.

EDIT: I see they added the autoindent setting last March. I still can't for the life of me figure out how to actually enable it. It should be on by default, no question about it.</comment></comment>


The Software Engineering Axis Survey - <AUTHOR> http://sweaxis.org/ <comment><USER2> Best answer for most questions: it depends.</comment>


Ask HN: First month at a FANG job–feeling useless? - <AUTHOR> A month ago, I started a job at a large, FANG-type company, I guess on the low end of Google T5 or high end of T4? (Salary is around $175k, not including stock options.) Things seem to be going well, but I've been feeling rather useless. I just don't have a lot to do at the moment, and I'm not sure if I should be actively seeking out tasks, proposing new features, or what. (Naturally, I've been spending a lot of time delving into our codebase, but this isn't something with visible results that I could point to, for myself or the rest of the team.) I haven't worked at a big company like this in a long time, so I have no context for how things are supposed to work. Is it expected that tasks take longer than in the solo/startup world? Are engineers on my level supposed to be more proactive with this kind of stuff? I know what's in the pipeline for the next few months—the sorts of tasks that are more my specialty—but we're still scheduling meetings to work out the details. (Mostly it's my manager doing this.) In the meantime, I feel like I'm just idling.
Basically, I have this intense fear that I'm not living up to the expectations of my high salary and that nobody's going to say anything until things get really awkward. I take this home with me every day. My manager hasn't mentioned anything negative in our 1 on 1's, but I don't know if he's expected to.
How are first months supposed to generally go for someone at a big company in my salary range? And if I happened to do things wrong, will I still be able to fix my mistakes?
I'm not lazy; I just have no idea how things work in the corporate world! <comment><USER2> _Is it expected that tasks take longer than in the solo /startup world_

Definitely. I've gotten a lot more done at startups than at a FANG. Partially due to the reduced bureaucracy, and partially due to the ability to use tools that are optimized for developer productivity rather than scaling to millions of requests per second.

 _My manager hasn 't mentioned anything negative in our 1 on 1's, but I don't know if he's expected to._

Yes, he would be expected to mention if he wasn't happy. And it would be fine for you to directly ask him for guidance.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the advice! Selfish aside, but is there any chance I could ask you to upvote the question? It's not going to appear in the Ask section until it has more votes, and I'm afraid it's going to sink off newest soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> My understanding is that F&G are culturally different from N&A, but I think you're probably being a little too hard on yourself. The company probably spent a lot to recruit you, they have some interest in helping you succeed and I don't think they'd hide performance problems from you.

You probably shouldn't be idling though. If you can't think of any ways to be more productive, you should ask your manager and your colleagues for their ideas about what problems exist and what needs to be done. HTH.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply. It's more F&G than N&A, culturally I think. Idling is probably a misnomer—I have some minor bug fixes, code reviews, and design docs to work on. But I feel like I've been basically writing no code for the last few weeks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would let your manager know your concerns and ask for permission to either pick bugs out of the issue tracker or request some from whoever your project manager is. Fixing a few bugs will help you get settled into both the codebase and the team's workflows, and hopefully keep you busy and feeling productive.

</comment><comment><USER5> Just go with the flow. It's like this at most jobs. You have it better than most people on the planet.

</comment><comment><USER6> You should maybe feel bad. Maybe not. In your first month, you should have had what? 20-ish days to get around the monorepo. Look to the bug tracker. Ask your manager for projects or idea about things to work on. Sorry to say it, but you should do SOMETHING soon.

</comment><comment><USER7> Can't speak to FANG specifically, but the number of well paid people that hang out and do nothing tends to increase exponentially with the size of a company. So yes you should expect to feel underutilized.

</comment><comment><USER5> Please don't F this up.</comment>