Eric Schmidt: On April 4th I Will Step Down, Larry Page to be CEO - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/update-from-chairman.html <comment><USER2> From my (very limited) perspective, this seems to be mostly publicly clarifying the roles they were already effectively serving in their ad hoc division of labor for a while.

Larry has been the most involved in the technology details, Sergey has been the most involved in the blue-sky new projects, and Eric has been the most involved in the interaction between Google and other entities (as well as very high level direction.)

<comment><USER3> Agreed. It seems like it may just be a PR move... Larry doesn't have Eric's growing reputation for slight creepiness. People might like the idea (whether it's true or not) that he's the one making all the calls.

<comment><USER4> But on the other side of the coin, this makes it a bit harder for Good Czar Larry to hide behind nasty old Eric Schmidt whenever Google does something inept or morally questionable.

<comment><USER5> well maybe that's the point?

<comment><USER6> I'm reminded of the quote "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.".

<comment><USER7> Santa Clause?

<comment><USER8> You can't fool me, there ain't no Sanity Clause--Chico Marx, "A Night at the Opera"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From a programmer nerd, Schmidt has the most enviable resume.

The entrepreneurs admire Jobs and Gates, but Schmidt worked his way through Bell labs, PARC, managed the release of Java, was CTO of Sun, CEO of Novell, and brought google from a well executed grad school project to dominate the internet. He turned down a job with the Obama administration to be the governments CTO.

He also did all that as an academic, after getting a Ph.D. from Berkeley.

He has gotten some bad press doing PR for google recently, but the man has been kicking ass in enviable positions since I was a toddler.

After all that, yeah, good on him. Take some time off.

<comment><USER10> Absolutely. Would like to add that he has never been a founder, always a hired gun.

<comment><USER9> Yep, he's on the short list (with Ballmer) of people who are billionaires through stock grants without being co-founders or heirs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great tweet from Eric Schmidt on the subject:

 _Day-to-day adult supervision no longer needed_

<comment><USER12> The link for the tweet: <http://twitter.com/#!/ericschmidt/status/28196946376130560>

This one was the best satirical one:

 _Larry Page has just ousted Eric Schmidt as Mayor of Google on @foursquare.<http://bit.ly/hQGNRe> _

Link: <http://twitter.com/#!/pourmecoffee/status/28198140209270784>

<comment><USER13> A foursquare joke? what is this, 2010?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, Sun (CTO), Novell (CEO), Google (CEO)... Quite impressive.

 _As indicated by page 29 of Google's 2004 S-1 Filing Eric Schmidt, Page, and Brin run Google as a triumvirate. Eric Schmidt possesses the legal responsibilities typically assigned to the CEO of a public company and focuses on management of the vice presidents and the sales organization._ (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Schmidt>)

Google was always a different company. And we should not evaluate this move as if HP's CEO is stepping down, or IBM's etc. After all this time, I believe Larry can make it. Interesting times.

</comment><comment><USER15> Great news! I'm definitely a Larry fan, this means that Google will continue do crazy, risky, potentially world-changing projects in the future too.

</comment><comment><USER16> Most underrated executive of all time? Google's been incredible under his tenure, blown away the wildest projects, and yet Schmidt's press has been kind of neutral to bad... actually, that doubly sucks because it seems like people get upset when he says true-but-uncomfortable things instead of just giving politically correct non-answers.

I think as time passes, his reputation's going to grow even more... that was one of the greatest decades of any company ever.

<comment><USER17> Hmm, I feel differently. My basic perception is that under his rule, Google somehow lost its focus and transitioned from the indispensable service to just a product company. Put another way, currently it is easier to live without Google that it was 10 years ago (but to be fair, I can't say if that is due or despite Schmidt's leadership).

<comment><USER18> Isn't Search pretty much the only thing Google was known for before Schmidt's tenure? Everything from Gmail to Android to Chrome to Maps to Self-driving cars has been developed whilst Schmidt was CEO.

When Schmidt joined, Google was a search company. A damn good search company, but still just search. Now they're a phenomenally influential technology company, who's products affect billions of lives every day. The fact that they didn't just sit on piles of cash but have used it to revolutionize field after field of endeavour is a striking achievement in diversification.

<comment><USER17> I agree with what you say, and I also don't want to play down Google's achievement. I just wanted to say that imho currently Google doesn't own any technology that would be truly indispensable - for any of their product, I can use competitor product without losing that much value.

Yes, 10 years ago they were "still just search," because that was the indispensable way to navigate the internet, it was a core technology. During the last five years, the focus has shifted so "just search" is not that important anymore, but Google somehow didn't evolve, but instead has been developing new and new products. And while some of them are very good, in the future they all can be replaced by the competition. Google is just not essential for the Internet anymore, or at least that's my feeling.

<comment><USER19> And it's a good thing for us that this is the case. Every time we say we wish a company dominated a field (like many of us say regarding Apple or Google) we basically say we wish it to be a monopoly, or close to it. For the most part, Google has grown in search, maybe not as fast as it did in it's beginnings, but grown none-the-less. It's competitors have grown as well, and maybe that's one of the reasons it doesn't seem like it's doing such a good job : competition is stronger and the difference between search results is not the way it used to be. Again, for me, this is a good thing, and we should be so lucky, to have globally, 5 or 10 companies duking it out in each major technology field, where we currently have 2 or 3 evolving incrementally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wonder if this has more to do with media relations than anything else.

Schmidt had some major media slips & blunders in 2010, it just doesn't seem to be his thing.

</comment><comment><USER21> Seems like Larry is done with CEO school, and ready to lead his company. It would have been hard to get this far without Eric Schmidt

<comment><USER22> Who knows where they might have been, it could even have been better.

<comment><USER13> They probably would have never made a dollar, but it would have been _awesome_

(btw, Larry and Sergey bought Android without telling Eric, to give you an idea of what could have been)

<comment><USER23> That's pretty interesting. Do you have a cite? Android (the company) was essentially designed as something to sell to Google. I wonder if the guys at Android bypassed Schmidt because they knew he'd be a tougher sell.

<comment><USER13> He said it during a press event in New York. There were ppl live blogging in the room but somehow nobody picked up that part of what he said, but I remember at least one person tweeting it.

He said it in passing, while talking about the Google mobile strategy (the summary of what he said was "we sort of fell into this business, nobody really understands it just yet (mobile ads) or how big the opportunity will be")

I agree Android was setting itself up for an acquisition, same as what happen with Danger. They were probably aiming for a carrier or large non-Apple manufacturer.

<comment><USER24> So there was press, lots of live-blogging witnesses, and what would be an incredibly interesting statement by Eric Schmidt, and you can't find any record of it?

I'm sorry, but the most likely theory in this case seems to me to be that you're misremembering things, than somehow a whole room of other people were simultaneously rendered incapable of recording or publishing a very interesting quote from Eric.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> No mention if he keeps his role of Chief Dismisser of Privacy Concerns

<comment><USER26> This meme is based on a few isolated and misinterpreted quotations. Let's take an earnings call, where we would expect him to be showing his true colors as someone who purportedly doesn't care about privacy:

Q: How does Google think generally about leveraging user data, both to better target ads and how to stay competitive with those like Facebook and Microsoft and Yahoo that are leveraging data possibly more so than what Google is today? And I think this is particularly relevant for using search data for your display business but, would love to get your thoughts on that.

Eric Schmidt: "We have a pretty strong opinion that we're not going to do very much of it. The reason is that we take our end-user data privacy incredibly seriously and the trust that people have with respect to giving us that information, both their search histories as well as other pieces of information, they get very upset, very, very quickly if we, in their view, misuse it.

"So, what we typically tell people is we're not going to do the kinds of things that you could do with this, in particular use it to generate sort of strange ads against your history and things like that, without your explicit permission. And we probably, in many cases, won't do it forever."

\--Q3 2010 Earnings Call, October 14, 2010 [http://www.123jump.com/earnings- calls/Google-Q3-Earnings-Cal...](http://www.123jump.com/earnings- calls/Google-Q3-Earnings-Call-Transcript/41199/281)

This kind of quotation doesn't get press, but it's essential if you really want to get a balanced picture of what Eric says about privacy.

<comment><USER27> "... And we probably, in many cases, won't do it forever."

You will have to excuse me for not being terribly excited about the words "probably" and "in many cases".

He sounds to me like someone who is saying exactly what he thinks people want him to say, and then throwing in a couple of qualifiers that pretty much leave the company open to doing whatever they decide to do in the future. If someone calls Him on it, well he did say "probably", and "in many cases"

Now I don't know Eric Schmidt from Adam, but I did watch the interview where he said "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." (yes, I listened to it in context, the quote is not the only part I heard). While that quote perhaps does not mean all that people have made it out to mean, I still find it deeply disturbing -- especially coming from the (now "former") CEO of a company which is in such a great position to abuse their collected information if they decide to.

Yes, perhaps Schmidt was only trying to cover the company's collective rear end for when federal laws require them to disclose information, but if so, He has done an extremely poor job of convincing me (and obviously many others in the world) that such was his intention.

<comment><USER26> > You will have to excuse me for not being terribly excited about the words > "probably" and "in many cases".

He said categorically that it would not happen without the user's permission. And then went on to further say that it probably would not happen at all (even _with_ the user's permission). The last sentence was further _limiting_ the scope of what Google will do, not expanding it.

> He sounds to me like someone who is saying exactly what he thinks people > want him to say

He is talking to investors, not privacy advocates. He is saying the opposite of what investors want to hear. Investors would want him to say "we are sitting on a high-value treasure trove of marketing information, and of course we will use it to enhance the value of our ads products whenever we can." Instead he is saying exactly the opposite of what would increase Google's perceived value.

> Yes, perhaps Schmidt was only trying to cover the company's collective rear > end for when federal laws require them to disclose information, but if so, > He has done an extremely poor job of convincing me (and obviously many > others in the world) that such was his intention.

What about the fact that his very next sentence was: "If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines -- including Google -- do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities."

Google is not the only search engine that keeps logs, and any US company that keeps logs is subject to government subpoenas. This is reality. If Eric or any other search engine CEO told you differently, they'd be lying to you.

<comment><USER27> Sorry, I just got back to this thread.

> > You will have to excuse me for not being terribly excited about the words > "probably" and "in many cases".

> He said categorically that it would not happen without the user's > permission. And then went on to further say that it probably would not > happen at all (even with the user's permission). The last sentence was > further limiting the scope of what Google will do, not expanding it.

That totally depends on how you read that entire (2 short paragraph) response -- you can take it with an optimists viewpoint and say he really is saying they have no intention of ever abusing that information. But I'm sorry, if that truly was his intent he chose his words _very_ poorly. "And we probably, in many cases, won't do it forever." can easily be taken to be applied to his entire comment, and that doesn't inspire confidence in me that I can take his comments for what I perceive he _wants_ me to take them to mean.

Yeah, I'd like to live in a world where I can take the word of business executives at face value, and never be concerned that what they appear to be saying may not be what they are actually saying. However, life experience has shown that the world I live in is not such a world.

> > He sounds to me like someone who is saying exactly what he thinks people > want him to say

> He is talking to investors, not privacy advocates. He is saying the opposite > of what investors want to hear. Investors would want him to say "we are > sitting on a high-value treasure trove of marketing information, and of > course we will use it to enhance the value of our ads products whenever we > can." Instead he is saying exactly the opposite of what would increase > Google's perceived value.

Regardless of the audience that was immediately before him, Schmidt knows his words will be out in public view. I was not arguing that he was telling investors what they wanted to hear, I was arguing that he could be telling users of Google's search engine what they want to hear. If you are trying to project the message that Google won't abuse data they've collected about you regarding your browsing habits, as a Google executive, you will try to make it sound like that is true no matter what forum you are in -- if there is significant chance that the public will hear about it. I still say there is a decent chance of Schmidt wanting to have it both ways here -- wanting the public to believe Google won't abuse the data, but still leaving the possibility that they can change their policy in the future (while, of course, intending the public to believe that that will never ever happen).

> > Yes, perhaps Schmidt was only trying to cover the company's collective > rear end for when federal laws require them to disclose information, but if > so, He has done an extremely poor job of convincing me (and obviously many > others in the world) that such was his intention.

> What about the fact that his very next sentence was: "If you really need > that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines -- including Google > -- do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, > that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is > possible that all that information could be made available to the > authorities."

I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say here. I wasn't arguing that Schmidt was not trying to cover Google's legal responsibilities (in fact, I totally agree that he _was_ trying to do that). I was arguing that he has not convinced me that covering said responsibilities was the _only_ thing he was trying to do (I put the "only" in the first part of the first sentence, I should have also said "only intention" at the end of the second sentence). Bottom line is I am not convinced that Schmidt has zero intentions of allowing Google to exploit data gathered about individual's use of Google's search engine (and anything they can tie that use to) for financial gain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I like the image of the self-driving car he chose as an illustration of who drives Google.

</comment><comment><USER29> Leaders of the two major players, Apple and Google, are taking a back seat now at the same time. It'll be an interesting watch from here

<comment><USER30> The difference is that Google will be run by a founder (again). That's not the case with Apple, where no matter how its spun, Jobs leave is generally perceived as a negative. Given the way the Apple announcement was handled, it would not surprise me if their timing was in part to steal Google's thunder.

<comment><USER31> That gives me a great idea. Woz for CEO!

<comment><USER32> Woz would be terrible as a CEO.

<comment><USER30> Maybe Ron Wayne is available. [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/25/ron- wayne-apples-lo...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/25/ron-wayne-apples- lost-fou_n_625657.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I wonder if this was in the plan all along. Schmidt acting as front-man until one of the founders has learned enough and garnered enough respect to credibly take over.

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm sorry, but this is not "publicly clarifying" anything. This new is huge. My guess at the real reason is this: Google created and continues to dominate the global market for low-priced ads - but it isn't doing enough to retain that dominance by either innovating in search, developing content networks (like Facebook or Amazon) or by taking control of new platforms (which is hard to do).

<comment><USER35> They took control of the Youtube content network. They serve the ads for most of the world's biggest websites, and they have a solid foothold in mobile. I don't think Google is in any trouble.

They really just need to make a compelling social product that appeals to the masses, not just tech geeks.

I suspect Schmidt dropped the ball on buying Twitter at some point, and Buzz, Wave, etc. were all duds. He's great at selling ads, so they've put him in charge of that while the cofounders work on future product development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> > _Sergey['s]....title will be Co-Founder._

I can just imagine the conversation. "So, Sergey, you're okay with Larry taking the CEO title, what will yours be?"

"You can call me 'Co-Founder', bitch"

<comment><USER31> If I were Sergey, I'd make sure that my title was just "Sergey".

<comment><USER36> I just think it's funny that they probably wanted Sergey to pick a standard big company management title for the press release, like "President of Products" or similar. He went with "Co-Founder".

<comment><USER31> Any standard big-company management title other than "CEO" or "Chairman of the Board" is beneath CEO level.

"Co-founder" makes it clear what his position is: power without any official duties. Pretty sweet deal.

<comment><USER13> His first request was "Super Co-Founder"

<comment><USER37> I love the way Google functions in respect to top management

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Despite the cordial collaborative tone of the blog post, it seems the picture, taken today, tells it's own story.

Forget for a moment who is who and just consider the picture.

There are two dudes in the 'self driving car', sitting in-sync with arms wide open. There is also another guy with crossed arms who is next to, but not in, the 'self driving car'.

Can you guess where Eric is in the picture?

Review the picture again and make your own conclusions..

[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_7ZYqYi4xigk/TTirzCdsGgI/AAAAAAAAHW...](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_7ZYqYi4xigk/TTirzCdsGgI/AAAAAAAAHW0/syTLBoNuYJg/s1600/L100288-clean.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER39> I bet this means Eric is on his way out. He'll stay on for a year or so, so as not to rattle investors, and then he'll leave the company.

<comment><USER40> I doubt it, he's too young to be doing nothing. He'll come to his senses and stay on!

<comment><USER39> After I posted this comment, the New Yorker came out with an article quoting an insider who agrees with me. It's a pretty straightforward thing... happens all the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Me thinks Eric Schmidt will replace Steve Jobs (for now) to restore confidence in Apple when Steve steps down.

<comment><USER42> He's not leaving Google, or at least there's no indication that's the case. They're just refocusing on their strengths. Also, why on Earth would Jobs want that? That'd be like grooming Gates to take over for him when Scully fired him.

Jobs will find a product guy to take over, and that's not Schmidt.

<comment><USER41> Schmidt was previously an Apple board member and had to resign due to conflict of interest but he is capable of restoring stockholder confidence once Steve Jobs steps down. He would still have to resign from Google if he took the position (which his current statement doesn't support) but I don't expect an equally capable product guy to replace Steve. Schmidt could also help facilitate strategic relationships between the two companies again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I wonder how much of this is due to some of the bad decisions Eric Schmidt has made with google.

<comment><USER44> What decisions made by Eric Schmidt would you consider "bad"?

<comment><USER45> Leading a decade of mediocre home-grown products (save for Gmail)?

EDIT: Name one hit Google product Schmidt oversaw (again, save for Gmail) that wasn't an acquisition. This is supposed to be a company of innovation.

EDIT 2: I regret the use of mediocre. I'm sure the technology, like everything that comes out of Google, was top notch. Certain products though, like Buzz, Wave, and TV, and the bizarrely bifurcated-from-Android Chrome OS, lacked a degree of oversight and discipline before launch that ended up hurting their brand in the space of consumer products. I also think something to consider is that this culture of acquisition has to be very bad for their employee turnover rate.

<comment><USER46> Being able to execute upon acquisitions and bring them to Google-scale is nothing to scoff at. Example, Android. Despite the Gruber's of the world thinking it is an iPhone rip off, Google made the acquisition (of a very small company--the Android we know today was quite simply built by Google) in 2005.

Update: Also, thought of a few... Translate, Chrome, Talk, and Reader. I'm sure there are more, definitely if you include ones based on acquisitions (Analytics, Earth, Apps, etc).

<comment><USER47> You have seen Android pre-iPhone, right? At that time it was a Blackberry ripoff.

<http://news.cnet.com/2300-1037_3-6230132.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Tried and true: founders make terrific CEOs.

EDIT, Context being tech: Hastings, Ellison, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Jobs, Gates. I'd say Google was a company in the spirit of these before WorldCom, Enron and Countrywide Financial.

<comment><USER46> Except when they don't... Angelo Mozilo, Bernie Ebbers and Ken Lay (among many others) come to mind.

<comment><USER45> Bravo on conjuring a list of relevant counterexamples. Surely boards on product companies will look to the Enron scandal when assessing whether a founder has the competence or vision to lead a company.

<comment><USER46> They are criminally liable to do the due diligence assessments to make sure the books aren't being cooked, so yes I would hope at minimum the board is actively trying to prevent an Enron.

<comment><USER45> No, what was pertinent to the discussion was whether vision outweighs direct experience in this industry, which is not entirely obvious. I would say that vision is a trait that is generalizable to technology startup founders. Your counterexamples reference accounting fraud, the proclivity of which is not tied or correlated in a significant way to being a founder. A valid counterexample would reference the need for experience trumping vision in a startup founder's performance as CEO.

<comment><USER46> Simply put, you said "founders make terrific CEOs". That's just not true. Some do, some don't (because they steal, manage poorly, whatever).

<comment><USER45> You took what I said out of context and used cases of criminal accounting fraud as counterexamples. That's totally missing my point, which was pointing to character traits that founders have that outsiders with more traditional experience lack. The discussion of experience versus vision in tech leadership is critically important and worth exploring in a deep way.

You weren't pointing to traits specific to founders when you replied. You took a very broad interpretation of what I was saying and provided a counter to that broad interpretation. There's nothing particularly insightful or relevant in doing that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> My guess is this is aimed at stopping Google from hemorrhaging engineers in Facebook's general direction. "Look, we've got a programmer in charge again!"

<comment><USER49> Eric Schmidt _is_ a programmer. He was one of the authors of lex.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Farewell, Eric! As you slowly leave Google with your $5.5 billion, we'll always remember you for... for.... uh, those thingies you did so well.

</comment><comment><USER51> I just can't picture Larry as CEO of one of the largest corporations in the world, I'm frankly surprised he'd want this!

<comment><USER52> Me neither. He's obviously amazingly talented, however, he has always struck me as shy/inarticulate/"slow"

Watch this talk he gave a couple years ago: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFb2rvmrahc>

Doesn't strike me as CEO material, especially for a company like Google.

<comment><USER53> He doesn't come across to me that way, but I see what you're getting at. He's not overtly charismatic or a gifted orator, but he has so much substance that he can demand the patience and consideration of his listeners - and I think this gives him important leverage in conversations with financial analysts on earnings calls, and suchlike. In recent years the concept of leadership seems to have become constricted into a narrow spectrum with motivational speakers at one end and General Patton at the other.

Good link in other respects too: an insightful look into his priorities, motivations, and thinking patterns. The insight and ideas that he inherited from his father are particularly interesting, and worthwhile. While visions of a better world over the long term have to be tempered by present promises to shareholders, I think it's important to be able to articulate the purpose and goals of a firm beyond simply maximizing quarterly growth.

On a related note, here's a 2001 Charlie Rose interview where Larry Page & Sergey Brin discuss what it's like to run a search engine that handles 100m queries per day, and more importantly why they had just brought Eric Schmidt on board. <http://www.charlierose.com/view/content/3017>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I guess Google is going to be more focused on PR (and lobbying) and will be way more aggressive than ever before - in simple lingo , they wont take anymore bullshit (from all sort of heavy weight and nasty competitors) and even more than that they will stop them even before they think to do anything against google ...

Don't be Evil to Customers and Shareholders !!!

But be as Evil as possible if (and Only if) someone tries to screw you !!!

<comment><USER54> i would appreciate courtesy if you explain your reasoning for downvoting me .... Eric Schmidt now a dedicated resource, he will be strong force for external PR also he will see that no one gets Evil to Google and their vision (which is not to be evil to other) provided everyone plays a fair game ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Does Eric Schmidt steps down because Larry Page is a more open standard as a CEO?

</comment><comment><USER56> Hopefully this is not another "Jerry Yang as new CEO of Yahoo!" thing.

</comment><comment><USER57> I think one of the two founders just wants more face time...

</comment><comment> brown9-2 I've always wondered when a change in the "triumvirate" would happen and what impact it would have on public perception of Google, but somehow I also imagined it would be one of the co-founders leaving the company first.

</comment><comment><USER58> Why April 4th? Symmetric date. Hidden meaning? :)

<comment><USER59> Many companies set their calendars using 13-week quarters. April 4 is the fourteenth Monday of the year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> How much I wanted the date to be 3 days earlier!

</comment><comment><USER61> Is looking to fill the vacancy at Apple?

</comment><comment><USER62> Eric is joining Apple when Steve leaves.

</comment><comment><USER63> His Page rank just went from 1 to 1.

</comment><comment><USER64> Sometimes people switch out from being CEO to being chairman because it's just more fun being the globe-trotting-jet-setting-lunching-with-Obama guy schmoozing and closing deals and partnerships than being the tedious micromanager.

Just saying.

But it's also fun to fantasize, speculate, and gossip about really rich and important people.

<comment><USER65> It's the 'problems we'd like to have.'

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Wow. Back to the original CEO then.

Eric is still around and filling an important role (basically doing what he used to mostly do, he just doesn't have to sit in on earnings calls anymore):

 _Eric Schmidt will assume the role of Executive Chairman, focusing externally on deals, partnerships, customers and broader business relationships, government outreach and technology thought leadership--all of which are increasingly important given Google's global reach. Internally, he will continue to act as an advisor to Larry and Sergey._

<comment><USER67> _"'we've only touched one percent of what' social can be within search."_

Brin was quoted above in the google earnings address, _"We've Touched 1 Percent Of What Social Search Can Be"_ ~ [http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/20/sergey-brin-weve- touched-1-...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/20/sergey-brin-weve- touched-1-percent-of-what-social-search-can-be/)

 _"... Eric is still around and filling an important role ..."_

I think this could be a bigger adjustment than you think. Google under Schmidt has not gained ground on social search and in effect dropped the ball. An important lesson running a product on the open Internet. Google with the massive financial and technical lead can loose ground and revenue to competitors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> But you still know all my secrets? Or is it Larry Page from now on?

</comment><comment><USER69> My birthday present!

<comment><USER70> Happy Birthday!

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Larry becoming CEO sounds like the same path that Bill Gates had.

Found a company and become it's CEO.

When it's time for the company to "grow up", bring in a well respected CEO who can structure the company for growth and stability while teaching the young founder.

When the founder has learned the ropes he takes over again as CEO.

<comment><USER72> Gates was CEO from the beginning of Microsoft until he became Chief Software Architect prior to his retirement. Ballmer became CEO after Gates. There was never a gap between founding and CSA where someone else was CEO of MS.

<comment><USER71> Hmm how about that, it looks like you are correct:)

I though John Shirley was the CEO for most of the 80's:)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> My initial reaction was that this was just another Google April fools joke.

<comment><USER74> I think it needs to be the 1st of April for it to be an April fools joke, right?

<comment><USER75> For most of us, yes. If Google wants to do an April fools joke on April 4th, all they need to do is edit the index so that the top result returned for "April fools date" claims that April fools' day is April 4th.

<comment><USER76> That would actually be a great April Fools' Day joke for Google, to change a few obscure indexes, especially one related to April Fools'.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Cellphone's Missing Dot Kills Two People, Puts Three More in Jail(2008) - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/382026/a-cellphones-missing-dot-kills-two-people-puts-three-more-in-jail <comment><USER2> Sounds like this is a good way of removing idiots from the gene pool. If you think the correct response to a perceived slight is to ignore explanation and apologies and try to kill someone then fuck you if you die, the parents see as much to blame for the loss of their daughter as she is for her own death.</comment>


Syrian Electronic Army Gained Control of Facebook.com Domain? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cybernewsalerts.com/2014/02/syrian-electronic-army-gained-control.html

<comment><USER2> >"With this case Syrian Electronic Army had proved thay can hack facebook website also"

No way I can take anything this badly written or ill-informed seriously. Also, "Cyber", not to mention the stupid anti-highlighting JS (attempt to stop people from quoting their site?).</comment>


Fair Source License - <AUTHOR> https://fair.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> First and obvious remarks:

* This breaks inter-op with other projects under a different open-source license. So for anything that's a library or a package: don't use this.

* What happens when other people contribute? Do they also get a part of the income (how?), or is this an implicit copyright grant (like a CLA)?

I guess this needs work, but it's good to see efforts to make open-source a sustainable business (not sure if a license is the right way to do it though).</comment>


Reverse words in sentence - <AUTHOR> http://developer.divakaran.com/home/2012/01/reverse-words-in-sentence/

<comment><USER2> Usually this question requires that operation be done in place. The trick is to reverse the string in place, then to reverse each word.</comment>


Ask HN: I want to learn to program (in Ruby). How can I get to "doing", easily? - <AUTHOR>

I want to learn to program (in Ruby). But with near-unlimited information, resources, etc., I've found it pretty overwhelming/difficult to find a good place to start.
To get started, I'd rather do than read. I'd rather someone tell me, in as much detail as possible: "do this this and this to get your environment up and running." (I'm on OSX 10.5.)
Then, I'd prefer if someone would just give me a bunch of "cool code" (meaning code with practical applications -- i.e. something i can use/experience right away, perhaps a very simple blog) to write and run (with specific directions as to how to do both), so that I'm able to experience it first hand.
And then I'd like the concepts to be explained to me (e.g. what variables, strings, classes, instances, objects, etc., are), after I've experienced/interacted with/done it.
I guess I wish learning to code was like learning to throw a frisbee, or ride a bike.
Perhaps it is, but that hasn't been my experience...
I'd happily (and eagerly) pay someone to make the initial process and core concepts of learning to code (mainly for web-development) a much more user-friendly experience... <comment><USER2> For a while I used the freely available HTML book at Railstutorial.org, but I recently bought the screencast + pdf bundle. The quality of the material is top notch.

Paying for stuff will make you feel guilty if you don't use it. As a bonus, you get to support the people that make great stuff.

Some other sites to check out are: www.railscasts.com (Free) www.pragprog.com (not free) www.peepcode.com (the rails screencasts here were 'meh' and not free)

</comment><comment><USER3> You have to check this place out. It has been incredibly useful for a lot of people, myself included:

<http://railsforzombies.org/>

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm actually glad to see this question come up again & again, because the Ruby world is so fast-paced.

I found the following useful:

\- tryruby.org (actually _why's precursor)

\- Hartl's railstutorial.org

\- Pragmatic Programmers Programming Ruby book

\- Peepcode.com videos (great for getting started very quickly on CRUD apps

I saw that nobody's mentioned the previous HN Asks about learning Ruby, so I've compiled some of them here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1623619>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1984323>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1544100>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=841951>

You can find more at:

[http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+l...](http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+learn+ruby) <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1676271> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1877668>

</comment><comment><USER5> For rails check out Michael Hartls tutorials by example railstutorial.org, it contains an ebook and videos. Only took me a couple of weeks to get through it and I can highly recommend it. I think it costs about $100.

</comment><comment><USER6> How about hackety-hack.com?

<comment><USER7> Nice, I didn't realize it had a Windows version too. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I just came across <http://tryruby.org> and it seems pretty useful.

</comment><comment><USER8> Try <http://rubykoans.com/> or for Rails, try Railstutorial.org

<comment><USER9> I've mentored several people who have wanted to learn Ruby. I universally start them with installing RVM (<http://rvm.beginrescueend.com>) and then the Ruby Koans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I just completed the ruby koans (as dougireton has suggested) and it was a great introductory course. I highly recommend that as a start. It's quite basic but you get a good grasp of key topics.

</comment><comment><USER11> it would probably help a huge deal if you set yourself concrete goals. I was a perler and I learned ruby because I needed to process and chunk huge amounts of genomic data for my new job (yes I realize there are python tools to do this but being a perler ruby seemed like a better choice) so I wound up using it as an excuse to write all new scripts to do those jobs. In the process I learned ruby.

</comment><comment><USER12> lynda.com is pretty good.

some ppl rate the "pickaxe" book (google it)

other than that, read code, try stuff, experiment.</comment>


LaTeX: A First Introduction - <AUTHOR> https://mathvault.ca/latex-guide/ <comment><USER2> I have a few things in LaTeX. I recently started using TexPad on my iPad, which I like.

However, I wish it was easier to extract formulas to include in either Notability or on GitHub, where I keep a lot of Markdown notes.

Often I want the simplicity of Markdown with a few equations.

$\frac{a}{|\Omega|}$</comment>


Betelhem Dessie: A 19-Year-Old Tech Genius Coding at Ethiopia's First AI Lab - <AUTHOR> https://codepeople.io/betelhem-dessie-tech-genius-coder-at-ethiopias-ai-lab/ <comment><USER2> The pic with developers has been taken in [http://www.iceaddis.com/](http://www.iceaddis.com/) a great co-working place (I normally do not like co-working place: to many so called western digital nomads just uploading dumb youtube videos, but this is different: almost all locals, really smart guys: I mean _really_ )

I am 100% positive on the fact that many EU based IT companies will have a base in Ethiopia in the near feature: almost same timezone, perfect English (in Ethiopia when you are around 16 anything in school starts to be in English: which is not that good, really, but you end up with access to good books and with graduates talking great English); but also great winter (Addis is a plateau, over 2500mt high, so no mosquitoes, no malaria at all, no need air conditioning, and every day sunny as june in Europe): any IT companies will love to have a base there!

the only problem is politics (here, too!): the government do not probably have instruments to control what is going on in the internet, as a result they just turn internet off when needed (and when I mean off, I mean OFF! and for days): election are coming, so watch out!

</comment><comment><USER2> btw, how do you bypass the "Blocked because of Ad Blocker"? I did whitelist the website but I am still unable to see the content (and I am not going to uninstall my Ublock ;)</comment>


Twitter Interview with Bill Scanner App Team - <AUTHOR> http://us5.campaign-archive1.com/?u=b5c77b5d9fe8557cd2e26f469&id=07a0a33f49&e=1f79f98e1a

<comment><USER2> Great!</comment>


Should Programming Work be Billed in Hours? - <AUTHOR> http://itscommonsensestupid.blogspot.com/2009/08/should-programming-work-be-billed-in.html

<comment><USER2> I think hourly billing is bad for two reasons, even though I do it all the time:

* It just limits the amount of money you can make. People have a strange psychological approach to hourly figures; once you hit a certain rate that they consider alarmingly "high," which is a metric that varies immensely, their eyes just sort of glaze over and they go, "ooof!" But if you give them a fixed bid that assumes x hours and comes out to an equivalent hourly rate that is ${quite high}, they seem to be just fine with that - in my experience, this is often true _even if you itemise it and declare the expected hours_. Some sort of fixed bid leaves a lot more room for padding in case things don't go as expected, and, if you're lucky, more profitability.

* Programming workflow just isn't linear like that. We've all read Joel Spolsky's "Human Task Switches Considered Harmful." In addition to that, programming problems are often solved in strangely noncontiguous, out-of-band ways, like coming up with solutions to a vexing encumbrance in the shower.

The point is that billing should attempt to reflect the actual workflow as closely as possible, and the workflow of a programmer just doesn't go like an auto shop's. If you have a 20 hour project, doing 5 hours here, going off to do something else, and coming back to it and doing another 5 hours _doesn't mean the project is 50% done_ \- at least, from a practical perspective.

Being a very small business myself with no credit facility and no savings or cash buffer whatsoever coupled with relatively high living expenses inherited from my employed days, I face the additional issue of severe cash flow constraints when I attempt to float long projects that pay hourly. I describe this more extensively in this comment: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=746517>

For me - as for many freelance programmers and contractors - I think the right choice is some sort of flat weekly billing, and splitting up any project of nontrivial size into smaller, manageable and well-defined milestones. If you can get away with it.

I think it's pretty fair to say that you often can't do a linear, 1:1 relationship between time spent toward project and money paid. One caveat is the one I pointed out above. The other, more generally, has to do with the fact that at 100% completion code acquires orders of magnitude more economic utility than when it's 90% complete. At 90%, it's just a useless blob of code as far as most customers are concerned. At 100% it's a finished deliverable that does what they want - or thought they wanted, whatever. So, usually there's a bigger balloon payment at the tail. It's not realistic to expect that when you have 7/8ths of the project done, you'll have 7/8ths of the money in hand. There are other reasons for this as well; see the link to my other comment above. But I think one should strive to get as close to that possible, insofar as it's possible to measure % completion to any degree whatsoever.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think tools are an important part of the equation.

Say you are paying someone to demolish your concrete driveway. Would you pay someone with a jack hammer who can get the job done in an hour the same rate you'd pay someone with a sledgehammer, which will take 8 hours? The task is the same. The value of the completed project is the same.

But if the jack hammer owner charges a fix bid billed for half the hourly rate of the sledge hammer owner, he spends an hour and gets paid for four.

In a fixed bid contract, the jack hammer could charge 50% more than he would estimate the demolition (originally billed at half the hourly rate of the sledge of 4 hours) at 6 hours and still make more money and spend less time: 6x as much money and spend 1/8th as much time completing the job. If his estimate was _way_ under actuals and it ends up taking him _twice_ as long (2 hours) as he originally thought it would take, which was 1 hour, he still makes triple the hourly rate for two hours of work (6 hour billed estimate, 2 hours of work) than the guy with the sledge hammer!

The use of tools that accelerate task completion, in this case an 8x improvement (jack over sledge) enables the jackhammer operator to underestimate the labor times and still make more money at lower times to completion. Plus, the driveway owner gets his demolished driveway in 25% of the time that it would have taken with a sledgehammer and that is _still_ at a project overrun of 100%!

But the world doesn't understand equations like this or really accept the value of advanced technologies. I use technology to build custom software products that are way more advanced than what typical developers use, so I can build them 10x faster and charge half the rate and still make more money!

I know a local case where a company is paying a guy to use Perl to build a data driven website using files -- instead of an SQL Database. he's been working on the website for over 5 months and it still isn't finished and it has already reached the maximum of its flexibility. It's already going to have to be re-architected to enable the features the client wants now. If the local company had gone with _our_ company, which uses a flexible sql based infrastructure, then the project would have been completed in about 2 weeks and still have lots of flexibility to go! New features would be easy to add.

Now, the programmer is coming to us asking to use our technology to help him complete his project!

So, I love the current state of the software world. Frustrated customers paying too much for projects that typically fail are a great market segment.

<comment><USER4> What tool do you use?

<comment><USER3> Qrimp

<comment><USER4> Interesting -- I'd like to talk to you about it in more detail, if you have a moment. I'd shoot you an e-mail, but none is listed!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For my latest contract gig, I decided to try a slightly different approach than tallying and billing hourly or guessing at a fixed-cost. We're going with a "retainer" model which more or less makes me into an unofficial employee, but the idea is that they get X number of hours per week of my time. Deadlines and such are attempted to be met within those constraints.

The upshot of this is that they have a clear and known rate of expense. If the project doesn't appear to be progressing fast enough, they could increase the hours per week they pay for, hire more help, hire someone else, or wait longer. :)

The tricky part is getting into a deal like this without them trying to attach things like, "ok, you work 20 hours a week on our project - but if it's not done by the 3rd, we don't pay you." or whatever. But if you can avoid that and get them to think of you as an employee and not just a code factory, it works out.

</comment><comment><USER6> Bill by the project. You can use your hourly rate to estimate the fixed cost. The more projects you do, the more accurate your estimate will become. Over time you develop your own time-saving methods, such as pulling code out into reusable libraries you can use on your next project. Say you do a project that takes you 50 hours and you charge $5,000. If you get another similar project but this time you know it will only take 25 hours, are you going to charge $2,500 for it? Hell no! Charge as much as the market will bear, but set some kind of a minimum threshold for yourself. Here's an old article relating to technical writing, but I think it still applies to software development: <http://www.writerswrite.com/journal/jan98/kent.htm>

<comment><USER7> "You can use your hourly rate to estimate the fixed cost"

Only if you know how long it will take. Which assumes you know what you are going to build, which assumes the client _really_ knows what they want.

If you are doing a more agile project, you expect new requirements to come up, current requirements to drop out, things to change along the way. But you almost certainly have no solid idea how long it might take.

A mixed approach might be to make a big project into a series of smaller projects (e.g., well-defined and doable in 1-2 weeks), and bill each at a fixed price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have never quite gotten billing in hours. The value of a project is utterly uncorrelated with them. The number of hours to accomplish X goes down as the skill of the individual goes up.

What sane model is it that says hiring average people to do unimportant work should cost more than hiring experts to do things that really matter for the business?

<comment><USER5> That's why as skill increases, the hourly rate should, too. If a company is looking to get something done faster and are willing to pay for it, they can hire the more skilled/faster professional. If that's less important to them, they hire the slower and/or sloppier but cheaper alternatives. You have to be willing to increase your rates if you're getting better/faster.

If you're an employee, that's why you should be able to expect raises and bonuses and the like. The assumption is that you're getting better and better at what you do and therefore becoming more implicitly valuable. If you feel yourself getting more and more skilled but the company refuses to reward you, you should leave for someone else who values that skill - which is basically the same thing as raising your hourly rates if you're independent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Day rate is the way to go. No time tracking, include an hour break for chatting and eating.

</comment><comment><USER10> Billing by the hour is the only effective way I have found to eliminate scope creep. Being able to say "Well, sure, I CAN do that, but it's going to cost an additional 4-6 hours" is simply the easiest (and most well received) method of indicating that they are asking for something not initially agreed to.

Obviously, it helps to have a contract/requirements documentation/specification/etc., to point to, but it's rare that you run into a document detailed enough to cover nuances like whether or not this element should be blue or light blue after clicked upon.

<comment><USER3> If you billed fixed rate and the client changes the requirements, then you change the fixed rate.

Say you estimate the cost at $10,000 and they want you to make a change, you say, "Okay, but this change wasn't included in the $10,000 so we will have to estimate how much the change will cost and add it to the bill. If you want us to do that, let us know."

This is why you have to outline the requirements before you do a fixed bid.

Instead of saying it's going to take 4-6 more hours, you say it's going to cost $400-600 more dollars, assuming you estimate at $100/hr. If it really takes you 1 hour, then you still make $400-600, but it only takes an hour so your hourly rate just went from $100 an hour to at least $400 an hour.

If you're a highly productive programmer and use the right tools, then a fixed bid can come out in your favor if you estimate projects using the hourly rates and estimates that not so productive programmers use.

<comment><USER7> 'Say you estimate the cost at $10,000 and they want you to make a change, you say, "Okay, but this change wasn't included in the $10,000 so we will have to estimate how much the change will cost and add it to the bill. If you want us to do that, let us know."'

Sometimes it's really that simple. Other times, you end up debating whether something is a 'change', or 'clarification', or some replacement, or whatever.

The upside of fixed bid is that you can do quite well when the process is well-defined and everyone is reasonable. The upside of hourly is that you get to offload assorted issues (i.e. prolonged requirements gathering, change requests, and ad-hoc requirements finessing) and focus on the work.

For every person I hear advocate fixed-bid, I hear another advocation hourly, and each swears experience is on their side.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Where I work we bill fixed bid and then go hourly if there is a scope change above and beyond that. It's the best of both worlds.

</comment><comment><USER12> No, to answer the original question. But I've heard it ties well to agile dev methods.</comment>


IEEE P802.3bz Approval for 2.5G/5G Ethernet - <AUTHOR> http://www.anandtech.com/show/10720/nbaset-receives-boost-with-ieee-p8023bz-approval <comment><USER2> I think most of us still just want 10G Ethernet to drop in price to the point where using it in a budget SAN makes sense.

Last I checked it was starting to get there, for single NICs; it was the switches that made even high-speed in rack deployment not make sense.

<comment><USER3> Does somebody have some insight about why there is such a gap between 1G ethernet and 10G ? I mean I have gigabit internet at my home why can't I have a faster local network for a reasonable price ? Is it just too soon or there is a real technological gap ?

<comment><USER4> My impression is that a 10Gbase-T PHY requires far more than 10x as many transistors as a 1000base-T PHY; maybe closer to 100x. This caused a death spiral where high prices lead to low volume that prevents prices from dropping.

<comment><USER5> There is also the problem that 10gbe over copper requires interleaving, whereas optical doesn't. A lot of 10gbit uses are latency sensitive. 2.5 and 5 usage is not likely to be latency sensitive usage.

2.5 and 5 are based on the existing 10gbase-t technology, and can be deployed over existing Cat5e and Cat6, whereas 10gbase-t only works reliably over existing Cat6 sometimes less than 100ft.

802.3bz's genius is basically running 10gbase-t at half or quarter the clock speed, requiring lower spec cabling but also lower power/lower heat parts. I don't know why this wasn't done as part of the original 10gbase-t specification (802.3an, which is now 10 years old; in comparison, 802.3ab, which defines 1gbase-t, is 17).

In addition, for embedded hardware, 2.5 and 5 are a better fit for common on- chip SerDes implementations when you need to wire stuff up that way.

As for power usage, a modern 10gbase-T controller ran at 1/4th the clockspeed (and voltage also appropriately adjusted) would use less than 1/4th the power, but be more power efficient than an existing modern 1gbase-t, per gbit/sec.

The real question is, when will all the cheap "we need an ethernet port but nothing fancy" controllers (which are all gigabit in anything recognizable as a computer, 100mbit becoming more and more rare in anything not recognizable as a computer) become baby 10gbit? That's all I really care about.

<comment><USER6> 10GBaseT only works reliably over "cat6a" and cat7 cable that costs close to $350 per 1000 ft (305 meters), whereas two strand singlemode G.657.A2 type cable now costs less than $85 per 1000 ft, or less than cat5e. This is why most datacenter environments use fiber and not copper. Also cat6a and cat7 will fill overhead cabling trays a great deal faster because of its huge diameter compared to singlemode patch cables.

<comment><USER5> Yes, this is true. I work in this industry, and I also recommend fibre over copper for these reasons. However, for rack local wiring (ie, wiring servers into top of rack switches), cat6 for 10gbase-t is acceptable, although I don't particularly care for it.

<comment><USER7> Eh, with the plethora of DAC SFP+ cables at extremely affordable prices I don't really see many people using CAT6 - especially considering the substantially higher power draw that 10GBase-T has over the DAC's.

<comment><USER2> This doesn't quite fulfill the role either though...

A quick search for SFP+ cards that can handle 10Gbit/sec shows that the typical price is ~200 USD/card right now (this is still at least 3x the cost per card I'd prefer to see).

Given the pricing on individual cards I'd hate to consider the price of a switch, if such a thing even exists.

<comment><USER7> We're talking about datacenter usage, not home. Also, there's plenty of older generation cards out there at reasonable prices, the Mellanox Connect-X 2 cards I have in my home servers cost me like $40 for a pair of them. And no matter how you slice it, 10GBe switching is expensive right now, like, crazy expensive - to the point that I don't even bother with it and my VMWare box is connected directly to my FreeNAS box with a 1M SFP+ DAC as a switch with even two 10GB uplink ports would have cost me considerably more than my cheap 24-port TP-Link managed switch ($150).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Running Cat6a through the older buildings here at NASA Goddard can be a nightmare. I can see us using this, especially for buildings that are planned for replacement down the road. And let's not talk about getting funding for Cat 6a upgrades, infrastructure money is always in short supply.

<comment><USER6> IMHO if you're going to go to the trouble of recabling a NASA research facility, run singlemode everywhere. It's really cheap, easy enough to terminate, and if the light path is done correctly is future proof to 100GbE, 400GbE and 1TbE. Singlemode fiber circuits built in very ordinary datacenters today carrying 1 x 10GbE LX circuit will function just fine for coherent 100GbE QPSK as long as the fiber termination is OK and the connectors are reasonably clean.

<comment><USER8> All of the 10Gbit stuff I'm aware of here at Goddard is over fibre. I assume it's single mode, but that isn't really my area of expertise. I mentioned Cat 6a above because I know that some projects here are using it, I didn't mean to imply that it was the preferred media for 10Gbit here generally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's crazy to think of the crazy high-speed signals we're now able to send over copper. Think about it: 5Gbit used to only be possible over very expensive hardware and very specialized/isolated cabling. Now it's all over the place: it started with PCIe, then Thunderbolt, then USB3, now Ethernet. And this is thanks to the advances in silicon technology that allows us to manufacture PHYs that are both performant to send/receive these signals and cheap enough to include in consumer hardware. It's not just Moore's law that allows this, but technological advances in signal processing.

In fact I've once read that all these high-speed signals are basically re- using the PCIe PHY. Does anyone with more knowledge of that area of tech know any more about it?

<comment><USER4> PCIe, SATA, SAS, Fibre Channel, Infiniband, and data center flavors of Ethernet are all based on very similar serdes technology that uses multi-GHz binary encoding over shielded cabling. [http://www.design- reuse.com/articles/10541/multi-gigabit-ser...](http://www.design- reuse.com/articles/10541/multi-gigabit-serdes-the-cornerstone-of-high-speed- serial-interconnects.html)

1G/2.5G/5G/10G Base-T Ethernet uses fairly different sub-GHz multi-level encoding over unshielded cabling.

<comment><USER9> Thanks! That's exactly what I was looking for!

I'm surprised that Base-T is unshielded. Cat-5 and more requires shielding over the full cable, however the cable will contain 4 twisted pairs of wire. Are those pairs of wires considered the "unshielded cabling" for the purposes of this application?

<comment><USER10> Cat-5, Cat-5e, and Cat-6 are all unshielded by default, but there are shielded versions for high EMI environments.

<comment><USER9> Huh, I didn't know that. Thanks!

<comment><USER11> They use differential signaling to reduce noise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is there a licensing reason that one can't get a Thunderbolt switch to connect a few close computers, laptops, and a NAS and be able to have a network? Even if one's not going for the full 40Gbit, just at least let me move files around on an emulated 10Gbit network card as Thunderbolt supports.

Does this just start to get too close to InfiniBand for Intel's liking?

Thunderbolt cables and adapters are (relatively) cheap and I find it a pity not seeing it used for these kinds of cases.

<comment><USER6> Thunderbolt is basically an extension of the PCI bus, it's a _very_ different thing than standards based Ethernet. The effort required to build a full network stack across it for computer-to-computer connectivity would be kind of useless, considering how cheap 10GbE optical is nowadays (I just paid $28/piece for 10GbE SFP+ 1310nm LX optics).

edit: and what are you going to do, reinvent the wheel by creating a thunderbolt switch/hub? good luck getting a thing like that to capture economies of scale for manufacturing and more than 0.05% of market share compared to existing infiniband or ethernet based interconnects.

<comment><USER13> I agree the transceivers and fibre are cheap nowadays, as are SFP+ DAC cables. The expense is the Thunderbolt to Ethernet adapters.

You can link two Macs with Thunderbolt, but in my experience the performance is underwhelming compared to a good 10GbE card (no send/receive offload, etc).

I'm beginning to hate Macs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Other than reusing existing cables, how this is going to be cheaper than 10GBASE-T isn't clear to me.

Can they make switches & NIC's reasonably priced compared to 10G? If so what in the spec allows them to do that?

<comment><USER15> This technology isn't designed to compete with 10gbit in the datacenter. 10GBASE-T has very strict requirements that can't be met by most installed cable plants except for very short runs, and as a result is almost exclusively used within a single room/datacenter. The Netgear switch they call out near the beginning of the article hints towards the source of the problem: 802.11ac Wave 2 now allows for just over 2gbps of throughput for current-generation APs.

Access layer switches are generally already backhauled with 10gbit where necessary, and even if they aren't running a fiber pair into the IDF doesn't cost a lot. There is little call for 10gbit to the desktop for most fixed- station users. APs on the other hand are getting swamped and they are widely distributed and are almost universally connected into the access layer with cat5-class cabling. Existing Wave 2 devices on the market solve this by aggregating two cat5 cables but this isn't ideal and often times still requires running new cables.

The goal then is to provide a swap-out replacement for existing APs and switches over existing cable plants. Cisco, et al want there to be no friction to finally talking their customers into an upgrade for their existing gigabit switches, and Wave 2 provides a nice incentive to do so, but only if you can get that bandwidth to the APs when nobody is interested in running new cables across the entire building.

Hence, NBase-T.

<comment><USER6> Anecdotally, from the perspective of an ISP, I almost _never_ see 10GBaseT. Even in the datacenter. I see a great deal of singlemode, and some special multimode cables for 100GbE intra-building links. And of course cat5e/cat6 for stuff like 1000BaseT top of rack switches to ordinary dedicated servers in colocation. If you tried to run cat6a or cat7 cable in some facilities here (or order your technicians to do it) you'd be laughed at and shamed by your peers for being wasteful of overhead cable tray space, and lacking the foresight to predict low cost 100GbE optical in a few years.

<comment><USER15> I work as a datacenter consultant and I can count on one finger the number of customers I've seen deploy 10GBASE-T at any scale (and they aren't a customer I would hold out as an example for how to do anything right). As others have mentioned, 10gbit is almost exclusively deployed using optics or direct-attach twinax.

Your point about upcoming fiber technologies is well taken and I hadn't considered the situation in that light.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The end of the clearfix hack? - <AUTHOR> https://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2017/01/24/the-end-of-the-clearfix-hack/ <comment><USER3> I'm not really a front-end kind of person, but whenever I've written any CSS this has, I think, literally _always_ bitten me. I try to read about it and understand it 'properly' every time, but clearly I never do.

Why is the unhacked behaviour desirable? If I put a thing in a thing, surely I want it to stay _in_ the thing?!

<comment><USER4> Because the original purpose of floats is not layout (where you want the thing to stay in the other thing) it's typographic floats, like pull quotes or info boxes or pictures. In that case, even if your float is in a paragraph you don't want to "expand" the paragraph past the end of the float if the float is longer than the paragraph, you want the following paragraph to be laid out around the float instead.

Here's a demo: [http://codepen.io/anon/pen/ggGgWb](http://codepen.io/anon/pen/ggGgWb)

Here's the "clearfixed" version which is nonsensical: [http://codepen.io/anon/pen/xgXgry](http://codepen.io/anon/pen/xgXgry)

That floats were press-ganged into layout does not mean their basic behaviour is bad, it just means they were used for something that was never intended (due to a lack of actual layout tools in CSS until CSS3) and they were not very good at it.

And note that the lack of layout tools was not limited to "applicative" layouts, most papers are laid out in multiple text columns yet that fairly simple and common layout was not supported either until CSS3.

<comment><USER5> Those demos look completely identical on my browsers (Chromium, Firefox). The CSS change is there, but the rendered output looks identical.

<comment><USER4> That is odd, I just opened them in Firefox 51 and I do get the rendering I was expecting: [http://imgur.com/a/Bke7v](http://imgur.com/a/Bke7v)

<comment><USER5> Oh, I see what happened. I have a minimum font size which makes the first paragraph tall enough so that it wraps all the way around the image -- so the clearfix is effectively redundant with my font sizes. The image clears it up, thanks!

<comment><USER4> Ah, makes sense, I should probably have explicitly set a small font size but completely forgot about the possibility of that issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't like the idea that this is tacked onto the "display" property. "display" is for the _outer_ display properties of the div, but this flow-root is for the _inside_.

You cannot have a div that is both `display: inline-block` and `display: flow- root` at the same time, for example.

<comment><USER4> > I don't like the idea that this is tacked onto the "display" property. > "display" is for the outer display properties of the div

That's really not true[0], "display: flex", "display: grid" or "display: table" are all _inner_ display properties, which is why inline-flex, inline- grid or inline-table exist ("display: flex" sets the outer display mode to "block" and the inner one to "flex", "display: inline-flex" sets the outer display mode to "inline" and the inner one to "flex").

Which is why CSS3 split display properties between _outer display_ (block, inline or run-in) and _inner display_ (flow, flow-root, table, flex, grid or ruby), which can be specified independently e.g. `display: inline flow-root`.

Furthermore `display: inline-block flow-root` makes no sense

1\. `inline-block` is specifically a "legacy" display property which impacts both inner and outer display (and thus is not compatible with a separate inner display property)

2\. `inline-block` already means `inline flow-root` so `display: inline-block flow-root` would expand to `display: inline flow-root flow-root`

[0] and has not been since CSS2 and display: table, possibly CSS1's display: list-item

<comment><USER7> That makes it look like the "display" property will turn into a css shorthand for "inner" and "outer" display properties... is that the case?

<comment><USER4> It is already that, it's been that pretty much all along, but for most of its history you couldn't set the inner and outer variants separately, you had to use "precomposed" values like inline-table. AFAIK you can't set the inner and outer display types via separate properties.

Furthermore there are values which have more complex interactions/natures than just inner/outer e.g. "contents" (which removes the element's box but leaves the descendants — including pseudo-elements), "list-item" (which can be combined with any outer type but only the flow or flow-root inner types, and generates an internal pseudo-element), or the "internal values" which only make sense within wider display context (table and ruby).

<comment><USER8> There was, briefly, in Display Level 3 drafts, display-inline and display- outside properties, with display being a shorthand additionally supporting legacy values (like inline-block). It's now expected to be in Level 4[1].

[1]: [https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www- style/2014Sep/0399....](https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www- style/2014Sep/0399.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've seen enough comments about using floats for layout that I think some people need to read the article. The example in the article is not using float for layout. It is using it for the original purpose, floating an element to the side for other elements to flow around. The problem shown is when the floated element is taller than the resulting containing parent. Which is a common problem and a valid use of float.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've moved away from float entirely and mastered the Flexbox. Which has made my live easier.

<comment><USER11> I really like flexbox, but its still missing functionality and somewhat misleading in its options. Everything is row-column based, but you can select between row or column, but in the column option, only justify-content will position content vertically. If you want something like forcing an element to be in the middle vertically, and have an element above it, you can't do that. align-self only works on rows. I really don't understand why they didn't make it work vertically if you have column mode.

<comment><USER12> A flexbox "column" can also be a row. You can have a container item centered vertically and also have it include two items.

<comment><USER11> In this case, I needed two children elements, one would be centered vertically in the column, and the other would be at the top of the column, but they would not effect each others position. I could only make one where the two elements were next to each other, or they effected each others positions, so the centered element was not actually centered. I ended up putting in three elements, the bottom one the same size as the top, but hidden, so the center element would stick between the two.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does anyone know the drawbacks of simply using:

        .container {
          display: table;
          width: 100%;
        }

See bottom example here [http://codepen.io/jrf0110/pen/xgXPGj](http://codepen.io/jrf0110/pen/xgXPGj)

I've never had to use the clearfix hack (that's probably a lie, but I can't recall a time in my career where I didn't just use the display: table; width: 100%; method)

<comment><USER14> It wasn't supported until IE8. For those of us who had to support IE6 till well after its sell-by date, prop-based clearing was an important tool in the toolbox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I usually use overflow:hidden on containers, what are the pro's and cons of this compared to clearfix?

<comment> martin-adams Interesting, I did not know that overflow:hidden resized the parent container to the floated elements.

It looks like the difference may be some legacy IE6 thing.

<comment><USER16> You can set overflow to visible too, just setting overflow to non-auto is enough to trigger it.

<comment><USER17> No, just auto, hidden, overlay, and scroll. Visible will not trigger the clearfix.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So a draft standard that's implemented in the current beta (alpha?) versions of Chrome and Firefox. So the end for the hack is nigh ... in about 5 years, I guess.

<comment><USER19> This isn't really true anymore. All the major browser vendors push out new releases pretty frequently. Even Apple and Microsoft tend to put out a new release at least every six months or so. And because of the ubiquity of software / OS updates, these tend to get deployed to the majority of users fairly rapidly.

For example, consider a feature like arrow function support in JavaScript: [http://caniuse.com/#feat=arrow-functions](http://caniuse.com/#feat=arrow- functions) Click "usage relative" to scale by the relative popularity of different browser versions.

Despite only being standardised and implemented in browsers last year, arrow functions are already supported in the large majority of deployed web clients, including Edge, Firefox, Chrome and Safari, both desktop and mobile.

Nowadays, new features, particularly relatively small and uncontroversial ones like display: flex-root, can get implemented across browsers very quickly.

<comment><USER20> A lot of people still have to support IE10/11, including myself - <USER2> browser support is mostly on evergreen browsers & browsers keep up to date on implementing the new standards, ability to use the standards hinges upon a couple of years buffer in some cases.

It still is largely true unfortunately.

<comment><USER19> As I already said: browser support _is_ mostly on evergreen browsers, and browsers _do_ keep up to date implementing the new standards. The stats make this very clear. To say otherwise is to promote a view of the world that is ten years out of date.

IE10/11 are at about ~4% global usage. Less than Opera Mini. And a large number of those users will have access to another browser. We've found many enterprises keep IE around to access legacy services, but let people install Chrome in order to access things that need a modern browser.

The days when it was worth supporting IE for new development work has long since passed. Company policies that mandate doing so should be challenged as a waste of time and money.

<comment><USER21> 4% is a high number in this context. If I cause a problem for 4% of my users, I will be spending the next week answering support issues and nothing else. When it is two orders of magnitude less, then we can talk.

<comment><USER22> Yeah: 4% of users of my site means like 40,000 people :/. For websites that sell things, I always think of it in terms of "if you could do some more engineering work and get 4% more revenue, would you?". I do not understand people who feel like 4% is some tiny number.

<comment><USER19> But that revenue isn't free. It has a cost in terms of time and effort in engineering the IE support, and then maintaining it. This is time and effort that could be better spent enhancing the site in other ways. For example, ~20% of the US population has a disability[1]. Investing effort in improving accessibility would be more sensible, economically speaking, than maintaining IE support, but I still see developers spending hours working around IE CSS bugs, while doing almost nothing to improve accessibility.

[1] [http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/facts_for_f...](http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/cb12-ff16.html)

<comment><USER22> Most of the people in that 20% likely have a disability that keeps them from working or walking but not from using a computer in a normal fashion.

That said, you are responding to my incredulity, and _I_ take disabilities sufficiently at least sufficiently seriously that a blind person presents every year at the conference we have been running for our ecosystem and we get tons of praise for our support of their issues.

In some cases, I will even argue that supporting old browsers is related to accessibility: if you are making a product such as a communications tool, one where many if not most users don't directly pay you for their use as you make money from a subset of users, people on older browsers are often people with older computers, who have lower income and less ability to arbitrarily plunk down money to upgrade their technology.

Just as we legally mandate people consider the needs of the disabled, I personally think we might be in need of some regulation that demands we also consider the needs of the poor and disconnected: there are tons of users (by which I mean "entire percentage points, by number competitive with blind people as a group of users but with less sympathy from the public") using older versions of browsers because they were stranded by Apple on an older iPod or iPhone with an out-of-date version of MobileSafari, or who would have to pay for a new version of Windows to even be able to use Chrome, or whose only access to a computer is a shared facility where the computers run something they have no control over. When we build websites that don't let them use our service, we essentially are building an implicit class hierarchy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> `float` should not be used for layouts, but for placement an image inside text ( e.g ), which is it's purpose.

Nowadays I don't use floats anymore. Flexbox is the current layout recommendation and I encourage you not to create legacy CSS stylesheet layouts with float.

<comment><USER14> To borrow and mangle a Zawinski quote:

'Some people, when confronted with a layout problem, think "I know, I'll use floats." Now they have two problems.'

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > The end of the clearfix hack?

Not until all browswers support it.

<comment><USER25> You could make a JS polyfill fairly easy.

<comment><USER26> I do agree, we still need to wait for all older browser to implement this (especially think of all the mobile browsers nowadays).

If making a polyfill is the solution, we risk ending up with a bigger polyfill file than the actual CSS implementation in the browser. If that is the case we can better do styling with JS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I see that you can use "height: 100%" on the inner item to fill the height of the parent that has "display: flow-root".

I've had difficulties implementing similar things in the past.

<comment><USER28> To make a child element the same height as the parent, you can set the parent container to position: relative, and in the child element, set it to position: absolute; top: 0; bottom: 0. The downside of this trick is that the child element is now absolutely positioned and no longer behaves the same. Alternatively, you can use flexbox to do this, if using it is an option.

<comment><USER25> My favorite use of this is making a resizable box that always maintains the same aspect ratio. Padding % is out of the element's width. So width: 100%, padding-top: 50% will make a block that is 2:1 that resizes automatically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Just use flex and avoid the float mess entirely.

(Obviously: starting from date supporting old browsers costs more than supporting them brings in, which depends on your product and your customers)

</comment><comment><USER30> I will remove clearfix from my stylesheets once ie9 supports it, or in 2050.. .whichever one comes first. :)</comment>


A functional programmer's guide to homotopy type theory - <AUTHOR> https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2951913.2976748 <comment><USER2> I am only able to download the abstract. Is there somewhere full content available?

<comment><AUTHOR> The entire paper is available for free at the moment. Click the pdf button right above the abstract to download it.</comment></comment>


Goodbye, server configuration woes. Hello, Puppet. - <AUTHOR> http://krisjordan.com/essays/goodbye-server-configuration-woes-hello-puppet

<comment><AUTHOR> For small teams and solo developers technologies like Puppet are easy to miss because most documentation is geared toward a target audience of folks running clusters of servers. It's actually super useful for small, single server projects, too. This post is a soft introduction to Puppet for smaller projects and dev system setups.</comment>


Ask HN: Am I right to be angry about the interview process? - <AUTHOR> I was given seven problems to submit via an online coding service called remoteinterview.io. Three problems included HackerRank style challenges. I was able to solve everything within an hour (though, it take me closer to two hours to code the edge cases for the third one), and the time limit was eight hours. Everything was  green; all tests cases were solved, minus any hidden cases I didn't know about. Next day, auto rejection.
How common is this? It's not my first time dealing with this. I find the interview process such bull crap, at the moment.
Note: I did document my entire code, which included my plan of action before writing anything and any necessary comments. <comment><USER2> I had 4.0 GPA, valedictorian, 2400 SAT, 800 on three SAT II tests, a varsity letter, awards in chemistry and math competitions, and 5s on 14 AP tests.

I got turned down by MIT. Yeah, it sucks but anger will hardly help.

And there are always upsides. In my case I went to state U on full-ride and saved myself $170k in tuition. In your case, you avoided being hired by a less-than-competent company.

<comment><USER3> >I had 4.0 GPA, valedictorian, 2400 SAT, 800 on three SAT II tests, a varsity letter, awards in chemistry and math competitions, and 5s on 14 AP tests.

I used to work with students polishing admissions essays for colleges like MIT.

The one thing I learned is that a resume like you listed isn't what gets you into a school like MIT. It's those things + something that makes you a uniquely appealing candidate.

Sure, you can get into MIT with your resume, but it's also very possible to be passed over. But the kid with that resume + something special is very very unlikely to get overlooked.

MIT, Harvard, etc. can fill an entire class with outstanding academic records. But they want people who are going to be truly special in the future and the best way to do that is select people who are already there. And they have their pick.

<comment><USER4> In practice the "something very special" thing comes down to how well you can bullshit admissions. If you helped kids polish their essays, you know this.

The annual number of 18yos who have done genuinely remarkable things is less than the size of the Ivy league freshman list.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If a company wants me to write code, they need to pay me for it.

I came across a similar situation where a prospective employer sent me the requirements for a complex routine and gave me 7 days to return functioning and commented code. My estimate was that it would take me 2 days to do it, so it would probably have taken 6 days.

I can envision an unscrupulous business model whereby you do the top level design and break it into routines, advertise for a programing position, and send the specifications for a routine to each applicant. You reject each applicant after they have submitted their code, take the best implementation of each routine, pack it all together and now you have a product.

I don't know that that's what they were doing but nobody will do it to me. I hope that's not what happened to you.

You may call me cynical but I've been around enough that I come by it honestly.

<comment><USER6> This is only a practice because people are being tricked into doing it. Also, I'm not too sure you're being cynical. This is the obvious next step to an interview puzzel, isn't it?

       * I need to test my employee so I give them a test
       * A test isn't code so I give them a coding HW
       * The coding HW isn't representative of our work, so...
       * I give them a small chunk of my real work.

This is pretty stupid. I've just barely started in the working market and I think my resume is solid enough that I won't mess around with any BS like this and if no one else does then they will finally stop.

There is one proviso (as usual). I'm completely fine with coming in and doing a pair exercise with people if the job requires pair work. I mean, that's not really about the programming at that point (maybe just write a simple web scraper) together with someone you'll actually be working with to see if you can all get along. Crack a few jokes, get some work done, leave with a better understanding of the enviroment. I'd be fine with that but nothing that would take more then 1-2 hr.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Got three examples like this:

First happened to me with Australian Department of Defence - invited to do online testing which took between 4 and 6 hours (4-6 online tests on computer theory, mathematics, logic, verbal deduction etc.) - never spoke to a person and was rejected within the week.

I interviewed for an analyst position for an ASX20 company through a recruiter which involved giving a 30 minute presentation on the results of their marketing campaigns. Never heard back from the company, the recruiter said that they decided not to hire anyone for the position.

Most recently I did 7 hours of code for a startup (100 lines SQL, 100 lines JS, 200 lines python, 20 lines R, fair bit of excel and powerpoint) for a junior manager role - got rejected from that too with a one line "you looked good on paper but no thanks" type email (mind you I put in a lot less polish than I would have if that was my job, didn't ask the reason why as I felt like they were asking too much of someone at that pay grade anyway.)

The last two cases weren't even through HR (went straight to hiring manager) - HR makes things even more difficult. I went through a bunch of standardised testing for one job interview and ended up being asked to fly 8 hours return for a 1 hour interview. When I declined, I was told by HR that this showed them I wasn't serious about the role. Of course once I told them that I already had a job offer from one their competitors they rushed me through a skype interview and gave me an offer straight afterwards.

All of this stuff really irritates me, I don't even bother writing cover letters anymore (will include a short paragraph at the most) - its much more respectful for the company to meet me in person.

<comment><USER8> I was rejected for by one for not doing TDD because I checked in the new test and code in the same commit. I suspect some of it is part of their "we can't find any Australians to fill the role" 457 requirement.

Also, if a code test takes 7 hours (some take days) then they are limiting themselves to the already unemployed, so probably not paying well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I would never take a test before talking to the hiring manager. It's a two way street, how would I know if you want to work for them?

That said, it's a great signal: the fact that they aren't willing to put in the work to talk to you _first_ lets you know that they don't respect potential employees and can't compete with companies who do. Thus they have to go for volume. You don't want to work for a "minimum effort" kind of outfit.

</comment><comment><USER10> Yes you have a right, and a duty, to be angry.

I say duty because it's our fault for not massively speaking up and demanding a radical change. We let companies get away with this, and it's not going to stop until we do something about it.

</comment><comment><USER3> >Am I right to be angry about the interview process?

You have the right to be angry about it. But ask yourself if that anger is doing you any good? If not, why bother getting worked up?

Are you in a position that allows you to decline interviews? Do you feel strongly that interviews should be conducted in a certain way? Feel free to turn down any that don't meet your requirements.

But don't expect any company to accommodate your desires in their interview process. It's just the way it is.

<comment><USER10> >It's just the way it is.

And if we don't take a stand then it's going to be like that forever. We can't let companies continue to get away with this.

In the end they need devs more than we need them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've had a similar experience. I will now decline all online take-home coding evaluations. I want the process to require a symmetric amount of effort from both sides.

</comment><comment><USER12> Are you angry about wasting 2 hours of your time or not getting the job?

Keep in mind that a lot of companies use automated tests to filter candidates, not necessarily in the most fair way. They're simply not able to do a whole interview with everyone as it's extremely time consuming.

I'd say don't worry about it too much. If you have the skills you'll find plenty of good companies that will want to work with you.

Unfortunately, job interviews are not as predictable as how code works. Even the best devs I know get rejected once in a while. :)

Think about it - there's 2-3 people (interviewers) trying to asses whether a person has the skills for a job and is a cultural fit for the company. All of these during an 1-2 hour long chat. That's virtually impossible to do right, they can only guess.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't like the zero feedback loop. I passed the test, yet I failed it and don't know why.

<comment><USER13> I was on the job market recently and similar things happened to me. It's worse when you don't get feedback after you go to an interview.

Two days ago I thought of making a job site that requires the employer to provide feedback, and the candidate to sign a form that says they won't sue the employer over the interview process. This way the employer has _no_ excuse for not giving feedback.

Would you use this?

<comment><USER14> The form will not be legally binding, so the premise of your site is broken.

<comment><USER15> Could show stats on companies that did not provide feedback, would deter some people from applying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think personally they should provide feedback for rejections on request, I personally want feedback so I can improve and better myself during a failure often times companies won't tell me so it makes it hard to understand what went wrong in their eyes.

</comment><comment><USER17> Very common. I no longer do these tests.

Basically, I refuse any interview that has me invest disproportionately more time than the interviewer. You're interviewing the company as much as they are interviewing you.

</comment><comment><USER18> Right now, the job market is super over crowded. There are a lot of jobs out there but too many people applying... You get a rejection on a 99/100 score (one tiny mistake and you're out), actually, even a 100/100 score sometimes will lead you to a rejection because other candidates were stronger than you. Too many people are applying from everywhere at the moment.

<comment><USER19> This is the opposite of my experience, both as a candidate and a hiring manager over the past couple of years. There are many openings, not enough competent people to fill them. We are essentially at peak employment for tech.

<comment><USER20> It's funny how companies / hiring managers always say they have trouble finding good candidates, and the people looking for jobs always say they are no jobs.

It's probably an axiom of some sort.

<comment><USER21> It's a combination of two things:

1\. We're bad at hiring, as an industry. We just aren't very good at identifying good candidates.

2\. We're an industry where the average skill level is below the minimum threshold of competence for even low-level roles.

I.E. there are lots of people looking for jobs, but most of them either couldn't code their way out of a wet paper bag -- and identifying the good candidates is time consuming and error prone.

<comment><USER8> > I.E. there are lots of people looking for jobs, but most of them either > couldn't code their way out of a wet paper bag

I wonder if the average skill is that low (kind of) or if it seems that way because only the most desperate are willing to jump through the elaborate hoops we create for hiring.

<comment><USER21> i suspect that even without the ridiculous hoops, the incompetent will always spend a disproportionate percentage of their time job hunting, and thus making the hiring process challenging.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Have you actually asked them about the specific reasons for rejection? FWIW, there's a multitude of reasons why one could get rejected, ranging from automated systems to the position just getting filled to being too good for the job to bad references to human error. Until you ask and get an actual human response, you're completely in the dark.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a no-reply email. Here's what the actual email said:

"Thank you for your interest in Company. We have reviewed your resume, experience, and responses to the Code Challenge. At this time, we have decided to move forward with other candidates in the process. We wish you success in your job search."

Sounds to me like they read my resume AFTER I passed the coding challenge. Seems to me like a waste of terrible time if I'm spending my time just to get rejected by my resume.

<comment><USER23> It seems really strange that you are applying to a position and get challenges, yet you have no-one to talk to.

Companies have recruiters, other recruiters pitch you to them, there were times when I had an agent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Was it definitely "auto rejection" or did a human read your code?

I ask because we have a coding test that most people solve (that we invite to do it) but we reject most on code quality. The purpose might not have been to solve the task, but maybe to do it in a good way?

<comment><USER8> Why do you expect clean code from a code test? It's going to be thrown away anyway and there are time pressures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Never ever take any kind of test before talking to a person, preferably the hiring manager. Not even for fun or practice.

</comment><comment><USER26> With big companies, it's pretty common. There is probably something about your contact info or education/experience that was auto-flagged as a rejection.

<comment><AUTHOR> It was a small company you never heard of. But yeah, probably something else. The rejection said based on my experience, answers, and resume. If so, it's disturbing that I had to do this challenge in order to get them to read my resume.

<comment><USER27> > If so, it's disturbing that I had to do this challenge in order to get them > to read my resume.

I'd read that more like "after considering all data points...". I'm sure they read your resume beforehand. Maybe the discussion on their hiring team was "Well, if he pulls out some magic in the coding challenge..."

You never know. It's not helpful to be angry about it, although it's natural and understandable. It's not even necessarily your fault. Maybe they just found someone that would slot into the position easier, just because of differences in their experience, education, or personality.

<comment><USER10> >Maybe the discussion on their hiring team was "Well, if he pulls out some magic in the coding challenge..."

This is an unreasonable expectation. If it gets to that point then it should be a no-hire, don't waste the candidates time.

<comment><USER27> People often don't act reasonably, and "should" isn't "will". That was part of my point. OP is looking for a reason, and sometimes there isn't a reason that could be supported logically.

<comment><USER10> You are absolutely right. I guess the point I was trying to make is that companies are not considerate when it comes to a candidate's time. IF after making a candidate go through a coding test or several interviews you still have doubts then don't hire him, simple as that. Nowadays companies/hiring managers/interviewers are used to treating us like crap, sometimes for their own amusement.Expecting candidates to pull out magic in a coding challenge is becoming more and more common, even when they know that a candidate won't be able to pull it off, it's almost as if interviewers enjoy turning people down and watching people struggle during interviews has become a (sadistic)leisure activity for them.

<comment><USER27> I take your point, and I agree with it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>