Economists don't know what they're talking about - <AUTHOR> http://www.maximise.dk/blog/2009/07/economists-dont-know-what-theyre.html <comment><USER2> I'm not sure where Tobiasen gets the idea that the Austrian School is a "major school of economics." This may have been true in the 1930s, but today, at least in the academic world, it's treated (justly or not) as a fringe theory (just look through the index of any standard economics textbook for even a single mention of the names "Mises," "Hayek," "Rothbard," or "Menger"). Furthermore, the only Nobel laureate who hails from the Austrian School (as far as I am aware) is Friedrich Hayek--an impressive figure, no doubt, but still just one man.

While Tobiasen's criticisms of macroeconomic models are valid for the Keynesians, I don't think they hold very well for the Austrians. Tobiasen points out the failure of mathematically complex economic models to develop into accurate macroeconomic forecasts. Austrian models, however, are intentionally devoid of mathematics. Mises, Rothbard, and other Austrian economists spent almost as much of their time on the philosophy of economics as they did on their study of economics itself and one of the fundamental philosophical tenants of the Austrian School that they developed is that human action is too complicated to model in a mathematically precise way; _a priori_ logical deduction is the only way to reason about economics in a meaningful way. Furthermore, the Austrian School does not make the same assumption that the Keynesians do that "people act as rational beings." The only assumption that the Austrians make is that humans act to achieve desired goals--the Austrians do not posit that humans necessarily act in a rational manner.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I'm the author of the post. First, thanks for a great comment. This is the reason I keep a blog - people like you that challenge my views and teach me (and hopefully others) things I didn't know before.

A few questions, since you seem to know the subject quite well:

\- Can't it be said that the Austrian school of economics is just out of vogue? It seems like it has been swinging back and forth in popularity for the last thirty years?

\- What's your take on using chaos theory, complexity and behavioral economics to model macroeconomic behaviour? It seems to me that it's on the way up.

<comment><USER2> I'm glad you enjoyed my comment! When I wrote it I had no idea it would reach the original author! As a disclaimer, I should first point out that I make no claim to knowing the subject "quite well." Economics is a hobby of mine, but my training is in astronomy.

In response to your first question, I think the status of the Austrian School in the academic economic community is quite a bit lower than "out of vogue"; the approach that the Austrian School takes toward the study of economics differs substantially from the mainstream economic community. Modern economics tries very hard to be a "real science"--it creates models, makes predictions, collects data, and sees if the data match the predictions made by the model. And the mainstream academic community has done pretty well with most of this process. The only part they seem to have a lot of trouble with is matching the data to the predictions. Unfortunately, macroeconomic data is influenced by so many factors that it is devilishly difficult to isolate the effect of a single variable. An economist who argues that a variable _x_ has a particular effect will be met with arguments by ten other economists that, no, in fact, the data indicate that it was variables _y_ , _z_ , and omega. Essentially, the mainstream economic community has developed economics into a process of inductive reasoning--collect data and use the data to reason out what's going on.

The Austrians reject this methodology. Because macroeconomic data is influenced by so many different variables (millions of people acting in millions of different ways for millions of different reasons), they claim that it is simply impossible to draw any meaningful conclusions from macroeconomic data--in essence, you see in it whatever you want to see. Instead of inductive reasoning, Austrians turn to deductive reasoning. Thus, Austrians see economics as a subject closer to mathematics than to science. (Though, as I mentioned in my first comment, the Austrians reject mathematical argument as being inadequate to model the complexities of human action; Austrian reasoning is primarily verbal, which draws criticism from the mainstream academic community of being too imprecise to be useful.)

The issue is deeper than the current fashionable theory of economics. In the 1920s and 1930s the Austrian School held a respectable position with mainstream economists. At the time economics was as much deductive as inductive, so the two schools of thought were on equal footing. But as the Keynesians developed their mathematical models, economics became heavily inductive and began to see the Austrian methodology as unscientific. Ever since, various other schools of thought have enjoyed popularity, but the fundamental methodology hasn't changed. Of course, the recent failures of the mainstream economic community to predict this crisis and the success of Peter Schiff in predicting it has brought renewed interest to the Austrian School. I'm not sure, however, that even this will be sufficient to change the fundamental approach taken by the mainstream economic community. As you wrote in your post, "old habits die hard."

In response to your second question, I think that behavioral economics will be useful for the study of human psychology and, to a lesser extent, microeconomics, but I'm not convinced that it will be terribly useful for modeling macroeconomic behavior. Behavorial economics studies what small groups of humans do in very specific laboratory conditions. How well the conclusions from these experiments extend to the real world where millions of humans are doing in a wide variety of conditions is impossible to say--it's just not something that can really be tested.

Chaos theory, similarly, I believe will be quite useful in limited contexts. Chaos theory is very good at telling us what, in general, a system will do over a long time period. But it does not provide much information as to what the system will do at any particular time. More importantly, chaos theory does not shed much light on the question of _why_ the system behaves as it does. In any science, predicting outcomes is important, but it is always secondary to understanding the system. We study science to understand the world; we make predictions to verify that our understanding of the world is correct. At the root of things, understanding why the world works as it does is the important part and chaos theory cannot provide you _a priori_ with that explanation.

For the Austrian School, I think the study of complexity theory might hold some promise. In essence, what Austrian economists have argued since the days of Ludwig von Mises is that the problem of macroeconomic modeling is undecidable. It has (to my knowledge) never been proven, but if it were, it would make a compelling case for the Austrian methodology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> We're doing the Keynesian thing again because during the last couple of economic disasters, the "throw more shit at the fan 'til it starts spinning again" approach gave many people the vague impression that it might be working. Interestingly, the idea violates the basic economic assertion that nothing can be truly free. The problem is that this approach is essentially a laxative. If you have an otherwise sound economy in which value flows have for some reason stopped, you administer the laxative, wait a while, and hopefully the economy comes back.

In an unfortunate turn of events, the world's economists (and worse, the politicians who listen to them) have mistaken a laxative for a panacea: the cure to all ills! This laxative is regularly administered as a cure for influenza, mumps, and boils on the nose, among others. Often, the mumbo-jumbo and rattle-shaking and hoodoo accompanying this administration is quite convincing; and when the ill departs of its own accord, as most do, patients and doctors both are ecstatic that their trusty laxative has cured another case of tendonitis.

Why a laxative, you ask? It's simple - we have discovered (rather ingeniously) that the best indicator of the patient's health is the amount of crap they are able to produce! More laxative, more crap - healthy patient.

At the moment, we are suffering from rather severe dehydration, prompted by a hangover and now worsened by the effects of our charlatan doctors. We don't need laxatives, we need water. In particular, we need intelligent decisions about allocating available capital. Flooding the market with "artificial capital" is not the way to obtain those intelligent decisions. The patient is parched, and we're administering laxatives and diuretics. It's bad medicine.

</comment><comment><USER4> Just because there are two schools of thought that disagree it doesn't mean that nobody knows.

Regarding the great depression, in the wikipedia article you link to, it says that the Austrian explanation is expansion of money supply not "fall of money supply".

By the way Austrian economics is not mainstream. Mainstream economics is Keynesian.

What governments are doing is following the Keynesian recommendations. The Austrian school points out the flaws of the the recommendations. They predict the failures of these measures and are ignored or ridiculed (Peter Schiff for instance). The Austrian predictions then come true. Then what do governments do? Follow the Keynesian recommendations again.

<comment><USER5> Well, if your culture tells you that a drought is because the gods are angry, and you must dance to bring the rains again, and you dance and the rains do not come -- you must not have danced enough yet. Dance more, and eventually the rains will return. It's always worked before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. --Reagon

</comment><comment><USER7> A counterargument:

[http://www.amazon.com/Economics-Does-Not-Lie- Defense/dp/1594...](http://www.amazon.com/Economics-Does-Not-Lie- Defense/dp/1594032548)</comment>


Jailed Saudi feminist refuses to deny torture to secure release - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/13/jailed-saudi-feminist-refuses-release-in-exchange-for-denying-torture <comment><USER2> If you don't like this regime one small thing you can do to help is to buy an electric car like a Tesla instead of one that uses fuel produced from Saudi oil. That will hit them where it hurts, in the wallet.

Middle eastern countries get away with all kinds of abuses, because oil. Remove the oil and they won't have the same bargaining power they do now.

<comment><USER3> Electric car, sure, but Tesla? Doesn't the company have some Saudi money in it? Not sure how much stake they have in it, but I'd guess they are close enough Elon Musk tried to take the company private with their backing</comment></comment>


Show HN: Organize and manage your startup's processes with Delegate - <AUTHOR> https://www.delegatehq.com <comment><AUTHOR> Just launched last week--we're a dev shop that builds apps for other companies, but this is the first SaaS product we've grown in house to release in the wild.

Stack is Vue.js over Django deployed on Kubernetes. We built it to scratch our own itch to manage our standard procedures that got too big to handle with spreadsheets as our company grew.</comment>


Many Teens Send 100+ Texts A Day - <AUTHOR> http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/04/20/teens.text.messaging/index.html?hpt=T2

<comment><USER2> But if the headline was "sends 100 lines of instant messages per day" it would be wholly unremarkable, and on a smartphone with a semi-decent price plan, the use case is identical.

<comment><USER3> There's also the fact that a single message can be blasted to multiple recipients.</comment></comment>


Real World JavaScript - Part 2 - <AUTHOR> http://suhairhassan.com/2013/05/08/real-world-javascript-part-2.html

<comment><USER2> Thx! Good site, didn't know about it yet.</comment>


Yahoo to Change Name to Altaba - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/after-sale-marissa-mayer-to-leave-yahoo-board-yahoo-to-change-name-to-altaba-1484002787 <comment><USER2> I'm not sure what this buys them, since a lot of the value in what they have left is name-based. If people have several dependencies on Yahoo.com E-mail addresses, they won't want a "new" free E-mail with a different domain. People already know names like "Yahoo Finance", etc. and any other name will throw that easy recognition away. And don't even get me started on what "Altaba" is supposed to be (I've already mistyped it about 3 times trying to write this comment).

</comment><comment><USER3> Since everybody here is confused on why they would give up the Yahoo brand: This is not the Yahoo which was sold to Verizon (which stays Yahoo, incl. email service) but the investment vehicle holding all the Alibaba shares. The name "Altbaba" is an obvious play at the official ticker of Alibaba (BABA)

</comment><comment><USER4> Extensive discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13360673](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13360673)

</comment><comment><USER5> What is there to gain by changing the name?</comment>


Floating point explorer - <AUTHOR> https://kayru.org/articles/float/ <comment><USER2> Alternative FP explorer:

\- double precision: [http://bartaz.github.io/ieee754-visualization/](http://bartaz.github.io/ieee754-visualization/)

\- single precision: [https://nebgnahz.github.io/ieee754-visualization/](https://nebgnahz.github.io/ieee754-visualization/)

<comment><USER3> This one is actually much nicer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Mostly seems to be _" TODO"_. It would be nice if it showed the binary representation and a number line in a graphical format. How dense are the numbers around this one? What is the next larger/smaller representable number? Is the number denormalized? etc.

<comment><USER5> > How dense are the numbers around this one?

Isn't that what the "epsilon" field tells us?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For a second, I thought that [http://www.exploringbinary.com/converters-and- calculators/](http://www.exploringbinary.com/converters-and-calculators/) had changed domain names.

(The rest of that site has plenty of good, extremely detailed articles about floating-point maths too.)

<comment><USER7> Thank you so very much for your link!

Simultaneously with my definite elucidation, I felt a really timely reminder that I haven't read the whole internet, and it's a beautiful thing to be informed of such a rich and established resource, just when you are getting sure that soon your bitterness and cynicism over the demise of the internet will soon inevitably pass.

Thank you, in other words, for a very useful link to what looks like it's great reading, and the whole breath of fresh air surrounding your contribution. I gush, but the aversion of creeping cynicism is genuinely something that I'm grateful for any day without exception!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm missing a rounding mode.</comment>


Putting 13 PinePhone distributions on a 8GiB USD card - <AUTHOR> https://xnux.eu/log/#014 <comment><USER2> Do you know if any of those can execute armhf/32 bit binaries?

My current toolchain (xojo) can only compile for 32bit so I've not been able to contribute software to the ecosystem.

<comment><AUTHOR> That depends on the kernel configuration mostly. I just tried, and my kernel used in that multi-boot image can run the 32bit arm statically compiled binary.

So I guess you can grab a kernel from here: [https://xff.cz/kernels/](https://xff.cz/kernels/) and use it to run your 32-bit userspace.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Tools to search across internal knowledge bases? - <AUTHOR> I'm imagining something like a tool that hooks up to confluence + google groups + dropbox paper + github + docs + external support + sourcegraph. I know of stripe home and internal knowledge wikis like tettra, but us anyone built the google for internal knowledge? <comment><USER2> Why not Recoll? [http://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/index.html](http://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/index.html)

 _Recoll will index an MS-Word document stored as an attachment to an e-mail message inside a Thunderbird folder archived in a Zip file (and more...). It will also help you search for it with a friendly and powerful interface, and let you open a copy of a PDF at the right page with two clicks. There is little that will remain hidden on your disk._

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah this is perfect!</comment></comment>


Why Geeks Get Bullied (It's Not Necessarily for Being Geeks) - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/01/why-geeks-get-bullied-its-not-necessarily-for-being-geeks/272723/ <comment><USER2> It's extremely common in the animal (incl. human) world to seek dominance. In cultures where physical domination is rewarded, you have violence to establish the dominance. In cultures where intellectual dominance is rewarded, you have more expressions of contempt for "stupid" people. When you have a diverse group, you have the strong beating up the weak and the smart verbally humiliating the dumb. It's not complicated. It's about public status and privately making yourself feel superior.

Blaming it on class and gender roles is one of those things that urban intellectuals do to maintain their status among urban intellectuals. Maybe he should analyze it from a Marxist-feminist perspective for good measure.

<comment><USER3> "Blaming it on class and gender roles is one of those things that urban intellectuals do to maintain their status among urban intellectuals. Maybe he should analyze it from a Marxist-feminist perspective for good measure."

I don't suppose the irony of this statement escaped you.

<comment><USER4> It's escaping _me_. He said "for good measure". Where is the irony?

<comment><USER5> His comment exhibits anti-intellectual posturing.

<comment><USER6> It's actually anti- _urban_ -intellectual posturing, suggesting that the comment author is on a higher level intellectually.

I had a good laugh at both the joke itself and that the telling of the joke is an act of "verbally humiliating the dumb".

<comment><USER5> Oh, I think I saw a different irony to you -- I saw the comment as an act of verbal aggression towards the author of the article on the grounds that the author was _being too academic_.

The author of an article about geeks being bullied, not because they were too academic, but because they were seen as being of a different class.

I prefer your interpretation to be honest, but clearly there is enough irony for everyone.

<comment><USER7> I agree with your exact wording: applying Marxist theory to everything is exactly 'more academic' in the sense that it is an artifact of fashion in educational institutions. It isn't actually 'more intellectual' because it is content-free, being equally applicable to everything, and brings little or no insight to any topic outside of economics.

Taking this criticism as validation of Marxist analysis (or accusing the critic of bullying, etc.) is cheap and pointless, like Freudians answering criticism of a weak Freudian analysis by saying the critic is only criticizing due to reaction formation.

If we disallow this kind of criticism then we are validating every kind of posturing. Not everything anyone says can be correct and it isn't bullying or snobbery to say so. It's not even personal.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure what exactly you're responding to, here, but I'm certainly not disallowing this kind of criticism or claiming that the top-level comment validates Marxist analysis because it's poorly thought-out.

I don't use Marxist analysis myself, at least not deliberately (I am not myself an academic), either.

I don't know what you mean by:

>content-free, being equally applicable to everything

and I think that:

>brings little or no insight to any topic outside of economics

ignores the fact that a large amount of history, culture and contemporary society has been profoundly shaped by economics.

>Not everything anyone says can be correct and it isn't bullying or snobbery to say so. It's not even personal.

Yes. There are a lot of things I agree with in your post, the problem is that they are "equally applicable to everything", so I feel like I've joined an argument halfway through, and I have no idea what you are responding to or why.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Did this author not watch _Revenge of the Nerds_? Were Booger, Gilbert, or Lewis of economically higher class than the Jocks?

I was bullied, I grew up poor. Neither of my parents were college educated. Mother raised 3 kids as a single parent while doing menial jobs. Living in a crime ridden neighborhood in Baltimore City where other kids were getting killed for their Nikes, books and computers were my only refuge, fantasy words of SciFi, even distopian ones, a better place to live than where I started. (BTW, when I got into a better school finally in the suburbs, I was made fun of by kids because my family was poor, not because of privilege)

My theory of why geeks are bullied is the same as why goths are bullied, or why fat people are bullied. When lions hunt buffalo on the plains, they look for those they get separated from the pack. Simply put, attacking an individual that is part of a smaller, less powerful, group is more likely to succeed without anyone coming to their defense.

If geeks, even as a small population, worked like the Crips, bullies wouldn't dare, knowing that an attack on one would invite tit-for-tat counter attacks. If a bully goes after someone who has lots of friends in the main group, they put themselves at bigger risk.

The more interesting question is why geeks don't have a mutual defense or strength in numbers, the answer there probably lurks in perhaps connections between seeking out things because you implicitly like them, and seeking out things because they are likely to strengthen the bonds within your social group ("fitting in", "bowing to peer pressure"). Most of the non-fake-geeks I know just can't stomach being in-authentic, of pretending to like stuff just to fit in, and so there may just be some core personality or emotional intelligence traits that are different in people end up at the fringes like this. If you subscribe to Meyers-Briggs, then it's people who are in categories like INTP.

<comment> __--__ > When lions hunt buffalo on the plains, they look for those they get > separated from the pack. Simply put, attacking an individual that is part of > a smaller, less powerful, group is more likely to succeed without anyone > coming to their defense.

This was exactly my experience in school. I wasn't bullied in high school, I was bullied throughout elementary instead. I'm INTP, introverted, extremely geeky, but none of that was why I was bullied. I was bullied because I was fat and I didn't know how to fight back. I was an easy target, basically. I had friends, but none who were capable of physically standing up for me, so we all suffered the consequences.

The bullying stopped in 7th grade (13 years old) when I stabbed one of my bullies with a pen and was suspended. I also started weight lifting and made a name for myself on the JV football team. The bullying stopped, even though I had become no less the geek and didn't stop hanging out with my geek friends.

> The more interesting question is why geeks don't have a mutual defense or > strength in numbers

In my experience, fear. In a typical school pecking order, if you're not capable of physically dominating others, then you live in constant fear of being physically dominated yourself. I certainly was.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Class and gender roles? Where's the evidence? It's all just conjecture and anecdote.

If that's how we're going to do it, I would assume a simpler explanation. Kids, and often adults too, want to show to their peers, or themselves, that they're strong. So they pick on the weak to prove it.

<comment><USER10> Personally, I think class, gender and race are ultimately major factors; there's huge amounts of literature on their effects on society. But it's probably easier to look directly at schools and families; these are the most concrete relevant institutions.

Schools generally aren't enlightened places. Many of them, especially for the poor, are particularly clear about their prison-like nature: need for written permission to move ("hall pass"), threat of prison, etc. So you get some prison-like dynamics. But even many above-average ones impose hierarchy, rating individuals and setting them against each another using competition (competition is a well-known way to atomize and control people), obedience to authority figures no matter how ridiculous, etc. In any case, these places generally provide virtually nothing in the way of conflict resolution, like particularly nasty governments.

And most families aren't utopian institutions either. Parents often act like owners of their children, and take out their frustrations and psychological problems on them. Child abuse (even for conservative notions of "abuse") is rampant. Even when parents aren't overtly abusive, they may simply not be particularly competent at the skill of nurturing children's minds and bodies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I feel like people are missing the point about the "fake geek" meme. If a bunch of football players were strutting around in batman costumes at conventions I feel like the same ire would be directed at them. Geeks are (or were) mostly outcasts. The geek world was their world. Now the popular kids are into geek culture since it's the in thing and they feel like they are losing their world. Being pushed to the perimeter of a world they built as a refuge. I understand the view, and I often feel wistful that if I see someone wearing a batman t-shirt there's a much smaller chance than before that he's friend material.

<comment><USER4> The correct response to the trauma that many geeks experienced growing up is to understand the pain and thus avoid inflicting it on others. When we were kids we would have loved for this stuff to be popular (hence why we talked about it to everyone), but now we are so traumatized that we don't want anyone without the same wounding to be allowed access? I refuse to become embittered and grudgeful to the point that I'm lashing out at people for showing merely a _passing_ interest in one of my treasured hobbies (fake geeks on TV is another matter). We're not in high school anymore, most of the jocks grew up and so did most of the geeks. The ones from both camps who are stuck in a mentality formed years before reaching psychological and social maturity are living tragically stunted lives. Our goal should be transcendence; there are many who have suffered far greater abuse than geeks who have achieved it.

<comment><USER7> If you think this is "inflicting it on others" then maybe you do not understand the meaning of serious childhood bullying. I don't think that grown up geeks are getting friends together to beat fake-geeks into submission or brand them as fags. There's no parity here.

<comment><USER4> Wow, way to completely miss the point.

It's not about the acts themselves. First of all bullying can range from light to severe just like nerdrage can range from light to severe, so right away you're comparison is nonsensical in the general sense.

More importantly, the point is that when one experiences hurt, the healthy thing is to understand where those feelings come from and allow yourself to release the hatred rather than holding it into our core being and reflecting it back out to others in the future. I'm not saying this easy, it's not easy for anybody (and it's not just nerds that experience abuse btw), but if you don't do this it will rot and wither your soul and it will be you who ultimately suffers the most.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There are many reasons why kids get bullied. There is no unified theory of bullying that explains it all.

For years I thought I was picked on because I was smarter than my peers. Looking back, it seems more likely that I was really kind of a brat about getting better scores on things. There were plenty of smart kids at my school who didn't get picked on.

<comment><USER5> I'm pretty sure the people who bullied you were to blame for you being bullied! Continue to be a brat about those better scores, it encourages the rest of us and sometimes it puts a bigger brat in their place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I suggest that a simpler hypothesis is that children mature at different rates. Empathy and moral self-control emerge at different times in different children. The overlap between adorable sociopaths who can talk and adorable intellectuals who can feel lasts for quite a while.

To make it worse, children are placed together in a deliberately infantilising environment with very few role models who aren't basically wardens as well as educators.

<comment><USER14> And yet, I'd argue that placing people at different stages of development - smart kids & dumb kids, apprentice and senior developers, etc - is a good thing. Putting kids that show increased intellect will give them a skewed perception of reality, i.e. that the average person is smart, instead of realizing diversity in people and dealing with it.

Primary lesson there: You are not special.

<comment><USER13> An Australian longitudinal study was recently linked from HN showing that streaming intelligent kids makes them happier, more successful and better adjusted. Throughout school and afterwards.

There is a difference between an apprenticeship and simply being forced to mix with children who literally don't yet have the same neurological architecture as you.

edit: here's the link -- <http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10489.aspx>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My hypothesis on bullying is simple: human beings are animals and like to fight for dominant positions. The low intellectual and/or emotional development of some kids will lead them to try for overt dominance, instead of the more sophisticated and hypocritical adult versions. Geeks are targeted because they are weak -- either in physical strength or in alliances.

<comment><USER16> Or maybe just different. I always had to deal with people who felt insecure around me. School was easy and I got good grades without trying. Meanwhile, others were struggling. That made them hate me. Though the joke was on them when I started practicing martial arts. (:

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm all for taking a good hard look at your assumptions and personal narrative to clean up biases, but this guy is generalizing _way_ too much. Take this for instance:

> _Americans have trouble seeing class, and the intersection between class and > intellectualism—or geekishness, if you prefer—can be especially invisible._

"Geekishness" is an intersection of class and intellectualism? That's absolutely horseshit. There are no shortage of poor geeks and rich jocks. Being middle class definitely confers some advantages to _pursuing_ those interests, but it has nothing to do with the innate quality of geekiness. Furthermore, geeky interests are not particularly intellectual per se, it's just we like to get involved in the details of them beyond what most people consider normal.

<comment><USER17> >>innate quality of geekiness

Very well put. The problem is most geek/nerd kids don't realize they are geeks/nerds until some point in their teenage.

In my case, I always wondered 'Why I was so different from others?'. It was only until a time in teenage that I realized this was actually a positive quality. Over time I saw geeks/nerds do far better than life than others, especially bullies.

Most bullies I know have only gone downwards in their lives, even the rich ones have only gone down with time.

<comment><USER14> > Most bullies I know have only gone downwards in their lives, even the rich > ones have only gone down with time.

^ this. I was bullied by some kid, took me years later (and processing an experience at his house) to realize he was probably beat up by his mom.

Short straw went to him, imho.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So after decades of arguing, finally getting close to a consensus that we stop blaming the victims and focus on the perpetrator with the crime of rape, we are now starting the same kind of discussion all over again with yet another kind of abuse? Well done, society.

</comment><comment><USER19> There are lots of peer reviewed papers that come to a completely different conclusion than this article (for example, that social skills and verbal skills are critical).

I recommend reading those instead of this article, which seems based on speculation.

</comment><comment><USER20> Bullies pick on folks who don't really fit in i.e who other people in a group won't stand up for, and who don't hit back. It really isn't more complicated than that. Thinking it is is giving bullies waaaay too much credit.

<comment><USER21> Suggesting that people's behaviours are shaped by society's class structure is not giving them credit. The author wasn't claiming that the bullies were making a rational decision to beat him up based on the class difference.

<comment><USER22> It probably made it easier for them to rationalize though, if the bullies can think of themselves as vehicles of karmic justice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Lots of people seem to be cross at a few of his incidental points (the article is _not_ saying that social class is the root of all bullying) so I'll just emphasise the conclusion:

 _The problem is that this can lead you to a place where suffering, or persecution, only matters when, or because, the victim is special. This, in turn, can make it hard to see the ways in which_ violence is not special, but routine — _and if you can't understand the violence directed against you, how can you stop it?_

The point he's making is that anti-nerd violence _is not unique_ , but part of the wider culture of violence for all sorts of reasons (and in all sorts of directions - up and down the social 'ladders').

I encourage you to read the disqus comments on the article itself, where the author responds to many of the objections raised here.

</comment><comment><USER24> His anecdote is irrelevant. Plenty of poor children get bullied.

This article makes things worse, if anything.

<comment><USER5> His anecdote is irrelevant to _bullying_ , not to _the bullying of geeks_.

<comment><USER24> To both, because it is an anecdote. Plenty of poor geeks get bullied too.

<comment><USER5> Anecdotes and anecdata can be ignored from a statistical point of view, when determining the truth of a statement about a population, it's true, but people can still illustrate a point with an anecdote - and the anecdote is not central to his post's argument, it's just an illustration.

What he is suggesting is that both privilege and a lack of privilege (he mentions homosexuality as an example, poverty might be another example) are more important than "being a geek" to whether you get bullied.

When you are called a geek, consider what the aggressor means by that; is it that s/he considers you overly-effeminate? That you can't afford to take part in social activities, making you an outcast? Or perhaps that you have opportunities and a position in the mainstream which they can't have?

That is all the author is saying (I think, I may have mis-read or read selectively). They're not saying that poor geeks don't get bullied.

<comment><USER7> Sure, people are bullied for having qualities that are inherent to being a geek, or very strongly associated. But not for actually being a geek.

What? That's a meaningless distinction.

Of course bullies do not necessarily use the word 'geek,' that word is a product of people trying to carve out a measure of societal and self-respect by claiming the label (like others have claimed 'queer' - a closely related concept given that all these targets are lumped together as bottoms for the purposes of imposing domination with impunity).

It's far from true that nobody is attacked for having qualities encapsulated in the word 'geek'.

<comment><USER5> Why is that a meaningless distinction?

A quality can be necessary for being a 'geek' without being sufficient for it.

>It's far from true that nobody is attacked for having qualities encapsulated in the word 'geek'.

I agree.

However, those qualities can be found in many different populations, and as geek is roughly approximated to "X qualities + intelligence" the question I feel as though the author is asking is whether the "+ intelligence" part of the definition is useful.

>(like others have claimed 'queer' - a closely related concept given that all these targets are lumped together as bottoms for the purposes of imposing domination with impunity)

I agree very strongly with this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Honestly, all you need to do to avoid bullying is have the balls to fire back at anyone who makes fun of you. If you just sit back and take it, you make yourself a target. By if you immediately fire back with a response, effectively "bullying the bully," he'll eventually stop targeting you. This is such a basic male social concept that I would expect "geeks" (btw, why even self label yourself? Seems to set yourself up for failure) of all people to understand it.

I think a lot of what people see as "bullying" is actually a just half of this male social pattern of "giving each other shit." It's just what guys do. If you can handle it and fire back, you don't call it bullying. It's only when you refuse to participate that it becomes bullying. Obviously, that line of logic has some inherent victim blaming, and I am _not_ defending bullying at all. I think it's despicable. But at some point you just need to accept the status quo and learn to defend yourself instead of lamenting about it. And if you're truly smarter than the person bullying you, it should be no problem to come up with a quick witted response.

Come on people. Get some confidence.

</comment><comment><USER26> Geeks get _ostracized_ because other kids are more or less forced to compete with them for grades in school, and resent the fact that they come up short. This is as opposed to, e.g. jocks who mostly compete with other folks who've voluntarily chosen the same arena of competition.

Geeks get _bullied_ because it's easy for people who are prone to bullying to bully ostracized kids.

</comment><comment><USER27> what about the other way around? Maybe people who get bullied disproportionately wind up becoming geeks.

<comment><USER28> Or drug addicts or alcoholics or suicidal. So, no.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> TFA says: "I wasn't being bullied because I was sensitive, in other words. I was being bullied because I was privileged" and that his refusal to accept this was "but simply an excuse to perpetuate" the "system of power."

What the fuck, man. I guess all those ~privileged~ gay kids who killed themselves deserved it for not checking their privilege. Ridiculous.

As a GLBT, and in addition to that, a smart and geeky one, I got bullied a lot in high school. There were some occasions where I couldn't (and still can't) understand the reasons why, but there were at least a few times where it was pretty clear whether I was being targeted for being GLBT or being targeted for being smart. This author is full of shit.

</comment><comment><USER30> I read up to "gender roles" where "more into D&D than football" was mentioned. The I stopped, as author linked it to homophobia.

This thing is not a gender role difference. This thing is difference in force and fitness. Being fit allows you to both bully and stand for bullying. There nothing related to homophobia there.

I was bullied myself until some spring my "friends" found that I can pullup more than them. I wasn't bulied anymore. I was hated, but that's different story.

I also should mention that there are almost no gender roles in human society. Especially for males - they should be successful in finding food and a place to stay at night and that's all.

Thus I consider author dumb one. He sees things that do not exist.

<comment><USER28> >>>I also should mention that there are almost no gender roles in human society.

That is just so wrong. You need to have a look around.

<comment><USER30> Compare humans to pigeons, for example. Human gender differentiation is much less exressed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> A social hierarchy based on insecurity will persecute _anyone_ who is different: by socioeconomic status, by interests, by gender normativeness, by sexuality, and so on. We don't need to subsume one in another to make sense of the system.

</comment><comment><USER32> Obviously picked on him because he's so smart and brilliant. Some birds aren't meant to be caged, their feathers are just too bright.

<comment><USER23> this is precisely the point the author is attacking; the problem of deciding that the bullying is the result of the fact that you're special, not part of a routine culture of violence.

<comment><USER7> But it isn't a routine culture of violence. It is a culture of shaming, violence and impunity against victims with very specific traits. Which actually do include things like intellectual ability, sensitivity or preference to be alone. It actually isn't equally applied to everyone.

<comment><USER23> I didn't mean it applied equally to everyone; I mean it applies to all sorts of people for all sorts of reasons, nerds and not.

 _victims with very specific traits_ \- You're choosing to ignore a whole load of violence (including harassment) which undoubtedly occurs against members of all minorities (indeed, to all "diversity streams" - since women are in fact the majority.) You're arbitrarily filtering out all sorts of similar violence that happens to people who aren't nerds, which isn't valid (the author argues).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I tend to agree with the comments that this is probably way over-thinking the issue from a certain perspective, but the author makes a subtle point that I generally agree with. The general premise that bullies don't particularly single out geeks leads to some interesting implications that I think has not been commented upon very much. She acknowledges that:

> On the contrary, I think people get bullied for lots of reasons.

Which leads to the implication she touches upon near the end of the essay:

> ...violence is not special, but routine—and if you can't understand the > violence directed against you, how can you stop it?

She's pointing out that geeks shouldn't necessarily think that they were bullied because they were smarter than the others, but because bullying is a common feature upon the dystopic educational landscape. And not recognizing this leads to a situation where bullying of victims who are not somehow especially outstanding in some way (smart being only one attribute of specialness), is not recognized as bullying. She cites that this sometimes emerges from previous victims of bullying themselves by mentioning how male geeks sometimes bully female geeks for not being "real geeks".

All this is well and good, but it unfortunately doesn't materially help the folks on the ground waking up today and dreading their daily bullying gauntlet. This perspective is where I think the article is possibly over- thinking the issue, by not providing actionable information. To be fair, I don't think that was her intent, but judging from the comments, there is a sub-group of people who seem to desire that kind of information with these articles that explore bullying.

At the risk of generalizing, and supplying actionable information that may be out of date, in my personal anecdotal experience bullies select victims that somehow respond in a manner that rewards the bullying. Thus the commonly- dispensed advice to "ignore them". But I think that advice often doesn't come with a helping of _how_ to ignore them, and really should be dispensed as advice on _using ignoring as a way to stand up for yourself_. Ignoring taunts while showing on your face that the taunting shatters your confidence and self-worth tends to incite further bullying. Ignoring in a manner (which will not be easy to pull off) that fizzles out the "fun" of the bullying is a means of standing up for oneself. This may sometimes mean actually interacting with the bully, but not in a manner that they expect; the "ignoring" refers to ignoring the intended effect of the bullying, and figuring out what action takes the fun out of the bullying. I wish someone had told me this when I was first going through my daily gauntlet.

For males, and increasingly for females, physical bullying is sometimes the form. I was very fortunate that I grew up in a part of the world and time where just fighting back was sufficient to stop physical bullying. I got the snot beaten out of me sometimes, but the ringleaders I was up against uniformly did not like to get their hands dirty, so using the element of surprise to land in a hit that draws blood (visible bruising counts) helped me dissuade them from further bullying. These days, there are more nasty places where you can get murdered fighting back. Be safe, play it smart, and don't get yourself killed if you are stuck in that kind of situation; if you're in such a dangerous situation and the adults around you aren't helping, some anonymous forums can sometimes provide ideas from sympathetic adults who have been-there-done-that.

YMMV, and all that.

<comment><USER7> > in my personal anecdotal experience bullies select victims that somehow > respond in a manner that rewards the bullying.

And here we are again, blaming the victim. Substitute 'rape' for 'bully' and you get a readout of the same regressive mentality. The target of bullying or of rape gets the 'bottom' role; the kind of argument you are making is that they are more or less justly assigned that role for being inherently effeminate or oversensitive and that the solution is for them to toughen up. Because you didn't suffer that much, because you were so much better at dealing with the bullying. Sorry, it doesn't work that way. You are congratulating yourself for having it relatively easy.

<comment><USER33> Perhaps I wasn't clear enough; I tried to point out there are _lots_ of different kinds of bullies, and bullying situations. I never tried to set out that what I was saying was representative of bullying in general, as I've never made a study of the issue. I tried to put qualifiers around what I reported was based upon my limited, personal, anecdotal experience.

For the record, I do not blame the victim. I've done my speaking stint with a battered women's shelter in my area, I've seen and worked with victims aplenty and have a perspective that informs me better than to blame the victim. But victims need to know there are ways to stand up, get help, and get out of the situation. In some settings where bullying takes place in the US public school system (the context that I'm familiar with), there might actually be no help feasibly available. Facing the reality that one might have to fight back (and note that I first described it in a metaphorical sense of redirecting the bullying's energy in a judo-like manner), is to acknowledge this situation on the ground, and does not mean I desire to blame the victim or in any way stop advocating for more assistance infrastructure like what we have for battered women.

If you have a more studied perspective, or your own personal views that influence how you view the issue that can help the kids getting bullied today, then I encourage you to share it here. If you want to go down the "...congratulating yourself for having it relatively easy..." road, then we all here discussing about bullying could be guilty of the same characterization, because this is #firstworldproblems to an orphaned 6-year old girl on the streets of Mumbai. There is _always_ someone, somewhere, somewhen that has it tougher. My position is I'd rather not devolve into that kind of meta-discussion, and instead put more energy into a discussion that can help those suffering at the moment. Or we can just agree to disagree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I blame the parents! The most important thing to teach your kid as soon as possible is self-reflection.</comment>


Why I'm learning to code - Roy Bahat, President at IGN Entertainment - <AUTHOR> http://also.roybahat.com/post/11574823708/why-im-learning-to-code <comment><USER2> "Every time I open my editor, I'm reminded that I can't just "jump in for a few minutes" the way I can with my usual work – either because coding isn't like that, or because I'm not good enough yet."

That is the best reason for a manager to learn to code that I have ever heard. Assuming he eventually realizes that it really is because "coding isn't like that."

<comment><USER3> I'll just leave this here. :)

"I've gone back and forth on whether managers should code and my opinion is: don't stop coding. Each week that passes where you don't share the joy, despair, and discovery of software development is a week when you slowly forget what it means to be a software developer. Over time it means you'll have a harder time talking to engineers because you'll forget how they think and how they become bored."

[http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2011/07/12/bored_peopl...](http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2011/07/12/bored_people_quit.html)

<comment><USER4> That is such a good article! Managing Humans (book written by him) is also a good resource for managers. I loved that book!

<http://www.managinghumans.com/>

<comment><USER5> It doesn't seem to be listed on HN-Books. Seems like quite an omission considering the number of articles that get posted from randsinrepose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was in a medium-sized company where the VP of Engineering started attending design meetings. Talk about a huge waste of time and a huge distraction.

Because he was the VP, and kind of jerk at that, everyone acted differently in the design meetings but everyone felt compelled to answer his questions because he was the VP. He would ask obvious questions that would derail the entire process. It was completely unproductive, but he really felt he could "add value" by attending the meetings, but it was pretty obvious that his expiration date as a technical person was long gone.

There was a funny quote a few weeks ago about how Zuckerberg wanted to go in and fix a few bugs and developers were complaining because he was way slower, etc, and basically just interfered with the process.

I'm glad that the original author is interested in learning how to program, but if it means he's going to stick his nose in and start gumming up the system, then he should stop. Programmers require a certain personality type. You can't take someone in sales and think that by understanding programming that it will somehow help him. Leave the managing to the managers, leave the sales to the sales people, and leave the programming to the programmers.

<comment><USER7> _There was a funny quote a few weeks ago about how Zuckerberg wanted to go in and fix a few bugs and developers were complaining because he was way slower, etc, and basically just interfered with the process._

Zuckerberg is a college drop out that started Facebook. We don't really know how his skills compares to others. It's easy to assume he his above average, but I have no idea what kind of code was behind the earlier Facebook versions.

My guess is that the Facebook that Zuckerberg started is so "simple" compared to the current version that it requires a different skill set. "Anyone" can throw together some some php+sql code to make Facebook v1.0, but that doesn't mean that they are actually an above average programmer. I'm not saying that he couldn't be an excellent programmer, but he has probably lost a lot of programming hours compared to others that were at his college at the time

<comment><USER8> Bill Gates may have inspired more cred during the early days. There are some hints about from history regarding his grip on things.. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancake_sorting> and taking <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Math_55> ;-).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Its always a good thing to know the work that your employees do, it helps evaluate their strengths and it helps in understanding the priorities of their requirements. I remember a manager at one company saying that programmers liked to have two monitors because it made them 'look impressive.' I asked if they really thought that reason really entered into the top 10 for the request and they were convinced that since they could do their entire job with just a lap top screen than more than a single big screen was a waste. Sad, so very sad.

It is also important though to keep track of what you don't know. It is never good when you have a manager who has been out of the thick of things long enough that they have lost the appreciation for the subtlties, trying to direct design decisions. I find this is hardest for managers where they were the primary coder on a project before it grew too big and they ended up managing it, and now it has evolved beyond their original understanding of it but they haven't realized that yet. Awkward!

</comment><comment><USER10> Even though Roy has stellar academic credentials...

"Roy graduated from Harvard College. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where he was also a lecturer in undergraduate math and economics."

...learning to code also involves doing projects where you run into problems and you learn and figure out how to solve those problems.

Over time.

Sometimes by spending hours on end only to have to wake up the next day with the answer.

It's certainly not just rote memorization to be tackled like learning latin or another language. Where accuracy and efficiency is not as important. And you can make mistakes and by context humans can figure out what you are saying or writing.) Or like running a ski resort and learning how to ski etc.

I think this is the most telling thing of what he hopes to achieve:

"I sometimes feel like a newspaper publisher who has to take his editor's word for it that the articles are good."

I don't see how he will come close to devoting enough time and learning enough to make any judgment on whether the programming is good or not.

<comment><AUTHOR> He also follows that sentence with a really good point "You trust your people, you know you could never write the way they do, but it would still be good to be able to read."

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> lately i wonder if these "biz guy learning to code" posts are harmful. I'm not sure which is worse: a product owner who can't code, or a product owner who _thinks_ he knows how to code.

 _"People who are not professional programmers often don't realize how the difficulty of writing software increases with size. Many people who wrote 100-line programs in college imagine that they could write 1,000-line programs if they worked at it 10 times longer. Or even worse, they imagine they could write 10,000-line programs if they worked 100 times longer. It doesn't work that way. Most people who can write a 100-line program could never finish a 10,000-line program no matter how long they worked on it. They would simply drown in complexity. One of the marks of a professional programmer is knowing how to organize software so that the complexity remains manageable as the size increases. Even among professionals there are large differences in ability. The programmers who can effectively manage 100,000-line projects are in a different league than those who can manage 10,000-line projects."_ [1]

I had a product owner once who had an EE & signals background. He thought since he could implement a complicated algorithm in matlab, he knew how to write software. Love the guy, one of my long-time mentors, but the project didn't go anywhere and part of the reason is some really bad early technical decisions.

[1] [http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2008/09/19/writes-large- correc...](http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2008/09/19/writes-large-correct- programs/)

<comment><USER12> I see what you're getting at but in this case the author is clearly taking a very humble approach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> As long as you understand where your team's talents are best deployed, a wider knowledge base of your product is only an advantage as a manager. To your point edw, yes when someone attempts to add value where they have no skill, frustration ensues. But, when you can better communicate with your team and understand their plights (via a knowledge of your tech), then expectations align and make for a better team workflow (emphasizing wccrawford's point).

</comment><comment><USER14> There are few things out there as infuriating as as non-technical co-founder (or say, someone higher up the chain if you're reporting to someone) who's written some crappy code once or twice in his life and then believes he's ready to tell professional software developers how to write code.

There's so much attention to detail and subtlety that a well-educated engineer with years of professional experience and a vast toolbox puts into his work every day, that the active involvement of an unqualified outsider can be absolutely devastating.

Thus, I think it's great that the CEO understands in general terms what it's like to write code, but he (or anybody else for that matter) should not attempt to participate to the process first-hand in any way. You wouldn't dare help a brain surgeon with a scalpel just because you know how to cut a steak, why is it any different for the highly brittle and sophisticated world of software?

</comment><comment><USER15> Everyone should learn how to code just as everyone learns basic arithmetic.

<comment><USER16> What would be the utility in doing this other than increasing the number of "coders"? I would make the argument that there are other, more practically applicable areas of study that would benefit the general population. Basic physics or even basic anatomy and physiology comes to mind.

<comment><USER17> What is the utility of teaching people arithmetic other than increasing the number of "mathematicians"?

This highlights an important aspect of the immaturity of software development, we lack the terms to even talk about it with very much detail. We don't put everyone who knows any amount of math in the same bucket, we don't even put people who know vector calculus and differential equations in the same bucket, we appreciate that there are many grdations of skill and differences between people who know a thing to some level of competence and people who use that knowledge intently in their occupation.

The same is true with programming. Just because someone knows the basics of programming doesn't mean they are a software engineer. It doesn't mean they are capable of building or working on large, sophisticated systems. It doesn't mean that they necessarily must take up programming as an occupation either.

Similarly, taking a wood shop class or learning basics of automotive maintenance doesn't make one a carpenter or a mechanic. But that doesn't make those skills useles either.

<comment><USER16> Yes, there is some utility in teaching the general population _a_ skill but I don't believe that coding is _the_ skill.

Don't get me wrong, it would make the jobs of those in technology a bit easier. But I think that there are better uses of resources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's great that he came to the realization that coding isn't something you can do for 15 minutes, in between meetings. Most of the managers at big corporations don't seem to understand how meetings can just kill off a day's productivity for a programmer.

</comment><comment><USER19> While this is a good thing my immediate concern is that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

The good side is that it will help him understand how coders working under him operate and that's great, but I'm not sure it's the most efficient way to get that knowledge. Simply listening to them (and their managers / team leads), maybe reading a couple of books on the subject would allow him to understand that in a way a bit of hobby programming simply won't.

The downside is that the lessons you learn as a beginner don't automatically scale to larger projects of the sort his development team(s) are working on. I've seen a business analysts who could code a bit, or managers with outdated skills, sell a development team down the river making assumptions based on what they think they know.

So yes it's good, but it's good with caveats.

Knowing how to develop is correlated with being a good manager of developers but it's not the only way to get some of the skills you need and, at this point in his career, it may not be the best way and certainly won't teach him everything he needs to know.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm assuming as President of IGN, Roy Bahat already has his hands full managing day-to-day operations. I'm sure he's intelligent enough to take up a task like "learning to code", but can he really put in the time to be a proficient programmer? It takes a full time CS student about a year before they really understand the logic of writing program...and then an additional 5-10 years (at least) to become the excellent programmer that a place like IGN would employ to engineer video games...

My question is, what's his end goal? I doubt he'll be able to balance his job as President AND devote the time it takes to become a great programmer.

<comment><USER21> He taught a class at UC Berkeley this past spring. The course was excellent, and he brought in some amazing industry speakers. I wondered the same thing about how he balances.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> What I really like about Roy's post is that he understands that programming is a way of thinking and he acknowledges that it's different than what he's used to. Programming teaches me how to think about abstract problems and to come up with solutions, and a series of steps to implement the solutions. The coding part is mostly boring and mindless typing if you have done the first part well.

I would rather work for a manager that understands this way of thinking over one that doesn't any day.

</comment><comment><USER22> As I see it, everyone in a software company should know how to 'code' at a rudimentary level - and appreciate the process and skill required by the company. Analogies anyone?

</comment><comment><USER23> I really like that he wants to learn something new. And I think it's also quite important that we, coders, try to learn something from the other camp too!

</comment><comment><USER24> I've always found that hackers should hack and business people should just conduct business, but each with as deep an understanding of the other as possible. One of our co-founders both programs and helps on the business side, because he insists on it, and it just doesn't work. However, his understanding of what we do from a business perspective and our non-tech cofounders basic understanding of programming has proven crucial to proper planning and communication.

Great post, I digging it.

<comment><USER24> <http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html>

<comment><USER24> Shit someone already posted that. oh well

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The danger in the president learning to code is that no one wants to tell him his code sucks, then he releases/deploys it and fucks shit up. All I can say is "good luck".

<comment><USER26> This is a pretty unfair. He seems self-aware enough to know he probably shouldn't be releasing stuff to production. But there is a long way from "learning to code" to "releasing production code."

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> in my opinion he cannot delegate and should actually learn to do that</comment>


What Happened to All 53 of Marissa Mayer's Yahoo Acquisitions - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/heres-what-happened-to-all-of-marissa-mayers-yahoo-acqu-1781980352?utm_source=nextdraft <comment><USER2> "She deployed quick fixes to solve Yahoo's morale problems, including expanding parental leave and hiring high-profile celebrities to run the company's media division."

Didn't she also cancel work from home arrangements? I think it's highly debatable if that was good for morale...

<comment><USER3> Additionally, she had a nursery built in her office.

<comment><USER4> So the 2 good things she did at Yahoo:

        1. Parental leave
        2. A nursery

Now, I wonder how things would have been if she herself was not pregnant when she joined Yahoo

<comment><USER5> 2\. a nursery _for herself_

AFAIK only she used it.

<comment><USER6> Not only that, but other employees had to watch this after losing their work- from-home "privileges". Was in all the big papers, caused quite the kerfuffle.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-who-just- banned...](http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-who-just-banned- working-from-home-paid-to-have-a-nursery-built-at-her-office-2013-2)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reid Hoffman interviewed Marissa Mayer for his blitzscaling lectures at Stanford and she gives some insights into her mobile strategy and why she made these acquisitions. In short and paraphrasing massively Yahoo had a tiny team dedicated to mobile and she wanted to change this fast. Full interview here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NS9mzbgI_qk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NS9mzbgI_qk)

<comment><USER8> > Yahoo had a tiny team dedicated to mobile and she wanted to change this fast

I'm not sure what was the point of buying Tumblr 1 Billion if Yahoo had a mobile strategy problem. Tumblr isn't big on mobile.

<comment><USER9> lol what do you mean tumblr isn't big on mobile. 78%. percent of Tumblr's audience that access it through a mobile device. Their whole site is tailored for mobile.

<comment><USER8> lol, you didn't get the memo , did you ?

[http://mashable.com/2016/06/15/how-yahoo-derailed- tumblr/](http://mashable.com/2016/06/15/how-yahoo-derailed-tumblr/)

<comment><USER6> Since we're being snarky- perhaps read the articles you toss out? It specifically says that a major cause was the merging of their sales/marketing/ads teams and installing middle management (between Marissa and Karp) who knew little-to-nothing about Tumblr, much less how to run it. It's not like Yahoo bought them out to turn them away from mobile. Or even to help Yahoo become more mobilized. They wanted to monetize Tumblr and gain from it's younger audience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think it's interesting to note Marissa took over in July 2012, since then the stock price rose by 140%. During that same time Google did 152%, Microsoft did 75% and Apple did 15%.

Of course this is only a small part of the story, but at the end of the day she works for the owners of the company, the shareholders, and they care about their share price. They've done quite well compared to others, under her leadership.

Am I excited about Yahoo, or would I invest, or do I think it's a well run company? Nonono. But there's a narrative that Marissa's doing a terrible job, and contextualised by a declining trend for at least half a decade prior to her joining the company, and shareholders faring quite well so far, I'd say it's nowhere as bad as people think.

<comment><USER11> > I think it's interesting to note Marissa took over in July 2012, since then > the stock price rose by 140%.

Yep. I bought YHOO when she was hired, and it worked out well. She may not have been the catalyst for they stock price rise (Alibaba), but she was the catalyst that made me purchase some shares.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, and the core business is still waaay undervalued. Plenty of people use Yahoo, it's just not us.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is talent really in that short supply that acqui-hiring makes sense? Wouldn't Yahoo have been better off just paying a million dollars a year to each of the developers Ms Mayer managed to bring on board?

<comment><USER8> Yahoo has a management problem, not a talent problem. There are plenty of talents at Yahoo capable of building and delivering great apps. Most of these acquisitions under Mayer were worthless and wouldn't fix Yahoo's internal issues.

<comment><USER12> It sounds like you have an insiders's perspective. From my very outsider's perspective it would appear that Yahoo did not manage to make much of the talent and opportunities it had or acquired.

<comment><USER13> Not really. It looks likes c-suit hubris and narcissism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> You know, at first I thought she would turn Yahoo around due to her cachet and Yahoo still having a ground to leap from. I dismissed naysayers by writing that down to chauvinism and envy our little world is full of. Now, I'm pretty sure she stalled and nose-dived Yahoo to the ground. At first there seemed to be a strategy behind it all, to build-up Yahoo as a media empire of sorts. However, then random acquisitions started and it showed lack of either strategy or focus. Buy shit and instead of building upon what you bought, they moved onto more buying, while ignoring previously bought stuff. That's just bad leadership, lack of strategy.

<comment><USER15> I still think she has cachet and i still believe there is (to a large degree) plenty of chauvinism being thrown at her. Maybe she is a fit leader but dove into a mess that is far worse behind the scenes than the public can understand? Maybe she had no help from her internal staff/teams? And/Or, maybe yes, she is human and could have made a few mistakes? Maybe her skills make her a better COO-type of person as opposed to CEO? It sucks to see the state of yahoo in general these days (I attribute this statement of mine to sheer nostalgia of the older inter-webs)...but it sucks _also_ because I have been cheering on Marissa Mayer, and hoping she succeeds both throughout hr time in google as well as here on yahoo. Good leader / bad leader, I don't know...but I'll keep pulling for her.

<comment><USER14> I'm sure she has chauvinism thrown at her. That's the sad state of the world we live in. I always tend to give positive benefit of the doubt to people. However, her results have shown lack of yield. That's all that matters. She's been at it for four years now and hasn't turned the ship around. Only two conclusions can be met here. Either the ship has already sunk before she came on board or she wasn't fit for the role / bad leadership. Even if she didn't have the support from people around her, that's still lack of leadership. After all, it's your job, as a leader, to persuade people into doing various things (do things, buy things, sell things, morale, whatever...). Results speak for themselves. She has got to go. The patient is flatlining.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Inspite of making so many mistakes, Yahoo is still one of the top 10 most visited sites. What is working for them?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_popular_websites](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_popular_websites)

<comment><USER17> I still use Yahoo Mail because GMail was changing too often and I had got tired from hunting buttons. Also you can select to see only unread emails in Yahoo. Also, if you send an HTML email to an Yahoo email address you can put the CSS in a <style> tag and Yahoo servers will deal with it nicely and the CSS will work when you read the email on Yahoo's website.

But all this Yahoo is dying nonsense did bring some changes. They modified the UI code and now, sometimes you select an email but you can't click any actions (delete etc.) because the app is confused about the state in which it is. It happent less recently.

Then they pulled Yahoo Messenger, which is how I was notified of new emails, while not having ready the mobile app.

Thankfully the mobile app is really good and I have my other account on it too.

And the ads... they are good. As oposed to google that will follow me with the same ad for weeks even if I already made my purchase or maybe it was just a curiosity. With Yahoo it's more like "here are some things people your age look at".

<comment><USER18> Honest question/not trolling: How often do you style personal/non- business/marketing emails?

<comment><USER17> By writting CSS directly, never. But then you would think all the other newer, "better" companies would have this little detail fixed already. But they don't. And it becomes hugely important as soon as you open your own online shop and you want to send a proper HTML email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> At least it isn't bankrupt, as opposed to Gizmodo's parent company.

<comment><USER20> What does that have to do with anything?

<comment><USER21> It's just a bit humorous that Gizmodo put out an article that (in essence) criticizes Yahoo's bad business decisions, while at the same time Gawker is filing for bankruptcy.

<comment><USER22> Gawker is not filling for bankruptcy for bad business decisions, it's filing for bankruptcy because they were sued for making a questionable editorial decision and lost the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Trying to acquire talent is not a terrible approach. From [http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html)

 _In theory you could beat the death spiral by buying good programmers instead of hiring them. You can get programmers who would never have come to you as employees by buying their startups..._

<comment><USER24> I'm not sure if I would consider Paul Graham -- a man who largely makes his living by mentoring engineers who get "bought" \-- and a terribly reliable source on this. Of course he thinks buying startups is a good way to beat the death spiral since he's in the business of producing startups.

And even if we accept that it is a good strategy, all it did for Yahoo was lease a few engineers for a year after their startup was purchased, only to have them leave a year later to do another startup. Either that or struggle to integrate a bunch of disparate teams that you purchased based on the product they made, rather than how they might best serve your mission.

<comment><USER25> I feel like there's a fundamental failure in this model: create and grow a business to be a target acquisition, then cash out. This implies an untested business riding on trend and PR fluff, whose creator was never committed enough to see it fully realized.

<comment><USER24> Failure for whom?

If I'm the one cashing out, then I think it's a successful model.

It's also driven by past successes in this arena. Over the years products like Powerpoint, Android and YouTube have all been acquisitions that have gone on to be huge successes for the parent company (I can actually think of a few more Google purchases such as Waze and DoubleClick).

Of course, that means other companies see this as a successful strategy and attempt to replicate it. Now there's a rush to find the best acquisitions targets, more companies enter the market, and at least some will be acquired based on hype alone, causing some companies who focus more on their hype than their product. Bubble ensues.

I think the real failure is at companies like Yahoo who buy the hype and not the product.

EDIT: I should also note that for some companies, it seems unlikely that they could have scaled without an acquisition. Making phone hardware or hosting so many videos is expensive. In their case, acquisition was really the only viable strategy for success.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > Marissa Mayer turned Yahoo into a startup lottery.

Yahoo just participates in the startup lottery like every other company its size. The lottery already existed, and Yahoo was already part of it, long before Mayer. Ditto after Mayer, I'm sure. Don't blame her for one of Silicon Valley's fundamental pathologies.

<comment><USER27> Exactly. They just went with it because its "normal". Either way, didn't Paul Graham sell a company to yahoo and then started YC?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This really is a bit sad to see. Tumblr by all accounts is just a porn aggregator site at this point, so the lone possible bright is BrightRoll... maybe?

<comment><USER29> I don't know what kind of tumblrs you're looking at, but this is certainly not my experience.

<comment><USER30> I though he was pretty clear about what kind of tumblrs he's looking at.

<comment><USER29> I wonder if it's like those people getting salty at google auto-completes without realizing the influence of their search histories.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Lots of complaining at someone who took the stock from 15 dollars to 30 dollars. It was take some risks or die. Yahoo had long gone stale. You can argue she took the wrong risks, but you'd probably do just as bad. That's why they call them risks.

<comment><USER9> Also lets not forget they had a lot of extra cash flow due to the pushed sale of a good chunk of their alibaba stake. Surely any sane businessperson would conclude that for them to just... sit on it is not a wise decision.

</comment></comment><comment> tuna-piano Does anyone know the median price for these deals? I assume it's highly skewed. What would a 5 person failing mobile app get, and how long would they be locked in to Yahoo for?

</comment><comment><USER31> "Hey, your company isn't working, therefore we're bringing you on for the talent. We're not interested in the product and service you have in market,...."

If your goal is to increase revenue and profitability, surely buying companies that have demonstrated they're great at losing money is a really bad idea? You're hand picking individuals who are the very best in the business at blowing investor cash.

</comment><comment> tuna-piano When Marissa Mayer states that Yahoo "is the fastest growing startup in the world", I hope she doesn't actually believe that or take pride in that- and is just saying it for hype.

They invested 2.8B to produce no meaningful profit and only a fraction of that in revenue. Under her logic, only looking at the output, they'd be a faster growing startup if they just put that money into a bank account.

<comment><USER9> Businesses take risks to create value. It's what they do, and if nobody did it putting money into a bank account wouldn't actually make money. If you want ~0 risk money buy some bonds, but startups are arguably some of the riskiest (and most rewarding) investments. In that regard I'd say she's 100% spot on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> What happens when you take some body who is good in the UX department and ask them to run a company? Peter's principle is what happened.

</comment><comment><USER33> Why did they shut down all the apps/software that they acquired? Why not simply to continue with the service like they did with tumblr?

</comment><comment><USER34> > "Gizmodo also made him cry once."

Really?! The original post [0] wasn't even necessary. But refering to it again! Come on...

0: [http://gizmodo.com/5830076/how-i-made-a-15-year-old-app- deve...](http://gizmodo.com/5830076/how-i-made-a-15-year-old-app-developer- cry)

</comment><comment><USER35> What is Yahoo doing in mobile? What does it mean that "the team joined Yahoo's mobile unit?"

<comment><USER36> i use yahoo weather app. it uses flickr pics from your current location as its background.

<comment><USER37> I used to use that weather app too. Loved it. Then I tried the AccuWeather app and I became convinced that its forecasts were more accurate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Did Gizmodo do a similar comprehensive rundown of Eric Schmidt's acquisitions? Or of Mark Zuckerberg's acquisitions? Have they in fact done anything so exhaustive and pointed for even one _male_ tech CEO, of which there are far more to choose from?

<comment><USER39> I downvoted you, here is why:

Yahoo is a company on the brink of a sale, currently undergoing (some perception of) slow collapse. The gender of the CEO is to me _entirely_ aside the point. There has been quite a bit of press surrounding Nest's CEO as well, companies in turmoil attract media, it's "business soap opera".

Now to play devils advocate, it may be fair to ask if she is receiving _undue_ attention due to the above, but given my anecdotal views of high profile businesspeople being put under the microscope when failures come to light (and the fact that it's rather an occams razor explanation; "rubbernecking" in the broader sense) as well as the fact that it's very easy to cite broad examinations of aquisitions even without the prompting of a "newsworthy" event (from an EXTREMELY cursory googling [https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/25/the- age-of-acquisitions/](https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/25/the-age-of- acquisitions/)).

Frankly, your statement feels like a strawman LOOKING for there to be some gender aggression when that just isn't merited over an examination of a company with some rather entertaining decision history, that I at least would have been inclined to read about regardless of any other information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> What blows my mind is how positive the HN crowd were about the acquisition of Tumblr at the time:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5737185](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5737185)

Everybody on HN now appears to be firmly in the camp of "Tumblr was a terrible acquisition, it was obvious at the time, what a disaster". Now we read about the other 52 companies that for the most part are also disasters.

My questions are:

How did Marissa manage to purchase a whopping 53 companies and waste so much money before somebody realised that Yahoo was collapsing from the inside out?

Is this all on her shoulders?

Surely the board signed these deals off? Are they equally culpable here?

<comment><USER41> No, that thread was talking about it being positive for _Tumblr_ , and the community thereon. Or at least not destroying it by trying to clean up the NSFW blogs.

I can't see any of those posts saying it would be great for Yahoo or its investors.

<comment><USER42> Did you see the very first comment?

" _I really think Yahoo 's back in the game now. I would never have used yahoo before. Now hundred thousands of people are. And they are from the new generation._"

</comment></comment></comment><comment> tuna-piano Only 6 months!?

Why would any corporation think entrepreneurs at heart would want to stay once they got there?

</comment><comment><USER43> 53 acquisitions in 4 years (13/year) seems like a lot. I wonder if they kept track.

</comment><comment><USER44> Has anyone ever figured out what the point of the Summly acquisition was?

</comment><comment><USER45> What's worse is that in spite of the ridiculous sums that Yahoo paid, the technical talent that they bought in was of pretty average quality.

She just bought over-hyped companies run by a bunch of kids. These kids were better at self-promotion (and perhaps business) than at producing great software.

Really good software engineers are not in the public view - They are too busy learning and writing code to waste their time fundraising, blogging about their technical achievements or chatting up journalists.

Marissa Mayer turned Yahoo into a startup lottery. What's left of Yahoo is just a freakshow of capitalist excess.

I don't see how this acquisition spree was ever going to 'attract talent'. Seriously; would any talented, hard working, self-respecting engineer want to have some entitled multimillionaire lucky startup brat as their boss?

<comment><USER46> You sound a little bit jealous. What apps / web services have you made?

<comment><USER47> He sounds envious, not jealous.

Jealousy is the fear that someone else will take what you have. Envy is when you want what someone else has.

<comment><USER48> Reminds me of that scene from The Simpsons [1].

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+simpsons+je...](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+simpsons+jealousy+and+envy)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> You may think this was harmless, but you've greatly contributed to our rampant inequality.

<comment><USER50> We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11915829](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11915829) and marked it off-topic.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Last full time job a year ago, thoughts on how to get back on the horse? - <AUTHOR> My last full time job was a year ago.
I barely tolerate my jobs: I resent spending most of my week working on "urgent" tasks that don't really matter other than making their requester more political capital so they can play their game of thrones, while my only upside is that I get to keep my job and do more of this.
For the last year, I have been tutoring people learning to program. This is rewarding but it's only 15h a week and the hourly rate is low: 95% of my after tax income goes to living expenses, and I'm frugal.
I had a three month streak of interviewing this summer and it was so dreadful that I would rather read the dictionary than doing it again. I still check job ads once in a while but don't feel very excited about dealing with yet another dysfunctional entity to make the shareholders more money at the expense of my sanity & freedom.
I feel stuck, and I'd rather make as much money as I should as a developer than surviving: this would put me back on track to save for retiring earlier (I'd like to retire before 40 but only have 25% of the required capital to date.) I have considered self-employment, but I have no network and suck at sales. The only people offering contract work are agencies who are looking for warm bodies to fill seats.
I could do this 3 days a week, but sadly no-one ever looks for part time developers: it's 8h x 5 days a week or die. I have noticed that when self-employed, I feel differently: there is still crap to put up with, but I feel more in control and don't mind as much plus the hourly rate is much higher than an employee and I can get more than 2 weeks a year off.
I'm hoping to hear from people who have been in similar situations: how did you get out of it? How did you reconcile the soul-crushing work prospects with your need for autonomy? I live in Canada, so while it is similar to the US some things can be slightly different. <comment><USER2> _This is rewarding but it 's only 15h a week and the hourly rate is low_

So, come up with another 25 hours per week of some kind of paid work, whether programming related or not.

You could also see about trying to make money via (for example) bug bounties since you are scraping by and have free time.

I'm not a programmer, but I am currently cobbling together things that work for me.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's another alternative you might not have considered. Passive income. Write simple scripts and sell them on a marketplace like CodeCanyon, twitter clone, youtube clone etc the quality is so bad there (even 'quality checked' ones) you'll quickly get to the top.

<comment><USER4> Although you'll certainly not make enough money to live off of, there's always content ads as another passive revenue stream. If you make high-quality content (learn-to-code videos, for instance), and it gets popular, YouTube et al. might be sending you monthly cuts of ad dollars.</comment></comment>


How a leading arms expert imagines North Korean nuclear attack on the US (2018) - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Potentially meant to link to:

[https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/8/17649588/north-korea- nucle...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/8/17649588/north-korea-nuclear- attack-2020-commission-report-jeffrey-lewis-book-interview)</comment>


Security updates available for Adobe Flash Player - <AUTHOR> http://helpx.adobe.com/security/products/flash-player/apsb14-04.html <comment><USER2> Yet another chance for Adobe to try and get people to install McAfee which is an "Optional offer" but checked by default. Bad form.

<comment><USER3> That sucks... I won a free download of Google Chrome when updating my Flash!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Apple has blocked the old version as of 10 hours ago:

APPLE-SA-2014-02-04-1 OS X: Flash Player plug-in blocked

Due to security issues in older versions, Apple has updated the web plug-in blocking mechanism to disable all versions prior to Flash Player 22.214.171.124.

Information on blocked web plug-ins will be posted to: [http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5655](http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5655)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The relevant part:

 _These updates address a critical vulnerability that could potentially allow an attacker to remotely take control of the affected system. Adobe is aware of reports that an exploit for this vulnerability exists in the wild, and recommends users update their product installations to the latest versions._

<comment><USER5> "relevant part?" They say that every month. The only surprising thing is that it's "critical vulnerability," singular, not "critical vulnerabilities," plural.

<comment><USER5> Ahem. Grumbling and bad jokes aside, you're right. The fact that Adobe believes it's already being exploited is unusually concerning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Although the security bulletin is dated February 4th, did the updates roll out before then? I just visited the 'About Flash Player' page and it claims that I am up to date already.

</comment><comment><USER7> Doesn't seem to be shipping with Chrome beta yet.

Edit: Just got the update.

</comment><comment><USER3> When the hell is Adobe going to include a way to manually check for updates and then automatically install the update within their control panel applet?

<comment><USER4> They already have that on OS X.

<comment><USER8> No, they just open a new browser window to the binary download. It most definitely does not auto-update in place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Mozilla's update page says: "These plugins are up to date Shockwave Flash 12.0 r0 126.96.36.199" (the Jan 24th update)

<comment><USER10> It told me it was vulnerable

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you use a browser privacy tool like Ghostery[0] to block Adobe's Omniture tracker, it'll have to be unblocked in order to download the new version of flash.

[0][https://www.ghostery.com/](https://www.ghostery.com/)

</comment><comment><USER12> I noticed that Ubuntu 12.04 LTS pulled down a 7 KB or so installer shim, instead of the full installer.

From my perspective, BAD! I hate this installer shim BS.

<comment><USER5> I think it's some sort of legal thing. You know, distribute 7 KB FOSS shell script, no proprietary software here, folks, nuh-uh.

The partner repository (which is for non-free software) contains a real, non- shim adobe-flashplugin package, if you like.

<comment><USER12> Interesting point.

They do it in the Windows world, too, though. Leading to people learning to seek out their .../distribution3 page (IIRC), where the full installers are linked.

In the Windows world, the shims bork more easily, and they don't seem to add any benefit.

I haven't really been paying much attention in Ubuntu; I just happened to notice this, today. On Ubuntu, Flash updates via the update manager have been mostly "just working", and I have most Flash blocked, anyway.

Back to Windows: Whenever I have to maintain multiple machines with some or all of them perhaps currently off-line, this shim business quickly becomes a pain in the ass.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> By default, Flash only checks if there is updates every 14 days, and in my experience only actually does on system restart.

[http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplay...](http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager05.html)

That is a bit bizarre given that it is in tight competition with Java (which also features enormous update issues) as the biggest security vulnerability on most systems.

<comment><USER14> The Flash (and java for that matter) update mechanisms are a big nuisance. Having to go visit the site manually is also not very convenient.

So I end up using a 3rd party that actually checks the plugins and gives me a direct update link if the plugin is not up to date.

[https://browsercheck.qualys.com/?scan_type=js](https://browsercheck.qualys.com/?scan_type=js)

Not perfect, but it helps me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Should be a sticky.</comment>


Want to buy the largest video game collection in the world? - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/06/want-to-buy-the-largest-video-game-collection-in-the-world/

<comment><USER2> Another huge collection is John Hancock's, he's a frequent guest on various retrogaming shows.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR- mRPh23n0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR-mRPh23n0)</comment>


Incident Command System And 8 Hour Ops Rotations For Fresh Minds - <AUTHOR> http://highscalability.com/blog/2011/4/27/heroku-emergency-strategy-incident-command-system-and-8-hour.html

<comment><USER2> This bullet point from the article doesn't make _any_ sense:

Be a really big customer so Amazon will help you specifically with your problems. This seemed to help Heroku a lot. I noticed in the Amazon developer forums a lot of people forgot to do this and didn't get the personal help they needed.</comment>


Ask HN: What are the signals to identify if I am snubbed at my workplace? - <AUTHOR> Is this a signal, that I mostly do medium or least priority work? <comment><USER2> Pardon my rudeness, but this seems like a sloppy question, coming from a programmer (which is not a good sign): is the work you're being given less critical? Calls for more or less care? Is or isn't more difficult, or requires more background knowledge? If you're being given tasks reducing difficult tech debt that may mean you're more highly valued even if the spotlight isn't on you, for example. But don't worry about other's opinions, get precise, disambiguate your speech and your code, write precise solid code and let 'em discover your merits.

</comment><comment><USER3> Probably how much you're paid and whether you get a raise if you ask for it.</comment>