Surprising salaries for jobs you'd never imagine - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20140814-that-job-pays-how-much <comment><USER3> I really dislike this - an article with unverified sources and no original content in the BBC, what I consider a very reliable, ethical news source. To me this is yet another example of the cheapening of modern journalism - <USER2> has been "partnering" with several "content distribution partners" including BBC to market themselves while doing the newspapers' jobs.

> Quora exec Marc Bodnick sees the media deals as a win-win, where Quora > writers get more distribution, and media partners get good content. > ([http://allthingsd.com/20131119/quora-will-push-its-most- > link...](http://allthingsd.com/20131119/quora-will-push-its-most-link-baity- > content-to-buzzfeed-though-it-would-never-call-it-that))

At least some publishers have been called out and ended up doing the right thing, like when huffpo published unsourced, ridiculous answers about trader joes' two buck chuck:

>This blog post contained un-sourced claims about Two Buck Chuck and its proprietor, Bronco Wines. It has been removed from the site in accordance with our blogger terms. ([http://www.starkinsider.com/2014/08/trader-joes-two-buck- chu...](http://www.starkinsider.com/2014/08/trader-joes-two-buck-chuck-wine- really-bad.html))

<comment><USER4> >I really dislike this - an article with no original content and unverified sources in the BBC, what I consider a very reliable, ethical news source.

About that...

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/neilmidgley/2014/06/03/bbc- news-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/neilmidgley/2014/06/03/bbc-news- division-to-cut-500-jobs/)

I personally thought that the BBC News jumped the shark when they introduced a "BBC Capital" section. It really rammed home Chomsky's point about major newspapers having a "business" section but no "labor" section.

It's been a downhill slide ever since Hutton, to be honest, and a crying shame.

At least we still have Al Jazeera, though.

<comment><USER5> Oh the irony in linking to a third-party contribution to Forbes as your source of this news. Is this what each newspaper's online presence is going to devolve into across the industry?

<comment><USER4> LOL, true. In my defense it was the first hit in Google.

Judging by the time it took to dig this up, BBC could do with some SEO work:

[http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment- arts-28342929](http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-28342929)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is this what passes as journalism now? I mean:

>"My 19 year-old boss was taking home $35,000/year with benefits," he said. "Plus they train you on the job for free. She told me that she was on track to be a regional manager by the age of 30 and would make 100k by then."

>Katie Nellis said managers of Walgreen's drugstores in the US "often retire in their 40s."

Are we just taking these wild, likely highly exaggerated claims at face value? And did the BBC really just re-publish comments from Quora as a story with no additional verification?

In that case, the most surprising salary is for journalists at the BBC - I'm surprised they can keep a job at all.

<comment><USER7> BBC's articles often report direct quotes from average Joes, it's part of their style. I don't like it either.

<comment><USER8> I've heard it called grain of sand journalism. It usually goes from a couple of very broad statements about the entire desert directly to an in depth look at a few grains of sand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not at all sure why these are 'surprising'. $100k/year for a dog walker is not possible in most areas unless there's a lot of dogs to walk for a lot of dog owners with disposable income. That $96k figure is 'up to', and while much may be in cash, it's probably closer to 50-70% that on an annual basis. If you're doing this in an area with enough rich dog owners to sustain that business year 'round, you're living in an area where earning, say, $60k isn't going to afford you a great lifestyle. Liveable, certainly, but not wealthy.

The 'not surprising' part really is the down to hustle - it should not be surprising at all that some people can hustle up paying customers for services that we'd ignore or look down on. The dog walking gig - you must _really_ love dogs to be cleaning up dog crap for _up to 8_ dogs at a time, 5-7 days per week, 6-8 hours per day.

I've known dog walkers and pool cleaners. Most don't make anywhere near that, because they're not good hustlers - they're not networked sufficiently, and don't know how to attract enough customers and manage a business. Someone with the skills to attract customers and properly manage 'busyness', money will flow almost in spite of whatever skills/education they may have or, more usually, not have.

</comment><comment><USER10> The oil boom in northern Alberta, Canada is another good example of high paying jobs without any skill or at least education.

Many small towns and fishing villages have been de-populated of men aged 20 to their 40s who went to work in the oil fields.

Going from seasonal work drawing unemployment benefits to $100,000+ working six months and all your food and lodging paid for even free tickets to fly to and from home.

Small towns now have big loud trucks from Alberta and lots of "that's not how we do it in Alberta" arguments. Small town poor boy makes it big can create some assholes.

<comment><USER11> > Small town poor boy makes it big can create some assholes.

A lot of them came back to Newfoundland and the feeling is pretty much the same. That province is going through an oil boom of its own and the influx of yuppies, crime and condos is excruciating

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Proxy for UK users: [https://simple- proxy.com/g.php?u=k3gVKwRdxrbr79mOfc6v2q7vafE...](https://simple- proxy.com/g.php?u=k3gVKwRdxrbr79mOfc6v2q7vafEU8Vg4I7aQWp2mayClDtcUcmuUxhiayRGLR1du%2FtCtobsUCKBO5Cf8&b=7&f=norefer)

<comment><USER13> Original: [http://www.quora.com/Salaries-and-Wages/What-is-a-job- that-m...](http://www.quora.com/Salaries-and-Wages/What-is-a-job-that-most- people-assume-does-NOT-make-a-lot-of-money-but-in-reality-pays-very-well)

<comment><USER14> Wow, this article merely rephrases the Quora comments' without contributing anything new to the discussion.

<comment><USER15> Pretty bad to see from the BBC, but at least you don't have to sign in to see it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not surprised at all re: construction workers. That they can make hundreds of thousands of dollars per year is sort of a semi-open secret. The catch is that construction is a feast or famine occupation. During building booms, contractors and workers can make a small fortune. During busts, they can go bust. New York is a great place to be a construction worker, as there always seems to be a steady supply of new projects underway. San Francisco, right now, is making a lot of construction workers quite wealthy. But this boom will go bust eventually, and when it does, the demand drop will shock supply, and the jobs will dry up virtually overnight. Nobody has any great idea when that will happen, but the workers I've talked to [1] are an odd mix of giddy and pessimistic. There is sort of a "get it while the getting's still good" mentality afoot right now.

As you might imagine, any jobs tied to real estate development very closely track the real estate market, be it residential or commercial. That market can be exciting, but it's also inherently unstable.

[1] I don't work in construction, but I have invested in a few buildings, and I talk to contractors and workers pretty regularly.

<comment><USER17> _> The catch is that construction is a feast or famine occupation. [...] There is sort of a "get it while the getting's still good" mentality afoot right now._

Indeed, and that's not good from the point of view of construction standards. When the going is good, contractors go pedal to the metal and will do everything they can as fast as they can, inevitably lowering their average work standards (both in terms of output quality and safety measures). Plus, construction booms typically lead to more widespread economic bubbles.

I wish we could find a way of stabilizing that particular market.

<comment><USER18> > Plus, construction booms typically lead to more widespread economic bubbles.

If there is actually a causal relationship there, I would have thought it was the other way around.

<comment><USER17> I think it's more of a symbiotic relationship: construction is the first sector to accelerate when things start looking good and the first to crash when things start going sour, because it relies on debt more than others. Because of this position, it plays a very important role in exacerbating trends.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > In India, hair dressers can earn more than employees in the software > industry. During a recent visit to the salon...

Are they really using Quora as a reference? Even if this is honest, the responder went to probably one of the top salons in Bangalore, in which case the same would hold in Western countries. Most hair dressing jobs in India are low paying, and most of the rest are average paying.

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't buy the numbers on dog walkers. I live in NYC, which is probably at the high end for this and many other things, and I don't know anyone who's paying $25/day to walk a dog with up to 7 other dogs. People will pay more to have their dogs walked by themselves or in small groups. I don't think I see groups of more than 4.

The theater/opera carpenter one really surprised me. I wonder why they are paid so much? Unions?

Construction I totally understand. I come from Perth, Western Australia, which is in the midst of a resources boom that has been going on almost unabated for 15-20 years. The scope and scale of what is being dug up from the ground or drilled from the sea is probably unprecedented.

This puts an incredible amount of pressure on construction. So much so that in 2000 you could buy a house for ~$100k in Perth. 5 years later that same house was $350k+. Most of that was just increased construction and materials cost, not land appreciation.

The problem with such massive increases in the cost of construction is that it feeds into virtually everything else. If you've ever been to Perth, you'll know it's an incredibly expensive city now. Back in the 90s I lived comfortably as a student in a 2 bedroom apartment and all expenses for <$200/week.

I often wonder if Australia will suffer (or is already suffering) from Dutch Disease [1]. It's a place now of the haves (those in mining/construction) and have nots (everyone else). Even if you're one of the lucky ones, the standard of living is not great.

I say this as someone who lives in _Manhattan_. But New York City has way more options for the whole income spectrum. Less than $200k can get you a 1 bedroom in Sunnyside, Queens that's <30 minutes to Midtown.

In Perth, there are no cheap options anymore. Even 5 years ago, 40-50 year old crappy apartments were being rented out for $300/week sight unseen.

Anyway I don't begrudge any of these jobs their good fortunes (I am a software engineer after all). I do worry about construction in particular however because of the on-flow effect into everything else.

Construction really is a mixed bag too. Highly paid crane operators? That's a stressful/demanding job. No problem there. 6 figure incomes for guys who stand on the street with a stop sign wearing a hard hat? Well, that's just a racket.

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease)

<comment><USER21> It's $25 _per session_... Their math is $25 * 8 dogs * 2 times daily * 240 days a year. That's how "up to eight dogs" turns into "eight dogs every day, every time".

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> _Working your way up to store manager has its perks. According to Murray Godfrey a Wal-Mart store manager "of a store in a moderate-sized locale can easily make $200k plus bonuses based on sales."_

Don't forget the other part of the job: scheduling much of the just above minimum wage workforce under you to work less than 30 hours/week so they don't get benefits.

</comment><comment><USER23> Several years ago I knew a hair dresser who made 90K working only a few hours a day while I worked three times longer as a software engineer making only 75K. A third of her income was from tips (and I've heard that a lot of people don't pay taxes on those).

</comment><comment><USER24> The dog walking job, at $96,000, is a flat-out lie. I owned a dog walking company for several years. There is lots of competition and no barrier to entry.

<comment><USER9> Agreed. It's someone extrapolating out 1 45 minute dog walk @ $X/hr x Y dogs, saying "they work 6 hours per day".

Yeah... perhaps of actual 'walking'. This says nothing about the time required to actually market your business, sign people up, deal with angry customers, not to mention deal with sick dogs, cleaning up crap for multiple dogs daily, and dealing with year-round weather.

If you're in an area where there's enough business to support $100k/year in dog walking, you still can't afford to live well, because that $100k will buy you relatively little.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I am not surprised at all. Whenever my leftist friends bring up the "poor" who cannot find a job I ask them if they know how much does a dog walker make and why is it so.</comment>


Struct Iteration Through Abuse of the C Preprocessor - <AUTHOR> https://natecraun.net/articles/struct-iteration-through-abuse-of-the-c-preprocessor.html <comment><USER2> You can do some interesting things using __COUNTER__ to make code using this less ugly. And if you're willing to use a small amount of C++ templates, you can make it possible to resolve all the iteration/member info at compile time to eliminate runtime overhead.

I did both of these things for Grim Fandango for vertex/uniform buffers, so that the game could use buffers without caring about whether it was using OpenGL or console APIs - but it's not open source :-(

Even if you don't need something like this under normal circumstances, consider whether it could let you identify mistakes in debug builds, or avoid errors when writing your serialization code.

<comment><USER3> I'm doing something similar in C++ for vertex attributes, integration with Lua et.al. First I define the struct:

      INTROSPECTION_DEFINE_STRUCT(S,
        (int, anInt),
        (bool, aBool),
        (float, aFloat),
        (double, aDouble),
        (std::string, aString)
      );

Then I create an instance of it:

      S s{ 23, true, 37.5f, 42.25, "String" };

And finally I can e.g. iterate over all fields and output their value using a generic lambda:

      forEachField(s, [](auto v) {
        std::cout << v;
      });

There are also definitions for the field's type, offset, name etc. generated by the macro, so it's easy to create a binding for vertex attributes, map the struct to a table in Lua, serialize/deserialize it and so on.

I'm really hoping C++ gets introspection soon. There are some proposals like [https://isocpp.org/files/papers/n3996.pdf](https://isocpp.org/files/papers/n3996.pdf) and a working group at [https://groups.google.com/a/isocpp.org/forum/#!forum/reflect...](https://groups.google.com/a/isocpp.org/forum/#!forum/reflection) but I'm not holding my breath for 2017.

<comment><USER4> Is the code for this available somewhere?

<comment><USER3> Not at the moment, no. But it's not rocket science. The macro essentially creates a struct like this one:

      struct S {
        // How many fields are in this struct?
        static constexpr unsigned int FIELD_COUNT = 5;

        // Full specializations are not allowed inside classes, so add a dummy parameter <T> that is equivalent to S
        template <unsigned int Index, typename T = S>
        struct FieldTraits;

        // Partial specialization for the first field
        template <typename T>
        struct FieldTraits<0, T> {
          using type = int;
          static constexpr std::size_t OFFSET = offsetof(S, anInt);
          static constexpr const char* name() { return "anInt"; }
          static constexpr type& value(S& self) { return self.anInt; }
        };
        // The first field itself
        int anInt;

        // Partial specialization for the second field
        template <typename T>
        struct FieldTraits<1, T> {
          using type = bool;
          static constexpr std::size_t OFFSET = offsetof(S, aBool);
          static constexpr const char* name() { return "aBool"; }
          static constexpr type& value(S& self) { return self.aBool; }
        };
        // The second field itself
        bool aBool;
        ...
      };

Now that we have the meta-information about the struct's fields, we can process them:

      // Meta-function to process a struct's fields
      template <typename T, unsigned int FieldIndex, unsigned int FieldCount>
      struct ForEach {
         template <typename Functor>
         static void apply(T& object, Functor f)
         {
            // Get the field's value and call the functor with it
            auto value = T::FieldTraits<FieldIndex>::value(object);
            f(value);

            // Next field
            ForEach<T, FieldIndex + 1, FieldCount>::apply(object, f);
         };
      };

      // Partial specialization to end iteration
      template <typename T, unsigned int FieldCount>
      struct ForEach<T, FieldCount, FieldCount> {
         template <typename Functor>
         static void apply(T& object, Functor f)
         {
         };
      };

And finally a bit of syntactic sugar:

      template <typename T, typename Functor>
      void forEachField(T& object, Functor f)
      {
         ForEach<T, 0, T::FIELD_COUNT>::apply(object, f);
      }

*(omitted for the sake of clarity: dealing with const objects, using rvalue references and std::forward for the functor to make the code work with non-copyable functors)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for taking the time to write this!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow, I just finished doing something similar. The use of x-macros is definitely a little cleaner / canonical than my approach, which instead "recurses" through a VA_MACRO. For an excellent guide on recursion in macros, see this article on how to abuse the C pre-processor: [https://github.com/pfultz2/Cloak/wiki/C-Preprocessor- tricks,...](https://github.com/pfultz2/Cloak/wiki/C-Preprocessor- tricks,-tips,-and-idioms).

In the end I end up defining structs like this: SERIALIZER_STRUCT( structname, int8_t, field1, int16_t, field2, ... );

Initializing them like this: structname instance = {.field1 = 1, .field2=2};

and serializing them like this: SERIALIZER_SERIALIZE( structname, &instance, bigbuff_ptr );

As for just using a packed structure, there are definitely caveats with some compilers (ie: compilers for embedded systems may not handle various edge- cases for misaligned access, particularly when dereferencing pointers to structs.)

</comment><comment><USER6> Taking a step back: what you're trying to accomplish is code generation -- a program that generates code. From that perspective, why would you choose to write that program using the C preprocessor, when there are so many other nice languages around?

<comment><AUTHOR> In actual production use, I think it could be better to write a separate program that will generate the code for you instead of using the C preprocessor (or use a language with this kind of introspection built in). However, using this hack lets you depend only on the facilities of the language, and that can be useful in simplifying the build process. Plus it was fun to create, too!

<comment><USER7> It can be a bit tricky if it isn't integrated with the build process.

<comment><USER3> You can use e.g. cog which puts the generated code into the file itself: [http://nedbatchelder.com/code/cog/](http://nedbatchelder.com/code/cog/) Then all you need to do is to remember to run the preprocessor after you've made a change to the generator code.

<comment><USER7> Python is definitely a better syntax to write meta-programs than the pre- processor, but you still have the issue of the additional step/tool. Anything that depends on the generated code depends on the step which, if it's missed, can lead to non-good things.

<comment><USER3> Sure. But you _do_ test your changes, don't you? ;-) So if you forget to run cog after making a change to the meta-program, you should notice right away.

But it still is a cludge. It would be better if C/C++ had a better preprocessor.

<comment><USER7> It isn't a question of testing changes. The more people working on the codebase, the more people it impacts. Adding manual steps is tempting the fates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> That (define macros, include file that uses them) is fairly vanilla usage of the C preprocessor. Abuse is something like this: [https://github.com/rofl0r/chaos-pp](https://github.com/rofl0r/chaos-pp) and [https://github.com/rofl0r/order-pp](https://github.com/rofl0r/order-pp)

</comment><comment><USER8> A bit cleaner setup, in my opinion, makes the "x macro" an argument to the user-defined macro, rather than depending on #include. For example, to define an enum along with a string representation function for it:

        #define DEFINE_ENUM(name, variants) \
          enum name { \
            variants(DEFINE_ENUM_VARIANT_ITSELF) \
          }; \
          const char *repr_##name(enum name e) { \
            switch (e) { \
              variants(DEFINE_ENUM_VARIANT_REPR_CASE) \
              default: return "?"; \
            } \
          }
        #define DEFINE_ENUM_VARIANT_ITSELF(variant) variant,
        #define DEFINE_ENUM_VARIANT_REPR_CASE(variant) \
          case variant: return #variant;

        // client code:

        #define foo_variants(x) \
          x(FOO_1) \
          x(FOO_2)
        DEFINE_ENUM(foo, foo_variants)

</comment><comment><USER9> While it is true that compilers pad for alignment it is pretty easy to avoid that, at least in my experience.

So an easier approach, but more fragile, is just to define the struct, count up how big you think it should be and then do an

assert(sizeof(struct foo) == FOO_SIZE);

If that assert doesn't pop then you can just do

write(fd, &foo, FOO_SIZE);

I know that is a lot less elegant but it works and isn't doing the translation back and forth.

If you don't like that you might consider using Sun's RPC marshalling code that is (used to be?) part of Linux.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, in poking around it looks like RPC is still a thing and it's solved this problem in an automated way.

[http://docs.freebsd.org/44doc/psd/23.rpc/paper.pdf](http://docs.freebsd.org/44doc/psd/23.rpc/paper.pdf)

[http://docs.freebsd.org/44doc/psd/22.rpcgen/paper.pdf](http://docs.freebsd.org/44doc/psd/22.rpcgen/paper.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> C preprocessor "abuse" to create reflective enums: [http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/1002895/Clean- Reflective...](http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/1002895/Clean-Reflective- Enums-Enum-to-String-with-Nice-Sy)

</comment><comment><USER10> why not using packed structure compiler feature?

<comment><USER11> I had the same question #pragma pack works just fine.

<comment><USER12> Maybe wants the default alignment for performance. Plus that still leaves endian issues</comment></comment></comment>


[re]Designing the Nutrition Label - <AUTHOR> http://www.ajaimk.com/2010/11/03/redesign-1-nutrition-labels/ <comment><USER2> Red and Green are colors with an inherent value (at least, in the US), suggesting good and bad. Unless there's a reason that they're the colors they are, you should use a color (I'd suggest a dark gray) that doesn't have a specific value.

I normally rail against pie charts, but in this case, you're comparing a part (calories in the serving size) to the whole (recommended calories per day), so I'm okay with it.

But the bigger thing I'd want to comment on: If you're redesigning the label, REALLY redesign it. Show the volume of the serving suggestion with a photo on a standardized plate / bowl. Or bring in some other piece of data that helps people make decisions. Do something wholly different with it. (Basically, what DanielStraight said.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Aside from the pie chart and Christmas colors (which I can't figure out the logic of intuitively), I don't see what's much different, and since we know that people are terrible at reading pie charts, I don't see how the pie charts will help.

I would like to see numbers per 100 g, or some other standard that can be compared across foods. I would also like to see a nutrient density score of some kind.</comment>


Reid Hoffman on the relationship between employers and employees - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2015/5/22/8639717/reid-hoffman-the-alliance <comment><USER2> Loyalty is such a ridiculous thing for most companies to expect. It needs to be earned, and it's not even that complicated. Here's how you get loyal employees:

1\. After some probation period, fire only as a last resort or for really terrible behaviour. Have a plan to correct behavior in all other cases.

2\. No layoffs unless the firm's very existence is threatened. It's a tough year? Too bad, that's part of the risk involved in being the owner.

3\. Keep pay up to market/replacement rates. If someone is 20% more valuable with his new knowledge, pay him 20% more. 4\. Have good benefits/vacation policies.

5\. Make sure there's lots of interesting and challenging work to do. Allow people to switch roles/teams on a regular basis if they're interested.

6\. Hire good people.

That's a company I'd be loyal to, and I think a lot of others would be too. Sure, you'd get people who would leave for their own thing, or a dream job, or because their husband/wife got a job 2000 miles away, but I don't think you'd see people jump ship nearly as often.

The other stupid thing is companies trot out how much it costs to hire a new person, but never want to invest in just retaining their employees.

<comment><USER3> Let's say you are working for a for-profit company that operates like you describe, and the business hits a rough patch. The owners tell you that the only way to prevent layoffs would be for everyone to agree to a 20% pay cut, and they back it up with hard data.

Knowing you could get paid more elsewhere, would you accept the pay cut to prevent layoffs or would you leave?

I'm not ashamed to say that I would probably leave. Loyalty shouldn't be expected on either side, and that's ok.

<comment><USER4> This happened to me in my 2nd job, a long time ago. Customer went tits up owing us £150k, we were only a small firm, around 10 employees so would have meant significant layoffs.

So the owner asked if we'd all take 20% or so paycuts, with some of the older/better paid staff and the owner himself taking bigger cuts. As the business was otherwise profitable (being in a pretty niche market) we all agreed. Something like 9months later we all got paid back with interest and a bonus.

Smaller scale, and a bit more recently at a different (also small) place, all the non-management staff offerred to forego the (expensive) christmas party so one of the contractors could get paid back pay they were owed due to problems with a difficult client.

It's obviously very situational, but in both cases it felt like the right thing to do and both places were smallish firms where loyalty and morale etc. at the time, were high.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > "They know that employers want loyalty," Hoffman says. "They know they want > to hear, 'Oh, I plan on working here for the rest of my career.'

When asked about where I wanted to be in my career by my boss (boss' boss actually), I was honest about having my resume out there and looking for other opportunities outside my current company. Now, I've heard from other sources a promotion that was possible in my future has been basically pulled.

Honesty is not a good policy. Keep lying.

Everyone says they want the truth, but if you are told you're not doing meaningful work, the justification for your job is vanity metrics, and the guy with less experience than you who does terrible work makes more money than you, how happy would you be?

If you told management, you're using the position and any promotion as a jumping off area for a newer better job at a different company, how happy would management be?

<comment><USER6> Promotions for loyalty are poisonous to the company. Merit / track record is the only way to go.

<comment><USER7> To an extent. As soon as you consider externals for a role though the merit/track record approach falls apart because of the information disparity.

Its usually better to hire the internal person who you know can do a good job, than to hire an external who looks twice as impressive on paper. Yet we often do the opposite.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When I interview candidates I always bring up his book and ask: "If all this goes well and you come work for us, what's next for you after that? Where do you want to be positioned to go after you move on from here?"

It's a weird question. But it's how I know whether or not I can deliver value to that potential employee. At big companies, salary and benefits is usually the main "value" that they provide. So, in essence, they provide the higher comp package necessary to make up for the fact that an employee is not going to learn as much as they would at a smaller company. A small company or an early stage startup is full of opportunities to learn. If your goal is to start your own company someday, I can make sure you're leaning the things that will help you get there. If you want to be a race car driver, I don't have much for you.

Employment is a two-way agreement. It's true that employers have the upper hand because they typically represent 100% of that person's income. The employee, on the other hand, is 1/N of the workforce. Switching costs are also likely higher for the employee.

For many people, I would imagine that a transparent and honest assessment is preferred to a pretend make-believe world where we imagine that an employee will spend their entire career in one place.

<comment><USER9> Do you expect a non-bullshit answer? For better or worse, this sounds to me like one of "those" interview questions, and expecting a company to care about what I do next makes about as much sense as expecting the company to treat me like family.

<comment><USER10> Maybe he's self-selecting for sociopaths/people who are good at telling him what he want's to hear? I've always wondered about an organization consisting of psychopaths. You disguise it as a consulting firm, at which point it severely cripples the target company as they infiltrate and demoralize. Then the evil mastermind covers his short positions/options. Seems like it could make for a good book or movie anyway.

<comment><USER11> I don't get it. What do you think he "wants" to hear?

I think this is a great question, that's honest about the nature of a skilled employee's relationship to an employer. I don't think it's at all about the employer pretending to care about the employee - it's a straightforward way to find out what the prospective employee wants (other than loads of money, which this employer doesn't have), so that the employer can try to offer it to them. It's classic SPIN selling.

<comment><USER8> I do spend a fair amount of time letting the person know why I ask the question, where it comes from (Reid Hoffman's book), and why I'm asking. I also position the question as being about a time pretty far in the future (and leave that vague so that it's far enough out for either of us to not make it one of "those" questions).

As far as what I want to hear... I don't have some "right" answer in mind. The question also helps me understand the person a little better than a typical interview question might. If I know their long-term goals, I can have a better idea if they'll be happy with us and we'll be happy with them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12>
      Employers may want to believe their workplace really is
      like a family, and, in that moment, they may convince
      themselves it actually is like a family.

When I was an employer, I pretty much embodied this sentiment. To me, work was this great place where smart people meet every day to have fun and solve interesting problems. I couldn't fathom that employees were just there to make money and then forget about everything when they got home. In retrospect, there are two aspects to this:

1) An employee can actually do a 9-5 job _AND_ have a good relationship with their colleagues, have fun at work, and apply themselves - fanatical devotion is not required and should not ever be a criterion for judging performance.

2) However, the "bad" employees I hired (which was totally my mistake in the first place) did _all_ have in common that they didn't care about their work at all. Some even consistently lied, about the work they had actually done, about how much they cared (unprompted), and about how they dealt with customers.

There is a fine line between utter disinterest and having a healthy work-life distance. I'm not surprised so many managers have problems categorizing this.

</comment><comment><USER13> I find Reid's prognostications quite fascinating. Mostly because they take similar inputs that I have experienced and pull out a different conclusion.

For example I see small companies as much more 'family like' than he does. However my understanding of the word 'family' is not 'fruit of my loin' sort of family, rather of a group with a higher than average social awareness of the peer members. Mostly I want people to treat each other "like family" because if someone is going through a painful divorce and their work output is suffering, I'm not inclined to kick them to the curb. Especially if they were a solid performe before.

</comment><comment><USER14> >[Hoffman is a] capitalist who made early investments in everything from Facebook to _Airbnb_

>I was at an _Airbnb_ board meeting and I ran into two former LinkedIn employees who walked up to me and said, 'Hey, how's it going? I'm working here now. I'd love to tell you about some of the stuff that I'm learning.' They know the way that we operate, is not, 'Oh, you've left LinkedIn, so you're no longer part of our tribe.' We continue to be allies.

So he has ownership interests in both companies, and an employee moved between the two. He's like chief of one tribe and minor chieftan of another. He feels righteous because he can be allies with someone who left his major ownership to work under a different company in which he has less-major ownership?

This is the exemplification he is choosing for his earlier quote, "and that the relationship doesn't have to end when the worker leaves?" Come on.

<comment><USER15> Our CEO has a really great policy about workers moving on. He doesn't chastise them but welcomes their move forward and wishes them the best of luck. He makes it a point to have managers do that as well.

The end result is that many people that have moved on from the company help promote the company and its services at their new place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> _> "YOU DON'T FIRE YOUR KID BECAUSE OF BAD GRADES"_

At huge traditional Japanese companies, even terrible, negative productivity employees aren't fired (the kid with the bad grades). Part of this is because of regulation, part of this is because they really behave as if they are a family. (Kyocera's maniacal devotion to its company-wide athletics tournament is a famous example)

The company provides you with pay, shelter (corporate dorms), a wife (there are women hired in administrative roles who are of a different category of employee than the full knowledge worker who are expected to marry a male employee and leave the company within some handful of years), commuting expenses, a pension, etc. In return, you are expected to be _loyal_ to the company. And it pays to be loyal, because (1) the upper levels of the companies are all "propers": i.e. people who joined as new grads rather than mid-career transfers, and (2) because pay is backloaded.

Do I think this is a good system? Well, in industries where the development, retention, and continuity of incremental knowledge was important, this seemed to work quite advantageously. When the economy was reliably expanding YoY, seniority based pay and lockstep promotion was feasible since more and more seats could be added in the pyramid structure.

But when the economy stagnates and the backloaded, highly compensated "kids with bad grades" fill the ranks? The youth suffers, and something's gotta give.

<comment><USER17> > a wife (there are women hired in administrative roles who are of a different > category of employee than the full knowledge worker who are expected to > marry a male employee and leave the company within some handful of years)

Where can I read more about this? How wide-spread is this practice?

<comment><USER18> Patrick McKenzie touches on it a bit in his blog: [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in- japan/](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan/). Search for the part where it says "Don't have a wife?"

<comment><USER16> _> Don't have a wife? You might quite reasonably think "I don't have time to even think about that." Don't worry — the company will fix your social calendar for you. It is socially mandatory that your boss, in fulfillment of his duties to you, sees that you are set up with a young lady appropriate to your station. He is likely to attempt to do this first by matching you with a young lady in your office._

I can attest to this, having this very situation in action first hand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >"So we'll ask, 'What's the next job that you would like to have post- LinkedIn?' ... 'It brings some honesty to what is otherwise kind of a collective self-deception dance.'"

...Am I the only one who thinks this guy is self-delusional if he thinks that this brings honesty to the table? Now interview candidates are just going to have to lie about what they think the interviewer wants them to say. Is this going to turn into the next "tell me about your biggest failure"? Maybe we can roll the answers to those two question into one. "My biggest weakness is that I work too hard, sometimes forgoing sleep. In a sleep deprived stupor, I'll probably accidentally accept a middle manager job at ResumeCo.com, when trying to perform some corporate espionage as a double-agent".

</comment><comment><USER19> The longer my career gets, the more I realize this to be true. This also has the added disadvantage that the employers take the employees lightly. In a family, the head of the family has more power than others. If employers considered an employee's duration at the company more as a contract, then they would also work harder to keep the other party satisfied with the contract. Unfortunately, the relationship is tilted in favor of the employer due to the fact that a loss of employment generally has worse consequences for the employee that for the employer.

<comment><USER20> Treating an employee's duration like a contract is a terrible idea. It puts into the employer's head that the employee is just a temporary expense, which starts begging the question - just how temporary can I make this employee?

<comment><USER21> Have you considered that most companies--especially in tech--already _are_ doing that?

They'd be stupid not to.

<comment><USER20> Yes, I'm certain I've worked for more than one employer who felt that way. And I've considered contract employees that way. It's what inspired me to write my comment.

Of course, since I am again a contractor, I'm getting some perspective about my feelings while at my previous employer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Companies typically get back exactly as much loyalty as they are willing to extend to their employees. So there's a hint if you want loyal employees.

</comment><comment><USER23> "he sits atop the largest, most data-rich hiring platform the world has ever seen"...

How would one extrapolate the "loyalty" issue from that vast amount of data at LinkedIn?

It seems the point is being made in order to give Reid Hoffman a segue to explain his company's approach to hiring, instead of actually attempting to find "the biggest lie" based on actual data.

</comment><comment><USER24> A lot of this rings true from my days working in hotels. You could work for Marriott or Starwood and hop between brands, but still be a part of that company. If you jump ship some people would get awkward and not know if they should talk to you. It's the strangest thing I've seen. At the same time it made the 6mo - 18mo tenures in startups seem super small and non-comital. Maybe it's more of an issue with larger companies.

</comment><comment><USER25> "The biggest lie is that the employment relationship is like family."

<comment><USER5> This goes two ways. Oftentimes employees act like entitled children as well. You are not "owed" anything for your loyalty to a company other than a paycheck for services rendered.

<comment><USER26> Well, would you not feel entitled to something if you were told "do this, keep at it, and surely you will be rewarded with X".

Quotes to look out for in that regard: "You're going places", "You have a future in this company", "Your work is so valuable".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> "I order you to stand around and drink beer until you're as loyal as Kif here." \- Zapp Brannigan, "Futurama"

</comment><comment><USER28> "You don't fire your kid because of bad grades"

Hoffman seems to underestimate how dysfunctional some families are :)

</comment><comment><USER29> Wage work is simply a variation on slavery where the 'employee' finds his own food and lodging. Money is just a simple technology for officializing and perpetuating class.

</comment><comment><USER16> _> And now he wants both workers and employers to begin having honest conversations with each other — conversations that admit employment isn't for life, that loyalty only lasts so long as it coincides with self-interest, and that the relationship doesn't have to end when the worker leaves._

I read this and immediately thought of McKinsey as the best company that manages the relationship between the firm and the individual throughout the latter's professional career.

</comment><comment><USER30> For me the biggest "lie" is that companies want employees to settle at their company and at the same time they don't offer contracts that don't expire.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm surprised no one has mentioned Netflix since they've seemingly embraced something similar to this honesty as an integral part of their company culture.

</comment><comment><USER32> You work to get paid. If you are well enough off you don't need to work to get paid you aren't working any more.

<comment><USER17> Some people actually find meaning in work and would continue to work beyond their financial necessities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Employees and employers lie/deceive each other (point two), so assertion in point number four, _" employers put too much weight on interviews, and too little weight on references"_ is questionable.

</comment><comment><USER34> I disagree with his point about references. They tell you nothing and are a hundred percent of the time only going to tell you positive things about the employee, regardless of reality. No one with half a brain would ever give a reference out that wasn't going to be positive. Even if you don't have one positive reference, asking a friend to pretend to be one is easy and I don't doubt it happens even when people have qualified references. I'd much rather interview a potential employee than have to use references. The mere thought of references making _any_ difference whatsoever in a hiring decision is rather angering in its stupidity.

<comment><USER35> The article specifically says to check references other than the ones given by the candidate. I wish Reid would expand on that. If I interview at LinkedIn, is he going to blab to my boss and the world that I'm looking for a new job?

I've been cold-called to give references on people I found weak. Frankly, I'm not going to blurt out a lot of negative data to a stranger. It's either a legal or ethical liability, and what's in it for me to trash a colleague?

<comment><USER36> I've also gotten those calls, and I don't think it's nearly the legal minefield that people claim. I'll make my point clear enough if it's warranted.

I've also gotten a reference call for someone I terminated and gave them a positive reference, conditioned on the fact that the new company wanted someone with exactly the skills my ex-employee had. I was very clear about why it didn't work out with us, but thought that that it was a very good fit for the new place, given how they described the role and responsibilities. Ex- employee was hired and is (as far as I know) doing very well and happy there.

I think the "I'm only allowed to confirm dates of employment" is a terrible drain on the mobility of good employees and allows higher mobility than should be the case of poor employees, so I don't participate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> That whole "we're a big, happy family is annoying". The company I previously worked at it was big into it.

It seemed to work for them when they were small (<= 50 employees and before I was there), but once they got to a certain size it just became annoying.

They used to have these monthly "before work hours" meetings that turned into bi-monthly meetings that were especially annoying. They would trot out some executive to say this and that and also had this weird group of employees that would dress up in costumes and put on these weird little skits.

But the final straw for me was when we were acquired by another company and they started trotting out the new executive team. One lady was showing pictures of her family riding 4-wheelers. That was it.

"I'm sure you're a nice lady, but I don't care. We have our own families".

I told my boss that I wouldn't be attending these anymore and I would give my resignation if he wanted. He grinned and said he understands..it was annoying to him too.

I think I left a couple months after that. The whole sappy-happy family wasn't the main reason, but it sure was annoying.

</comment><comment><USER38> Could we replace the LinkBait title with a more informative description like "LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman on the biggest employer lie: the company is like a family".

<comment><USER39> We replaced it with a phrase from the first sentence.

First paragraphs often contain a more accurate and neutral description of what an article is about. It's as if, having baited you in with the title, they immediately start walking it back.

<comment><USER40> In publishing, it's the editors who compose the titles, not the writers. This is why the writer's lede is so frequently a more reliable point of entry to the story.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Clickbait on HN. Great.

tl;dr "The biggest lie is that the employment relationship is like family," Hoffman says.

<comment><USER42> Of course CEO of a company that coordinates credential evaluations between employers and employees thinks that this is more important than interviews. His business depends on it.

<comment><USER43> It seems that every post on "how to fix hiring" was written by someone who has a product that claims to fix hiring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I wrote something similar a few months ago: [http://www.yegor256.com/2015/03/02/team-morale-myths-and- rea...](http://www.yegor256.com/2015/03/02/team-morale-myths-and-reality.html)

</comment><comment><USER45> _Frequently employers are so casual about references they either a) don 't check them, or b) only check the ones the prospective candidate gives them._

See, that's a problem. That stands out more than any of the good things that he might say. People talk and things come out and shit happens, but deliberately going behind someone's back for back-channel references is just plain unprofessional, if not unethical. This is the kind of behavior that has the rest of the country (in which ethical standards aren't seen as old-fart ideals to be "disrupted" but are actually considered important) thinking that we, in tech, are a bunch of immature psychopaths.

The back-channel reference check is an unprofessional show of power-- like waving a gun around at work-- because it takes social access to get any information out of it (people don't just offer candid opinions up to complete strangers). What's communicated by the back-channel reference check is "your colleagues are more loyal to me than to you". There's _a fucking reason_ why people outside of tech consider it unprofessional and borderline unethical.

<comment><USER46> > People talk and things come out and shit happens, but deliberately going > behind someone's back for back-channel references is just plain > unprofessional, if not unethical.

It's not unprofessional or unethical.

> The back-channel reference check is an unprofessional show of power-- like > waving a gun around at work-- because it takes social access to get any > information out of it

For it to be a show of power, such an action would have to involve "showing" something. It's actually an attempt to avoid hiring bad employees -- that's the benefit people get.

> (people don't just offer candid opinions up to complete strangers).

This merely raises the threshold of badness before they might offer negative information. If their coworker was bad enough, they would. And do.

> What's communicated by the back-channel reference check is "your colleagues > are more loyal to me than to you".

The miscommunication is on your end.

(Also, your former colleagues don't owe you _or_ some potential employer "loyalty.")

<comment><USER43> Michael O Church once lost a job due to a "back-channel reference check", so that explains why he's so hostile to them.

Also, in the USA, there are rules limiting what you can say about a former employee. By giving a negative back-channel reference, you and your employer might be susceptible to a lawsuit. However, actually suing a former employer for something like that is probably a bad idea, because (1) it'd be hard to prove it (2) it would make you even less employable when other people find out about the lawsuit.

If I ever am in a position to do hiring, I probably wouldn't do it, because I'd trust my judgement more than someone else's.

<comment><USER45> _Michael O Church once lost a job due to a "back-channel reference check", so that explains why he's so hostile to them._

To tell the whole story... "you should see the other guy." :)

I did eventually get my revenge. Six months later when I had the money, I hired a PI to figure out who gave the bad back-channel reference (it wasn't even someone I worked under) and found out that he was sleeping with one of his subordinates. Had the news dropped at his work, to his wife, and at his kids' school on the same afternoon. God works through people.

 _By giving a negative back-channel reference, you and your employer might be susceptible to a lawsuit. However, actually suing a former employer for something like that is probably a bad idea, because (1) it 'd be hard to prove it (2) it would make you even less employable when other people find out about the lawsuit._

A termination lawsuit makes you less employable. I don't know that the same holds over a bad reference, because pretty much anyone would sue someone who damaged their careers in such a lasting and petty way. Getting fired is something that happens to everyone and while most of us aren't fired in an illegal way or for illegal reasons, most people will be fired in an unjust way at least once in a 40-year career, so the prevailing attitude (right or wrong) is that a successful, competent person will just dust himself off and find another job. Bad reference issues are much less common and most people (the rhetorical "reasonable man") would agree that you have to do something permanent and brutal about that.

Wrongful T lawsuits are dangerous to your career because (a) every company or manager will have to fire someone, given enough time, so it's far from clear that your opponent did anything wrong (b) they bring a lot of dirty laundry (on you and the company) into the public, and if there's no dirt on you, they make something up, and (c) your odds of winning aren't good unless you can easily prove discrimination.

When you sue over a bad reference, you're suing an individual (not "an employer") and you're also suing over something that would lead pretty much anyone to lawyer up, so the air about you isn't "he got let go and sued his company" but "someone tried to fuck up his reputation and he fought back".

<comment><USER47> Michael, while I usually enjoy your rants, getting revenge like this is insane, and admitting to it on a public forum attached to your real name is a whole 'nother level of crazy. No personal offense intended, but I would never ever in a million years hire or associate personally with somebody who did what you did.

<comment><USER45> All I can say is that I hope you're never in a position where you have to do "insane" things to protect your own life or career. It's an experience that I wouldn't wish on another person.

<comment><USER47> Thanks, I hope I'm never put in the position that I would have to do such things to protect my life and career, either.

Admittedly, I don't know much about what actually happened in your situation, but does hiring a PI and going after someone 6 months after the fact protect your life or career? How, exactly? You say you had money (presumably through employment) at this point. Why not just move on and forget about that episode of your life?

That's the sort of vindictiveness that would make me afraid to associate with a person.

<comment><USER45> The PI didn't actually cost that much. I helped out someone he cared about. That's another story.

The person was able to hurt me because he, through a certain station, had the credibility that made what he might say about other people (such as me) matter. His opinions would be taken seriously. After taking a hit, I fixed the problem. It wasn't about vengeance. It was about doing just enough to fix the problem, then moving on. He didn't lose his job _per se_ but I made him enough of a laughingstock that no one would take his word over anyone else's, thus making me safe from him.

After being attacked, it's not unreasonable to think that such defenses are needed in order to protect the future.

I wouldn't do that sort of thing after a "things didn't work out" situation, even if things ended badly or I got fired. I'm an adult; I'll move on. Likewise, I wouldn't retaliate against someone just for saying that I was a jerk or that he didn't like me. (Plenty of people say that I'm a jerk. That's fine.) There has to be a lot more, like fraudulent negative claims about past work performance... something that sounds objective and can be damaging... before I'm ready to fuck up someone's life. People have the right not to like me and to say that they don't; what they don't have the right to do is to deliberately damage my reputation with fraudulent or inaccurate claims.

This was a case where someone deliberately tried to damage me _after_ I had moved far away from him. There was an act of war, and I fought back with force, and I won. I don't believe in starting fights but I do believe in ending them.

<comment><USER48> But how were you certain that this person gave the bad reference, since it was back channel after all? Hell, how did you even knkw a bad reference was given? How did that effect you? The logistics of this story make me more skeptical than audaciousness of it.

<comment><USER45> I had the luxury of other people talking too much. If not for that, I wouldn't have known.

 _Hell, how did you even knkw a bad reference was given?_

I was able to find out what was said. Again, if all someone had said was "I don't like him", that wouldn't have been an issue. This person made negative, fraudulent claims about me and my past work performance in front of enough people that it was impossible for him to hide his tracks.

People who do bad things are usually awful at keeping secrets. There are exceptions, of course, but generally the traits that incline a person toward malice and petty conspiracy are not traits that make a person good at keeping secrets.

<comment><USER46> > There are exceptions, of course, but generally the traits that incline a > person toward malice and petty conspiracy are not traits that make a person > good at keeping secrets.

If there was ever a time for "show, don't tell"...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why can I sometimes edit my comments and sometimes not (always being logged in)? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I have deleted comments and they still show up. I deleted my comments, because I wrote stuff that I didn't mean to say, but it was not removed

</comment><comment><USER3> What happens in the "not" case?

<comment><AUTHOR> The "edit" link just doesn't show up, even though I am shown as logged in.

Edit: it seems to be prevalent if looking at my comments via my profile, rather than through the news pages. I thought I had seen it coming from the news pages, too, but right now I am not sure anymore.

<comment><USER4> Time. Older comments are not editable.</comment></comment></comment>


I hate computers: confessions of a sysadmin - <AUTHOR> http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/04/22/i-hate-computers-confessions-of-a-sysadmin/ <comment><USER2> It's frustrating as a computer engineer when I see people much smarter than myself trying to do simple things with computers and failing horribly. They understand that there is a learning curve, but can't comprehend the random behaviour of their computer. It makes me think as engineers we've got to do better than this.

Conversely, one problem is that people buy the cheapest computer possible, and then don't understand why the operating system is hard to use and crashes, and the hardware is badly designed and of poor quality. There's a certain company that has decided to make excellent hardware, offer good support and a relatively sane operating system at a higher price than most computer systems. So sometimes you get what you pay for. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> I agree with a lot of this. For me, it's mostly _Windows_ computers that I hate. Issues like bad capacitors and flaky memory are of course OS agnostic, but it seems to me a bulk of his complains go away with OSX or Linux.

<comment><USER4> For me, Windows, OS X, and Ubuntu all suck. They try to do stuff to "help me", get it wrong, and then make me do more work as a result.

I've fucked over my Debian unstable system more times than I can count over the last 10 years... but it's never annoyed me much. On the other hand, my Windows, OS X, and Ubuntu machine annoy the living fuck out of me every time they say "updates installed, you must restart".

I guess I hate sitting down to use a computer and having it tell me, "sorry, I did stuff without your asking, now you need to clean up the mess". I still haven't fixed the nvidia driver on my Thinkpad with Unbuntu. I tried, failed, and just put the machine in a closet somewhere. It worked a few times, but now I can't get it to work, and I don't know what steps to take. Everything is so magical, and all I can do is be helpless.

With Debian, I make the mess myself, so when I have to clean it up, I am already in the mood. (And of course, the nvidia driver works perfectly. Yeah, I had to build it with module-assistant. But that _always works_! Every step in the process exists for a good and logical reason -- there is no magic. And magic is what makes me mad.)

<comment><USER5> It is for this reason that I use Arch Linux. Building a system from the ground up is, quite honestly, a wonderful experience (it does get tedious after four or five installs on different computers, but meh). I don't have any Crappy Crapware, or Auto Updates (sometimes this bites me), or Evil Bloat ... like a desktop environment. It's a breath of fresh air. As you say, there is no magic.

<comment><USER4> I don't think I could ever move away from Debian... but Arch is indeed nice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm right up there with this guy, the only problem: I'm writing the software and I can't design an interface anyone would enjoy using.

<comment><USER7> I'm not I sure I could write an interface I would enjoy using.

<comment><USER6> That's what I was getting at, anyone includes myself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> His issue doesn't seem to be with computers _per se_, but rather the interaction of all the junk that comes either on a new Windows system or via the default installation process for new software. Even a well maintained Windows machine accumulates crapware over time. It's just the cross you have to bear if you want to run Windows.

While I disagree fundamentally with the heavy-handed approach Apple has taken with the iPhone, I think part of their motivation is to protect the phone's ecosystem from threats. Imagine a world where we have malware infection rates on cell phones equal to, or greater than, the infection rates on personal computers. It would be ugly indeed.

</comment><comment><USER9> Why isn't there consumer RAID? Consumers seem to be buying a lot of cheap laptops lately. RAID would increase weight, heat, noise and power consumption as well as add $1-200 to the price of a $3-600 machine. The only selling point for that feature is "less likely to lose your data", which tends to imply that the standard model _is_ likely to lose your data[0]. It's not popular because nobody would buy it.

[0] Of course, that's true. Still, it's not something the marketing department can _say_.

<comment><USER4> Not really. It would add the cost of one disk, which is around $30-$50 these days.

Now for laptops, space is an issue, and that's why SSDs were invented. Light, low-power, fast, and much more reliable than rotating disks. Perfect for laptops.

<comment><USER10> "It would add the cost of one disk, which is around $30-$50 these days."

Plus the RAID card, if their working in hardware. Nice one's aren't cheap, and they're bulky for something being put in a laptop.

[http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=RAID&x=0&y=0)

<comment><USER4> A RAID card is totally unnecessary. Software RAID is orders of magnitude faster than any disk it is going to be managing. We aren't talking RAID 0+5 for your credit card processing database. We're talking RAID 1 so that when your disk dies from all the soda you spill on it, you don't lose your porn stash.

I use 3-way software RAID 1 for my homedir, and I don't regret it at all. It automatically fixes bad sectors when they occur (since the other disk has the correct data), and reads are 3x faster than they otherwise would be. And two disks can fail (and have), and I don't lose any data. It's great. For the cost of an extra disk, I would recommend the setup to anyone.

<comment><USER11> Trick I used to use was to have RAID 1 for my homedir, and then try 3 different mounts for /tmp. The first was RAID 0. The second two were trying to mount the two RAD partitions. It made /tmp larger and faster at the cost of a reboot if I crashed. Which seemed to be a worthwhile trade-off on a desktop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There are only two problems with this article. First, of the significant number of applications I have installed under OS X, I can count on one hand the number that came with a util for removing them. There are ways around this (eg, lsbom|xargs rm), but they are messy. Second, writing an operating system with a UI on top of that has to be a monumental task. Something that only a really small percentage of people can do (and an even smaller number can do well). In order to design systems, they have to think a certain way, become familiar with the systems... and it all looks completely obvious to them. Otherwise, "Me, too."

Makes me wonder if Microsoft uses "focus groups."

<comment><USER13> Most OS X (and Mac OS in general) apps can be uninstalled by dragging the Application from the Applications folder to the Trash.

<comment><USER14> You mean, except for everything the app leaves under Library, and except for any application that used an actual installer instead of drag-to-desktop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I can't believe how often I find myself telling my wife I hate computers. Usually it's when she starts asking me how to do something and I immediately know it's something that should be easy (if she can't figure it out, how many millions must be right there with her?) but that is going to be very difficult.

Just two examples.

Printing to a shared printer on a Windows network. Requires a login once per reboot. Trying to print (the logical think) won't prompt, it just queues up the document silently. To get a prompt, you have to know to navigate to the host in the network neighborhood. Then the queue prints.

Posting edited photos from Picasa to a Blogger blog. There are three ways to do it, all with various limitations and complexity. And then a Chrome bug puts double line spacing between her paragraphs.

"Maybe I'll become a plumber," indeed.

</comment><comment><USER13> I have a problem with this attitude, which is why I think most sysadmin types suck. Computers are the most complex devices we interact with on a daily basis. A basic NetBook with Windows running Google Chrome is hundreds of orders of magnitude more complex than the most complex automobile for instance. It is amazing to me that they are reliable at all.

Have some respect for these machines, spend lots of time learning why they are the way they are (read kernel source, learn assembly, take apart a disk drive) and eventually they'll treat you right.

<comment><USER16> Or as John C. Dvorak has repeated, "Require a license/permit to use a computer."

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> He really hates windows, not computers. I do, too, and stopped using windows in 2002, all for the better.

<comment><USER18> That's part of it, but he also talks about how fragile hardware is, how cumbersome RAID is, and other things hardly specific to Windows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It seems like the cure to this problem is usability testing.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is why the iPad will win.

</comment><comment><USER21> So, what he's really saying is "I hate Windows." Switch to Linux. Dummy.

<comment><USER22> Most of his complaints are related to UI and how it communicates errors to users (read: not well at all). I don't see switching to Linux solving it at all.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Chalkboard, a better way to plan/spec software projects - <AUTHOR> http://chalkboardhq.com/

<comment><USER2> It's hard to review the app without bias when I immediately had to scroll to the bottom to see if 37signals created this product. So much of the website, sales pitch, and product sensibility has been inspired by 37signal that there is some serious brand confusion. It makes me wonder how well you know your own product, or how unique it is.

After registering, I see the value. 10 years ago, I used to have to plan websites by mocking up each page, printing them out, and taping them all up onto a giant wall with post-it notes explaining what the user can do on each page. This was the only way that management could really visualize and understand what changes we were making. This allows you to do that without the wall, and the collaboration is a nice addition. It's also a great way to look back and see how a project came to light. I often jot down these sorts of notes when planning a web app.

I recommend you reconsider being so inspired by 37signals that it's hard to tell your site apart from theirs. I think I'm being kind in how I'm describing this to you. It's very confusing for any user who is familiar with 37signals and it makes your product less trustworthy.

<comment><USER2> One other note: it emails me about every change or addition I make to a project. There appears to be no way to opt out of this. By creating a page with 10 user actions, I'd get 11 different emails from you. Please add a way to opt out, and consider instead sending a digest of all changes made daily.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea. We'll add that to our next release(should be implemented in a matter of a couple hours). I'll disable the email notifications for now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there. I just pushed the disabled email notifications. Sorry if Chalkboard flooded you, it's totally our fault.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's a relatively scrappy MVP and there are a definitely going to be bugs and kinks. The user interface definitely needs improvement. Regardless, we're just getting started and have gotten great amounts of feedback and now want to see what Hacker News will think.

Chalkboard is a project my partner Abi and I started several months ago. Chalkboard is a collaborative tool for laying out software features, user stories, and screens in a way that is organized and communicative. Abi worked in web consulting with remote teams and wanted a tool that let him easily define project requirements with clients then hand the project off to designers/developers.

Chalkboard lets you quickly define software features / user stories and then create step-by-step user flows for them. User flows are linked up to application screens that you specify and can upload mockups for.

A lot of people have suggested we integrate/tie into Balsamiq. We have been talking about this since day one but have hesitated reaching out to them until we are 100% sure that this app can become a useful product.

</comment><comment><USER3> I just crashed it. Signed up for an account with the same username as on here, then tried to create a new project as directed and on submission of that form I got a rails error page. The url was <http://chalkboardhq.com/projects/31>. Please let me know if there is additional information that would be helpful...

ETA: Sorry, I didn't read the error message. It's a 404, not a 500. Reproducible every time I try to create a project.

<comment><USER4> Me too

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Before I clicked the link the title seemed like an article which would argue why a real chalkboard is better than computers for planning.

<comment><USER6> Yes, the "Show HN" is essential in the title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I checked it out, seems to be a decent MVP. I wouldn't focus on basamiq integration yet. Seems to be too early. There's few easy tools for mapping out agile software specs and it looks like this could be the answer. Others seem to be too tightly tied to a certain process and this looks very flexible.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the positive feedback and endorsement..after working a couple months on Chalkboad, its really nice to see people appreciating it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A new structured way to plan apps sounds good, but what makes your site unique and impressive?

My first impression is that it's a flow chart in the form of an outline. The outline looks like something I could just as easily type into any text editor. Why not make it a visual flow chart?

<comment><USER9> David, that's a great question.

We actually started out by displaying user flows as flow charts... we quickly realized that flow charts are an inefficient way to display a comprehensive batch of sequential user actions and application flows. It IS easier to type outlines in a text editor than mess around with flow charts.

We transferred that realization to this web app.

Our user actions are linked to application screens, which gives you a good overview of how your user interacts with your application.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Created a test account and test project, and got redirected to <http://chalkboardhq.com/projects/37> :

The page you were looking for doesn't exist.

</comment><comment><USER11> I find the dark red text on red background (like what's used on <http://chalkboardhq.com/pricing>) very hard to read. You might consider changing that.

</comment><comment><USER12> You should make that "Create my account" button bigger, I almost missed it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> UPDATE: There seems to be a bug in with creating a project. I and my my partner are working on it right now. We're very very sorry about this bug. An update will arrive when we fix it.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm a bit late to the party, but was just wondering how can you justify such a price. Why don't you have a 1 project plan?

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm also having issues with hitting the Rails 404 page after submitting the Create a Project form

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Josh. I'm very sorry about this bug happening. I'm working hard to fix it asap.

<comment><USER14> No worries, I'm looking forward to checking it out. Watching your videos I immediately thought that it would be cool if I could export the flows my team created into cucumber stories...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> 1\. It would be awesome if you incorporate transitions between the single page design elements instead of jumping back up then back down.

2\. On my 13" the screenshots are too big, then I have the chat widget overlaying on top.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that! Regarding switching elements, there should be a TOP button located at the top right of each element. We'll get this fixed as soon as the HN burst stops, I'm very sorry, Jerry.</comment></comment>


Is Pinterest Illegal? - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/pinterest-illegal-faq-2012-2?op=1 <comment><USER2> Ridiculous article by a ridiculous blog. They acknowledge that the DMCA protects them and then proceed to explore whether what Pinterest is doing qualifies as fair use, concluding that they are probably not covered by fair use and therefore probably illegal.

</comment><comment><USER3> This was one of my first questions when I first looked a Pinterest. I don't think it is ridiculous, and I'm not sure they are protected. The interesting question is, if they were to loose a court battle, would the court just require them to remove the image in question, or would there be larger implications?

</comment><comment><USER4> Why pointing pinteres as illegal right off the bat?

Let's wait what happens when the first copyright complaint is filed to the company.</comment>


AdMob Chief Responds to Apple's New Developer Terms - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2010/06/09/admob-chief-responds-to-apples-new-developer-terms-for-analytics-data-collection/ <comment><USER2> In the spirit of truly controlling their supply chain, the only thing left for Apple now is to bid for wireless spectrum next...

<comment><USER3> AAPL 'cash': $23B (plus another ~$20B in liquid investments)

S (Sprint Nextel) market cap: $14B

CLWR (Clearwire) market cap: $7B

<comment><USER4> The other day I was wondering if Apple had so much of cash.. why do they not announce App developing competitions.. and that too very aggresively. For example if they announce a yearly $500 Million prize (aggregate), they will get so many cool apps for people and a lot of them can be free. The increased devices sales can alone cover for the prize value. What am I missing here?

<comment><USER3> Is a shortage of apps a major concern for Apple?

<comment><USER4> No, but shortage of free quality apps is, IMO.

<comment><USER5> Not a problem for Jobs...

Just as he is about the end of the Internet, he's about the end of free...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [http://blog.admob.com/2010/06/09/mobile-advertising-and- the-...](http://blog.admob.com/2010/06/09/mobile-advertising-and-the-iphone/)

Direct link.

</comment><comment><USER7> How else are iAds supposed to take off?

<http://venturebeat.com/2010/06/07/iad-apple-steve-jobs/>

<comment><USER8> It doesn't block other ads. It blocks analytics from competitors. So you are free to run analytics and ads from whoever you want... unless they are own by a device manufacture that directly compete with the iPhone.

<comment><USER7> Uh, thanks, but I already know what the article I posted said. My point is, iAds will be an easy sell if all competitors are kneecapped.

<comment><USER9> I don't think you quite got it. Only mobile advertisers who also compete with Apple on devices and OSes are affected. This does not make all competitors "kneecapped".

Edit: Really? I'm getting downvoted for this? Gruber's point that Apple's critics won't let facts get in their way gets proven once again.

<comment><USER9> Still with the downvotes. Not that I care about losing points, but how badly does it reflect on you when you downvote someone for presenting a fact?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I hate to admit it but Apple can do whatever they want with their platform and has demonstrated they would rather hurt competitors at the cost of end users/developers. The sad thing is many end users (read comments on the blog) think it's wonderful. They are ecstatic that they don't have the option to install Flash.

<comment><USER11> Do Apple users think that Flash will transition 3 frames of PNG/JPG/GIF ads worse than a custom iAd/Apple solution?

Trendy Adobe hate aside, how terrible could it possibly be? In actuality, not delusional fanboy opinion.

Betting that it is not very different resource-wise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Could apple change their developer contract to say anything they want?

<comment><USER13> This Apple vs Google thing is turning really ugly. Next is what Google will shut down maps and youtube apps on iPhone?

<comment><USER4> If that happens, it will be a loss for Google.

Bing Maps will do fine. Bing search will do fine for a large percentage of users. Youtube will be missed but its web app is pretty good now.

<comment><USER14> >Bing Maps will do fine. Bing search will do fine for a large percentage of users.

Assumptions that Microsoft is cozy with Apple are flawed. Microsoft is more at risk from Apple than they are with Google

<comment><USER4> I agree but why would microsoft not grab the chance to get the bing and maps to millions of people in one go?

War at the PC vs Mac/iPad front is a different thing, IMO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wait, you're saying that Apple is again changing their terms for their own benefit?

Had we seen this coming, developers would have switched to a different platform.

</comment><comment><USER8> Do you think Posterous would let Tumblr collect stats about all their users and their business? If you want to place ads using any other network you are free to do it, but you can't pretend that Apple will let Google, not the analytic company in this instance, but the iPhone competitor, collect stats about their users and business. Would you do that with your own business?

<comment><USER15> If Tumblr had an attractive analytics suite that users loved, I doubt Posterous would attempt to forbid its users from using it.

Apple placed a low-ball bid for for AdMob, when they got outbid, they figured they'd simply use their dominant market position instead of out-competing them. This sounds awfully like that other OS vendor that got in trouble for driving a lot of companies out of business by using their market dominance.

<comment><USER8> the problem is that those using AdMob, Google could find out about devices and features even before Apple release them. That's competitive advantage. Apple is a business, not a non-profit organization (just like Google), they need to defend their business. Want to be have ads? Go use Mobclix or other providers.

<comment><USER16> Apple is more than capable of not passing back information about devices and features prior to their release - for instance, instead of identifying their next iPad as 'iPad 1,2' during their internal testing, they could just send out 'iPad 1,1'. While they didn't disguise their test units in the past, I doubt they'll make this mistake again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's time somebody look for the undo button on the Google-Admob acquisition! ;)

<comment><USER18> Yes, because Admob doesn't work on Android which will soon have more market share than the iPhone ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Am I correct in stating that Apple does not need to be a full monopoly to be convicted of anti-competitive behavior? After all, we have both Anti-Trust and Anti-Competitive behavior laws on the books. AT simply gets more press as it is usually a populist movement.

I wonder if the FTC would be willing to investigate this.

</comment><comment><USER20> Can anyone comment on exactly what types of data AdMob collects?

<comment><USER16> Stuff like IP address for geotargeting, the phone's UDID (a numeric identifier) for frequency capping and conversion tracking, the name of the app for obvious reporting reasons, and whether the ad's been viewed or clicked, again for obvious reporting reasons. Same as anybody else in the space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is the site down for you guys?</comment>


A Stone Carver's Diary from the Spa City of Bath - <AUTHOR> http://huntingtonblogs.org/2015/09/stone-carvers-diary-from-the-spa-city-of-bath/ <comment><USER2> Bath's my home town, I'm surprised by 'Science and medicine were the lifeblood of these cities', I always associated Bath as a party town for the rich (back in the 18th century), but the science/medicine link does make sense. On a related note, a few years after this diary was written, the astronomer William Herschel was living in Bath when he discovered the planet Uranus.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Herschel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Herschel)</comment>


Joel on Software and Stack Overflow job boards unite - <AUTHOR> http://joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/06/03.html

<comment><USER2> Where does it say "mediocre" in that article? Unless they edited it out since your submission, I think you're editorializing there.

<comment><USER3> Not that I have any problem with editorials. But there should be a clear separation from the actual content, and in this forum that means a comment.

Negative sensationalism is just as irritating as hype.

<comment><USER4> I agree with you, he should have posted it as a comment. But did anyone actually think that SO (or any business, for that matter) would advertise itself as being for the mediocre?

I thought it was pretty clear what he was doing - editorializing - even if he is wrong. Its kind of like reading the New York Times ;)

<comment><USER2> [Edit: this is a reply to alxp below who wrote:

"Haha yes, because good programming and good networking skills are so clearly linked."]

Clearly linked, yes, but inversely proportional!

When in my "rain-maker" mental mode, when I go for weeks keeping contacts and have a phone glued to my ear, my hacking skills are just about none. I make it a point to take TODO notes for later.

When I am knee deep in hacking; designing, writing, testing, benchmarking, etc. my social skills are none. I can't even form sentences when I am interrupted by the phone, the few times I forget to forward my number to my girlfriend.

I sometimes do vocal exercises "Mii Maa Mee Moo Muu" type stuff to get my voice back before I need to make an important call.

<comment><USER5> Interesting comment, mahmud (as usual), but it made no sense in context. I read farther, and see that you simply responded to the wrong comment here!

<comment><USER2> Yes, I was responding to alxp below. Edited to reflect this.

Thanks dhimes :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I found my current job through the Joel on Software job board and it's miles above any other job I've had. We only advertise jobs on Joel and ArsTechnica and the candidates that interview here are sharper than all but a couple people I've ever worked with.

</comment><comment><USER7> Er so the ad is up for 21 days but I can get a refund within 90?

"How long will it run for? 21 days, unless you remove it sooner. Job seekers are generally reluctant to apply for older jobs than that because they may already have been filled.

What if I don't find anyone I like? Thanks to The Fog Creek Promise, there's no risk at all. Just ask us within 90 days and we'll refund your money."

<comment><USER8> Right. What's so "Er" about that? Maybe you don't notice that you hired an ax murderer until the third month.

<comment><USER9> If you can request a refund after your ad has run its term, doesn't that mean the service is free?

What's the incentive to not request a refund on day 22? (Besides being a tremendous douche.)

<comment><USER10> <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/customerservice.html>

See point 7.

<comment><USER7> Somehow I never saw this article before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A total of 1 (one) job is posted in all of the United Kingdom. Unfortunately I am not looking for work as a Python coder in Oxford, or I would answer it. Profoundly "Meh" to me right now.

</comment><comment><USER12> This confirms my suspicion that I need more than one SO profile: one for answering questions and using on a resume; and a separate profile that gives me the freedom to ask as many stupid questions as I like on topics that I know very little about currently -- but that I may know enough about at some point in the future to apply for a related job without needing to worry that my earlier noob questions will be taken out of context and unfairly disqualify me. On the other hand, my habit of writing long-winded sentences may be a bigger disqualifier.

<comment><USER13> I'd say the problem isn't with asking quirky questions, but with idiotic employers who expect their staff to be unrealistic, dishonest automatons.

No-one's perfect. We all ask stupid questions, many of us have crazy things in our online profiles, and we've all gone off the rails at some level or another. Employers who want to see people who are 100% "proper" all the time at their interviews are idiots.

And, no, I have no problem with employers like these pulling up this very message and reading it back to me in the future because I'll know they're not worth working for. Smart employers use smart criteria.

<comment><USER14> i think what the parent was saying is that (s)he is trying to avoid any possible ding. it's not that all employers demand 100% propriety (well, some do, but we certainly don't) -- just that, when browsing through a list of comments haphazardly, one errant comment, now out of context, might affect the perception of the candidate. in a tight labor market, that might be enough to put one candidate above another.

it's similar to the need of all college grads to clean up their facebook profile.</comment></comment></comment>


Japan to extend copyright period on works including novel, paintings to 70 years - <AUTHOR> https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/12/10/national/japan-extend-copyright-period-works-including-novels-paintings-70-years-dec-30/ <comment><USER2> When was the last time a country _reduced_ the duration of copyright?

With very few exceptions, the profit a work brings falls quickly after publishing. So copyright isn't being extended so much to preserve the profits from existing works - it's to keep those works from competing with new ones. Literally taking from the public to create demand.

<comment><USER3> When was the last time a government gave up power?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As someone who is trying to use Aozora Bunko to get practice material for learning japanese, this saddens me.

[https://www.aozora.gr.jp](https://www.aozora.gr.jp)

<comment><USER5> This looks really cool, makes me want to get my motivation back for learning Japanese again.

<comment><USER4> I don't have a link atm, but the whole site is available as a github repo if you are interested in a local copy.

<comment><USER6> [http://darthcrimson.org/digital-japanese-literature- aozora-b...](http://darthcrimson.org/digital-japanese-literature-aozora- bunko/)

[https://github.com/aozorabunko/aozorabunko](https://github.com/aozorabunko/aozorabunko)

~1.7 GB, as served as a zip file by Github.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A JavaScript calculator using the latest ES6 features - <AUTHOR> http://calculator.portfolio.braham.biz/ <comment><USER2> ES6 using jQuery? Using jQuery and not caching your selectors?

<comment><USER2> I created a pull request, "Remove jQuery dependency and cache DOM selectors.", [https://github.com/stevenbraham/javascript- calculator/pull/1](https://github.com/stevenbraham/javascript- calculator/pull/1)

<comment><AUTHOR> Merged, thank you for your contribution

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I did not get the point of this.

<comment><AUTHOR> It was a school assignment

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice styles.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you :)</comment></comment>


Drone Guard for Offices - <AUTHOR> https://securitytoday.com/articles/2016/04/06/online-exclusive-kisi-labs-unveils-drone-guard-technology-as-futuristic-doorman.aspx <comment><USER2> Yeah, that's what I want in an office, WHIRRRRRRRRRRR passing by me with every visitor.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A bit older but drones flying around offices could make a lot of sense - indoors and no one is really paying attention to visitors anyways. Seems like the co behind this project is getkisi.com</comment>