Ask HN: Are Glassdoor reviews a reliable indicator of a company's culture? - <AUTHOR> A particularly negative review of a London startup[0] by a former employee has been doing the rounds on social media recently. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a couple of extremely positive reviews by current employees have suddenly cropped up for that company as well. So positive they feel a bit like HR plants. But then again, the original feels like a gleeful hatchet-job and is maybe a bit extreme going the other way.<p>Is Glassdoor reliable, and if not, are there any reliable alternatives?<p>[0] https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Reviews/Employee-Review-ROLI-RVW17219691.htm <comment><USER2> In my experience, the negative ones are usually absolutely reliable! When I have left a place happy, I usually forget to write a good review. When I leave a place that was a nightmare to work at, I don't forget to spill the beans to warn people away.

It's not uncommon for a company to have some sort of management shuffle, a new (worse) culture is imposed, and people start to leave and write negative reviews. Then the company will hire a firm to write them positive reviews and disparage those who have left bad reviews, and not realise that prospective employees can completely tell the difference between the level of detail in the negative reviews 'eg, there was a pm who used to try to physically intimidate the female members of the team by leaning over them when he talked, I saw this on a weekly basis for 6 months until he was promoted to the programme manager and stopped working in our office', and the BS positive ones like 'it's a challenging place to work, the people posting negative reviews are used to workplaces where they need less initiative blah blah blah.

You'll see what I mean as you read them.

Sites like glassdoor are the only safety net we have to protect ourselves from those kinds of situations.

<comment><USER3> Does anyone know how GD is funded? Is it ads or do companies pay somehow to be listed?

I ask, as the payment method is critical to understand it's reliability.

If it is ads, then yes, I think it should be reliable. 'You' are the 'product' in that case. More negative press will likely keep you clicking and searching about, therefore more money.

If it is the companies, then it it not likely reliable. Why would you pay a company to essentially bad-mouth you? You pay them for good press (the pizzeria in NY on Yelp being an egregious exception). I'd say this holds if the companies can pay in any way at all. If they can influence for dollar, even rarely, then the whole thing is suspect.

Anyone know the real answer?

<comment><USER4> So far, it looks like they are supported by VC funds. I can't find any info on how they intend to become profitable but a few comments, drawn from memory, suggest they are expecting to fund with ads and a couple of people have suggested they will have a subscription service.

However, I can't find anything official about either and Wikipedia isn't very helpful. They do have some information about their existing funding:

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

A part of me thinks this type of thing would make a good not-for-profit enterprise. I'd even consider some sort of government backing. I'd say a service like that has good social potentials and can help society to make nformed choices.

<comment><USER3> I'd think so as well! But as we have seen in healthcare and other sectors, regulatory capture is possible, if not probable. Though, to be fair, the credit bureaus are in a similar niche and they are frankly a catastrophe. It seems that any 'word of mouth' type business or board that is of any use will eventually become useless as they try to squeeze blood from turnips. Subscriptions/payment may be better, like The Negro Motorist's Guidebook of the 1950's.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I'd think it'd have to be a not-for-profit enterprise with some sort of forced independence and verification. I keep mulling it over and thinking that it's be simple to do, but each idea I come up with finds me also finding ways it can be abused. So, it's not really that easy, I suppose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't really trust any Glassdoor reviews. I've always figured many positive reviews are fake, and the problem with negative reviews is that they're often written by disgruntled employees who are unable to reliably assess their own contributions to problematic situations.

The company I'm at -- the best company I've ever worked for, hands down -- has a few negative reviews from over the years that were written by employees who were fired for basically being awful, hostile, aggressive people who fought with everyone and refused to do work. These are the folks who are technically competent and think that gives them a pass for generally being an awful human being to work with. Being willing to fire people like this has resulted in this company having the happiest and most productive culture I've ever personally worked in, but it does lead to some pretty harsh reviews on Glassdoor. You're not going to get any of this context from the reviews.

The most informative reviews are the negative ones written by folks who left voluntarily and were not fired. In fact, these reviews, if they exist, can be a gold mine of valuable information. But it can sometimes be hard to pick these out, as folks who were fired sometimes lie about it and make it seem as if they chose to leave.

A generic tip when reading negative reviews is to look for specific details and concrete examples. The more details -- and the more specific they are -- the more likely the review is to have some basis in fact. This tip alone can filter out a lot of noise in both positive and negative reviews.

If you ever want to _write_ a negative review, the corollary is that you should include specific, concrete examples to convince the reader that you're not just disgruntled. Avoid emotional language.

A negative review written with a calm, collected tone is also a sign that there might be something there.

It's also worth looking for themes that seem to be consistent across multiple negative reviews. As with Amazon reviews, it's often best to look at distributional properties of Glassdoor reviews rather than focus on specific reviews too much.

<comment><USER6> _The company I 'm at -- the best company I've ever worked for, hands down -- has a few negative reviews from over the years that were written by employees who were fired for basically being awful, hostile, aggressive people who fought with everyone and refused to do work. These are the folks who are technically competent and think that gives them a pass for generally being an awful human being to work with._

If this happens consistently over a longer period of time, I'd say there's a problem with conflict management in that company. Technically competent people usually start pushing back if they see a better/simpler way of solving the problem they are given, but instead of taking their feedback or giving constructive criticism, the management just tries to shut them up.

<comment><USER5> It's just a few cases in 10 years. I don't think there's much of a pattern there. It's certainly not a perfect company, and conflict management is one of the hardest parts of being a manager. But overall the situation you describe was not the issue in these cases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've looked at a few companies only, and from what I've seen, in my limited experience, is that the only people motivated to leave reviews were those who were fired/layedoff/let go. So we're left with 100% negative reviews. These are not tech companies, so no one working there has any idea that glassdoor even exists. The place I work now has TERRIBLE reviews, and it's pretty obvious who left the reviews, and it's obvious to me why they left those reviews, but it does not reflect the reality of working here at all.

I guess I should go leave a positive review, but the motivation of an angry/hurt person is WAY higher than those of us who are happy.

<comment><USER8> My company has two departments, a lot of amazon turk like manual labor for things that haven't been automated yet, and a dev team automating the crap out of everything. Dev is pretty good to work, most of the time. Manual labor department is hell on earth. Reading glassdoor, the reviews are 95% negative from the manual labor department, mixed with reviews from people we turned down during interviews (our interview process used to be horrible), and about two bad reviews from previous devs. One who was let go for basically being as asshole (bad hire, not really his fault, life just got hard and he was young), and one that had some legitimate complaints.

(shrug)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Negative reviews seem to be pretty reliable, you have to have a motivation to post them, even if the content may not be objectively accurate. I worked for a company with terrible management and every time an employee would leave they would leave a negative review.

However, glassdoor is not completely objective-- companies can get negative reviews removed simply by complaining about them, and the quality control on this is not good. So that means that over time the HR department can just keep making accounts and complaining about the negative reviews and they disappear.

Thus if you leave a negative review you have to be a watchdog... and if it gets removed, even without cause, glassdoor won't let you leave another one.

However they can't hold back the tide, here's a comment from a recent review (redacted for privacy): " Forced "culture". It's explicitly stated that culture fit is a huge part of this backwards company. If you are too tired to go to a happy hour when the XXXX crew comes to town prepare for awkward questions why and being told you're not supporting the culture if you don't attend - by the CTO."

Reading the reviews of this company (that I worked at and know first hand) I see a lot of negative recent reviews, but the overall score is 2.4... way too high to be accurate.

HR is still grooming the reviews and leaving fake positives, to keep that overall rating up, and the negatives are all relatively recent (though they describe problems that have existed for 5 years.)

<comment><USER10> There are all kinds of motivations to post a negative review, and not all of those motivations map "reliably" to accuracy. Leaving a job can be traumatic for employees for reasons that have nothing to do with the company's culture or behavior--a disgruntled employee fired for cause has a strong motivation to leave a bad review, but that doesn't mean it is reliable.

Glassdoor has the same pros and cons of any review aggregator. It is susceptible to gaming (perhaps uniquely so, like Yelp, because the companies being reviewed are also Glassdoor's advertisers). But it provides a directionally accurate view of a corporate environment given a large enough sample size of reviews--and as with any review, more credence should be given to examples that are clear, detailed and well-written.

<comment><USER11> The conflict of interest (companies are also advertisers) is powerful, and it appears to be exerting a significant effect on the directional reliability of aggregate reviews for any company large enough to be a major advertiser. Companies can badger Glassdoor into removing negative reviews, and Glassdoor will ask few to no questions before taking summary and unappealable action in the company's favor.

The negative reviews are pretty much the _only_ interesting data points on the site. Take them with a grain of salt, sure. But you have to take the positives (especially large cohorts of positives over short time intervals) with the whole freaking salt shaker. The aggregate scores offer some directional guidance, but bear in mind that you are not looking at the total sample size of reviews; you are looking at _the sample size after the company has culled and gamed what it can_ , which is often quite a lot of the original pool.

This is sort of like the directional reliability of eBay scores, now that there is a short decay on past reviews, and pretty much anyone with 10 minutes on their hands can get negative reviews expunged.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wouldn't take everything on Glassdoor at face value, but if there are recurring negative themes in the reviews then that can be a red flag. I read them the same way I read reviews on Amazon, I look at the distribution of scores and then read a handful of each rating.

If there is a low distribution of 1 star ratings, then either the 1 star people are outliers or there is some sort of incentive for the higher ratings (either pressure from management to give positive reviews, or the company could just pay for fake reviews). Sometimes this is obvious, like a bunch of positive reviews that sound the same posted in a short timeframe, and sometimes it isn't. At the end of the day it is going to be a gut feeling.

<comment><USER13> I'm 100% in agreement. I disagree with those who say that negative reviews are more pure, and the 5-stars are HR / corporate drone-types. However, 'themes' and patterns are what I look for. Several times I've validated the experience of these negative themes, joining a place anyway or leaving a place and seeing confirmation. And just the same, if the positive ones say eye-rolling things like, "This place rewards the best, but they expect a lot from you. This is not for 9-5 whimps. Grrr." then I also see that as a pattern.

Before I was a contractor [ where reviews mean much less as you're not marrying your employer ], I'd take more of a Goldilocks approach to the reviews. The outliers (like a product review on Amazon) have to be smoothed out somewhat mentally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is not a direct answer to the question of GlassDoor reliability, but I have found negative GlassDoor reviews something interesting to bring up in interviews.

For example, I interviewed at a company that had a fair amount of negative reviews on GlassDoor, as well as some positive ones that came across (in my opinion) as astro-turfing. I brought this up with the guy doing my interview, and it lead to an interesting discussion about the internal dynamics of the company and what the real pros and cons are. His answer was basically that Division X had some real issues but they were working on it, but this position was going to be in Division Y which functioned in a different way. I ultimately decided against this offer for different reasons, but I appreciated the candor of the interviewer when I brought it up.

The usefulness of GlassDoor probably decreases as the company gets larger. I doubt the reviews of, say, Google or IBM have any bearing on reality because they're so massive and the experience inside the company is certainly not universal. Likewise, it's probably not that accurate for tiny companies.

I'll close with a (guarded) anecdote. I happened to know from insiders that a particular startup (~100 employees) was very dysfunctional and the leadership had severe issues. The GlassDoor reviews had detailed scathing review after detailed scathing review for a little while, then switched to entirely things along the lines of "[ThisCompany] is great! It's sooo great! And I love the leadership, especially [CTO who is a known jerk and known to be driving the company into the ground]. He/She is tough but fair and sooo smart!" So, take that anecdote for what it's worth.

</comment><comment><USER15> Yeah this is a very tricky thing to do well as it will always be abused. Glassdoor has been struggling (they've raised a bunch of flat rounds) and there are so many cases i've seen of bad reviews, followed by HR getting wind of it and burying them in a ton of fake positive reviews.

I run a site called TransparentCareer ([https://www.transparentcareer.com](https://www.transparentcareer.com)) and we've tried to make all of this data quantitative and verify that the person actually worked at the organization and what role they were in. We are getting ready to release a qualitative type review/question answering system using the same verification method and you will be able to see what department within the company the review is in reference to.

I would love to hear how people think this could be done better as we are currently developing the product and would love if it could solve this need in the best way possible. Is employee verification the biggest problem or is it something else?

<comment><USER16> > followed by HR getting wind of it and burying them in a ton of fake positive > reviews.

Or even worse, from [https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Reviews/Lab49-Reviews-E257101.ht...](https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Reviews/Lab49-Reviews-E257101.htm)

> * Requiring new joiners to write a Glass Door review as part of their on- > boarding process, presumably in an attempt to improve their rating.

<comment><USER17> My last company was like this. Desperate to get people to write reviews their first week.

<comment><USER15> Interesting, sounds like it would be useful to understand how long the person has been at the company when the review was written.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It can be a red flag, but it is often not 100% of the truth.

The larger the company gets, the less useful glassdoor is. The same company could have very awful very political teams, and very awesome and great teams.

More useful.. go out to the bar with your future team. If you didn't enjoy it, then pass. If you enjoyed it, then think about working there.

</comment><comment><USER19> Glassdoor is an interesting data point, but not "reliable" as a standalone rating system for multiple reasons:

1\. It tends to attract complaints and unhappy (ex) employees more than anything else. The ratings tend to skew low as a result. Look for common themes, and take them with a grain of salt.

2\. Complaints can be specific to a department or role. Complaints about Amazon, e.g., may be related to working in one of their distribution centers, not in HQ/IT.

3\. Current employees don't tend to leave reviews. Unlike an annual employee survey—which would be a better indicator if companies chose to publish them—Glassdoor tends to ignore current employees.

<comment><USER20> A counter to your point #1, a few companies ago where I worked we were asked on mass to provide positive reviews on Glassdoor to attract new candidates.

I think overall it's good for a quick check on morale if there are >20 reviews. The salary data is worthless, high earners within companies do _not_ advertise what they earn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Every now I'll be contacted by a recruiter and look up their company on glassdoor and see like a flood of 1 star reviews on it (both from applicants and employees)... like you can tell that there was a mass exodus of employees and that it's falling apart, so they're trying to rehire for those spots. You inevitably also see a ton of recent five star reviews that say something like:

"Wow I don't understand these five star reviews, I'm totally a real person who works here! Positives: <everything is amazing>; Negatives: <something inconsequential>"

Anyways, that's when you politely decline to interview.

<comment><USER21> (one that contacted me years ago and apparently still exists is kind of amazing to read: [https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Tobi- Reviews-E315372.htm](https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Tobi- Reviews-E315372.htm))

<comment><USER22> "You can bring your dog, I think"

This kind of thing is generally a yes/no type of thing.

"There's a parking lot"

Wow, this company is reaching for the stars there!

(Note: I don't know where the company is located, but generally having a parking lot isn't a bragging point.)

<comment><USER23> Actually, if the company is located in an area where the housing is unaffordable, then having a parking lot is indeed a bragging point. It means you can live in your van super close to work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Positive reviews can sometimes be just as valuable as negative reviews.

For example: I came across a company with many glowing 5-star reviews, and one of those reviews was from a software developer who very matter-of-factly stated that it was not a place for people who take issue with working overtime on a regular basis, as if doing so was somehow a point of pride within that company's culture.

Yeah, no thanks.

</comment><comment><USER25> Personally, I've worked at companies far worse than described in this letter, and if you think places like this don't exist you're young or foolish, or both. I've seen real emotional, and psychological violence at companies treated as everyday business. As an employee I was threatened for almost any reason whereas managers sexual/racial harassment, rape, yes rape, were dismissed as "he's just like that."

<comment><USER26> This is painfully accurate. With the recent barrage of sexual molestation cases against employees at Uber, Akamai and the ilk, it is all the more important to develop a transparent platform which rates companies.

<comment><USER25> You know what bothers me the most about this? There are no laws (in the US) against abuse unless it is motivated by being a member of a protected class (impossible to prove).

What does this say about us? "It's ok to abuse people, just do it equally."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> A few years ago I was at a failing company. The quick influx of detailed negative reviews (from people who were both still there and who had recently left) was perhaps the only public indicator that things were going poorly. I felt so terrible for all the people who were joining based on rosy promises while glassdoor reviews laid it _all_ out.

So yeah, in many cases glassdoor is a strong signal. Don't just look at the average rating, read the reviews from the past few months and look for trends and red flags.

</comment><comment><USER28> >Perhaps unsurprisingly, a couple of extremely positive reviews by current employees have suddenly cropped up for that company as well. So positive they feel a bit like HR plants.

Most of the responses here are spot on but I want to address that one specific point. It's highly unlikely those new reviews are HR plants. Instead, the company is clearly aware of the negative review and the fact that it's getting publicity and has asked/encouraged their current staff to post their own reviews.

<comment><USER29> This is the way I've seen it happen as well. I even had a past employer reach out to me and straight up say that someone had left a nasty review and asked if I would mind sharing my opinion of my time at th company on there. I did so happily, and he obviously reached out knowing that I left on good terms and would likely leave a positive review, but it was far from an HR plant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Looking at Glassdoor for every company I have ever worked at: it's a mixed bag. There are truthful reviews and then there are the really unhappy individuals who can be overdramatic. Unhappy folks are usually not reviewing the company from an impartial position and the stories can be misleading.

For instance: looking at a recent review of my company from a few days ago, it saddens me to read something written so well that is so inaccurate. The content opines that people of color would not be welcome at our organization. I cannot tell you how completely FAR off that is from the truth. Diversity is something we value tremendously. That being said, we are a tech company in the agricultural space that is located in the midwest. The fact of the matter is: our pool of candidates is simply _not that diverse_ to begin with.

Because we are a small startup focusing on survival, we hire the right person for the job, regardless of their background! Ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, etc... is never part of the decision! When this sentiment was shared with the organization, the reviewer interpreted it as "we do not care about diversity and people of color". Not making a specific point to hire diverse folks is NOT the same as not appreciating a diverse team!

Now this is almost a self fulfilling prophecy: a person of color might read that post and be completely turned off from even giving our company a shot. It hurts to imagine this scenario.

Long story short: the unhappy folks are usually the loudest and so I think you'll tend to get the 'jade colored' glasses.

Another anecdote: my fiancee was warned by a friend who previously worked at a company she was interviewing at. This person warned her that her manager was mean and grumpy and she'd be unhappy there. My fiancee has been there for months now without any problems whatsoever, and this manager tends to confide in her more than others on the team.

So I think you need to use every available resource you can to gather data points that can feed into your decision... but a lot of it needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

<comment><USER31> > (and not just when it comes to the amount of melanin in your skin).

Hopefully this is just by accident, but this comment has the air of downplaying the value of racial diversity. Imagine someone saying "we value diversity of all kinds, not just how much estrogen you have", or "we value diversity of all kinds, not just which invisible being you pray to".

<comment><USER30> Definitely not trying to downplay anything, quite the opposite. I was trying to suggest that diversity involves more than just the color of your skin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I take Glassdoor reviews in the same way I take Yelp Reviews. If there are 9 positive reviews, and a single negative review, that's probably not a problem. If it's 50/50 and the majority of the positive reviews seem like slightly changed variants on the same review, then I'm very suspicious.

<comment><USER33> glassdoor seems like a great opportunity for fakespot.com to take a crack. They don't have the same types of things they can reference though, since most people probably don't have > 1 reviews on the site for cross-referencing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I worked for about six months at one of the worst places of my 28-year software engineering career. I left a negative review on Glassdoor when I left, but Glassdoor removed the review after the company's HR department hit them with a mountain of whinging.

I also interviewed with a well-known company two weeks ago and they told me, during the interview, that they've had to have Glassdoor remove comments about their idiotic interview quizzes. I still look at Glassdoor, but I don't take it as seriously as I do reviews on Amazon or Yelp.

</comment><comment><USER35> Glassdoor reviews are useful only if you manually read them individually and critically judge each one for what it's worth.

A lot of negative reviews for my current employer are incredibly spot-on.

I had a very negative experience with my former employer, which currently has 11 reviews with a 4.9 star average, which led them to be rated the #10 best employer in a very large tech market.

They were constantly explicitly threatened to fire people. Ran off 2 out of their 3 founders, some of them very abruptly, jeopardizing the staff's pay and benefits (and this was just a couple of months before winning that "best in town" award). They either cynically produced horrible quality code for their clients, or farmed you out as a body shop to local software teams that couldn't attract their own talent directly, and for good reason.

Exactly 1 year later I now recognize exactly 1/3 of the bio/profiles listed on their website, the other 2/3 being totally unrecognized and new.

When I left the place I had a negative sick time balance, which they offered to write off, and also kept my health care running for an extra month after the month that I departed. And during the same conversation they offered that "we should not talk bad about each other," and of course they had the one really nice guy have this conversation with me.

So now, I look for individual negative reviews which seem reasonably articulate and unemotional, and if a place looks interesting enough, try to queue these issues up for questions during a prospective interview.

</comment><comment><USER36> Companies definitely try to inflate their rankings with fake or forced reviews. But these are usually pretty easy to spot. They are often short vague 5-star reviews.

Read longer reviews and judge for yourself. Don't trust the star ratings.

</comment><comment><USER37> In my experience, the data points most accurate in Glassdoor are those related to tone from the top and the CEO or owner. I've not seen one that didn't match my experience either as an employee or as a customer.

But it's important to remember that these are static data points in time, so there are certainly factors you should weigh based on other available data. For public companies, it can be important to assess changes in organization structure including and around the CEO. For private companies, sale of company is worth considering, though that top leader may still be in place post-sale.

Depending on the role you intend to enter, a negative tone may be what you're looking for -- lots of managers enter roles to help turn around a company. That the problems have been called out directly provides an important starting point in understanding whether you will actually be in a position to fix the problem. And public disclosure of the problems also provides a clear target for response through subsequent Marketing/PR and corporate improvements.

</comment><comment><USER38> This prompted me to log in and check out reviews for the company where I work.

Some observations:

\- Reviews are more or less accurate, but in the context that it's a big company and most of the reviews apply to their immediate team

\- Most reviews don't seem to be aware that they are actually reviewing their team/their manager/their org

\- Viewed with that lense/context, reviews are accurate but not representative of the company as a whole

All in all, if you look at the reviews holistically, they paint a good enough picture. Most reviews for the company in this case were positive, a few bad teams, but for the most part the company at least makes an effort to provide a good environment for employees. After reading enough reviews, that theme did come across and I would agree with it

I imagine the site is great for assessing the area you're going into, but only really paints a good picture of the entire organization when the company is pretty small.

</comment><comment><USER39> I wouldn't trust one bad review. There are a lot of "haters" out there that like to unfairly review some companies.

I would trust the ensemble and the overall tone of reviews

</comment><comment><USER40> No. Somehow, someone wrote a review for my company that has never had any employees other than myself. Unless I have multiple personalities, then it was me.

</comment><comment><USER41> The companies with the best glassdoor reviews are most likely the companies that know how to "hack" the system. For instance, a former consulting company I worked for made leaving a "glassdoor review" semi mandantory as part of the onboarding process. So right after you onboard with all the rah rah rah about "unique culture" and "fun environment" you tend to leave a review to that effect. This particular company tended to have a 5:1 ratio of "this place is awesome" to "This place is awful" comments. I also think that if you see a lot of responses from the CEO for negative reviews that lean toward defensive then you need to view that as a red flag. I personally would see GD as one of several indicators not a final word on where to work. If you can spot a trend such as "So much unpaid overtime" or similar negative post, you can probably trust it as being at least semi accurate. However, one persons great company is anothers personal hell, so you need to decide if the place is a fit for YOU.

That said, I am a big fan of ROLIs products, and the JUCE framework is a great audio/plugin framework used by tons of companies in that arena. Seeing the 2/3 reviews makes me sorta sad, but I can see how they would have to be a lean, long hour hard work wearing many hats kinda place. Building semi pricey gear for musicians is a hard sell, as musicians are usually a lower income segment of the population...

</comment><comment><USER42> I wouldn't take Glassdoor reviews as absolute truth but when I read the reviews for my current company they generally are pretty accurate at giving you a general sense of the place.

</comment><comment> j-c-hewitt Every single online review platform can be gamed by just soliciting reviews from people who have just had a positive experience and shunting people who have just had a negative experience to some kind of alternative channel where their complaints can be hidden from the public and/or resolved.

The more aggressive the company is in managing public perception through online review platforms, the more challenging it will be for anything negative to get out there.

Companies have a strong incentive to systematically manipulate online review systems. The people leaving the reviews 'organically' just have some intrinsic motivation to write them. Over time the shills will win no matter what kind of rules you set up to prevent it. To some extent also the capacity to run a good shill program is a signal of the health of the business doing the shilling, so it doesn't completely destroy the value of them.

The main way to counteract this kind of shilling is for objective and trusted third parties to compare companies, products, etc. with tests that cannot be faked and perhaps combined with some subjective evaluation. If the user is not paying to maintain the accuracy and objectivity of the reviews that they're using to inform their decision, then why should they expect it to be anything other than some combination of shill-spam, the odd lunatic, and the increasingly rare fair-minded and well-informed reviewer? The aggregate of all those things is not necessarily the ideal wisdom-of-crowds outcome because all of the inputs can be defrauded or otherwise manipulated in various directions.

</comment><comment><USER43> You can generally recognize a few broad themes pretty reliably. How strictly or loosely things are structured, the power distance between management and employees, etc. There are sometimes things too weird to make up that come through (One I saw had a bunch of reviews like "great place except there are too many dogs", "didn't get a promotion, hated it, tons of dogs", "great benefits, love dogs in the office", "woof, terrible job")

</comment><comment><USER44> I look at trends by job titles and I look for consistent incidental remarks, not negativeness or positiveness.

Example of the first: when evaluating one employer there were many negative reviews, but mostly from a particular high-churn part of the company; the experience of easy-come easy-go customer-facing support may not tell you much about the experience of someone even one level removed from that position. The odd positive review was usually a higher-level tech, and even if they had a negative outlook on the company or its future, such reviews would still add "but don't listen to _these_ guys--they just couldn't hack it."

Example of the second, same company: it's very easy to get hired by this company but training is limited and you could just as easily get fired for poor performance -- i.e., the company's hiring requirements were significantly less than their actual on-the-job skill requirements.

So I applied to this company based on mostly negative reviews. I was aiming for a higher position, and I was confident in my ability while having very little evidence of it: if their hiring requirements had actually matched the job I got, I would never have gotten it.

</comment><comment><USER45> Yes, I think they are very reliable. I worked for a London Startup that currently has 100% negative reviews and I regret not looking at them before I joined.

From what I've seen, a lot of good or decent places tend to have a general positive rating, and the really bad ones are going to have multiple negative reviews.

Take individual reviews with a grain of salt, but as a group I think it's fairly accurate.

</comment><comment><USER46> The positive ones are not.

I worked for a ecommerce company and the CEO gave anyone who wrote a positive glassdoor review a $50 credit on the site.

</comment><comment><USER47> When I've looked at the reviews of places I've worked, I've found them to be reasonable, but often painting an incomplete picture. Most of them seem to be from people who never really understood the work or the culture of the place, and therefore didn't perform well.

Also, it will bias towards bad reviews. I've never posted a review of a place I loved working at (and therefore never posted a review). I guess I should, but it would probably just be assumed to be astroturfing.

One other issue is when there are multiple classes of workers. For example Netflix has a lot of negative reviews from the folks who work in the DVD warehouses. But their work environment has nothing to do with the software engineering part of the company, which is the majority of the company, so it skews negative. Amazon has a similar problem, where a lot of the reviews come from the warehouse workers, who, for better or worse, get treated differently.

</comment><comment><USER48> This is a textbook case of something every first-year statistics student studies: voluntary response bias.

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

If I remember, things like these tend to draw out extremes, but the missing middle tends to be more moderate.

</comment><comment><USER49> IMO, finding a job you like is so much about finding a place where you'll be able to tolerate the bad sides. Negative reviews are the best places to find that.

It's a fact of life that there are no perfect jobs, and the difference between happiness and soul crushing is often about how you can deal with the negative sides of your job.

</comment><comment><USER50> Any anonymous system is open to abuse, or at the very least to distortion of the truth. People who didn't like a company who left can say whatever they like and are free to stretch the truth, and likewise companies can write their own exaggeratedly positive reviews.

If you want to know what a company is like... go look for yourself?

<comment><USER9> Companies are generally pretty good at not letting people who aren't company cheerleaders do interviews.

<comment><USER50> I have two counter-examples to this from my own experience.

The first is when I was asked to do interviews for my replacement after I handed my notice in at one company. Everyone knew that I was leaving because I hated it, I didn't even have another job lined up. But I was the person on my team _least_ likely to give a bad impression of the company.

The second is when I was interviewing for a startup tech lead role. One of the engineers gave me a tech test, then we had a chat, and I asked, "What's the worst thing about the company?" She told me: "Basically the CEO has no idea how software development works, or agile development, and we have loads of arguments and it's really frustrating. We're trying to hire a tech lead to shield us from that." Needless to say, I didn't take the job...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Negative reviews can be removed from Glassdoor if the company works hard enough. I know of a local employer who has tons of terrible feedback on Glassdoor and devoted someone full time for several weeks to comb through the reviews and get the most inflammatory removed.

I would take Glassdoor with a few grains of salt.

</comment><comment><USER52> No. I know of companies who have management post good reviews to minimize the impact of a real negative reviews. One bad review from a real former employee? Post five good reviews!

Also, I've seen evidence of one employee posting multiple bad reviews. It's a bad system all around.

</comment><comment><USER53> > are there any reliable alternatives?

The Old School method was to ask around, find actual company insiders or former employees.

These days it's relatively easy to find these individuals via a quick sort on Linkedin. Simply, reach out and talk to these people direct.

<comment><USER22> How reliable is that? I mean, how honestly would you answer such a thing?

<comment><USER53> Can you gauge sincerity in a live 1:1 conversation?

If someone pinged you with a transparent motive-- _We share a mutual connection in 'Mike D', I'm interested in learning more about your experience in (company/ex-employer) because they a have a job opening I want to explore. Would you be open to a brief 10 minute call/Skype?_

Wouldn't you tell that person the straight deal?

<comment><USER23> I'd be concerned that anyone asking me for a 10 minute call or Skype was trying to scam me or say something they would try to use against me. If I got this kind of email and was inclined to reply, I'd advise them to check Glassdoor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Negative reviews are accurate I believe. Obviously you have to take them with a grain of salt but the positive ones seem to generally be written either by HR or through exhortation of the employee base to paint the company in a great light.

</comment><comment><USER55> My employer is consistently ranked as one of Glassdoor's 'Best Places to Work', and also regularly encourages staff to write reviews on the site (though without any actual or implicit incentivizing, as far as I know). Make of that what you will.

In my view, encouraging staff to speak honestly of their positive experiences with the company is a reasonable objective from a PR perspective (this is really a PR issue, not HR). Coercing such feedback of course would be unethical, but I think it's awfully presumptuous to assume any company was doing such just because some good reviews showed up with auspicious timing.

</comment><comment><USER56> Just my 2c, I tend to give more weight to longer reviews unless they get rambling or show some other obvious personal distortion. I also totally discount short ones at either end of rating spectrum, for reasons.

</comment><comment><USER57> A with most systems like CSATs and NPS Glassdoor ratings reflect the extremes, those who have an axe to grind and those with an investment to protect the brand of the company reviewed. Could be competing company shills, disgruntled employees, those with emotional investments related their self-worth and such. The truth always lie somewhere in between. The best thing to do is to talk to employees and use your gut in the interview process or during your decision to support the company as a customer as you interact with people there.

</comment><comment><USER58> Reliable, no. Useful, yes, but mainly in the aggregate.

If there are only a few reviews for a company and those reviews are all over the map, I'm not going to put a lot of stock in any of them.

However, if there are a dozen or more reviews, most of which come across as fair and nuanced regardless of the score they assign, then I feel comfortable drawing some hypotheses based on the points they raise.

Also, companies can respond to reviews on Glassdoor. In more than one case the content of the (defensive) response has been more valuable to me than the original review.

</comment><comment><USER59> I left both good and bad reviews for bad employers but I do think negative reviews are usually more reliable since employees who hate a company are more likely to be bothered to write a review.

</comment><comment><USER60> Absolutely. I once made the mistake of ignoring a Glassdoor review and it caused me no end of trouble. What a stinker of a company. The reviews were completely accurate.

</comment><comment><USER61> I generally will give a firm the benefit of the doubt and discount 1 or 2 bad reviews. When there is a consistent negative theme in the reviews then I trust it completely. I have turned down several interviews because of Glassdoor reviews and have bought up bad reviews during interviews. Everytime the HR person has confirmed that the reviews had truth to them and that they were working on the issue or it was already fixed.

</comment><comment><USER62> No. They tend to skew negative, in my experience.

I once got a bad review because I had the audacity to quiz a candidate that said they'd done work with databases before about SQL. We're talking 'what's the difference between INNER and OUTER JOIN' level of questions. They were interviewing for a position where they'd be expected to write plenty of SQL. At that moment I completely discounted Glassdoor.

</comment><comment><USER63> Culture is often local, not global (to a company). A single team may have a great culture, and the team sitting right next to them might be horrible.

Culture is also completely different from direction. Some place may have a great culture but a lack of direction, or vice versa.

I would say you should really see if there are reviews from all departments and if the number of reviews correlates to number of employees to paint a realistic picture.

</comment><comment><USER64> A lot of people talk about how only upset employees leave a review, but the opposite side f the spectrum also leaves reviews. Really happy employees also write reviews. Distribution goes to the 5* and 1* For example, my current company has 100% 5* reviews on glassdoor. I guess part of what incentives us to leave reviews is that we are hiring like crazy, and want smart/good people to work with us.

</comment><comment><USER65> In years past, I had written two reviews for employers on Glassdoor.

One was positive, and it remains.

The negative review was removed.

I don't bother writing any reviews or using Glassdoor anymore.

</comment><comment><USER66> At my company the negative ones are all real, but positive ones (which outnumber them) are mostly fake. I imagine a lot of companies are the same.

</comment><comment><USER67> Reviews often say more about the reviewer than the reviewee. Keeping that in mind however, the reviews of my former employer were accurate.

</comment><comment><USER68> It would be great if fakespot added GlassDoor reviews to their set. I would love to see how well it could identify real verse paid for

</comment><comment><USER69> Glassdoor has been reliable in most cases in my experience. Watch out for the warning bells and patterns negative/positive within the reviews, as they are most likely true about that company. There are also companies that have HR fake review their company, these reviews become pretty apparent as other people will call them out on it.

</comment><comment><USER70> Glassdoor has a huge conflict of interest. Its customers are the companies themselves.

And it is not just a review problem. Even for job interview questions, where I work we were unhappy that someone wrote a detailed and correct answer to a question we usually ask. HR emailed glassdoor and they removed the answer saying it didn't comply with ToS.

</comment><comment><USER71> You have to read them with a strong grain of salt and make your own judgment. Most people don't like their jobs and aren't capable of writing a fair and balanced review. But sometimes enough obvious red flags pop up, or too much astroturfing, that can be reliable indicators.

</comment><comment><USER72> Glassdoor is moderately reliable. Not sure of better alternatives - that would be great.

HR often plants or strongly encourages employees directly or through managers to post How Great Things Are Here. Negative reviews can go away mysteriously, are buried. It's disconcerting. A lot like Yelp.

</comment><comment><USER73> A company I used to work for had a bad review posted (not by me). It was taken down 2 days later.

</comment><comment><USER74> Like any review site the reviews will always be either super positive or super negative, and with Glassdoor I think this natural effect is heightened because employment can be very emotional for people (versus a review of a burger on Yelp, for example).

</comment><comment><USER75> Having left a horrible company in the past and later decided to write a negative review, I can tell you that my experience has definitely been that Glassdoor is an awful indicator of a company, unless you're extremely picky about the metrics.

</comment><comment><USER76> My company changed a lot of stuff and as a result had a turnaround from high engagement and low turnover to the opposite within the last year. But lots of positive reviews still up there reflecting a company that doesn't exist anymore.

</comment><comment><USER77> For my employer I'd say they are _if_ you manage to link the reviews to the particular organizational unit as the culture and life of these can vary wildly. Unfortunately an outsider is unlikely to be able to do this.

<comment><USER22> I think that's also a red flag. Do I really want to essentially play roulette with hoping I find the one good team, or don't land on the one bad team?

<comment><USER77> It's a pretty multidisciplinary company. What I mean is if you're interested in life as a software engineer it's going to be a lot different than life for a bench biologist. There's no roulette involved, but it's not always obvious which is which from the reviews.

<comment><USER22> Maybe for your company, but like, for Amazon, when all the bad stuff really came out, one thing that people always said was, "It depends on what team you're on." Do I really want to take the chance that I might end up on one of the crappy teams?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> I worked for QSuper in Brisbane, Australia. All the negative reviews are accurate.

</comment><comment><USER79> Generally accurate though it's possible for one person to generate a lot of noise, and companies can talk a Glassdoor into removing reviews. (Generally on the basis of it pinpointing one individual)

</comment><comment><USER80> Have you ever been asked to provide a positive review for a place that you formerly worked at? I have, I suspect this is common.

</comment><comment><USER81> It's better than nothing.

</comment><comment><USER82> Ignore the outliers, look for the general trend.

</comment><comment><USER83> I do think reviews are reliable source of current situation of a company, I trust negatives ones more than the positives. Its not just for glassdoor but for any reviews that you see on yelp,google or fb. I sift through the negative reviews and try to find a common factor in the reviews, that would be a way to validate the review.

I trust negative reviews more because if I had a good experience, I don't have any incentive at all to login to a webpage, create credentials if its needed and then go through the myriad of steps to post a positive review. But on the other hand, if I had a bad experience, the only way to vent it out is by giving them a bad review. I am willing to go through the hoops of signups and surveys so that I post that one bad review about the service. There is an incentive for me there.

Tailpiece: There are many services that you can purchase to write positive reviews for your company/service. The trend to identify this is that whenever there is a negative review, it gets buried by a bunch of near 5 star positive reviews, mostly with a one liner review text.

</comment><comment><USER84> No, they're skewed toward disgruntled ex employees.</comment>


The Secret of User Activity Streams and Cohort Metrics - <AUTHOR> http://blog.500startups.com/2011/02/08/build-a-killer-product-faster-the-secret-of-user-activity-streams-and-cohort-metrics/

<comment><AUTHOR> Great post by Dan Martell of Flowtown about their new product Timely.is

<comment><USER2> That's funny, I thought it was about cohort analysis for spotting trends that might otherwise be obscured in confounding variables.

<comment><USER3> Calling a real time user activity stream a 'cohort' is technically accurate but I think it sounds inappropriate in this context.

<comment><USER4> The first half of the article discussed the user activity stream. The second half discussed their (separate) dashboard showing activation metrics segmented by cohort.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


As Cities Woo Amazon to Build Second Headquarters, Incentives Are Key - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-has-honed-its-site-hunting-expertise-with-in-house-team-1508405401 <comment><AUTHOR> Techmeme summary: _[https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-has-honed-its-site- hunti...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-has-honed-its-site-hunting- expertise-with-in-house-team-1508405401*)</comment>


Oracle Files Appeal Brief in Oracle v. Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130213000119924

<comment><USER2> If I were a judge, I would be offended by this brief. Oracle's lawyers are so obviously oversimplifying the case, as the author says, it sounds like the kind of tale you'd spin for a jury. Rather than relying on this terrible, inaccurate distraction, I hope the court takes a very technical interpretation, and acknowledges the difference between a software API and the table of contents of a Harry Potter novel.

</comment><comment><USER3> Love the wise and simple way groklaw explains the complex matters.

</comment><comment><USER4> Haven't seen posts by Groklaw on HN for a while, or maybe I just missed them. Good to see Groklaw back on the front page, I always like reading the articles.

</comment><comment><USER5> Is Ann's literary technique obviously illegal? It seems like an interesting literary exercise to me, and if it's illegal to publish the results, that's a pretty interesting development.

<comment><USER6> According to Oracle it's "obviously" indefensible. They don't say why though, and saying it doesn't make it true. Oracle really has a knack of coming off like a whiny 5 year old ( _but it's not FAIR_ ) rather than arguing the actual law.

Sure you put a lot of work into the Java libraries, Oracle. (Well, actually you didn't, Sun did). That doesn't mean it's protected by law. There are plenty of things that you can invest heavily in that aren't protected by law. Just because somebody "taps into your fan base" doesn't mean they violated copyright law. By that logic, anybody that creates any Java library that uses core Java APIs as input/output is also using the Java API unfairly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yay, time for Revenge..go Oracle!</comment>


Ask HN: How to be up to date with newest tech? - <AUTHOR> The people who found out about bitcoin in 2010-12 were the ones who gained, either by innovating more on the platform such as Vitalik, or by investing in it.
The first internet companies were the ones to gain a lot by the new tech.
The first apps on the Appstore were the ones who won the market, such as Instagram and Whatsapp
How do you find the newest tech or discoveries or innovations? How do you keep up with your digest/news? <comment><USER2> You're suffering from selection bias.

The first people who found out about multimedia CD-ROMs... didn't do that well because the web killed those off after three years.

The first people who invested in 3D television technology... went nowhere, no one bought them.

The Internet did go places, it's true. But, the first Internet companies are mostly dead. For every success like Amazon there are 1000 dead dot-coms.

Etc.

Knowing about new technologies (languages, libraries, frameworks) is useful in terms of "oh I might need this tool someday" kind of way, but that's a very different goal. Some tips on how to do that here: [https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/10/07/growing-your- toolbox...](https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/10/07/growing-your-toolbox/)

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah thats true I agree

I like your blog!!</comment></comment>


Ruby 2.5.0 Released - <AUTHOR> https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/news/2017/12/25/ruby-2-5-0-released/ <comment><USER2> When I discovered Ruby 12 years ago, it was an amazing moment. All the features I loved from my previous favorite languages Perl, Smalltalk, and Scheme in one place, but with a much more reasonable syntax, a far more robust standard library, a complete and dead-simple packaging system, and a practical and portable runtime. The fact that it still feels magical, fun, practical, and pragmatic all at the same time while progressing and improving step by step each release after all these years is a truly amazing feat, especially when you compare it to its peers.

So congratulation and thanks to Matz, and all the other Ruby contributors for creating and maintaining and growing and improving this amazing language that's still my favorite. 2.5 looks great, and I can't wait to see what's in store for the future.

<comment><USER3> I started a new contracting gig a couple of months ago, in Ruby. I had used it briefly years before in another project, but it was so long ago that I had to learn it again basically from scratch.

Although I don't really think the language is anything special (i.e. it's a standard dynamic OO language), what really turns me off Ruby is this dogmatic, almost religious aspect of its community.

Take POODR - it's more or less the community bible. If it's not written in POODR - don't do it. If it is - do it that way or else. It's POODR's way or the highway.

According to more experienced Rubyists more than 80% of the Ruby community use Rails. Rails is so widely spread that its development even fundamentally affects Ruby's roadmap.

Now irregardless of what you think about POODR or OO or dynamic types or whatever, a homogenous echo chamber filled with people chanting the same things over and over again is _not a good thing_.

As a counter example, take Javascript. Yes, it has its warts; its equality table is a joke. Ruby is a better thought out and implemented language in almost every aspect (although I do like Javascript's minimalism better, but that's a matter of taste I guess.) However, Javascript's community is as diverse, vibrant and experiment-friendly as it gets - there are the OO diehards, but there's also React, fantasy-land, macros, monads. People are trying out new things constantly.

Now I know you have monads in Ruby too or flow-like gradual typing libraries or rewrites of Clojure's spec. But at least where I work (and I work with some very experienced Ruby people) those libraries and the ideas they embody would never ever be considered as serious alternatives for anything. POODR or else.

<comment><USER4> Huh... didn't even know what POODR was...

Guess I've been faking it for the past nine years... I mean, I _did_ start a company that used Ruby/Rails as the primary platform. And I've worked the last six years in a shop that currently has a team of about 12 Ruby/Rails developers...

Don't get me wrong, Ruby's a tool in my toolbox; I use it like I would any other tool. I like solving problems. Most modern languages make it easy and fun to solve problems.

I don't like when it's easy to see where a language is encumbered by poor choices (I seem to have a diametrically opposed viewpoint of your opinion of the Javascript community; to me, the redundancy, low quality and churn of community libraries is one of Javascript's greater liabilities). But if it works for you, that's great.

Language Holy Wars are necessary for young, budding languages and young, budding programmers. Language Holy Wars help young communities draw others to their banner and young programmers define themselves. Unfortunately, having causes and "bad guys" is a big part of the underlying way we work as people.

But at some point, once a language's adoption has reached critical mass & once you've reached a point where you're comfortable with the underlying paradigms of programming, these Language Holy Wars get left behind for more interesting problems.

I mean, I definitely have opinions about what language I'd prefer to be working in and why, but at this point, I make my determination of technology based on the right tool for the job, not necessarily my opinion of any given language.

<comment><USER3> (To you and everybody else)

Point taken - apparently I mistook the particular echo chamber I happen to be in at that moment for a more general symptom. Glad to hear!

<comment><USER4> Sorry, I think I got a bit sidetracked in my response.

I do hope that your current situation gets better or that you find somewhere that isn't so preoccupied with navel gazing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ruby may not be the cool thing in town it once was, but it remains my preferred language for prototyping ideas - purely because of its elegance and expressivity. It truly delivers on its fundamental goal of "developer happiness". A lot of ideas from Ruby have gone to other languages (CoffeeScript, Elixir) and many web frameworks are modelled after Rails.

Congrats and thanks to all the core devs! :-)

<comment><USER6> See, expressive I totally get. Absolutely. But elegance? Don't understand that one.

Ruby is a cluster of inelegant and over concise cludges in the name of expressivity. The fact that it was once most famous for one of the most inelegant hacks - monkey patching - as a core feature speaks to that.

So I totally understand that it's quick, it's expressive, and it's easy to prototype in. Agreed. It's lost a lot of it's shine there now but it's all still true.

But elegant? It's concise, not elegant.

<comment><USER7> Disagree 1000%.

Just because you _can_ write a monstrosity in Ruby doesn't make the language itself inelegant.

Ruby, of the many languages I've used, has by far the highest potential for code being poetry. You can find solutions that are incredibly simple and understandable due to so much boilerplate being remove from the syntax. Likewise you can write code that's impressively concise without being inscrutable — I'm continually astonished by how _readable_ Ruby can be.

One exercise in particular sticks out in my mind. Many years back, I implemented the first few dozen Project Euler problems in Ruby. However, I imposed a limitation: each solution had to be under 72 characters (library inclusions are fine), a single logical line, and _readable_. The end result was surprising at how naturally it ended up working — the solutions ended up being little more than the high-level conceptual approach, translated literally to code. Solutions ended up looking like the following:

        (2 ** 1000).digits.sum
        (2..10_000).amicable_numbers.sum
        1901.to_year.upto(2001.to_year - 1).select {|d| d.mday + d.wday == 1 }.count

Sure, these depended upon injecting new methods into core classes, but who cares? For _this_ problem it led toward incredibly straightforward and readable solutions for these problems. If this were library code I wouldn't dream of doing it this way, but for application code — why not?

I have yet to see any other language with Ruby's capacity for readable conciseness.

<comment><USER8> > Sure, these depended upon injecting new methods into core classes, but who > cares?

I, as a developer reading your code 6 months later, care.

When something fails, it's nearly impossible which of the magic methods were injected by which magic library.

<comment><USER9> Not really. It's hard for your editor to do this statically, but there's heaps of good tooling for finding the method source and docs dynamically.

      pry> show-source SomeClass.class_method
      pry> show-source AnotherClass#instance_method
      # List an arbitrary object's class methods, instance methods, methods mixed in by included modules
      pry> cd some_object
      pry> ls

The runtime knows how to execute your program (it's not random) so everything you want to know is available.

<comment><USER8> You realise you just validated my point, right? :)

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure you did.

People who don't use Ruby seem to think this is a huge thing that you run into constantly. It's not. People are for the most part pretty responsible with these things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I started using Ruby only in April this year due to starting at a new job. Having used and/or dabbled in C, Java, Python and Haskell before (amongst others), I find it super interesting to see how Ruby manages to take some interesting parts from each and manages to integrate it into a very pleasant programming experience. Also the rspec testing library is nothing short of magic, none of the compiled languages have anything that even comes close IMO.

For the cases where you have a tight loop taking up 99% of the actual CPU time it is also relatively easy to hook in C or Rust or whatever. Also, sometimes you hit hardware performance limits regardless of the language you use. We have some streaming download servers written for 99% in Ruby using the libCurl bindings that and they easily manage to fill up the 5 Gbps pipe* per server that AWS gives us.

* You can get 20 Gbps for some instances, but only to other instances in the same group. The biggest to the 'outside' seems to be 5 Gbps.

<comment><USER11> I'd be very interested to know what you mean by "nothing short of magic". I've had a quick look at the rspec documentation and as a Python dev this looks very similar to what's in the Python standard library. Would that be considered magic as well or does rspec have some cool features that I have missed?

<comment><USER12> rspec's internal DSL is based on Ruby's multi-line anonymous functions. I don't know how you achieve a similar design in Python where you don't have those in the same way. How do you write the equivalent of 'it 'does something' do ... end' in Python syntax?

<comment><USER13> This seems a good starting point [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37334668/is-there-a- pyth...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37334668/is-there-a-python- equivalent-for-rspec-to-do-tdd)

TLDR: not as nice as RSpec but close.

<comment><USER12> > not as nice as RSpec

Right, well that probably answers the question about what they thought the magic is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> FYI: I've collected articles / blog posts about what's new in Ruby 2.5 over at the Ruby Advent Calendar [1]. The list so far includes:

\- Standard Gems 2.5.0 - Default Gems, Bundled Gems // by Jan Lelis, Idiosyncratic Ruby

\- 10 New Features in Ruby 2.5 // by Junichi Ito, Ruby programmer @ SonicGarden.jp

\- 10 More New Features in Ruby 2.5 // by Tom Lord, Software Developer from London

\- Performance Improvements in Ruby 2.5 // by Jesus Castello, Ruby Guides

\- yield_self in Ruby 2.5 // by Michał Łomnicki

\- Improved stacktrace display in Ruby 2.5 // by Michał Łomnicki

\- Ruby 2.5 Series // by Amit Choudhary, Mohit Natoo et al @ BigBinary

[1]: [https://planetruby.github.io/advent2017](https://planetruby.github.io/advent2017)

</comment><comment><USER15> Nice to see the 3x3 work continuing to go well with that 5-10% speed up. For anyone who hasn't seen it, Ruby declared a target for Ruby 3.0 to be 3x faster than 2.0.

[http://engineering.appfolio.com/appfolio- engineering/2015/11...](http://engineering.appfolio.com/appfolio- engineering/2015/11/18/ruby-3x3)

<comment><USER16> What particular speed improvements do we expect from 2.5.0 release? String interpolation speedup?

<comment><USER15> ERB generation should be a lot faster, which will be a boon for a lot of Rails apps, and according to the release notes there's a 5-10% performance improvement overall from removing all trace instructions from bytecode.

<comment><USER17> Rails has not used the stdlib ERB implementation for a long time. As of 5.1 it uses erubi [0] and prior to that it used erubis. [1] So the performance improvements to the stdlib ERB implementation will not affect rails apps.

[0] [https://github.com/rails/rails/pull/27757](https://github.com/rails/rails/pull/27757) [1] [https://github.com/rails/rails/pull/16773](https://github.com/rails/rails/pull/16773)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Oh, it looks like Bundler didn't make it into the standard library for the 2.5 release. The commit to bring it in was reverted just before the release, with very little explanation. I mean, it's not like `gem install bundler` is that hard to do, but I'd be curious to hear why.

<comment><USER19> Same thoughts here, I thought that was the important step to gemify everything in 2.6. Are they reverting course?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Was waiting for this!! Super happy about this. I've come to expect this every year now at this time.

Ruby is still one of the most productive languages out there. I just love it. It gives me great joy that 10 years ago I chose Ruby to be the language for my future.

My wish this coming year is to be able to contribute more to the Ruby ecosystem.

Btw I've also built something using MRuby this year. The whole ecosystem is just great.

<comment><USER21> I've really wanted to find a good use for MRuby (probably to noodle around with game development, as an embedded language) but figuring out where to _start_ is really hard. Any tips?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Ruby's SecureRandom is finally sane to use? It's like Christmas or something!

[https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/9569](https://bugs.ruby- lang.org/issues/9569)

Now to update the "how to generate secure random numbers in various programmming languages" documentation.

</comment><comment><USER23> Anyone else noticing syntax ruby parser regressions?

e.g.

      class FooBar < Foo
        prepend_before_filter only: [:create, :destroy] {
      request.env["hello.skip_timeout"] = true }
      end

was valid in ruby 2.4 but invalid now in 2.5

<comment><USER24> I believe this syntax was only accidentally valid: [https://bugs.ruby- lang.org/issues/13939#note-5](https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/13939#note-5)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> rescue on do blocks!!! Wooooo. Merry Christmas!

Ruby is a joy to use.

<comment><USER26> Can't beat reversing the backtrace output for making Ruby even more enjoyable. Slogging up through a huge pile of calls was one of the few things that drove me mad.

<comment><USER23> Just need to rework all these

e.backtrace.first lines to e.backtrace.last

Or maybe my favorite which is still good

puts "#{e.message} #{e.backtrace.join("\n")}"

<comment><USER27> That code will still work, they are using the experimental feature only when the backtrace is printed to a tty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Every year it's the Christmas gift I wait the most!

</comment><comment><USER29> There's no such thing as a perfect language, but Ruby is a very nice one, and the community is just such fun. The tradition of major version releases on Christmas Day each year is one of my favorite things!

Cheers to Matz and all the Ruby contributors :)

</comment><comment><USER30> I absolutely love ruby and its community :) My software goals for next year: \- Start a new platform built on Ruby/Rails. \- Contribute to the ruby eco- system. \- Enjoy it.

</comment><comment><USER31> Love Ruby. Back a few years ago before I learned to program properly, I found a lot of the syntax of various languages to be hard to understand. I was not trained as a computer science major, mind you. Nonetheless, the syntax of the Ruby language made things easy enough for me to digest. Heck, even ended up starting a Ruby based software company won't employees — something I couldn't have imagined doing even a decade ago.

</comment><comment><USER32> Test Driven Development (TDD) gets a huge improvement with the new coverage capabilities for methods and branches. Thanks Ruby team!

<comment><USER33> I'm surprised by this comment. Having done TDD for many years now I've only ever felt the need for coverage tools on code that wasn't initially TDDed. If you do proper TDD your coverage is always pretty damn close to 100% and you are already well aware of where it isn't because you struggled TDDing in the first place.

<comment><USER34> That's true until you decide to delete tests/code that is no longer in use. Then it becomes much more difficult to track down dead code paths

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> > Mutex is rewritten to be smaller and faster. [Feature #13517]

This is something I find to be using quite a lot, great to see this.

</comment><comment><USER23> looks like we have some gem authors that need to update their stuff...

google-protobuf-3.5.0-universal-darwin requires ruby version < 2.5, >= 2.0, which is incompatible with the current version, ruby 2.5.0p0

[update]

looks like this is resolved by forcing bundler to compile instead of grabbing the precompiled versions.

</comment><comment><USER36> Many thanks to all who contributed!

</comment><comment><USER37> Hey they finally fixed the issue with SecureRandom using OpenSSL instead of the OS CSPRNG implementation!

I worked for a company a few years ago that made security software, with Ruby as a primary language, and this caused no end of frustration...

</comment><comment><USER38> I had installed Ruby on a Windows 10 machine a few weeks back and had some issues setting up Ruby 2.4.*.

I forgot where the issue came from (I think it was some issue with bundler or ruby gems), but can I install 2.5 without breaking my set up?

</comment><comment><USER39> Jebus!! this is about Ruby 2.5.0 release not about why you think Ruby sucks.

</comment><comment><USER40> Awesome! I'm excited about the new yield_self method, and the general functional programming direction that Ruby is moving in.

</comment><comment><USER41> Thank you Matz & co. <3

</comment><comment><USER42> i loved ruby and i still do but my focus has now shifted to scheme/clojure and lisp family dialects like racket, and i don't see a reason to return or move to anything else it feels like my search is over.

<comment><USER21> If your "search is over", you're doing it wrong. Something sucks about everything you are using, no matter what it is. There is a better thing, even if you must make it.

<comment><USER43> Would agree with your view, but Lisps are arbitrarily powerful by the means of macros and interop.

In my daily work (Clojure) I can use different concurrency and typing models than Clojure originally envisioned, via core.async, clojure.spec. This is not some fairy tale or toy/PLT project.

How many languages can fundamentally change themselves without breaking things or getting awkward?

<comment><USER21> Lisps are arbitrarily powerful, yes, sure. Once I too was a Lisp head, I am familiar with the advocacy.

They also read awfully even with an editor designed for them. They aren't human-first languages. S-expressions are _easy for a computer_ , they are _hard for a human_. So, yeah, that can be improved, too. "But you can do it with macros"\--other people _won 't_, and so you are thus devolved to the minimum set everyone can agree upon, and it's gonna be awful.

And so there is room to grow outside of one's parentheses, too.

<comment><USER43> Threading macros (-> / ->>) can greatly improve readability, putting lisps on par with Ruby (which I appreciate much).

Best of all, emacs/Cursive lets you trivially transform a sexpr into a threading form, and back. So one doesn't even have to do much effort for refactoring nested (a(b(c(d calls.

<comment><USER21> I totally get that--what I'm saying is that, much like something like C++, you can only practically use the subset everybody you have to work with will agree is acceptable. Threading macros, IMO, help but don't really _solve_ the readability problem, and it's still a far sight from Ruby, but it's a good step. But you have to get Bill the chin-stroking graybeard down the hall to use them when they're "not how he uses Lisp." Contrast this to a language with more guardrails--the equivalent of that threading macro in Ruby (or in Scala, or in F#) is just...The Way You Do It, it's the standard of the tools involved.

You're transforming a linguistic readability issue into a cultural problem of agreement and that's a _waaaay_ harder problem to solve, IMO. Lisps are cool. But every problem raised to "cultural problem" is so much harder to solve. (When was the last time you saw an indent war in Ruby?)

<comment><USER43> Your observations are on point, and collaborating with lispers is not free of bitter moments.

At work we use cljfmt (similar to gofmt) plus a variety of hacky formatters and conventions. It works for us and I hope to open-source part of our stack at some point!

The experience is similar to that of Rubocop - which btw is the reason why there aren't indent wars (or similar) on Ruby.

Great to decomplect how code is written (however you please), from how it is committed (autoformatted).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Awesome! :)</comment>


Soylent: It's Not People. Or Food. - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/geek-life/hands-on/soylent-its-not-people-or-food

<comment><USER2> > Or food.

Neither is half the stuff on the shelf at 7-11 but people still literally live on it. At least Soylent took a stab at engineering for health instead of merely addictive taste over-stimulation.

<comment><USER3> The arguments against Soylent that compare it to some perfect diet are just obnoxious and disingenuous. McDonalds feeds 68+ million human beings A DAY... just McDonalds.

If there is a solution that is convenient, simple, healthier cost-effective replacement for fast food calories, I am all for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not calling it "food" is a little off-putting, since it is "nutritously edible" unlike a lot of industrial food marketed to the time-money- impovershed. This is fascinating stuff, and people are trying to make their own formulas as well, here's a couple sites:

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/h2h/soylent_orange_whole_food_open_s...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/h2h/soylent_orange_whole_food_open_source_soylent/)

[http://diy.soylent.me/](http://diy.soylent.me/)

Personally I've already invested so much in organics that I'll have to work my way through that before I can give it an n=1 go.

</comment><comment><USER5> Soylent and food are not mutually exclusive. Soylent replaces feed, not food.

If anything, soylent makes those times when you eat out extra special, since you get to eat out for the sake of flavour rather than to fill up your belly, and you get to spend the money you didn't spend on regular meals.

</comment><comment><USER6> Saw the IEEE domain and was intrigued, but this is just another "I don't get it" piece, wherein the author reveals himself to also not get it (or more likely, is being deliberately obtuse because it makes for a 'better' article).

</comment><comment><USER7> I stopped reading after:

        ...effort to produce a single foodstuff that could
        be consumed, to the exclusion of anything else...

I am interested in Soylent. I am interested in what people, who took the time to find out about it, say about Soylent. But this is a strawman at best, and ignorant at worst.

</comment><comment><USER8> We were also a little put off by the "it's not food" hyperbole, which is why we made MealSquares. I think it will be appealing to a lot of people who like the concept of Soylent but not the execution.

</comment><comment><USER9> I could lease a new BMW with the money I'd save eating Soylent. There is no food in the world that produces more happiness than a new BMW.

<comment><USER10> I can't tell if you're serious or not. If you're not, well, cool.

If you are, well, your perspective might need a bit of realigning. As someone who's driven nearly every new BMW that's been made in the past 10 years, I can _assure_ you the happiness they produce is short-lived, at best.

<comment><USER9> I'm pretty serious. I have an old one now and driving it makes me happier than any meal I've ever had. But that's mostly because I hate food :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You all know this article is from a year ago right? Relevance?

<comment><USER4> Thought it was newer, had friend that started his second day (today) on Soylent with positive results.</comment></comment>


The story behind the dropped 'e' in flickr's name - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/14/flickr-flicker/#IDComment80186954

<comment><USER2> Unrelated: Apparently Twitter was originally twttr, and in 2006, techcrunch had this to say about the service:

        There is also a privacy issue with Twttr. Every user has
        a public page that shows all of their messages. Messages
        from that person's extended network are also public. I
        imagine most users are not going to want to have all of
        their Twttr messages published on a public website.

</comment><comment><USER3> To summarize: Yahoo (which owns Flickr) got the domain today, but no one's saying how much they paid for it or whether the transfer was the result of a lawsuit.

They cite this DomainNameWire piece, which offers more details but doesn't provide sources for them:

[http://domainnamewire.com/2010/06/14/yahoo-settles- lawsuit-a...](http://domainnamewire.com/2010/06/14/yahoo-settles-lawsuit-and- gets-flicker-com-domain-name/)</comment>


A few hundred of the thousands of rejection slips I've got over the years - <AUTHOR> https://knottpoetry.blogspot.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Appreciation of Bill Knott: [https://www.bookofjoe.com/2014/05/let-us-now- praise-bill-kno...](https://www.bookofjoe.com/2014/05/let-us-now-praise-bill- knott.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> Had a professor who used to wallpaper his closet with his rejection letters. Was very reassuring to hear that from a successful writer when I was an insecure 17 year old.</comment>


Taxonomy of Humans According to Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://thenewinquiry.com/taxonomy-of-humans-according-to-twitter/ <comment><USER2> Title can be misleading, it's a list of Twitter Advertising categories and their proportion.

So, it's mostly centered around consumerism ("buyers of X") and demographics.

I like how some categories are openly manipulative, like "People who are receptive to offers for auto insurance". And others are just harsh: "Struggling retired singles. Barely getting by. <$50K Income, Age: Retired (65+)."

</comment><comment><USER3> That is a really cool idea and execution. Must be weird to see one of those ads, and kinda scary if the on boarding of data is as accurate as Twitter makes it look.</comment>


US DoD snuffs open-source 'misconceptions' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/27/department_defense_free_open_source/ <comment><USER2> i love how that article cites zero references. anyone interested in what the DoD actually released, see here: <http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10384067-16.html></comment>


Ask HN: How does your team share files securely? - <AUTHOR> What do you use when you share access keys, passwords, secured files to your teammates? <comment><USER2> For the current project I'm working on (it's not technically software development), we're using NFS within a single subnet that every desktop is hooked up to. The server is physically at the office and does not have internet access. We have some confidential files (healthcare and legal records) stored on it.

Since everyone has the NFS share mounted locally on their machine, simply adding a single file makes it appear on every other machine, without much overhead.

Encrypted backups are stored on- and off-site.

</comment><comment> jon-wood For files we use Google Drive, while shared access keys/passwords (where they can't be avoided) are kept in 1Password, where we're able to create vaults with different access rules so that only people who need them have access to them.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Saw this at DO marketplace - bitwarden. Anyone else uses this?

Seems to be an alternative for LastPass and has a way to share encrypted files.

</comment><comment> coding-columbo keybase.io seems good for that

<comment><USER3> We also use keybase.

<comment><AUTHOR> @coding-columbo and facorreia

Checking out keybase, it seems to be like an encrypted slack instead of a file sharing platform.

Is there a way to just access their secure platform sharing without getting inside the chatroom?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For files we use PGP, and sometimes Manta (for big files).

For passwords we use LastPass Enterprise (and have no shortage of complaints about it)

</comment><comment><USER5> For us (120 persons):

\- Passwords et al (API keys, ...): PrivateBin

\- Files (log files, ...): Lufi

\- Strange things: scp (between geeks).

All of them are self hosted with https

</comment><comment><USER6> google drive file stream for non-critical files.

a NAS connected to our LAN, for critical and confidential files. w/o internet access.

designers use git lfs for sharing their work with the others.

</comment><comment><USER7> Google Drive, GPG, OpenSSL + Magic-Wormhole

</comment><comment><USER8> Google drive</comment>


EasyPost (YC S13) Sees Transactions Doubling Every Month - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/06/easypost-a-stripe-for-shipping-raises-850k-seed-round-sees-transactions-doubling-every-month/

<comment><USER2> Just built a fulfillment app for a relative's Shopify store using EasyPost last month. The sub-10-minute support response times are real, and the drop in pricing to 5c/package is phenomenal.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is incredible. Having dealt with the FedEx API for a client a while back this would have made our lives much easier. Good job to everyone behind it. Sorely needed product (and it shows based on their growth rate).

</comment><comment><USER4> Congrats Jarrett and John! Happy for you guys!

</comment><comment><USER5> Isn't charging 5 cents a shipment very low?

<comment><USER6> In case there was confusion, we charge 5c per shipment, and you still pay the carrier directly for the shipping label, so the total cost per shipment is the shipping rate + 5c.

<comment><USER7> Incredible value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> congrats on the growth guys!

</comment><comment><USER9> congrats @jstreebin!

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> congrats!</comment>


The Senate's new anti-encryption bill is even worse than EARN IT - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/06/senates-new-anti-encryption-bill-even-worse-earn-it-and-thats-saying-something <comment><USER2> Longer discussion at [https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2020/06/there%E2%80%99s-n...](https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2020/06/there%E2%80%99s-now- even-worse-anti-encryption-bill-earn-it-doesn%E2%80%99t-make-earn-it-bill-ok)

</comment><comment><USER3> "require that manufacturers of encrypted devices and operating systems, communications providers, and many others must have the ability to decrypt data upon request"

Would the unintended effect be maybe just to eliminate _commercial_ encryption software and force everyone to use open source?

<comment><USER2> From the link I posted in another comment:

> The bill is so broadly worded that I think it _might_ apply to individual > contributors to open-source projects, such as, say, the Linux kernel, but > I'm not sure and I don't want to scare everybody.

But the bigger picture is that this bill is part of a strategy. It's meant to make EARN IT look less unreasonable by comparison. A unified strategy needs a unified response.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> More digestible version I made: [https://thinkerapp.com/shared/MessyRadiantCaracal](https://thinkerapp.com/shared/MessyRadiantCaracal)

Context: This is a highlighted summary generated with an app I built to help myself approach all the drier HN links I was opening. I appreciate any feedback from the HN community on this project!

<comment><USER5> > More digestible version I made: > [https://thinkerapp.com/shared/MessyRadiantCaracal](https://thinkerapp.com/shared/MessyRadiantCaracal)

> Context: This is a highlighted summary generated with an app I built to help > myself approach all the drier HN links I was opening. I appreciate any > feedback from the HN community on this project!

Nicely done! Small suggestion I have is to add the expand functionality to tapping on the passage. It feels more natural and doesn't currently do anything.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the suggestion! Did you intuitively feel that the text was clickable?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Instead, the government can require the system to be redesigned.

No thanks.

<comment><USER7> Yeah I wonder legally what is in place precisely to stop someone from just telling the secret court to go fuck themselves or pleading the 13th? The secrecy they claim as a pretense would be ruined if cryptographers go missing. Whoops operation compromised from the start.

Revealing what was obvious from the start that it is a fucking fascist tool of abuse by minds incapable of comprehending irony. These are same the dumb fucks who would fire people for being gay out of fear that they would be blackmailed disregarding that their policy is the source of blackmailability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does this affect open source? PGP, cryptsetup, veracrypt and more? How do they factor in?</comment>


Show HN: Shots AI – Turn designs into code with one click - <AUTHOR> https://www.shots.ai <comment><USER2> Congrats on the launch, really neat idea.

It looks like the product is not yet ready, and it is just a collection of HTML/CSS templates at the moment (as already stated in the FAQ). As I understand, there is no process which turn designs into code right now, and this statement from the upgrade page seems like an outright lie:

> Some features, such as the AI based trace-and-export, are pretty heavy on > our servers and start getting expensive fast.

since How does shots work? section in the same page does not mention anything about uploading, and the Upload a shot page simply redirects to an Airtable form.

I love the idea of launching early, but is giving the false impression that the product is ready, and charging for a subscription on top of that really ethical? You may claim that you are actually charging for accessing your collection, but it does not appear that way from your homepage and links shared on PH and HN. Please do not mislead people.

<comment><USER3> It's interesting that the OP is only responding to positive/glowing comments and ignoring the others even though some of the positive ones are the newest out of all the comments. Doesn't instill a lot of confidence in my opinion.

Edit: I'm curious OP if you read this what the comment in your profile means and what someone looking at your website should glean from it: '"I wish I had sexual relations with that man" \- Bill, probably'

<comment><USER4> It's a riff on Bill Clinton "I did not have sexual relations with that woman [Monica Lewinsky]"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You really need to let us try it out without having to sign up. Imagine how many users that think "oh, yet another img -> html/css tool, I wonder how questionably it works" and then get discouraged by having to take a chance on something they have no idea how well/if it works.

I'll sign up anyway and give it a shot.

</comment><comment><USER6> Your app is so much better than the website...

I honestly didn't get what eaxtly you offer until I looked up a login on bugmenot.

for you other to gt an Idea, here is a screenshot from the app: [https://i.imgur.com/zIj2A1m.png](https://i.imgur.com/zIj2A1m.png)

</comment><comment><USER7> Overall, the application looks solid, there are some glitches that I am sure you would resolve them in future, thanks for making this tool that solves real engineering problems and helps developers to get to a prototype sooner. keep rocking !!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much! Love and support from the maker community is what keeps me going.

If you have any feature requests or things you would like to provide feedback on, we have a community page: [https://www.shots.ai/community](https://www.shots.ai/community)

And for glitches/bugs, please let us know through Intercom and a team member will be with you immediately!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Some features, such as the AI based trace-and-export, are pretty heavy on our servers and start getting expensive fast"

Why can't this just be done locally (with no plan needed?).

I hate it when I am artificially pushed into a plan. No thanks.

</comment><comment><USER9> What exactly is the AI doing? From the description it sounds like a UI design tool that exports the UI as code, which is like any other UI design tool out there.

<comment><USER10> > we built artificial intelligence to take the screen image and identify > common UI elements, patterns and properties so that tracing a design you > like is painless and easy.

Looks like it goes from a screenshot to code.

I can't find a demo that works without me signing up for it though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> First of all good luck! But, is this really a thing? or just trying to convince some investors to make it rain?

<comment><USER12> Based on the validity of some of the comments here, it really does seem like it's a company trying to convince investors to make it rain... I'd say do some research on some of the companies being mentioned here and see what you make out of it...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Such a brilliant concept, Loved the design. What are the programming languages does it support to export ?

<comment><AUTHOR> So right now it uses a DSL based AI code generator and supports HTML and CSS. There's a lot more on the roadmap and we have a community page that you can check out to request/upvote new features: [https://www.shots.ai/community](https://www.shots.ai/community)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> You might want to tell the AI to ignore the 'handlebar' in iPhone X screenshots.

</comment><comment><USER15> cool, I also work/playing with the same thing, inspired by pix2code, I use deep learning to turn code from image screenshot

</comment><comment><USER16> how far are you guys from adding react native?

<comment><AUTHOR> So React Native is definitely already on the roadmap, we have a very early prototype and I'm actively working on making it production-ready. It's one of our most requested features from our community page ([https://www.shots.ai/community](https://www.shots.ai/community)) and we're working as hard as we can to get it out as soon as possible.

We're also thinking of running an early beta. If you'd like, you can DM one of us through Intercom or anywhere with your email and we'll add you to our beta list so you'll be the first to get access to our newest features!

<comment><USER17> Hi, what else is on the roadmap?</comment></comment></comment>