Good writing is a business advantage - <AUTHOR> https://adaged.blogspot.com/2020/04/good-writing-is-business-advantage.html <comment><USER2> Superior writing skills are one of two things that separate novice developers from experts. This, as judged from experience, is self-evident to all people except bad developers. Here are the criteria that are generally most important:

* precision: This is perhaps most important. The ability to communicate tiny finite details that immediately reflects the product as a whole in a way that is universally clear to a wide audience in the same way is paramount.

* directness: Say what you mean. Don't waste people's time with distractions and pleasantries. Put the most important things first. If the audience wishes to read more they will.

* conciseness: There is an art to the careful description of technical details, behaviors, and examination of a subject that is both precise and still expressed in the fewest words/statements. An extended vocabulary is helpful.

* organization: Almost everything complex is open to more simplistic description as a subject of intrinsic relationships. The ability to perceive, understand, and convey those relationships is logic at its most base foundation but only when the those relationships are orderly and supported by evidence.

A common mistake is to be clever about organization, relationships, and their logic. Don't do that. People do this as a weak form of manipulation, but strong communicators will tear it apart.

All of these points on writing are directly evident in well written code as well as formally expressed writings for general audiences.

<comment><USER3> Here's the "one weird tip" life hack to do all of these things: revise and rewrite.

Important communications should go through multiple drafts. That includes important emails. Write it all out, then re-read it carefully, ideally after a bit of time has passed. Edit with an eye toward making it shorter. Rewrite it from scratch if you have to.

I once had the good fortune to take a writing class with Edward Hoagland. We spent most of the semester with each student working on a single essay-- reviewing it, editing it, rewriting it, rewriting it.

<comment><USER4> My last writing professor didn't have a Wikipedia page, but he was fantastic, and taught with an approach on iteration: He allowed us to submit our assignments for review, and then let us take back the paper to work on it more, and we could continue to do that until it was an A paper.

This essentially guaranteed everyone an A in the course, if they did the work. But the focus was on getting you to improve your writing, not to fail people out. My opinion is that this is how writing should be taught, rather than giving you one shot to get a grade.

(I also once had a writing teacher who gave me a zero for a paper because it wasn't submitted in a manilla folder, and no late submissions were accepted, so I had no chance to fix it.)

<comment><USER5> My father was a professor of business finance for a few years. He wrote on the board the first lecture that if any of the following words were misspelled, it was an automatic F:

1\. business

2\. entrepreneur

3\. your, you're

4\. its, it's

5\. they're, their, there

Also, for the term paper due at the end of the semester, for every day the paper was late, one grade would be subtracted. I.e. 2 days late meant a B would become a D. No excuses would be accepted, as they had the entire term to get it done.

The first time he taught this course, half the students were a day or more late. He followed through. The next year, word apparently got out as he only received one late paper.

His point was that in business, excuses were not acceptable.

<comment><USER4> The example I gave was of a terrible writing professor: I learned no writing in her course. Because when her arbitrary requirement that the paper be in a manilla folder cost me two letter grades for the whole course, I dropped her course, rather than accept a C as my highest achievable grade. It's the sole withdrawal in my entire transcript. Furthermore, I never got any legitimate feedback on the paper, which I put a lot of time and thought into.

It's important to teach the values of timeliness and attention to detail, but you aren't teaching anything if you're not giving students a way to recover and improve.

<comment><USER5> There was a lot of skepticism with this from the students at first. They didn't take it seriously. But after the first semester, the students took a liking to "no bullshit, no excuses" and thrived on it. His classes swelled with students.

If you're in business, and write business letters misspelling "business", you aren't going to be taken seriously (though you likely won't realize why the rejections are happening). If you graduate from a business school and can't spell "business" then the school's reputation suffers, too.

In college, you're an adult. The requirement that "business" be spelled correctly is made quite clear. No excuses, no bullshit.

<comment><USER4> But while the second year, the "word had gotten out", how many students may he have seriously harmed the careers of to make his "point" in the meantime? Would a subtler corrective action been equally effective at outputting successful students without harming others?

<comment><USER5> I remember a story about Chuck Yeager. He was put in command of an Air Force base during the Korean War. He noticed the pilots were putting in sloppy landings.

So one day, he got the pilots together, went out to the runway, painted two strips crossways and demanded that all pilots touch down within the stripes. There was a bunch of whining about it from the pilots that it was unfair and impossible.

So Yeager fired up a jet, took off, circled the field, and landed precisely in the center between the lines. He got no more guff from the pilots and they straightened up.

Me, if I was in a combat squadron I'd choose to serve under Yeager rather than a commander that tolerated sloppy flying skills. Sloppy skills will get you killed in aviation and especially combat.

<comment><USER6> Curtis LeMay apparently had a similar issue with the abort rate over japan (Pilots making up technical issues to avoid getting over the target/flak), so his solution was "I fly in the lead plane, anyone who turns around gets court- martialled" -> abort rate drops over night.

Story is taken from "The Fog of War" as told by Robert S. McNamara.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _> Here's a promotional film on the car that was sent to me on Saturday. It's almost impossible for me to believe this passes for work today. It's incomprehensible, unappealing, uninteresting and meaningless. It provides no information that makes me want the car._

The blog author misunderstands that the BMW car video ad is deliberately _not_ supposed to convey concrete information. Abstract ads are typical of _" brand awareness advertising"_ vs _" product specific advertising"_.

I made some previous comments about the difference between _" concrete informational ads"_ vs _" abstract aspirational ads"_[0][1]. Yes, the ad agencies choosing to communicate abstract ads are infuriating to us but they don't care because they are going for a deliberate and calculated emotional effect.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20034558](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20034558)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9877422](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9877422)

<comment><USER8> You're missing the larger change in society that advertising is adapting to.

Few people have the attention span anymore to read all of the copy in BMW's old ads. Ad agencies could hire Hemingway himself, it wouldn't make any difference. People look at the picture, the headline, and move on.

So-called brand advertising (at least, print brand advertising) serves as an admission on the part of marketers that, if they can't fit the whole AIDA model into a single ad anymore, they can at least try to push Awareness as much as possible.

Doesn't mean that brand advertising is particularly effective.

<comment><USER9> > Few people have the attention span anymore to read all of the copy in BMW's > old ads

or could it be that everything is so oversaturated with ads that spending two minutes _voluntarily_ reading fluffy ad copy just doesn't seem like a great use of time, even if it's well written?

attention span is its own problem, but connecting the two like this seems... odd.

\---

 _EDIT, had more thoughts on this_

i mean, i like the old VW Beetle ads. they're charming and clever and i enjoy reading them. but that's because the element of "trying to get me to buy something" isn't relevant anymore, i'm experiencing the (long-dead) ad willingly. but if the ad is a normal ad i see in a magazine... no way i'm giving it my undivided attention for two minutes just so it can manipulate me into liking X

<comment><USER10> I agree, there is still plenty of money invested in product placements in long form content, or sponsored 'review' articles.

It's not so much that they don't write copy, it's that they try to avoid telling you that it's copy

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In general, technical people severely underestimate the value of good writing. My wife has a MS in Professional Writing, no technical background, and got hired to work in the IT department at a major publishing company. While there, her entire job was writing up guides, announcements, etc., that were going to be disseminated to the rest of the company. Management had identified that a bunch of time/money was being wasted because the IT team had nobody who could write in a non-technical matter, so non-technical employees were giving a lot of pushback on IT changes that they didn't see the benefit of.

Even though the IT employees would constantly make snide remarks about her having a "soft degree", management loved her because she could take technical information, even if she didn't fully understand it herself, and translate it into a format that could be understood by the rest of the company.

<comment><USER12> At the risk of offending many HN'ers, I think many (most?) technical people severely underestimate the value of most "non technical" things. Sales, marketing, writing...

<comment><USER13> Having swung away from the technical somewhat and back again, my opinion is that many techies could make a decent fist of the non-technical side if they were forced into it, whereas the reverse would end in absolute disaster.

<comment><USER14> I used to be a game developer, which involves working with lots of people across different domains. I've seen no evidence that programmer art is any better than artist code. Given the choice between working with a programmer- turned-artist or an artist-turned-coder, I would almost always prefer the latter because they tend to be more aware of their deficiencies and able to accept help from others.

The kind of black-and-white thinking that programmers are understandably prone to often leads to them denying the existence of their own blind spots.

<comment><USER13> Interesting point that I hadn't thought of, though I'd counter that art as it's involved in video games is very much a technically skilled endeavour, no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't understand why this essay starts with an excursus on economic decline before veering around the corner to talk about writing and the author's---no shit---comparison of himself to Einstein? And then closes with a bunch of screenshots of BMW ads, evidently (?) as an example of Good Writing of the Past, but where those ads (that is, the alleged exemplars of writing) are too blurry to read, even zoomed in?

This is, dare I say it, exceedingly bad writing.

<comment><USER16> It seems as though you read the entire article and cared enough to make a comment about it. Those are not characteristics of bad writing even if it is disagreed with.

<comment><USER17> bit of a catch-22, wouldn't you say? If you read it, it must be good; if you don't read it, you aren't qualified to rate it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Here's a little test for your company and your website.

Is it easier for me to work out what the hell you do by looking up your company on Wikipedia than it is is by looking at your website.

A surprising number of companies fail the Wikipedia test, because marketing and management somehow feel that simple language sdescrtibing what they do somehow devalues the importance. "We're valuable because we're complex. Our marketing material needs to make what we do seem very complex".

<comment><USER19> It's normal for a company website to fail this test. After all, explaining what a company does is the sole purpose of a wikipedia article about a company.

The company website on the other hand has many more objectives.

<comment><USER20> What objectives are these? I have had quite a few occasions where I tried to look up what a project does and couldn't figure it out from the website. I only learned that the product is really cool and makes young, diverse and good looking people happy.

<comment><USER12> Its easier to sell a product that is really cool and makes young, diverse, and good looking people happy than it is to sell what a product does. The purpose of a website is to sell things. That's why the "About Us" page isn't the home page.

<comment><USER17> It's not like "about us" has anything relevant either. Usually it's some origin story about the positive change the founder wanted to gift to the world.

<comment><USER21> In other words, a bagacrap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It took me more than 5 minutes, reading through more than half the article, and watching the video clip in its entirety, to realize what this blog post what about. Is this good writing?

In the end, the proof is in the pudding. Is this selling cars? It's very hard to measure the marginal effect of one ad, but to the extent that we can do it, this is what the yardstick of advertisement is.

edit: putting -> pudding typo

<comment><USER23> Exactly! Title is so misleading I stopped reading after a second.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> From grade 7 to grade 12 my education was heavily writing focused. I didn't take a history, civics, or English test that wasn't 100% written. In college I took classes that were focused on writing as well, mostly because I could write better than I could study for/take a test.

That has made me an adult with no real skills except the ability to communicate very well. More specifically, I'm able to write very well. And I find it staggering how many people cannot write with any quality.

Rewinding to college - I funded my beer and fun fund by writing other people's term papers. The first year or two out of school I paid the rent by writing other people's term papers. I run a marketing business now and despite my hatred for spending the time writing longform, a good chunk of our revenue comes from people overpaying for content simply because finding good writers is hard.

While many people say that understanding how to code is perhaps the most valuable skill available to young people during their education, I would offer that writing well is of greater significance and use. There are plenty of excellent careers, vocations, and paths in life where any measure of success can be reached without knowing how to code. There are far fewer where not being able to write is not a hindrance.

<comment><USER24> How do you prove to others that you can write? I'm assuming that you have a portfolio that shows your writing — is that the case? How do you tell if your writing is good quality? Are your clients able to evaluate that too?

I suspect the issue is that it's really easy to evaluate technical skills like coding, but I am not sure since I don't work in a writing-focused occupation.

<comment><USER14> One thing that separates writing apart from many other fields is how _easy_ it is for non-professionals to determine when it's done well. In fact, the definition of good writing basically _is_ whether or not it has the intended impact on its audience.

If you are moved, the writing is good.

This is in contrast with other fields where "goodness" also requires other longer-term less tangible goals that are invisible to non-professionals. If a program does what you want right now, it may still not be made of good code because it can be hard to maintain, or fail catastrophically in edge cases or otherwise lack in ways that aren't immediately obvious.

You can be a poor chef who makes tasty food if your personality causes high staff turnover or your ingredient choices and pricing kill your profitability, all of which is hidden from the diner.

But the point of writing is to get an idea lodged in someone's head as effectively as possible, and we're pretty good at evaluating whether that's happened. The only case where it can clearly break down is journalism where the ideas you transmit must be _factual_ in ways that require external validation. A compelling news story that is false may be good "writing" at some level, but isn't good journalism.

<comment><USER24> I see, thanks for the clarification. I agree that coding has long-term intangible goals that are difficult for a non-professional for to evaluate, and it makes sense that this isn't something that people face in many writing- focused professions.

How do you evaluate and improve your own writing? Is this something that requires simply seeing the reactions of other people, or is it something you are able to simulate in your head? I think the reason why I thought it would be hard for other people to evaluate writing skills, is that I find it hard to tell when my own explanations are easy for other people to understand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I really like this line in the article: "Bad writing is bad thinking." So true. Sometimes I just write when I'm confused about something and it helps clarify things.

Since this is HN, I'm going to add a shameless plug.

For 4 years I've run Write Battle, a game for writers (originally anyone writing emails, instant messages, etc...but user base has largely turned out to be marketers) to compete against each other to devise the most concise prose. The best writing wins, as judged by brevity (response length) and readability (Flesch-Kincaid).

Right now, as we speak, I'm turning these games into a set of interactive, gamified, bite-size _courses_ to teach the basics of effective writing without boring reading or lectures. I should have the first set of (free) courses done in about a week [0].

My approach is that while grammar and formal rules are important, practical effect is _more_ important, so the games and courses I've made so far focus more on effectiveness than theory and rules. Turns out writing is more fun that way too!

[0] [https://writebattle.com](https://writebattle.com)

<comment><USER26> Interesting, but today's prompt left me questioning the exercise. This is because the prompt doesn't spell out the main point of the text in its entirety. It doesn't even spell out what smaller goal the prompt is trying to accomplish. So I'm sure it's possible to reshape the prompt into something shorter and sweeter, but I don't know that it's better writing.

To me good writing is about communicating your point well. It's hard to tell what I'm supposed to communicate from a few isolated lines.

<comment><USER27> I agree. I got this prompt:

> Cybercrime is viewed as a serious threat to the prosperity and security of > developed states, prompting the adoption of cyber security strategies across > a range of countries. Although some malicious cyber activities are carried > out in the pursuit of military or political objectives, a high proportion of > cybercrime is financially motivated. According to one report, this was the > case for 76% of all data breaches in 2017.

I had to read it three times to understand it. I could try to make it present the information in a clearer way - maybe something like this?

> Many countries adopt cyber security strategies to mitigate threat from > cyberattacks. Although some attacks are means to a political end, 76% of all > data breaches are financially motivated.

(The algorithm didn't think this was a valid response, but I like it.)

But it feels hollow because I don't understand what the prompt is trying to communicate. The average person eats almost 1500 pounds of food a year. Is it trying to say that countries shouldn't worry about cyberattacks? Why does it conflate cyberattacks to data breaches? There is no thesis or argument, they seem like disconnected and soulless facts. In good writing, every sentence has a purpose, and they build to a conclusion. Wasn't it confusing when I mentioned how much food the average person eats when it had no clear relevance to anything? That's how I felt with all the prompts I got. This still seems like a cool site but I was a little let down.

<comment><USER25> You and parent comment are both right, but it's interesting because I haven't heard this feedback before.

Part of what makes these games so playable is that they're quick and don't require a whole lot of thought. It's a compromise. The intention is for players to focus more on improving the technical aspects of the writing presented instead of thinking too deeply about the message because more context and more text to edit might add too much friction to the experience (i.e., make the "game" into more of a "task").

I know it might not help a whole lot, but each game has a tiny bit of context to help...the context for the current game (shown right above the game-play box) is "Opening sentence of a research paper by a think tank."

Anyway, I'll think about ways to address this. Thanks for the feedback.

However I will also add that while these games are meant to be more fun than serious...the "courses", on the other hand, will take message, content, audience, etc into account and generally be much more thorough.

anchpop - your response wasn't considered valid because it did not include the term "cybercrime". In hindsight this was a bad decision on my part -- each game has a small set of strings that a response must include to be considered valid (to avoid spam responses from messing up scoring). "Cybercrime" probably shouldn't be one of them (sorry).

<comment><USER27> I looked at more prompts. I think the three I checked out at random must have been an unlucky sample because most of the ones I looked at just now have had much more intention and clarity of purpose. I suspect you're getting this feedback now and not earlier because you happened to post it on HN at the same time as having an outlier prompt. Congrats on the site! It's really awesome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> After reading the title, I was hoping that the article would be not about advertising, but about technical writing - whether in communication (email) or documentation (internal or public).

Good writing is paramount for both of these contexts. From good text formatting to realizing what the audience is and adjusting level of detail and pace accordingly.

<comment><USER29> Does HN have some resources to share on good technical writing?

<comment><USER30> It's come up a time or twenty.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?q=technical+writing](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=technical+writing)

And while this is orthogonal, I'm sure there's some overlap: this is a list of links I've compiled on giving technical talks. I haven't checked the links for years, so I'm sure a few are broken.

[https://gist.github.com/macintux/5354837](https://gist.github.com/macintux/5354837)

<comment><USER29> Very helpful resources, thanks! I've bookmarked them to go through.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I can't help but feel like we are on the verge of a new audiovisual era, one in which long paragraphs of text are almost never seen in any marketing context and eventually in most contexts.

The initial reaction of most educated people is probably horror at our new illiterati leaders, but in an attempt to be optimistic, I'd note that the widespread dominance of writing is something of a material historical accident. Languages were originally spoken, not written. It's been suggested that the semi-mythical Homer was specifically depicted as blind in order to emphasize that poetry is an aural art, not a visual (textual) one. If somehow audio recording devices had been invented prior to paper, I think we'd be living in a far different society, one filled with audio recordings rather than books.

So, knowing this, the challenge is to adapt to this new reality and form of communication and learn how to utilize it to achieve the level of depth seen in literature. I'm fairly confident we'll get there eventually: the art of writing has been around for thousands of years, whereas video/film (moving images) is barely over a century old. We've got time to master it.

<comment><USER32> The Internet has been (depressingly) post-literate for a while.

I adore good English. IMO writing peaked in the middle of the last century. There are some beautifully literate, clean, elegant, but unpretentious books from that period. Like this one:

[https://www.amazon.com/Structures-Things-Dont-Fall-Down- eboo...](https://www.amazon.com/Structures-Things-Dont-Fall-Down- ebook/dp/B009G1PHP2)

Elegance and simplicity started to become rarer in the 70s, when writing became more about ego, forceful persuasion, and opinionation and less about communication.

Then YouTube happened, and now we're in the hyper-emotive era of "Wassup fam?" and "Mash that Like button." And memes.

Some of it is certainly entertaining - because it has to be. But it's not so good at sharing complex and nuanced world views.

So I don't think we will get there, because moving pictures and sound are inherently not a literate medium. They can be a _literary_ medium, but you get Maximum User Engagement™ with crude lowest-common-denominator content, and not with subtlety, difficulty, or complexity.

<comment><USER31> I don't really think you've understood my point. The art of writing is thousands of years old, whereas the use of audiovisual media is barely a century old. Widespread use and access to technology that lets you _create_ audiovisual communication and share it is perhaps 15-20 years old. This is _extremely_ recent, considering that spoken language (which became writing) was itself in development for hundreds of thousands of years.

The first writing by cavemen was probably scribbles, too. I'd give video another thousand years before writing it off.

And to be clear: I am a writer by profession myself. So I'm definitely on the side of "writing is important." I'm merely acknowledging that technology trends are changing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The new BMW ad actually speaks to me more than the old ones. I find the old ones too blunt, whereas the new one is trying to be poetic and smooth, purposefully contrasting with the old design and trying to create this utopic vision of the future where everything is smooth and efficient. I even got the feeling that there's a nice breeze in the car even though you're in the desert.

<comment><USER34> The old ads wer geared towards the people of those days in those days. The idea is moving people to buy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Just like his "400 mi range BMW", I fear George will find himself on the wrong side of history.

Let's start with cars: why has George gone out of his way to put down Tesla, lumping it in to his "not-a-new-product" category, and decided to purchase an objectively inferior electric vehicle (BMW)?

Maybe he likes the look of BMWs. I hope so. Or maybe he cannot stomach Tesla because it represents the exact antidote to his entire argument: an "incremental" product that requires no marketing or writing to easily outsell the competition. If the future looks like a world where there are no "new products" and great writing will be the meaningful differentiator between products, why has Tesla decided to forgo writing altogether, great or not?

He makes a few salient points on the outskirts of the article. But the crux of his argument is "good writing goes beyond almost anything outside of real transformative technological leaps," one of which is not Tesla, as noted earlier.

If you had to bet the future of societal progress on improving products vs. improving writing, which would you choose?

If the future of advertising follows the future of autos, then I'm sorry but George will be out of a job pretty soon here.

For all the hackers that get scared by these articles and run out to take a writing class: don't. Focus on creating great products. As Elon does, let the products speak for themselves.

Also George, small typo in paragraph 16: "I called by system "the three Ds.""

</comment><comment><USER36> I completely agree. I view this as a competitive advantage personally.

Like any skill, practice is the most important thing. Training helps, especially grammar & structure coaching. That said, tools can help:

\- Hemmingway[0] has been useful to me. I often use it to revise things I write elsewhere.

\- Grammarly [1] seems good, but I refuse to pipe everything I write to (another) cloud. If I could run it locally or get a private on-prem instance for my firm, that would be great.

\- Microsoft's new AI Editor [2] seems promising.

[0] [http://www.hemingwayapp.com/](http://www.hemingwayapp.com/)

[1] [https://www.grammarly.com/](https://www.grammarly.com/)

[2] [https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-blog/in...](https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-blog/introducing- microsoft-editor-bring-out-your-best-writer-wherever/ba-p/1247931)

</comment><comment><USER37> Has anyone here made the leap from developer to technical writer? Or know someone who has?

It sounds weird but I not only take pride in writing documentation for my software, I actually enjoy doing so as well.

I'm sure this would result in a large pay cut but it may be worth it for the change of pace.

<comment><USER38> I have not, but what I have done, is get to a place where documentation is a "first class citizen" in my work.

I actually wrote an article about exactly that, fairly recently: [https://medium.com/chrismarshallny/leaving-a- legacy-1c2ddb0c...](https://medium.com/chrismarshallny/leaving-a- legacy-1c2ddb0c8014)

It's a fairly long read, compared to most of my articles, but I feel that it's an important topic.

My biggest issue with most modern tech writing, is that it is actually painful to read.

It may be 100% correct, and impart very important information, but if I can use it as a soporific, there's a problem.

I find that writing in the vernacular, injecting personal anecdotes and [ _very_ carefully-chosen] humor and humanity into tech writing helps.

I write about extremely technical stuff; often walking through significant code trails, but I have had non-technical people praise my writing, and read the entire article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I disagree with the argument that today's inventions are only incremental improvements "because someone invented the automobile" \- if Tesla (or any other manufacturer) really manages level 5 autonomy at some point, it will indeed be a breakthrough. Or just take CRISPR - that in itself is a remarkable invention. Improvements to solar cells and batteries will eventually upend the whole energy sector.

I do agree with the author that good writing is a business advantage. E.g. developers who are good at writing blog posts or email newsletters can become widely known (and booked). I don't see the author make a compelling argument in the article that supports this though.

<comment><USER40> Also, don't forget that inventing the car in the first place was a bunch of "small" incremental improvements. Without improvements to steelmaking, the combustion engine wouldn't have been possible. Without Ford's incremental improvements to assembly lines, they would have been too expensive for mass market, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Yes, Comms is King. Whether written, verbal or other, the foundation of human progress is comms; often taking form as influence.

That said, while well written, I don't agree with his argument. In general selling - well, actually buying - is mostly driven by emotions and less factual. Even B2B is emotiinal. "Will this decision help my career?"

We don't buy what X does (i.e., features). We buy benefits. That is, "what's in it for me?" Yes, it makes sense to be upfront about features. Of course. But it's benefits that sell.

</comment><comment><USER42> I wish there was a concrete way of improving writing skills and getting feedback ala Hackerrank

<comment><USER38> "Just do it."

That sounds familiar...

There's no substitute for repetitiveness and habit.

Feedback is important, but also valuable. It can be hard to get good feedback for free.

I've found that just slapping stuff up there is important, as long as I keep doing it, and make sure that whatever I "slap up" is of the best quality possible.

Every few weeks, I stop what I'm doing, and spend a day or so, writing up an entry about something. My usual read length is under fifteen minutes, but I have a couple of prolix entries.

You can see what I write here: [https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/](https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/) and here: [https://medium.com/chrismarshallny](https://medium.com/chrismarshallny)

I'm not a widely-read author, but everything I do; whether coding or writing, is done as if I were publishing to the masses.

Establishes good habits.

I also find that writing in the vernacular seems to be received well. But that's just me. YMMV.

<comment><USER42> I am an avid book reader and developer. I write book reviews and also try to write good documentation as a means to improve my writing.

The only problem is finding someone or a group to receive good feedback.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> This is (one of) the reasons why I am skeptical of arguments that are dismissive of all formal coursework in college that isn't directly applicable to the technical aspects of people whose majors are in STEM programs.

General education courses, required courses in history and humanities, they provide a different way of critically thinking about things, and their frequently heavy writing focus is excellent practice for a skill that will be extremely useful in life, even if it isn't directly tied to your STEM program.

Consider this: And enormous amount of your quality of life, your career advancement, and many other things are directly tied to your ability to convince other people of your way of thinking. And writing is a fundamental vehicle for that process.

</comment><comment><USER44> I am not a particularly great programmer. I am decent at documentation, to the point where I have received unsolicited commentary about the technical documents I produce and the comments in my code. My technical writing class is largely to thank for it, plus a hefty dose of frustration at reading awful documentation over the years, combing through code with almost no comments, and the like.

Once your code "works," nobody cares about it -- they're on to the next thing -- and then the next time it receives attention is if something goes wrong, or something changes either coming in or going out. It is then that your code will receive attention again. Having good docs on hand is going to make that quite a lot better.

</comment><comment><USER45> I watched the ad and read the comments. I am not a target audience either, but I do respond to visuals. So I watched while mostly ignoring the semi- aspirational talk.

The ad created mixed feelings for me. Frankly, it could have done away with the voice over. Especially since it did not make much sense.

In a practical sense, the story told through video was sufficient.

Aesthetically, I dislike the new look. It looks nothing like I8 I was expecting to see, but that is a personal preference. Inside looks futuristic and cool, but not much more can be said beyond that.

I am oddly disappointed with BMW. They have all the money they need to unseat Tesla, but they just can't seem to hack it. Eh, maybe Taycan will change the field somewhat.

</comment><comment><USER46> If I were to make one request of people, it'd be that they re-read their own writing before posting it--even to Slack or a code-review.

I feel like it's a daily occurrence that I have to read between the lines of what people say and construct my own reply that does the heavy lifting of moving the ball forward by outlining the different possibilities based on what was said.

There's a sense in which lazy writers are offloading thinking onto others. This sort of drive-by writing is pretty annoying IMO. And when there's not someone in the room willing to do the meta-thinking of clarifying, it can lead to misunderstanding or arguments.

</comment><comment><USER47> Well reading/writing level are going down. Anyone who thinks, just because they've graduated from some famous college are going to absolutely obliterate competition in business are wrong. You need a language which most of your customers can easily understand and most of the times those who come from outside of the industry but have superior knowledge of language make fool of themselves.

This is as someone who doesn't know much about English but have built a company for English speakers.

</comment><comment><USER48> Good writing is a business advantage because it encompasses many other useful business skills.

\- Writing clearly requires empathy. If you write documentation, you must put yourself in the shoes of your confused users.

\- Writing requires storytelling skills. Writing something pleasant to read is no small task.

\- Writing requires social skills. How you write things dictates how well they'll be received. You have to sell your arguments and convince people with very different priorities.

</comment><comment><USER49> 'Communicating' is almost a better term.

There are great writers who are not able to organise their ideas very well.

I think good business writing isn't really the same thing as creative writing though they are both assets.

The ability to explain something very quickly in simple and succinct terms, so that the value is really well understood by an audience without any context ... this is the key.

</comment><comment><USER50> I was never more than a middling coder, but I can write.

I've built a pretty great and remunerative career on being able to understand technical things well enough to write about them for a less technical audience.

<comment><USER20> It took me a while to appreciate that. A long time ago i noticed that a lot of famous bloggers didn't really write about groundbreaking things but relatively trivial stuff. This annoyed me for a long time until i realized that being able to write this stuff is a great skill by itself. I think I am a decent developer and have done interesting things but I am having trouble communicating my stuff. My impact could be much more if I could write about it in a compelling way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Effective writing might be an even better advantage.

</comment><comment><USER52> Surely every thing you use in furthering your business will confer an advantage if it is a Good example of that thing?

</comment><comment><USER53> >(An advertisement for myself.)

I love the author's sense of humor.

</comment><comment><USER54> obligatory: [https://www.bartleby.com/27/23.html](https://www.bartleby.com/27/23.html)</comment>


On Writing & Drawing - <AUTHOR> http://cloudhead.io/2010/03/15/on-writing-and-drawing/

<comment><USER2> While I appreciate the sentiment of the article, and I agree that drawing is of the "1st degree" (I also believe speech to be of the first degree) a mistake is made here about the nature of drawing. Some of the argument falls apart when you realize that act of drawing is not simply a question of representation. There's a whole world to drawing which is about things which _do not_ exist, or rather those things which have no being outside of our thoughts. Or drawing a scene which shows more than could be experienced in real life- thus the beauty of many old, old drawings as well as a great deal of contemporary ones.

<comment><AUTHOR> very true. I'd like to touch on that next actually, and how it ties in with abstract art, which needs to be interpreted more than 'sensed'.</comment></comment>


SoftBank, Legend Invest $150M in Didi Chuxing's Bike-Sharing Unit - <AUTHOR> https://www.theinformation.com/articles/softbank-legend-invest-150-million-in-didi-chuxings-bike-sharing-unit <comment><USER2> Didnt most Chinese bike share companies went belly up like a year ago? most were investment scams anyway.

yep [https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/31/a-billion-bicyclists- ca...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/31/a-billion-bicyclists-can-be-wrong- china-business-bikeshare/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Who the heck is going to ride shared bikes and scooters after this?

<comment><USER4> Riding a bike is safer germ-wise than sitting or standing in a crowded metro or a bus.</comment></comment>


What is your favorite login screen? - <AUTHOR>

What is your favorite login screen? <comment><USER2> <https://me.com/> You can select the service you want to go to (mail, calendar, find my iphone, etc.) before you log in. Also the sign in box 'shakes it's head' no when you screw up your password. Pretty cool.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> <https://login.mailchimp.com/>

<http://vimeo.com/log_in>

</comment><comment><USER3> Why, the hackernews one, of course.</comment>


Slack Says It's Filed to Go Public - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-04/messaging-platform-provider-slack-says-it-s-filed-to-go-public <comment><USER2> Matt Levine on Slack direct listing from a few weeks ago...

[https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-11/direct...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-11/direct- listings-are-a-thing-now)

<comment><USER3> I didn't read the whole thing yet so I don't know if he covers this:

I think many of us (or at least a few loud members) in the tech community have started to see underwriting as a bad form of cronyism. The point jump on opening day becomes substantially about putting money in the pockets of a favored set of investors. Half of that comes from frothing up the public, but the other half comes out of the pockets of the pre-IPO investors and the company. That's not okay.

We know that in a hot neighborhood you want to price your house a little low to get a bidding war going. I get that something similar happens in the stock market. But that's an art of shaving 5-10% off hoping you yield an extra 5-10% over your original price point. We're seeing much, much bigger spreads than that with IPOs, which I take to mean that everyone but the underwriters and their friends are getting screwed.

<comment><USER4> And this is exactly why i immediately lose all respect for any company that choses goldman as their handler in an ipo.

<comment><USER5> _All_ respect? Really? And _immediately_?

If one inconsequential event like this warrants such an extreme reaction respect will be in short supply everywhere.

<comment><USER6> I don't know if it's inconsequential. But Goldman definitely has a well deserved tarnished reputation, especially in recent news of their actions that involved the 1MDB fund.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does anyone else here use Mattermost, an open source, self-hosted alternative to Slack? I like it. We're not allowed to store communication offsite. I have no experience with Slack, so I'm wondering how current offerings compare.

<comment><USER8> We tried Mattermost a while back. Slack is just way more polished, especially the mobile apps. We use the API to interact with Slack a lot. Mattermost was fine, just not nearly as nice as Slack.

<comment><USER9> I've never used Slack in a business context which leads to: what polish is missing that actually affects your use case? You mentioned mobile for instance but how are people using the mobile app while also being in an actionable position?

<comment><USER10> Not everyone is a programmer! I've had plenty of times when I was getting messages on my phone that mostly required informing/connecting the right people/departments. If I hadn't done it stuff would have eventually gotten done, but a lot later & with more misunderstandings and miscommunications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nothing is wrong with the market: Slack may have decided that this is the best way for them to create liquidity. There is also a cap (2000) on the number of shareholders a company can have before they have to abide by what amounts to the same reporting requirements as a publicly traded company.

Slack also get the advantage of the usual market pop of acquiring companies share prices that usually amounts to a significant % of the cash value of the transaction.

<comment><USER12> Stupid question but how do they create liquidity? Don't all the money go into the shareholders' pockets who sell in the listing?

<comment><USER13> Liquidity means that people can sell/buy the stock easily. It has nothing to do with the company's financials.

<comment><USER14> That's one definition of liquidity (which applies here). In the context of companies liquidity can also mean: assets to pay short-term liabilities (based on the article, it seems Slack has no problems in that area).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hopefully they raise enough money to build a native desktop app.

<comment><USER16> [https://volt.ws](https://volt.ws)

200 KB native Slack client. A polished public beta will be finally released on Feb 7. Also supports Skype, Twitter, Telegram... almost everything.

It was delayed by 9 months. Sorry to thousands of people who have been subscribed and waiting for news.

I'll release a detailed post explaining what I've been working on and what caused the delay.

Also super excited about the language I created to develop Volt. Compiles 15 million lines of code per second and can be translated to from C/C++. I've successfully ported DOOM and (almost) DOOM 3 while making build time 120 times faster.

<comment><USER17> 200 KB, now that's more like what a chat client should take! Even excluding the browser "runtime" I think Slack's JS itself is bigger than that.

I say this as someone who wrote a 20KB MSNP8 (MSN Messenger) client for personal use many years ago --- it's not _that_ hard to keep your code size down and performance up, even if you custom-draw everything so it looks like the browser Slack client.

May I ask, since I noticed your username, if you are Russian? It seems a lot of other non-bloated tools I use come from Russian programmers...

<comment><USER16> Yes, I am :) Might be a cultural thing. We like simple and efficient solutions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Serious question...

What are the benefits of using Slack over Discord? I know Slack has been around longer, looks more professional and has more tie-ins with work flow management tools but those seem like small advantages compared to how feature rich Discord is. Just genuinely curious as I prefer Discord for communicating with my coworkers about non-sensitive information but it doesn't seem to get any love outside of video game and internet communities.

<comment><USER19> Is that what Discord is (a Slack competing product)?? I've never found the time to look up Discord but I hear it referenced a lot.

On the other hand I use Slack daily.

<comment><USER20> Discord isn't really a Slack competing product as much as it's a Teamspeak and Mumble competing product... or at least at the start.

Initially it was just easy to use VOIP with rich text chat channels. Now they've added in video calls and a video game store meaning they're more gunning for Steam and even less for Slack.

I do not see them as being Slack competing. They're too casually focused to be a threat in an enterprise environment.

<comment><USER18> I completely forgot they added the video game store. That would kill them as a consideration for any kind of corporate environment.

<comment><USER21> If they were targeting themselves to that space, that would be an administrator toggle without question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > The company is choosing the unusual method for going public because it > doesn't need the cash or publicity of an IPO, the person said at the time.

So why is it going public? Is there a benefit to a successful company?

<comment><USER23> To provide liquidity to employees and investors.

<comment><USER22> More than the cash it currently has? It's a grab for an even bigger pile of money?

edit: Ah, missed the employees angle.

<comment><USER23> The "cash" _who_ has? The employees don't have cash - they have stock. You can't pay rent with stock.

This is a good move by Slack to provide a return to the employees who have stuck with them.

<comment><USER22> Ah, ok, so the employees will be getting money for their stock? That makes sense now.

<comment><USER24> They'll own stock they can trade publicly. It's their call now, rather than holding on to a bunch of fictional dollars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't get it.

Why do they need or want to go public with revenue north of 1 Billion dollars and ~1000 employees? (according to a Recode story from last year: [https://www.recode.net/2017/6/15/15810088/slack-deal- funding...](https://www.recode.net/2017/6/15/15810088/slack-deal-funding- amazon-microsoft-buyers-business-communication)).

The got a good product, it makes money, lots of people use it. Aren't they afraid of "winning" the market so completely that they can only look forward only to a downhill ride?

Is it simply because they took investor money and now need to grow like bejeezus to pay them back?

<comment><USER26> Look at it a different way, why do they need to stay private? Do they have any strategic advantage to maintaining a tight market-counterintuitive initiative? What's the reason not to put a bow on it and push it out the door? Probably large part due to their early funding, but what's wrong with that?

<comment><USER27> Not having a bunch of shareholders, who are interested in their short-term profit, directing your business decisions is one thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> ...and my confidence that Slack will continue to be useful and a good experience for me just plummeted.

Does this mean something is wrong with our market, or just my expectations?

<comment><USER29> Well the general startup model is to figure out a revenue stream _after_ either an exit or going public, so you're probably onto something.

Yes, I know, you can pay for slack, it's absolutely a viable product for free so most users don't. Does that sound like something a publicly traded company would be happy with?

<comment><USER30> Slack figured out its revenue stream a long time ago: charing companies who use it.

They were making $200M in revenue over a year ago:

[https://www.businessinsider.com/slack-200-million-annual- rec...](https://www.businessinsider.com/slack-200-million-annual-recurring- revenue-2017-9)

I'd imagine that number is significantly greater today.

<comment><USER31> 1.5 million paying users and 200M in arr is certainly impressive.

Thanks for the link

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The privacy statement of Slack is horrible. I also wonder why so many companies trust often highly sensitive conversations to what is essentially an IRC forum that could be taken over by an evil company any minute.

<comment><USER33> Convenience unfortunately seems to be higher valued than privacy by many. This held true for a web agency I worked for. Getting things done, even with proprietary tools, stood above all. The privacy policy was read later, or not at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Two comments predicted this on the discussion about Slack's redesign a few weeks ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18923809](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18923809)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18924347](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18924347)

</comment><comment><USER34> You thought the real-estate was bad in SF now... we have AirBnB, Uber, Lyft and now Slack all going public in short order.

<comment><USER35> I wonder why they're all going public right around now.

<comment><USER36> Trying to get it done before the economy tanks, I think. We're vastly overdue for a downturn, the economy was already over-juiced due to excessive tax cuts/etc, we just put five million households out of work for a month (most of which are contractors and will not even be getting back pay) and will be doing it again in less than two weeks (now that the Superbowl is over and we're not messing with FOOTBAWW we can get back to our regularly scheduled shutdown).

The US economy is extremely likely to slide into recession in the next 2-6 months. And when they do, it'll be a lot harder to get $7 billion for a knockoff IRC client.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> When hacker news shits on a tech company IPO its definitely time to buy.

</comment><comment><USER38> The interesting thing about these direct list IPOs is that if you have confidence your investors will hold, you don't need the bank for stability, you have stability as a result of such low volume. I'm no pro but I think the real risk is introduced when you don't know your investor base well, hence traditional underwritten IPOs have worked well. If the company doesn't need to raise money, seems like a fine way to let the little guys find liquidity. Will likely follow a similar chart as $ESTC.

<comment><USER39> Not sure if the comments were supposed to be connected, but just to be clear, Elastic NV (ESTC) did a traditional IPO. Spotify was the first to do this direct IPO and Slack would be the second.

<comment><USER38> Yah sorry, I started my thought about small cap IPOs that I think have similar revenue and then made a disconnected point, thanks for clarifying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Hate to say it but I believe this will be a easy short long term.

<comment><USER41> If you look at their revenue growth the past several years and projections I wouldn't assume immediately it's a short.

Their revenue growth has been very solid, so while the valuation may seem a bit high, if they hit their numbers for this year and demonstrate good visibility in to 2020 based on hitting projections it's no where near a short based on the value of other cloud/SaaS companies currently.

Now it would be great to look at the S1 to see the costs associated with the business but I don't expect it to be an upside down story as much as Box was at the time of their IPO.

Additionally you still have companies like MongoDB growing slower, from a smaller revenue base, with some very large costs and no where near profitability and still trading at quite a high premium, so based on their revenue and growth and assuming their net loss is below or at 50% of their revenue base it will still trade well based on current comps in the market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Microsoft Teams does almost everything Slack does, and some things even better. What vision would Slack provide to the investors to convince them that they would not just be wiped out by Microsoft or Google?

Personally I feel Slack was a huge missed opportunity by Google. Their enterprise woes would have reduced a bit

</comment><comment><USER43> I find myself increasingly preferring email over chat

</comment><comment><USER44> My use case for loving IRC is this: I like to chat with other people while learning a language/framework. What do you guys use these days to do the same? Are there public channels on discord or slack, so to speak?

<comment><USER45> There's a bunch of programming Discord servers yeah. Also some Slack ones but those always seemed to involve some awkward hack where you put your email into github to get an invite or some such.

Gitter is also pretty popular for that kind of thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I can't help but interpret 'Slack' as an abbreviation of 'Slackware', always, in whatever context. This leads to some curious confusions.

</comment><comment><USER47> For my curiosity:

Is there any mathematically optimal algorithm for doing an open initial offering? Some sort of auction I guess where at the end there's just one price and 100% of shares are sold?

I know Google did a Dutch auction... is that considered the state or the art? Are there variations that wouldn't have the same problem?

I suspect ICOs have done all manner of experimentation here.

</comment><comment><USER48> This is tangential, but a couple of years ago I market tested the idea of a slack competitor that limits interruptions. I could not find demand and ditched the project.

<comment><USER49> Ever tried [https://twist.com/tour](https://twist.com/tour) ? I've always thought it looked interesting, but my company uses Slack. The main difference seems to be that it's thread focused rather than channel focused. Which makes me wonder if it's basically just modern email (which is fine).

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> For those that are thinking of the product rather than the company Slack - theinformation ran a great piece on Slack's financials:

"Slack had revenue of $221 million in the year ended January 2018, and was projected to grow by 76% to $389 million for the year ending January 2019, according to the early 2018 documents. Revenue was expected to grow by 64% to $640 million in the year ending January 2020. The financial details haven't previously been reported."

Link / Paywall: [https://www.theinformation.com/articles/slacks-financials- ah...](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/slacks-financials-ahead-of- listing-plans)

</comment><comment><USER50> No mention here of MS Teams? I suspect many companies will be switching from Slack to MS Teams over the next 12-24 mos.

<comment><USER51> We use MS Teams.

It's always having to reconnect, the history doesn't work well, notifications are unreliable.

IT's just terrible IME

<comment><USER52> that's been the opposite of my experience. You described slack for me and MS Teams UI was much more friendly to use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> An application that lets you chat to other people from your computer is valued at a quarter of a company that puts stuff into space.

(Yes, I appreciate it's not a unique observation, and that reality is slightly more nuanced than that, but nonetheless, prima facie crazy.)

<comment><USER54> I personally don't get a lot of productivity gain from putting stuff into space. I do, using Slack, and I suspect a lot of other people do as well.

<comment><USER55> _You_ get immense prodictivity benefits from putting stuff into space. You just don't personally notice unless it breaks.

Did you check today's weather forecast specific to your location?

Compared to what the 2,000 active satellites enable, Slack is just chatter.

<comment><USER56> ULA does that, not spacex

and spacex doesnt plan on going public

and technically it's russian engines that launch them

in any case company valuation is not based on aspirations

<comment><USER57> > in any case company valuation is not based on aspirations

It kind of is though. Valuation is based on future discounted cash flow. Aspirations inform how much future cash flow a company can generate.

<comment><USER56> but are satellite launches a growing market? there is only so much space up there. Mars is a different beast, but that's quite a few decades ahead before it starts bringing "cash flow"

<comment><USER58> I'm not sure if you've checked recently, but there's a _lot_ of space up there.

<comment><USER59> Not really. Geosynchronous orbital slots are filling up very quickly. They tend to space them about 2 degrees apart due to interference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> a-dub shit. startup idea: "encyclopedia dramatica for work"

</comment><comment><USER60> The world is mad. Launch an IRC server then make billions.

<comment><USER61> There's a long history of taking things that are marginally hard to use (like FTP servers) and making them marginally easier (like Dropbox). I kind of understand why it works, but it's still seems a little disappointing that you can make billions off of a technology that was invented eons ago (for both FTP, and IRC).

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Why filing only now? Trying to get a piece of fools money while facing fierce competition?

</comment><comment><USER63> Better late than never.

</comment><comment><USER64> After 30 years the market is finally prime for a managed IRC service.

<comment><USER65> Managed and _modern_. Seriously show me an IRC client that supports images, threads, emoji reactions (yes they really are useful), painless file transfers, etc.

Hell IRC doesn't even let you browse history. How can you people not see that Slack is vastly superior to IRC (apart from the openness of course).

<comment><USER66> > _emoji reactions (yes they really are useful)_

Fun, sure, but useful? Ehh...I dunno. It seems like you have some specific use in mind and I'm curious, so if you don't mind me asking, what do you use them for?

<comment><USER67> They're useful to see support of a message, without requiring the responder to say "I agree with $MESSAGE_FROM_SOME_TIME_AGO".

This is both useful for weeding out mostly-pointless "I agree" statements, and for encouraging people who would not otherwise send support to do so.

Compare this, without emojis:

      user1: I think we should try $THING.
      user2: Yes, that's useful.
      user3: But what about $OTHER_THING?
      user4: I agree.
      user3: See, $USER4 agrees with me.
      user1: $OTHER_THING is too pricy for us right now.
      user4: No, I was typing at the same time. I agree we should try $THING.
      user5: $OTHER_THING is my preference!
      user6: I've used $THING before and loved it!

to this, with emojis:

      user1: I think we should try $THING. (5 :+1: emojis)
      user3: But what about $OTHER_THING? (1 :+1: emoji)
      user1: $OTHER_THING is too pricy for us right now.
      user6: I've used $THING before and loved it!

Note that in my example, people were more chatty than they normally were, but not everyone who responded with an emoji in the emoji version even responded with a message in the no-emoji version.

<comment><USER68> > They're useful to see support of a message, without requiring the responder > to say "I agree with $MESSAGE_FROM_SOME_TIME_AGO".

Messages on this websites have a number of points associated with them based on the number of upvotes and downvotes they get (if any). But we can't directly see the number of points a particular post has (though we can indirectly infer it by how it's sorted compared to its sibling messages and whether the text is grey rather than black).

But, even without this information, the vast majority of posts and responses are informative and have some substance. For example, I didn't just post a 2 word response to your post saying "I disagree".

Forums that didn't have voting or emoji reaction support didn't have problems with "me too" posts. Neither did usenet.

<comment><USER21> As a counter to that, GitHub had a very bad problem with that before they added emojis to issues/PRs. There were hundreds and hundreds of issues with countless "I agree" messages across major projects.

<comment><USER68> In that case, some moderation (manual or through automated tools) could be used to address the issue.

On that note, I noticed that my original post was downvoted. I personally think that it would be more useful if the person who downvoted it had posted a reply instead and detailed the reasons they disagreed with what I posted earlier (like you did). The latter contributes to the discussion. The former doesn't really provide any useful information other than someone out there disagrees with me and I have no insight as to why.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> "From 1980 through 2001, if you had bought the average IPO at its first public closing price and held on for three years, you would have underperformed the market by more than 23 percentage points annually."

<comment><USER61> Ignoring the huge black swan event in your data (the tech crash), the point of getting in on an IPO isn't for you to hold it 3 years.

You get allocated shares that you then sell before the lockup period for everyone else expires. It's just risk-free money for the people that are friends with the underwriters.

I don't have the data on me, but I bet if you got into every IPO from 1980 through 2001 and then sold after one month, your returns would be pretty damn good.

<comment><USER35> "And finance professors Jay Ritter and William Schwert have shown that if you had spread a total of only $1,000 across every IPO in January 1960, at its offering price, sold out at the end of that month, then invested anew in each successive month's crop of IPOs, your portfolio would have been worth more than $533 decillion ($533,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) by year-end 2001."

"Unfortunately, for every IPO like Microsoft that turns out to be a big winner, there are thousands of losers."

"You could have earned that $533 decillion gain only if you never missed a single one of the IPO market's rare winners—a practical impossibility."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Anyone else thinking of jumping on buying a condo in SF bay area soon in anticipation of this wave of IPOs? I'm looking at a few properties with the rationale that prices will only, at least, stay constant if not increase with additional demand all this new liquidity might bring to the market.

<comment><USER69> I don't think they're particularly cheap right now if that's the question

<comment><USER43> Agree definitely not cheap, but newfound liquidity for thousands of tech workers should, in theory, keep prices high or higher than they are today.

<comment><USER70> If remote work continues to catch on (ironically almost always using Slack) then the rate of price increases will likely stagnate.

<comment><USER43> SF is so screwed up though that even if that's true there will, for the foreseeable future, more people that want to live here than there is housing available...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Fascinating how « Good » apps turn to utter shit when they are touch by VC money.

Slack really follows the same pattern as everything that exist in the valley :

\- Create simple software that people love to use

\- Raise hundred of millions

\- Stop innovating / fixing bugs / adding new features and solely focus on customer acquisition

\- Go Public ans Cash Out

\- Leave the company and ignore millions of frustrated users

\- Repeat

<comment><USER72> Are the latter points true? I mean, I personally do not like using Slack at work, but I have to admit it has a lot of really smooth UI and Product features that seem polished. I don't think I encounter bugs on a frequent basis at all, and my coworkers don't seem frustrated by using it.

But I guess I'm just one point of anecdotal data?

<comment><USER73> I can second this, and I have a bias against it. When it came out I couldn't wrap my head around why people were excited about it. I've used IRC for like 20+ years and I didn't see it as much of an improvement from IRC.

However, I currently use it every day and honestly have no complaints. I still don't know why a chat app is worth so much, but it does what it's supposed to (lets me talk to others in my company in a single place), and basically everything you could think of has an integration for it. I haven't had an even remotely annoying user experience since the early days, and as a "slack hater" I've been actively looking for things to complain about.</comment></comment></comment>


Having real trouble hiring coders... - <AUTHOR>

We're finding it a real chore finding a coder with the right combo of skills and fit. Too many applicants are either underskilled or just a poor cultural fit (that's corporate speak for boring AFAI can tell).
Some background: we're launching a number of built-from-scratch systems on a LAMP stack, that use a number of web APIs. Whoever gets the job will have CLOSE TO carte blanche to build the system however they like, usign whatever frameworks or code base they are comfortable with.
So if you're a PHP coder based in Sydney (Australia), whose keen to run your own projects (which pretty much comes with complete control over how you do that), and want to work in an office in Bondi Junction (above Westfield) that is small and happy, drop us a line: http://www.excitecorporation.com/contact.html <comment><USER2> Big ups to the author of this post for getting me to read what is essentially a job posting.

</comment><comment><USER3> Am I the only person who cringes at the word "coder"? For some odd reason, I've never liked being referred to as a "coder", particularly when the word is preceded by "my".

</comment><comment><USER4> Just pay craigslist their fee, and put up an ad. Problem solved. I'm disappointed that your spam made it through to HN, but am glad to see the very on-target comments it has generated.

Also making a snap judgment that someone under the pressure of an interview situation is "boring" is probably a mistake. Sounds like there is something else going on. The fact that you call developers "coders" is pretty damning of your attitude, imho.

<comment><USER5> _cough_ you're showing ignorance

They want a local resource. In sydney. There's maybe 1 or 2 (if that) legitimate jobs posted on sydney CL on a daily basis. Not everyone lives in SF!

<comment><USER4> Oh, right, because HN is local to Sydney. How ignorant of me to not know that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If the programmer has "carte blanche", why are you restricting them to PHP?

<comment><USER7> ditto that. this is probably the wrong crowd to be recruiting php coders from.

<comment><USER8> Perhaps we can stop the language flaming. I build my stuff in a combination of PHP, C++ and javascript on a LAMP stack. Feel no need to justify it to people who aren't making architectural decisions.

<comment><USER7> i don't see any flaming here, just a misdirected appeal. i'm not arguing people's use of php, i'm just saying there aren't many of that type of people in this particular crowd.

<comment><USER9> Nah, there are a reasonably good number of people here who know PHP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > if you're a PHP coder

I think I see your problem.

A good programmer can write PHP; but a programmer who _only_ knows PHP is not good.

</comment><comment><USER11> What about you is different, what makes a job with you not feel like a job? What is your culture like? ("not boring" is probably the wrong answer) What gives your company personality? What would the person get to work on? and why is it interesting?

I looked at the website and it didn't really grab my attention.

What a lot of people seem to forget when recruiting is that you often have to sell your company and the position just as if you were selling anything else. Companies with well known brands have the advantage of a known culture (most of the time) or simply just brand awareness, which they leverage to get quality applications (or at least more of them). Startups and small to midsize companies don't have that advantage. So, if you want the best talent, you have to sell your company like you would sell your product. Undirected marketing of your company & jobs will usually produce fairly random response.

A very well read book in the HR/Recruiting community is called "Hire With Your Head". I recommend anyone that who needs to hire read it. The best takeaway quote...

"Companies need to move away form a classified ad mentality of listing boring, hard-to-find jobs and, instead, adopt a consumer marketing approach to advertising" ~Lou Adler, Hire With Your Head

</comment><comment><USER12> > Some background: we're launching a number of built-from-scratch systems on a > LAMP stack, that use a number of web APIs. Whoever gets the job will have > CLOSE TO carte blanche to build the system however they like, usign whatever > frameworks or code base they are comfortable with.

You've already settled on PHP, however. So you're longer giving anybody a "CARTE" blanche and it's no longer "built from scratch". False advertising?

If you're looking for "PHP coders", you're in for a disappointment. You should hire great programmers who can also code PHP - and you would have to convince them why your idea is so fascinating/unique that it would be okay to write in a more or less boring language which has a kiddie/toy reputation.

Yahoo did this by not specifically listing PHP in their ads and bringing in strong Java/C/C++ programmers and then teaching them PHP on the job (or at least that's what they _used_ to do for the non-UX centric parts).

You can find great web-developers and designers who are primarily PHP people, but afaik smarter coders tend to shun it.

</comment><comment><USER13> I recently offered to hire and manage three local C programmers in Cebu, Philippines for the company that owns the web scripting software I've been using for more than a decade. My offer would have cost them about 2/3 of the cost to hire one intermediate level C programmer in the USA -- yet with my offer they would have had a 4-man team developing their newly purchased software instead of only one.

They could have made substantial progress these past 5 months, but instead they have apparently made no progress whatsoever, and they are still wasting time trying to hire one C programmer in a little midwest city where one of the owners lives. I guess five months of wasted time with no progress to speak of is something that does not bother them very much -- but I think it should, because the more time they waste not hiring a programmer and failing to make some real progress, the bigger and stronger their competition grows.

I ran my own outsource programming business here for several years ... and while it is sometimes a challenge to 'train' a skilled programmer from scratch over here, there are so many who already have the requisite skills that I find it amusing that problems like yours actually exist. I mean, what's wrong with hiring an outsource programmer and getting the jobs done? Especially if the programmer you eventually hire is going to be given as much autonomy as you claim?

I just don't see why every person that's contributing to a startup company needs to be part of the 'local startup family', that's all. It seems to me that sometimes it just makes more sense to get the work started and finished -- one way or another -- even of you have to change your approach to make it happen.

<comment><USER14> From what I can tell happened to past and present clients of mine, there are plenty of bad programmers all over the place local and worldwide, and throwing more people at the job never fixed anything. If said company is having a hard time hiring a programmer but you have at least one available now meeting the exact same criteria they want, then that company really needs to rethink what they're doing. But having a 4-person team when a single one can do is overkill.

Also on another personal note, my startup has one person who lives across the country (the US, so it's a big country ;) ) and I'm not sure how well that will work out. We've yet to even meet up in person for a drink or anything, and we can't hang out together to code, and I can't easily go over there to kick his ass (figuratively speaking) or he mine when necessary.

In comparison, I pair program with my boyfriend occasionally when stuck on something or working on a project euler problem, and we both do our individual work near each other quite often and the interaction can be pretty useful. It's not entirely the same as IRC or videochatting, which I've done on one project where I worked with people halfway across the world. But again, this is my personal preference. I'd _like_ to hang out with the people I work with, because strictly work can get sort of dull.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Are you (or your compatriots) active in the user community in Sydney? I've found that's a great place to find good developers.

Otherwise, write a job posting that YOU would be excited about answering, and post it in a few places.

</comment><comment><USER16> You are pushing all the wrong buttons!

If you want as much control as you've already declared then I am afraid you will struggle to find the guy you want, they are fed up of working for people that make the wrong decisions for them and leave them with the mess to clean up.

Listen careful to all this feedback and maybe you can either change the job so that you genuinely do offer something interesting to the guy you want or temper your ambitions to find the competent PHP you want.

</comment><comment><USER17> you do realize PHP is the most boring, conventional, middle of the road way BDC's get into open source stacks. Why don't you just post for J2EE engineers? Other than the obvious fact that they will probably only know Java you are going to get the same type of person.

If you want interesting ask for interesting, not safe. Ask for people using python/ruby and then let them use that.

<comment><USER12> There's nothing wrong with PHP as a tool and if a developer wants to make the judgement call to use it (for whatever reason), they should. The parent, however, is up-front stating that they will _have to_ use PHP which is an unhealthy approach when you're looking for somebody to build something from scratch.

And this may be totally wrong (and I very seriously hope it is, as I see too many of these) - but this again sounds like a case of business/web-design people hoping they can hire hackers to execute on their 'wonderful and unique' idea. These don't work _not_ because there's anything wrong with being a business person or a web-designer (quite the opposite, they're crucial) but because you can't tell how good or bad a certain idea is unless you begin executing on it yourself.

[Edit: looks you've got a fairly interesting idea and an established business. Don't kill it through turning away of enthusiastic/skilled hackers - since you mention APIs, why should you be a one language shop? The beauty of web service is that they're fairly language/technology agnostic]

<comment><USER18> "There's nothing wrong with PHP as a tool"

I think there are some things wrong with it, actually. Probably you can write good code with it, but I don't think it is encouraged, and it is very easy to screw up.

<comment><USER19> _Probably you can write good code with it, but I don't think it is encouraged, and it is very easy to screw up._

I don't think so. PHP just doesn't have the right abstractions needed to create truly good code. Having some OO support is better than having none at all, but it's clear that the authors of PHP never bothered to try any object system other than Java's -- easily the worst object system of any language. (Also, I would love to know why a language with no type checking has Java- style interfaces. What is the point?)

Combine that with the lack of anonymous functions, closures, continuations, lexically-scoped variables, and so on, and you are stuck compromising your design to get something that is actually implementable. It is sort of like a brilliant novelist that is used to writing with his laptop, but is given some napkins and a dull pencil instead. Since he's a great author, he'll probably make something good -- but just give him his laptop back already.

<comment><USER18> I was trying to be diplomatic - actually I personally despise PHP, but I acknowledge that some pretty big sites have been built with it. Also, it still seems to be the most productive language, which is odd, given it's crappyness. Try to find a popular blogging system or CMS that is not written in PHP (I know there are some, but somehow the PHP ones always have more traction).

<comment><USER20> That's because PHP is installed on a huge number of web servers out of the box, and thus at the disposal of nearly any Joe Blow who uses shared hosting.

PHP has done one thing right in it's history; they made it _extremely_ easy to deploy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> In this economy, there are a lot of people just happy to have a job. I would recommend you try to get the passive candidates:

<http://jobs.37signals.com/>

<http://snaptalent.com/>

<http://hiddennetwork.com/>

<http://authenticjobs.com/>

You can't always expect the best programmers to come to you. You need to go out, find them, and give them incentive to work with you.

</comment><comment><USER22> If you're building from scratch, is there any particular reason you have to go with a LAMP stack? Any reason not to go with Python, ROR, Java-type stacks? If you expanded it a bit, you might have better luck...

</comment><comment><USER23> pay more, or stop complaining. Your work culture is not as cool as you think, I guarantee it.</comment>


Thoughts on Computer Science graduate school - <AUTHOR> http://dennybritz.com/2014-05/cs-grad-school.html

<comment> good-citizen I did high school in 3 years by taking all the required classes for senior year as electives in junior year. Then I went every summer in college to finish my CS degree (pitt.edu) in 3 years as well. I was 19 when I graduated. Never even considered grad school for a second. Was so excited to get into the work force.</comment>