Is There Any Room for the Not-Passionate Developer? - <AUTHOR> http://philippe.bourgau.net/is-there-any-room-for-the-not-passionate-developer/ <comment><USER2> This is always worrying to see when set as an expectation. I mean, I enjoy coding. My employer gets my 40-ish hours of attention. But I just can't seem to get into after-hours or weekend coding side projects.

I have ideas to explore (Nothing I'd ever want to turn into a business, perish the thought), but I just... can't find the motivation to spend more hours doing what I already spend about a third of my life doing. I enjoy reading articles and the like, sure, but if I wanted to work on side projects, I'd need to take extended time away from work to "reset" and get into something.

Does this make me destined to fall behind? I'm hoping not, but given how many people talk about needing one's job to be their all-consuming passion, to be something they spend spare time and weekends on... I'm not always hopeful.

<comment><USER3> Probably not what people want to hear, but I think it's near impossible to complete a significant personal project while working a FT day job, let alone gain the inspiration for something unique and meaningful. If you're really passionate about pursuing your own projects, unless you are superhuman, I think you'll have to take time off work, or find something PT or flexible consulting hours.

<comment><USER4> I find it really hard to be passionate about personal projects at the same time as work projects. The moment I get excited about something at work, all of my personal stuff gets instantly shelved. Then, when work turns non- technical, all of a sudden I'm all fired up for my old projects.

<comment><USER5> I've seen this exact cycle multiple times with my job. I got into programming because I enjoy it and find it fulfilling. When I hit boring times at my job, I seek that fulfillment with side projects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have pride in my work, but I'm not going to kill myself for the company.

I work a 35 hour week, and if you want more out of me, pay me. I'm good enough to be worth a wage, I'm not about to undermine my own health and the hiring market to satisfy some fad about over work.

Just look at the games industry. Overwork is endemic. The only way its sustainable is by creaming off a new layer of young star-eyed programmers each cycle.

In areas that are not as glamorous, its just not possible.

I do not derive my self worth by how many hours extra that I put in at work.

<comment><USER7> I'm very much the same way, except you can't pay me to work more that 37 hours a week. At this point I feel that I'm to old to care about whatever random deadline management set on a project. It's not that I don't care about deadlines, I do, but if it's unrealistic, I'm not going to stay late to help meet it.

No one is rewarding you for getting stress or burn out. It's true that management will often reward those who stay late and "put in the extra hours", but in the long run I don't see it being worth the strain on my mental health.

<comment><USER8> how can I become as well off as you?

I am young, 20-something developer, but i already conciously slack off and don't give a shit at my job, doing just enough to not get noticed/fired.

How do I take the next step of working less hours? I would like to work at most 10 - 20 hours per week, but still retain my full-time, 40 hr/week payrate. Do you have any advice for me? Thank you.

<comment><USER7> Sorry, no. I'm in Denmark, pretty much any standard contract here will say 37 hours a week. I tried to have my contract changed to say 30 hours (and of cause having my salary reduced), that not something management really like.

I don't slack off, and I do care about my job. What I don't care about are deadlines set by random, or unwillingness to adjust deadline if issues show up along the way. I view it as a "I can be just as inflexible as management" sort of deal.

Of cause it helps that I'm not worried about losing my job. There's plenty of job for developers around here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A lot of development work is boring, unglamorous stuff that pays the bills and can't be avoided. Passionate developers hate that.

I've had to intentionally recruit "boring" developers, who weren't passionate at all. They just get on and do their 9-to-5 because it's their job. Without their help, we'd have lost most of our A-players due to a lack of sufficiently interesting work.

Relatedly, there's a difference between being motivated and being disciplined. Passion and motivation are essential wherever innovation is required, but otherwise discipline is what gets the job done. Turns out, in any team larger than a handful of people, you need a mix both.

</comment><comment><USER10> Sure, I remember one non-passionate developer got very upset when companies asked him for code samples. He said "f that, I have a life. When I go home I cook, or read, I don't write more code. Any code samples I have belong to the company where I coded them. I'm not a nerd that does open source projects." So yeah, there u go. People like that exist and are part of the workforce.

<comment><USER11> " So outside of work, what management projects are your working on and could you provide some samples of your work? "

Do managers spend their off-hours coaching kids sports teams and running charities in order to boast their resumes?

<comment><USER12> Or more absurdly: Do plumbers re-do their home drain piping as a hobby because of their passion for PVC? Do landscapers go home and trim hedges after hours for fun? Do doctors spend their off-ours doing minor surgery in order to have "remarkable careers"? Maybe some do, but it's not expected. Why is it that software practitioners are expected to always be coding in their free time and working on side projects?

<comment><USER13> > Do doctors spend their off-ours doing minor surgery in order to have > "remarkable careers"?

Quite a few go to the Third World to perform surgery for free — and, not coincidentally, increase their skills.

<comment><USER14> Yes, but that's not concurrent with working a full-time paid position either. When the go to another country with a group like MSF that is basically their full-time job, paid or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There is room for both the passionate and non-passionate developer.

Because passion doesn't necessarily equate to skill. Passion looks like an eagerness to be immersed in a topic and invest time in that topic. Some people work out of necessity and not necessarily passion (maybe just passion to make a living, pay the bills, and support their families).

What actually matters is that you:

\- follow through with your promises and claims to your team or manager/boss/founder/yourself

\- you leave things better than you found them

\- you're reliable

If you adequately do those things, there is plenty of room for you, passion or no passion.

<comment><USER16> I'd agree with that.

My dad was a fast jet pilot, I grew up on RAF bases watching jets fly overhead, as a scout I worked at air shows. It was all I wanted to do, but unfortunately I was too tall to make the entry requirements.

I'm 34 and still haven't really got past that. As a student I looked for job adverts for well paid positions and decided that I'd look to become a contract Java developer in London on an income that would put me in the top 1% in the UK. It took me 5 years and I didn't have to go to London. Many of my peers are still struggling to get a mortgage with some looking at 40 year terms. While I have one, I have the funds to pay it off. Now my family are financially secure I can start taking on fixed price work with more risk and more reward; building out a business and getting away from a cripplingly sedentary job is the next goal.

I think you need commitment (amongst other aspects) and passion is one vehicle to achieve that, I'd imagine a more rewarding one, but it's not the only one.

<comment><USER17> Get your sports pilot license.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The best developers I've worked with are the ones who realize that while passion is helpful, it often fails you at the times when you need it most.

As an example, if I'm in the middle of a 3 a.m. debugging session because someone slipped a bug into production and customers are complaining and the company is losing money, I find that stone-cold professional determination is more reliable than passion.

I've worked with developers who has busy lives and families. They didn't do much programming outside of work, and they mostly worked 9-5. But they were so locked-in, determined, and professional while on the clock that they kicked ass and outperformed most of their colleagues. What programming they did do outside of the office was carefully chosen to help them keep up to date with the latest and greatest.

This isn't meant to knock passionate developers; I consider myself one of them. But given the opportunity in the future, I'd gladly work with a team of hyper-productive, focused, professional developers even if they don't have the 'passion' for programming that a lot of job postings seem to be looking for.

</comment><comment><USER19> It's a stupid expectation.

Passion doesn't even correlate with outside events OP lists.

Little point having a side project when your employer often asks you to sign a contract giving them ownership of all code inside or outside of work. I've walked away from job offers because they wouldn't strike this.

Where's the passion coming from in the 90 of 100 programming jobs that are programming payroll, fuel pump displays, stock systems and the 1,001 other not exciting, not full stack, not web dev role? OK, there's probably someone, somewhere, who can get passionate about fuel pump programming, but...

Also consider the employer's point of view. Unless junior code-monkey is needed, and even then, I would far rather see a well rounded individual with some non-IT to the fore. With at least a fighting chance of some social skills and some other interests than discover all free time is spent at the laptop working on other stuff. It can help when understanding client needs, or bring the idea from the model engineering or some other hobby to the task at hand.

As with almost everything, balance is the key. If, as a parent, you can't read one programming book a year, or spend a couple of weekends worth of time on a bit of tinkering there's something wrong. The reason a lot of parents end up no longer developers is they probably became senior enough that they're herding cats (staff) instead of bits.

So I'll stick with DHH and heavily favour work-life balance.

<comment><USER20> I'm super excited about programming "boring" stuff like the things you listed, because there are often huge usability improvements to be made and the people who use them express a tremendous amount of gratitude when they experience process automation. However, from what I can see, the bulk of them are in huge corporates and/or huge consultancies that work for them. Where are these 90% of jobs from your pov?

<comment><USER19> Well a good proportion are in those huge corporates or consultancies. An awful lot of people end up at those places, often straight from uni. Only later do they realise it's not usually the best place for your career or job satisfaction!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The startup industry expects employees to be passionate about the banal. This is not realistic.

<comment> eric-hu About you:

You have a passion for CRUD apps. You dream about CRUD in your sleep.

You attend (or give talks at!) CRUD conferences. Your bookshelf has at least five books on CRUD. You attend CRUDathons, and maybe have won first place in the most READs or most CREATEs category.

<comment><USER22> CRUD is a "hard problem". There are currently no RAD frameworks for simple CRUD apps — nothing like FoxPro or FileMaker of their heyday. The amounts of redundant labor being put in CRUD apps all over the world is insane — and no one seems to be doing anything about it.

So yes, I am mildly passionate about CRUD apps development, and it is not hard to imagine someone who is really passionate about it, coding next-gen rapid development environment for CRUD webapps weekend after weekend, and on its way to becoming yet another garden variety tech billionaire.

If some industry is "boring" and monotonous, it is ripe for disruption by something exciting. Truck driving. Filing taxes. Accounting. Paralegal. And yes, CRUD app development — will be automated nearly out of existence soon.

<comment><USER23> Agree with you here that CRUD is a surprisingly hard problem. I've been playing around with Rails however and find it really helps with getting past CRUD.

<comment><USER24> Rails tends to deal with CRUD not by raising the level of abstraction, but by automating the generation of code. That helps when every different CRUD route grows little hairs of difference, but is less than ideal if you have bigger refactorings to make.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> If you are interested in the craft, it's hard to imagine the interest ends when you cross the threshold of the workplace on your way home.

But how that interest is measured is more interesting. A friend of mine just creates things for his kids, another has small hacks around the home, another is playing with his music setup and creating his own pedals, I run lots of forums and the systems for them.

It doesn't have to be a "Where's your OSS contributions?", or a "Work outside of work".

You just cannot make someone deeply interested _not_ take an interest outside of work.

The hard bit is how to detect this fundamental curiosity, because I agree strongly with others that it isn't "What are your side projects, where are your OSS contributions?". It may surface in many more subtle ways, mostly private noodling around, wondering how things work, and could they be made better.

<comment> vertex-four The thing is... if you're interested in almost anything else, there's no particular expectation that you spend every possible waking hour doing it. Most hobbies, you spend maybe an hour or two a night on, if that, and spend the rest of your evenings doing something else.

If you get enough flexibility to explore things you're interested in within the context of work, it seems perfectly reasonable that 40 hours a week of that is enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Enterprise development.

For an internal project over a certain size for a large enough organization you actually want people that will just do their thing, be happy, collect a pay check and carry on.

your über 10x coder won't make any difference in these environments.

<comment><USER27> Yeah, that über coder is likely to make things worse because spending 40+ hours a day in a typical software job makes you feel your brain is atrophying and doing some overly clever stuff suddenly becomes a good defense strategy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's simple: If you spend more than 40 hours per week at the office, then you are bad at your job.

There are only two reasons. You either aren't productive enough, which means you are bad at your core job, or you are taking on too much, which means you either lack the social skills to say No, the maturity to manage your time, or that you are fucking around too much at the office. Basically, anything more than 40 hours means that you are either bad at your job or at managing your job.

That said, coding outside of the office with no particular purpose in mind is a lot of fun. The whole "play" thing. It's important to keep it at the level of play, don't get too serious. Serious ruins the point of play.

</comment><comment><USER29> I don't like the word passion. When someone asks me the cliche question "What are you passionate about" I want to punch them in the nose.

The word passion to me implies an level of emotional obsession that borders on (or actually is) unhealthy.

I enjoy programming, and find it interesting. But I'm not passionate about it.

</comment><comment><USER30> Funny how most articles mention family as the only acceptable thing to do outside of work, Even, or especially when you're young, there's more to life than shaving milliseconds from that query code. Working OT should not only be discouraged, but disallowed to force people into hobbies or things they care about - watching loads of TV or whatever they feel like as long as it's not homogenous. We know it in biology and other science that too sterile ecosystem is not good - you need diversity and variety. If all you do is code or later code and have kids, then on a global scale it leads to a really dull society.

</comment><comment><USER31> My wife is going to school to become a programmer. She is the exact opposite of me. She is passionate about programming and it's a job to her. She hates talking about code outside of working hours. Yet she's a good programmer that can get the job done and has a part time job while at school.

I believe there are many people like her in the industry and they are the ones who do the majority of the work.

I have a super passionate colleague. It's actually counter productive working with him because most of our energy goes into design debates and office politics and competition

</comment><comment><USER32> By any measure I'm a workaholic and I love programming, but something feels off with the word "passion" in this context. I don't think you need to be passionate to be good at anything, what you need is motivation and practice. In the case of programming, I believe you need enough curiosity such that the dopamine hit you get from figuring something outweighs the incredible pain of getting to that point. Only by stacking up those gains over a period of years will you achieve competence. If you don't feel that satisfaction and drive to continue learning then you will definitely burn out before you are competent.

In other words, I believe there's an intrinsic quality one needs to become a good programmer, but it doesn't necessarily manifest as passion.

<comment><USER33> My dopamine hit often comes from improved performance: Awesome, I cut the runtime by a factor of 25!

Or reduced code. Or improved UI.

Generally anything that improves my life as a developer or those of my users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> There is quite a bit of room for the non-passionate developer.

The fact of the matter is that there are a lot of companies out there doing CRUD web development and there are lots of jobs that only require mediocre skills.

And it turns out that the Tech shortage is so bad that those mediocre jobs still pay very good salaries.

This is why tech bootcamps are so successful. It is not that these bootcamps are able to pop out high skilled developers in 3 months that are better than Top Tier CS grads. Thats ridiculous.

They are so successful because it turns out that you don't really have to be that great of a programmer to do CRUD web dev at your average startup. But these startups still pay insanely good salaries when compared to the median US work wage.

<comment><USER35> It seems like you're implicitly asserting that non-passionate developers have 'mediocre' skills, and are best-suited for CRUD work. Do you mean to say that passion is a prerequisite of professional excellence in our field?

It also seems like you're saying that bootcamps only produce mediocre CRUD developers - who, presumably, are non-passionate? I know some (passionate, highly-skilled) bootcamp graduates who would be really quite insulted.

You might be a little more deliberate with your axioms.

<comment><USER36> _Do you mean to say that passion is a prerequisite of professional excellence in our field?_

Isn't it a prerequisite for excellence in any field?

<comment><USER37> No, professional dedication and discipline are. Passion helps, but is neither necessary nor sufficient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> "passion: a strong feeling of enthusiasm or excitement for something or about doing something".

I am sure there is a place for people who are not passionate but I don't even want to work there. I have been programming computers for more than 30 years and it still excites me. I want to build great things and make the small things perfect. There is _always_ a place for passion and always something interesting about everything.

Being excited and enthusiastic hasn't killed me yet.

It is not about huge hours. The world is full of dumbasses who work massive hours and write shit code.

</comment><comment><USER39> I consider myself a passionate developer, and while strive to put myself into scenarios and projects where that is a plus, it's generally not the easiest route. People who _care_ about what they're doing technically become bored or aggravated easily in their daily work. Being opinionated about things that are considered taboo is not always a good thing either, especially if that goes against common tropes or when you're on a buzzword-driven project. It's also easy to aggravate other passionate developers if there are different opinions. Passion-induced skepticism about a solution or tech stack can sometimes even be construed as incompetence.

If your passion is programming in general, chances are you have a broad experience background, which is not always perceived in a positive light by management. I recently had a meeting with a potential client who told me they would not hire me because they found it strange and implausible that someone would be able and willing to do both script language programming and also develop native modules in C.

I would say, all things being equal, non-passionate developers are very feasible career-wise and absolutely essential for many projects, because chances are they're going to be doing the brunt of the work.

Especially in a team, these players are important for follow through. I like to think of teams as RPG adventuring parties: you need people from all character classes to make it work. While all-mage or all-beserker parties _can_ sometimes pull through, a balanced and diverse approach is a better generalized strategy. You want tanks and support characters.

</comment><comment><USER40> When I started working, I lived with my parents to pay off student loan debt. I didn't have to go shopping or fix my house. I worked from 8 to 7, forgot to eat lunch sometimes, went to sleep at 8:30, and woke up at 4:30 to hit the gym before work. I'd code in my off time and go in on the weekends. Now, 3 years in, I have a house, a dog, a girlfriend, go to the grocery store and cook my own meals, try to work out some of the time, too many home improvement projects, a lawn to attend to, an old motorcycle I want to restore. That is, I now have everything I dreamed of and went to school for in the first place. But some part of me thinks that maybe I should be doing more, or I should be studying to try to work for one of the big software companies, or developing a portfolio. Part of me wants to, but mostly I just want a decent life, and maybe once I have that worked out I'll come back to software in my free time, because really, I do like it, maybe even a little too much, but right now I'd rather just try to get my shit together in the real world for once.

</comment><comment><USER41> Passion is a proxy for "interest in the topic".

The key point being that programming really requires that the programmer is deeply interested in doing it.

<comment><USER27> No, it does not - as evidenced by most of the industry. Being deeply interested actually hinders your ability to work in a lot of typical programming jobs, because it'll make you get bored out by the realities of business and pushing the same pointless CRUD or boilerplate JS code.

I feel that the reason startups like young people is that only fresh programmers can feel passionate about or impressed by this kind of work.

<comment><USER41> OK I see you are doing the HN thing and pedantically interpreting the words literally.

Programming well requires that you be interested in the topic. It is of course possible to program a computer without being very interested and many do.

<comment><USER27> Not trying to be pedantic here. You wrote, quote, "programming really requires that the programmer is deeply interested in doing it", and I disagree with that.

As for your clarification, it depends on how you understand the word "well". In general, mastering _any_ skill requires interest in it, otherwise a person settles down on the minimum level that lets them do their job comfortably. But a point I think is important to highlight is that this minimum skill level is often "programming well" in the business context. No matter how many buzzwords companies put into their job offers, what most of the industry really wants is replaceable cogs that follow orders well and don't think too much. Being _actually passionate_ about programming seems not only a bad proxy; having passion can be counterproductive at work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> This article seems to conflate a passion for engineering with a passion for one's employer. The two are quite orthogonal.

<comment><USER43> True, but neither should be a job requirement. I don't need to be a domain expert in marketing to write a relatively simple SPA and API over your "big data" idea, and whether or not I know Go or ES6 (or any other "bleeding edge" technology) has extraordinarily little impact on my value to the organization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I believe that people don't understand that when you work with a computer you are working with a machine that can work for you. Specially when you are a programmer.

That is the first mindset that I will implant in any young programmer, make the computer work harder, but learn to work less yourself.

Forget about working more hours, you will get older, you will get ill, specially if you work too hard. Start working today in making the machine do your work.

As a professional you should be able to compete working 40 hours a day easily. If not you are making something wrong. You need more skills and not just learning a new language(of the week).

I will study less programming and start studying other things like art(music o painting) or psychology(how humans work) because that way you can improve interfaces and your own tools.

In fact I had this education myself, and I can do lots of things that other people can't. For me is obvious how to make it and why but for the rest of the people is very hard. I realize now that is my education in those areas that people had not studied because in theory they are useless for the technical work.

When I see programmers that only know about programming I see how fast they dig their own grave, just working too much. Maintenance goes up over time and they could barely sustain their own code. They can't progress as they are stuck with old code maintenance. The code gets too complex to understand just using text alone.

Quite interesting they only develop visual tools and test when asked and for non programmers. I see it as people not wanting to use screwdrivers because they have their nails or teeth, but technically able to do it for others.

They ignore how to make great documentation,structure the code(to constantly reduce complexity) or how to communicate graphically in order to make tools that make their life easier and life gets harder and harder for them.

I am training right now people and I teach them something as simple as using (Dear) IMGUI over their own program to visually control their own code and memory. After a month or so they start getting it on a big AHA!! moment why they were so much unproductive before.

</comment><comment><USER45> Would it be fair to say that we expect people to really like solving problems, and implementing the solutions, rather than being passionate about coding?

I really, REALLY, enjoy solving problems that will make people's lives easier and while implementing the solutions will frequently get the feeling it's not the right way to code it or it's not the most elegant way, and will devote a sane amount of time trying to make it better (after making it work), which usually ends up with the application of the SOLID principles (fun fact, there are more than the 5 letters).

However, ignoring the rare events where a problem consumes me and makes me go almost a day without eating properly (relax, I drink a lot of tea/infusions and I'm not exactly thin, also not obese) just wanting to make it work and feeling energised, I too don't feel incredibly motivated to put time into coding after work.

After work I usually read about current affairs (politics, economy, science), read some pages of a book, play a game and binge watch something on a streaming service. Not the first time the solution to a problem comes to me when I'm almost falling asleep, or sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night.

Guess people are different, which doesn't mean people that aren't always demonstrating passion are incompetent or will provide worse results. Do I dare to say they will be the most consistent in the long run, though a mix of these types of people will probably be the best combination, as they will support and learn from each other?

</comment><comment><USER46> So I had this discussion in another group today, and I guess one point that no one brought here is the fact that some people/managers/companies faces software engineering as an art.

Under this point of view, we should compare software engineering with painters, musicians, writers. Isn't it expected from this guys to "breath" their areas even when they are "not working"?

I'm not saying that I agree with that point of view. Just adding another point of view to the discussion.

* credits are not mine.

</comment><comment><USER47> Two really basic flaws in the logic here.

 _> As my Aïkido professor says, the more you practice, the better you get …_

Oh, sure, because every Aikido practicioner who has practiced the same number of hours has the same ranking. (That's sarcasm, btw...)

 _> Studies have repeatedly demonstrated that 40h per week is the most productive work load [...] But then, how do passionate people manage to remain productive when working more than 40 hours per week ?_

I don't know what studies you're quoting, but this just makes no sense. For the _same work output over longer time_ , you will have more productivity. The trick is keeping up the pace. At the same time, there is absolutely no evidence that "passionate" programmers are more productive _for the same amount of time_ than "non-passionate" programmers.

And yes, you need time out of the box to make out-of-the-box solutions. Archimedes' bathtub, Newton's apple, the Apple Computer's fonts, ...... you really have to get the hell out of the office once in a while.

</comment><comment><USER48> I dunno. Enjoying programming is not even on the same planet as having a passion for it. I have a genuine passion for programming. I do it in my spare time, because _I fucking love programming_. My employer gets forty hours a week. More, very occasionally, you know, when there are fires or whatever. But I spend some of my spare time programming that I would otherwise devote to personal relationships, or watching cat videos, or whatever everybody else does. There is a mountain of difference between the programming that happens at work, and the programming you do in your spare time because you are passionate about programming. I am 100% confident after twenty years in the industry that if you aren't taking _some_ amount of your spare time to write code for yourself, you aren't really passionate about programming. End of story. Nobody says you need to blow your weekends and stay up all night behind your computer. But if you are clocking out at 5pm and never touching your IDE until 8am the next morning, you just aren't passionate about programming. And if you used to spend some personal time programming out of passion, and you don't anymore, consider that you might have lost the passion you once had. That happens, you know. You've just become passionate about your kids these days, instead. And is that wrong? No. But it's not wrong either that employers are rewarding people who are genuinely passionate about programming. Can it be an expectation? Sure! Why not? Go work for BigCorp or whatever, if the position here requires passion for programming. But think for a minute that every company that says they only hire passionate programmers also says they only hire 10x programmers. We all know that's not true. So if you enjoy programming, but you aren't really passionate about programming, there's nothing stopping you from telling people in an interview that you've got "passion" for programming. Might as well tell them you're "10x for sure, bro". They won't know the difference anyways.

</comment><comment><USER49> Absolutely. You might be more interested in solving real world problems and hence you learnt programming. You might not be passionate about programming, but he tools it provides to solve problems. It's like using Microsoft Excel, I am not passionate about it but use it extensively to solve problems I am passionate about.

</comment><comment><USER50> > _that might also be the moment in your life when you become a parent_

> _That is when things get tricky. Neither can you jump ship for the next cool > and risky startup where you'll do great things, nor can you find enough time > moonlighting to improve your skills_

I have opposite experience. Just before becoming parent, I quit my cubicle job. I started 'cool risky opensource startup', to be at home with a child.

9-5 had lot of overhead (socializing, commute, babysitter...). Now I can organize my time better, work longer and do more work, while spending more time with my kid.

</comment><comment><USER51> How about spending the first 40 hours of work with passion? There seems to be this belief that workplaces have to be demotivating and therefore all learning has to happen outside of work.

</comment><comment><USER52> You need to be professional, keep learning, keep up to date and strive to improve your skills. Professionalism can't be faked, passion can.

</comment><comment><USER53> banks and insurance company IT departments are littered with non-passionate devs. They probably started bright eyed and bushy tailed, but then they had to maintain 30yr old systems and make fixes for patches that fixed another patch. New projects and passion come together. you dont find any passion in maintenance.

<comment><USER54> Counterexample: I was more passionate about my last maintenance job, where I could shape the system through slow, but steady refactoring, compared to my current job, where I mostly string together buzzword-worthy components.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Personally I am more worried about those who just do not care. But that might be the mild definition of passionate.

</comment><comment><USER56> There is plenty of crappy grunt work IT that needs done. It does the exact opposite of inspiring passion.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think that one should only spend 36-40 hours a week on work, but one should _also_ spend plenty of time outside of that honing one's craft. I think that neatly squares the circle of burnout vs. getting to 10,000 hours.

</comment><comment><USER57> How can you be passionate about your work when the company you work for is pushing product that are uninspiring and you feel every day the breath of management to deliver something that dull thing?

</comment><comment><USER58> Look at team fit first (If you're gonna spend at least 30% of your time with them, they better be pleasant to work with) and then their future potential (based on their past experience)

</comment><comment><USER59> I believe passionately is about being passionate with the product, the company itself. Not-passionate means you're an executor and that's all.

</comment><comment><USER60> Allow me to be skeptical when your first quoted source is Gladwell.

</comment><comment><USER61> A passionate programmer should work overtime - just not for their employer. My overtime goes on my own projects only - why put overtime into something you don't own?

</comment><comment><USER62> [http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/5289.html](http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/5289.html)

"The great majority of employees are quite enthusiastic when they start a new job. But in about 85 percent of companies, our research finds, employees' morale sharply declines after their first six months—and continues to deteriorate for years afterward. That finding is based on surveys of about 1.2 million employees at 52 primarily Fortune 1000 companies from 2001 through 2004, conducted by Sirota Survey Intelligence (Purchase, New York)."

Seems like a large sample. I don't see how an employee who happens to be a developer would somehow be different.

I am pretty sure there are many accountants/writers/designers/brick layers who are passionate about their jobs, and many who aren't.</comment>


Amsterdam's Startup Manifesto - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/on-startups/8656836beb94

<comment><USER2> The main reason why Amsterdam isn't a startup hub, and won't be for some time, is really simple: money.

First of all compared to SV there is no easy access to capital. Want to raise 100k (an insignificant amount by SV standards)? Well you better get a good price for your kids in the black market because there's barely any VC to speak of and banks do not give money to anything more complicated than a clothing shop.

Next is housing. Amsterdam is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, but it's also one of the most expensive ones. Living inside the city ring (what people typically understand when you talk about Amsterdam) is extremely expensive. A 50-sqm-one-bedroom appartment will easily cost you $1500 (over 1000€) and for the average person that means almost 50% of your netto salary. Go under that and you're not really living in Amsterdam proper but the newer, and much less desirable, outer boroughs.

Finally there's the issue with compensation. Amsterdam is plagued with yuppies in the finance/consulting/sales sectors for one reason: it's what pays. In consulting 60k is almost entry level, and I'm talking about middle of the road companies. A senior engineer, someone with more than 5-7 years of real experience, is lucky to break 55k and will never get a raise once there. Lack of talent you say? Go 120km to the southeast and you have access to fairly hardcore technical guys. If you need more you have Germany right next to it which also has lots of technical talent. There is no shortage of talent here, there is a shortage of pay and of interesting work. And let's not get into the highly unfavorable contracts offered, like mandatory non-compete agreements for up to two years and automatic ownership of everything you make in your own time with your own equipment.

In short, nothing will change unless there's more money flowing around.

<comment><USER3> Agree 100%. I basically see all really good engineers either flying out to SF or working from home while being employed by a SF company. Mainly because of the complete lack of appreciation (in hard cash) by companies here. I myself are working for Norwegian company from Amsterdam.

Something to add as well: failure is accepted in the Valley. It's part of the way to success. In the Netherlands you will get BURNED for life. First of all, failing the company and being stuck with personal debt? The only way to get rid of it is to go into 'schuldhulpverlening' (debt helping something), which will mean you will have to live of 30 euro's a week for three years and can't get any bank loans in the first five years after it. Second, an entrepreneur that went bankrupt will have a stain on himself forever, both with banks, as well as investors.

Then there is the complete difference in how investors work between the Valley and Netherlands. When my previous employer was raising money (the company was about 10 persons in size) the only way to get money out of Dutch investors was to replace the management team, whereas they eventually raised 5M in SF. No business plan or no experienced CEO? There is the door. Seed money? There are a few funds that provide it but it's hard to get around to it.

<comment><AUTHOR> "It's part of the way to success. In the Netherlands you will get BURNED for life."

Couldn't agree more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'll throw in my two cents on the education side of things. My supervisor is a professor of entrepreneurship. I asked her how she teaches it since she has never started a business herself. She said "When I start the course the first thing I tell them is that most of them are not going to start a business." What she believes is that she teaches them a way of thinking that will help in the future. This was weird to me. Basically, despite "expertise" in the topic, it still boiled down to teaching theory and not how to start a business. But that's just a snapshot of one conversation, take from it what you will.

Generally, there is a division in young graduates: the part that want security and benefits and "not having to think about it" to the idealists who have the potential but are clueless as to how to get started. Divisions between disciplines in the classroom mean that in the past year I've spent more time with anthropologists than engineers. A ridiculous amount of time. Who knows what ideas could have been sparked if I'd hung out after-hours with a few techies instead?

The irony is that many of the top graduates from my class will go on to work for McKinsey and other consultancy companies (it was the top career of choice) somehow deluding themselves that they can offer top advice on something they've never fucking done. Isn't that pretty amazing? I think so. They are not bad or dumb people, but they've been taught that they CAN do it like this.

What other industries can you be a consultant in without prior experience?

</comment><comment><USER5> "Seriously: McKinsey? WTF do they know about starting your own company?"

Eh.. I don't know, maybe they've been consulting and guiding startups since before you were born?

They've even written an excellent book on starting a business called "Starting Up" ([http://www.scribd.com/doc/4505824/Mckinsey-Starting-Up- Busin...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/4505824/Mckinsey-Starting-Up-Business- Planning-Manual))

Anyway, I don't think that the problem with Dutch startups is ambition. It is lack of action taking. If I look at people with awesome and ambitious ideas, they almost never go out and persue it full time. They also almost never try to find a cofounder. If they do, usually it's a group of friends that go at it part time.

So perhaps what we need to convince people of is that it's not so risky to stop what you're doing for a year and pursue a startup idea full time. The Netherlands is actually a very startup friendly country, people just don't know it. They don't know about tax advantages and subsidies available to entrepreneurs. Banks make it seem like getting money is hard.

BTW how did you manage to write a blog post about startup culture in Amsterdam without mentioning Bubbleconf? ([http://www.bubbleconf.com](http://www.bubbleconf.com))

<comment><AUTHOR> ""Seriously: McKinsey? WTF do they know about starting your own company?"

Eh.. I don't know, maybe they've been consulting and guiding startups since before you were born?"

Consulting and guiding from the sidelines indeed. Being a consultant is pretty much the furthest you can get from being an entrepreneur. They know next to nothing about risk taking, only about mitigating risk to others. I believe it's a true disgrace that new venture is the most well-known startup competition in the Netherlands, and I'm definitely not alone in this. Over the years it has become a bullshit bingo where some 50-year old Shell exec lectures young talent about why their startup should be a sustainability focused business. They just forget to mention how they have been ignoring any form of sustainable behaviour in their own business model for the past 5 decades.

I'd rather take advice from someone who's done it himself instead of following up on some macro-level bullshit business plan book. I don't really believe in stories that promises me golden showers based on some assumption-overloaded excel model. Webvan anybody?

<comment><USER5> Just to make sure you don't misunderstand me. I don't have any affiliation with McKinsey, I just think it's a bit odd to dismiss a firm with a pretty solid reputation out of hand without much evidence.

I don't think anyone asks of McKinsey that they should be entrepreneurs, or even risk takers. I don't see how risk mitigation is irrelevant to startups. You'll find little about risk mitigation in 'Starting Up' though. It's more about how you can describe your business in a standard way so you and your investors can reason about it more easily. If that's something you want I'll leave up to you.

I don't think you should follow the book to the letter, I just think it's a good little book. There's no stories in it that promise golden showers, none that stuck in my mind anyway.

Isn't the whole idea of risk taking to promise yourself golden showers based on an assumptions based revenue model (or none at all), like webvan did?

I agree with you that it's a good idea to take advice from entrepreneurs themselves though, that's also why Bubbleconf makes an effort to get founders to speak at the conference (and not consultants :P).

(btw, I work for a company that coorganizes Bubbleconf, but I'm a part of the organisation of the conf this year, just a helping hand)

<comment><USER5> *I'm not a part of the organisation

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great Piece. FYI: last year we brought 500 female led startups together througout the year, to connect with the eco system of investors. we organized 2-monthly Pitch training programmes that won the recognition of the European training Foundation. We have monthly coffee chats for female entrepreneurs. We bring a fresh approach to the startup female entrepreneurs, connecting them with investors. We are building an inclusive startup eco-system, and indeed, if there would be more corporates, VC's, who would support this, we would go faster - and so would the female entrepreneurs. Every country in the world understands that female entrepreneurs are key to future growth of the economy, ( do a google search and you will know) but the Dutch government is not yet there. Next week we'll talk again

</comment><comment><USER7> I'd love to hear the one, the first, most important (or with the highest leverage or MVPability) thing we could start to change. Tell me and I'll help.

Startup tour and media attention for it was not bad either btw. At Springest we get a lot of visiting students who want to know what it's like to work at a startup or start your own. I feel a bit like we're also underplaying how much is good already. Maybe a first step is a good directory-style site that gives info on all kinds of startup ecosystem parts? Then we can fill in the gaps or accept them where they can't be filled in. And make sure nobody gives bullshit reasons for not starting something :)

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't know were you got your information about higher éducation and startups, but a lot of good things are already happening at ACE. [http://www.ace-amsterdam.org/](http://www.ace-amsterdam.org/) Greetings, @martinharing

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> To be sure: With this manifesto we don't mean that the ecosystem is completely shit. We've written this post in order to recognise current weakness in the Amsterdam ecosystem, discuss and learn form them, and build something great from it.

</comment><comment><USER9> You're talking about talking to the government, but you'd need a clear agenda if you want to partake in such an endeavor. So what will the main talking points be and do you have something clear and actionable in mind?

<comment><USER10> \- entry points in education systems using dutch influencers. \- Cheap resources like specialised Housing \- Facilitate talent coming into the country with more information on how to set yourself up and who to talk to. \- Small enterprise and startup awareness campaigns

These kinds of ideas

<comment><USER11> Who can/should spearhead this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In Amsterdam, there's almost no houses with garages. Put bluntly, this is why Amsterdam will never be anything like SV.

<comment><USER13> IJburg (East-Amsterdam) is full of parking garages. Huge ones underneath almost every large building :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> dangerous business, ijburg :p

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's started a conversation at the very least ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly. Which is the most important part in my opinion.

<comment><USER15> I am an American who travels to Amsterdam on a regular basis, and who lived there for 2 years for work. Based on that experience, I believe that there are some more basic cultural issues that need to be addressed if Amsterdam is to be a successful startup culture.

<comment><USER16> Can you name some examples of the cultural issues needing to be addressed?

<comment><USER15> I'd rather take that discussion to IM or video, as I think it would be more productive in a synchronous fashion, than here.

<comment><USER17> I'd love to hear it.

My experience has been an abundance of charlatans. The other issue is that 60% or 6 out of 10 is deemed the best you will ever get out of a Dutch person. And, a lack of accountability in anything that's done - so if it's not done, nothing is said... poor.

<comment><USER15> You're painting with a wide brush, as I was going to do as well... however, my concerns are more specific.

Charlatans are in _every_ culture. Slackers are in _every_ culture. This is nothing unique to the Dutch.

I am of the mind that reputation is important, and I'm wary of speaking my concerns to freely in this format, and being misinterpreted.

If anyone cares to talk further, let's do Skype or Google Hangout. My usernames there are the same as here.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


HP-01 wrist instrument, 1977 - <AUTHOR> http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/abouthp/histnfacts/museum/personalsystems/0022/

<comment><AUTHOR> HP-01 was code named "Cricket". I found out some answers but I still don't quite get what it meant by "all of Cricket's technology". Are they referring to the insect Cricket? What technology are they talking about?

> From the minutes of a product planning meeting: "A suggestion was made to > put all of Cricket's technology into an elegant, truly pocket size > calculator selling for around $250. It would have an LED readout, 10 keys, 2 > ROMS, timing functions and do about '40 things'. The appearance of the > package would do justice to the selling price. This suggestion prompted an > immediate lack of enthusiam [sic] and was seconded by no one thus inhibiting > further serious discussion." This was a suggestion to "save" Cricket (HP-01) > which was highly controversial. The meeting recap/action item related to > Cricket was: "Pray for Cricket."

[http://www.hpmuseum.org/collect.htm#codes](http://www.hpmuseum.org/collect.htm#codes)

<comment><USER2> As the original article mentioned, they spent a lot of resources miniaturizing the math circuits for the relatively unsuccessful Cricket watch. This is talking about their idea to "save Cricket" and get some more value out of the work they put in by transplanting all of the internals of the watch into a separate pocket calculator product which might be more successful than the watch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> They were big, heavy, and needed batteries too often. Expensive, too. They are retro-chic now, though. A good specimen will cost you north of $1K.

</comment><comment><USER4> Now why would they destroy something to keep others from copying it? That is plain dumbassery.

<comment><USER5> Particularly destroying the workings of an unsuccessful product line, where others could have learned and progressed the design. But it was the 70's and sharing of knowledge has changed significantly since then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a reminder to me that it doesn't matter how great your idea is, or how technically impressive your product is. If the execution isn't right (in this case, who wants to do math awkwardly on their wrist with a tiny, hard to hold stylus? A calculator is much more comfortable) nobody will buy your product.

<comment><USER7> Actually the Casio versions of such watches were quite cool among us back in the 80's.

<comment><USER8> I loved mine. My uncle gave the best presents! When you're in third grade, at least, nothing makes you feel cooler than a calculator watch.

<comment><USER7> Quite true. I only managed to get one already in high school.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The HP-01 is the one and only watch I would ever wear. Sure it's big and clunky but it's so freaking cool, in a nerdy way. The $1k+ price tag is the only thing that has detered me. This is the ultimate gift for the nerd who has everything.

</comment><comment><USER10> I wonder if it could do RPN...

<comment><USER11> This comment may not have much meat to it, but HP was famous for their excellent graphing calculators, which used RPN input format. They were fun to program as well and started many a young nerd of the 90's on the path to making software.

<comment><USER7> I used to dream about the HP 48GX, but my budget only allowed for a Casio FX-880P.

The days when a 32KB upgrade module costed what would be now around 100 euros.

<comment><USER12> Wow, times change, now you can get a 1MB card for that kind of money!

<comment><USER11> The calculator market really hasn't scaled in price like the rest of the general purpose computing world... pretty amazing that the exact same TI-83 and HP48's used ten years ago are still selling for nearly the same prices they were then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Unfortunately it was algebraic. Another sought after calculator watch is the Casio scientific watch CFX-400.

The only RPN calculator watch I'm aware of is the uWatch which is out of production apparently [http://www.calcwatch.com/](http://www.calcwatch.com/).

</comment><comment><USER14> Looks like the apple watch!

</comment><comment><USER15> ...and it runs NetBSD.</comment>


World's First Magnetic Hose Created - <AUTHOR> http://www.uab.cat/web/newsroom/news-detail-1345668003610.html?noticiaid=1345672963817

<comment><AUTHOR> here is a description of potential application of this by "Accujack" on reddit: [http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/291wwk/worlds_first...](http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/291wwk/worlds_first_magnetic_hose_created_an/cigr40a)</comment>


OAuth Will Murder Your Children - <AUTHOR> http://zachholman.com/2011/01/oauth_will_murder_your_children/ <comment><USER2> Even better: Let the application also say _why_ it needs the permission:

        * Read access
            We want to analyse your tweets
        * Read/write
            Because we want to spam your friends

<comment><USER3> Both OS X and WinAPI do this now. Users (in general) hate it. You make a good point, but it's going to have little impact in the real world. People livin' in that 21st century do it better'n anybody you ever seen do it and they want their Kanye analysis now; they ain't got nothin' to lose! They rollin'!

I am deadly serious.

<comment><USER4> Users dislike it on Windows because requesting elevated privileges became so common that they rationally chose to tune out. Had Windows been designed from the start with UAC, developers would have been less cavalier in requiring administrator abilities, then maybe a UAC request might actually have meant something. Given that so many legacy games request privilege authorization, it's no wonder the users don't take it seriously.

Look at the mobile platforms for an example of implementing this idea correctly. Android users, the same who are likely to detest UAC, rave about the ability to see which parts of the system an application accesses before they install it. I'm an iPhone user, and I've always appreciated its piecemeal approach to authorizing location and notification services.

Zach's article is about making the message _more_ meaningful, such that it's not just another automatic clickthrough. My guess is that users would much prefer this screen to what twitter is using now.

<comment><USER5> Your point about Android is half correct, yes I like seeing what the app needs to access, but I don't see _why_. Why does your calculator app need access to the internet? I know the author can just offer some bullshit excuse, but it's better than nothing...

<comment><USER6> I would very much like the checkboxes in Android too, although obviously they'd place a greater burden on developers. For example, I tried installing the official XBMC remote app a while back; it requested all sorts of crazy permissions ("read SMS" etc) which they were intending to use for debatably useful features but I ended up not installing it because of the privacy concerns. In the end I installed a third-party remote app which didn't ring as many alarm bells on installation, but I'd have been happier to stick with the 'official' one if I could selectively disable some of the permissions they wanted.

I can certainly see why that isn't an option; it'd make things much harder for developers if they suddenly have to test against different sets of security permissions. But it's on my wishlist.

<comment><USER7> XBMC remote needs that because it has a "show your texts on the TV" feature which you really, really shouldn't turn on. Trust me.

It's a shame that you can't pick and choose, as a user, because they can't remove that permission without breaking that feature for everyone [who?] that uses it. It's open-source though, so the good news is you could remove that permission and feature yourself if you really want it (you should: it's pretty nifty).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Making Facebook apps, we ran into a tiny fraction of users who disabled some of the permissions that we asked for. It was simpler to just keep popping up the permission window until they accepted or left the app rather than code special cases for the tiny minority that cared about nonstandard permissions settings. This became pretty standard in Facebook apps, although it's a bad experience, because hardly any users actually care.

So, be careful what you wish for.

<comment><USER9> > _hardly any users actually care_

I'd be careful before making assumptions like this. Many users may care but still value using an app enough to put up with giving up permissions they'd prefer not to. Other users might not have any idea what the permissions settings do or say. Still other users (for example, me) just avoid facebook apps altogether because they universally ask for distasteful levels of access.

<comment><USER3> Schemes that avoid users like you may be good business, similar to the way that fine-grained low pricing invites pathological users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Meh. The problem with this is that every empirical study of actual users is going to demonstrate that they simply don't care. The primary control that OAuth dialogs like these express is "prevent malicious phishing apps from coercing users into inadvertantly opting in", and the dialog we have now is sufficient to that purpose.

For the tiny subset of users (I am one of them) to whom this issue matters, you can mitigate the problem by periodically culling your OAuth tokens through the Twitter interface.

<comment><USER10> There's still a culture of too-much-access (we might need it in the future!!) that needs to be addressed here. Perhaps once we're all super used to these interstitials, then it'll become a no-brainer to come back to them and request info.

Personally, i think we should go even further; lets request sunset/timeout clauses on access. I'm willing to give the kanye analyzer two weeks access to my twitter account, but after that, i want my token rescinded.

<comment><USER11> Absolutely right. LinkedIn is doing this. access for one day, one week, ... when granting permissions.

<comment><USER12> Here's screenshot of how it looks: [http://developer.linkedin.com/servlet/JiveServlet/downloadIm...](http://developer.linkedin.com/servlet/JiveServlet/downloadImage/38-1039-1130/400-276/oauth_window_screenshot.png)

However the reason LinkedIn does it is probably because the nature of information accessed is very fragile.

Similar, but slightly different solution, I'd suggest, would be to track by provider if application is actively used and perhaps revoke token after some period of time (or at least present user with that data on their profile settings page).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Due to a long-standing bug in the Twitter API, you can not add write support to an app without deleting it entirely and re-creating the app in their system. It will let you change the flag for future users, but there is no way to request the additional privileges from a user if needed. As such, it unfortunately a "good idea" to always create your Twitter apps as read-write.

Reference: <http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/detail?id=669>

</comment><comment><USER14> I recently discovered that to use the @Anywhere javascript API you have to have your app request read and write access even if you don't want write access.

* <http://dev.twitter.com/anywhere/apps/new>

</comment><comment><USER15> The article discusses how many applications request write access when they don't need it.

I think that the reverse problem is even worse. Many of the applications that I use (Posterous, Picplz, Instagram) only need write access, yet they always get read permission. I don't want these applications reading my direct messages. Unfortunately, Twitter does not provide a write only permission.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is a crucial step for safeguarding privacy/security if OAuth is to become more prevalent.

Any app may request any number of permissions from me; but I as a user should be able to choose what permissions it gets. I would take this one step further and allow the user to retroactively withdraw permissions (OAuth already allows for asking the user for additional permissions).

</comment><comment><USER17> Twitter is half of the problem here. Once you request read access and a user approves it, there is no way under the same application then go back and get write access. Ideally every app would start with read and then only upgrade to write when needed but Twitter won't allow it. There are multiple bugs in their api issue tracker and they don't seem to care. The only way to get around it is to have two applications, a read and a read-write which actually is more difficult and why bother working around Twitters short comings when most users don't care?

I know this wasn't only about Twitter, but this is an issue I've had myself and it's incredibly annoying.

</comment><comment><USER18> A good example of this is Clickpass that Hacker News uses for logins. With Google, it asks for access to "Google Contacts". There is no explanation of why it needs access to Contacts or what it is going to do with it. As far as I can tell, it doesn't do anything nefarious. I have seen other sites using Google Accounts for sign in with requesting OAuth access.

</comment><comment><USER19> Probably a coincidence, but this sounds a lot like a post written by @richardhenry in November last year, right down to the "41 of the 43 apps":

[http://www.quora.com/Richard-Henry/Improving-Twitter- OAuth-W...](http://www.quora.com/Richard-Henry/Improving-Twitter-OAuth-With- Mockups)

Richard now works at Twitter.

</comment><comment><USER20> I see a couple of responses saying users don't care about this and they'd never read a dialog box.

Honestly, if that's the case, what's the point of OAuth then? Why don't we just go back to handing over usernames & passwords and trusting some 3rd party to not do anything nasty? With everyone constantly complaining about Facebook privacy concerns and hijacked Twitter accounts, how can anyone pretend that conditioning people to allow the maximum set of permissions to a complete stranger is a good thing?

<comment><USER21> OAuth has some advantages over storing passwords, firstly you're not giving your password away. Password reuse is very common, if you give one site your Facebook password, they probably have your email password.

It also easier to revoke access to just on app, previously you had to change your password and then update all the other apps

<comment><USER20> I admit there was some slight hyperbole there. Let's say it's one better than giving out your password because it cuts down on the password reuses issue and you can revoke.

If that's all that OAuth will ever get us, then it's a failure: either because the goals of the spec were infeasible or because developers weren't able to use it to its fullest (I lean toward the later).

OAuth is not about solving password reuse. It's about granting other clients rights to specific resources on your behalf. It's about telling a 3rd party app they can tweet once, and not read my direct messages; they can read my Gmail contacts, but not send; and so on...

I for one believe in the need for this. But the original poster is right: as long as developers request blanket permissions, I'm not going to use their apps. I may be in a small category, but I'll ask again: is this the kind of behavior we want to condition into users?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Android needs this too, perhaps even more than OAuth does.

<comment><USER23> My first thought as well. It annoys me when apps add optional "sharing" features that require access to my contact list, and there's no way to allow the app to run without those permissions. And the Internet and SD card permissions are too coarse-grained; developers should be able to list specific directories and hosts that the app can access.

<comment><USER24> Trust me, as an app developer it annoys me too that there's no easy way for me to allow users to opt-out of contacts access. Making a second app is just too complicated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> A capability that I'm looking at for working with Facebook Connect is gradually adding more privileges as a user has more experience with the site and gains more trust.

Overall this problem is worse with things that are more app than web site or that put up an authentication wall before you can see anything interesting.

</comment><comment><USER26> I agree with the criticism. This OpenID stuff was promoted as single sign in. That is not what it is at all! You are forced to give write permission to every app out there before being allowed to sign in to their site to do trivial things, and then they start spamming your feed and harvesting your data. When you try to turn it off there is no off switch that can be found. It's insane.

It's the same level of intrusion as if you wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper and by sending your opinion on local parking fees, the newspaper is given access to your private mail, is allowed to set up cameras inside your house, and asserts that you agreed the newspaper's publisher can have sex with your daughter.

What the hell does any of that have to do with submitting an editorial letter?

What it has to do is this system ALLOWS them to invade your privacy, so they REQUIRE you to give up your privacy and allow them to invade it in order to do things like post comments or vote in polls that have nothing at all to do with any of what they demand they must have.

It's an abusive system that violates consumers.

</comment><comment><USER27> I agree with the OP's conclusion - permissions need to be finer-grained and authorisation prompts more informative. But with OAuth as it stands, those things are under the control of the API provider, and app developers have limited control.

If my app has a button to follow someone on Twitter, my app needs Twitter write permission, which also lets me tweet as you and read your DMs. All I want to do is follow someone, but Twitter doesn't offer finer-grained authorisation, so I have no choice but to pop up the dialog box asking for full write access.

Twitter's an extreme example, but not the only one. The Facebook API also has some unintuitive permissioning requirements (for example, you need more permissions to "like" a post than you do to comment on it). Unless the permission model makes sense to users, apps have a hard time communicating to users why they need the permissions they're requesting. Judofyr's suggestion above would help a lot with this problem, but it's still not something that can be blamed entirely on lazy app developers.

</comment><comment><USER28> I've often backed out of installing an OAuth app _because_ of the overwhelming amount of info it says it wants read/write access to. I'd like to be able to choose what to give the app and I'd be willing to accept less functionality in some cases if necessary. Giving an app all your data could become the equivalent of a 'Pro' account.

</comment><comment><USER29> You are missing the point. Apps need to respect a User enough not to get banned from Twitter.

Twitter also in their TOS specify how not do do things. If you don't follow the TOS and expected behavior of the app, then you are going to get complaints, and twitter will shut down your app.

In general it's not good business to get shut down.

</comment><comment><USER30> Facebook has made a lot of progress in app privileges. Under <http://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=applications>, there is a categorical line-item veto - you can revoke access to certain things, such as wall posting, access posts in news feed, access my data at any time, check-ins, etc. It also specifically shows what information was accessed by an app, and when (Last Accessed: Basic Info, Likes, and Current City on January 25th).

LinkedIn has time-out on permissions. You can set a specific time setting or allow access until revoked.

There's no reason that Twitter can't do the same. The subset of users who care about specific privileges can go and revoke them, and the app can re-request permissions if needed.

</comment><comment><USER31> While I agree that there are problems with access granularity for Twitter, the author ignores the access models of the other providers. Facebook for one provides an extremely rich set of granular controls. The grant screen, is however 1 page, so maybe that is why he chooses not to analyze Facebook further.

I also believe that the author has some fundamental misconceptions about OAuth. OAuth is merely a standardized way of gaining access to proprietary APIs. There is nothing in the specification about what sort of level of permission an access token will provide the consuming site. The statement: "And KanyeAnalysis™ uses OAuth, which lets you use your Twitter credentials to sign in!" is misleading and makes OAuth sound much more like OpenId than it really is.

</comment><comment><USER32> The problem, as I see it, is over the top access requests to access elevated privileges and personal information is the norm. This is not a user problem.

There must be a way for :

1\. third-party developers to use the api to access information for their app in a kind of handshake mode - without the ability to use that information externally - or to access elevated privileges in a kind of sandbox arrangement.

2\. for the api developers to use their control of market places and warnings to make these low level access privileges the norm, rather than the exception.

Getting these two things in place would mean developers would have to make a case to you, the user, if they wanted to do something more powerful or dodgy with the api.

</comment><comment><USER33> So because some apps abuse the system, we all have to suffer writing lots of extra code?

In one of my apps, I request read/write access and then allow the user to select whether they want to tweet on an interaction basis, not on a connection basis. It would provide an extra pain point if the user did want to the application to tweet to have to go back to Twitter.com to change their settings (and if the setting can be changed via the API, then that defeats the purpose altogether).

It's not ideal when any app can spam, but it's better than having a user choose their access levels _before_ they've even used the application (where the OAuth request dialogue tends to sit).

</comment><comment><USER34> OAuth is powerful and awesome because even when people hand over full control they can revoke that access at any time they want.

Previous to OAuth people would hand over their credentials to third party apps. That's what sucking looks like.

<comment><USER35> Before, all you needed to do to revoke access to all those crazy 3rd parties you gave your password to was: change your password. Now, you need to figure out where to go to revoke permissions, figure out what 3rd party app you no longer want, and figure out exactly what permission (in Facebook's case, but not Twitter's). It's confusing even for technical people because it's nonstandard and different on every OAuth provider's site.

<comment><USER34> 1) Unless the app was evil and changed your password for you.

2) Or unless you wanted to let some apps keep access to your account, but not others.

3) And if you can easily deal with remembering new passwords (most users can't).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> We had a similar problem at Yahoo! with BBAuth and OAuth. Developers started out initially building an application that needed access to (for instance) Yahoo! Mail. Unfortunately, there's no way in the Yahoo! Developer Network to "upsize" an application ID or consumer key after it has been created. You can't go back and say, "You know what? My application could be 2x as awesome if I added Yahoo! Address Book support." As a result, developers requested the kitchen sink: Yahoo! Mail, Address Book, Calendar, Flickr, Profile, MyBlogLog, Delicious, Fantasy Sports, Messenger, Updates and so on. In addition, each of those services has different permissions ranging from Read-Only to Read/Write (see <https://developer.apps.yahoo.com/dashboard/createKey.html>).

Google did a better job of this with their OAuth flow, allowing a "scope" to be passed in the authorization request so applications can dynamically select what they want access to (<http://code.google.com/apis/gdata/docs/auth/oauth.html#Scope>). This means applications don't have to ask for the world up front when registering. Unfortunately it doesn't fix the "OAuth will murder your children" problem.

Ultimately it's a user experience problem. As the article points out, add too many checkboxes and it becomes too complex. The average user doesn't pay attention (like reading a EULA) and in several cases they're not going to understand the scopes presented to them anyway. Read/Write is pretty clear to most of us, not so clear to my mother.

As an amusing aside, I went to log into Hacker News using their Clickpass integration to sign in using my Yahoo! account. Clickpass does the OAuth song and dance and requests read/write access to my Address Book. "<http://www.clickpass.com> is asking you and Yahoo! for the ability to automatically sign-in as you to your Yahoo! account through a service or application that is provided by <http://www.clickpass.com>, and to read and store to your data in Yahoo! Address Book." Evidently OAuth will not only murder your children, it will wipe them from your Address Book, too.

<comment><USER37> the "scope" parameter that google included is actully from the OAuth 2.0 spec (still in draft iirc). There are a lot of improvements in OAuth 2.0 which are worth checking out, but this is one of the main ones

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Couldn't have found a more linkbait title if I tried.

<comment><USER39> Yeah, but it works because a.) Zach follows through with the metaphor throughout the article and b.) it isn't slimy self promotion.

<comment><USER40> "43 Ways OAuth Will Murder Your Children"

<comment><USER41> Don't forget the tangentially-related-through-twitter <https://github.com/lg/murder>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'm building a startup and I want to make things easier for my users.

Should I let them "sign up" with OAuth?

I read somewhere that doing that I don't "own" the users. What does that mean?

All I want is for folks to find their friends automatically, and not to force people to remember another password.

</comment><comment><USER43> I don't think developers get that users simply don't care about this kind of stuff.

There's a reason Steve Krug titled his book on good UI design 'Don't make me think'. We should be trying to make things simpler (from the User's POV) not more complex.

</comment><comment><USER44> I agree, limiting third parties access to your data is why OAuth exists in the first place. Although everything in this article is about Twitter's implementation of OAuth and not OAuth in general. The title is misleading.

</comment><comment><USER45> Maybe give the user permission to _revoke_ any permission from any application - so that if some application is spamming your followers, you can promptly force it to cease and desist.

</comment><comment><USER46> Good point, bad example: your "KanyeAnalysis app" really does not need write access, so no need for checkboxes. It simply should not request write access, ever. Period.

</comment><comment><USER47> This is "double click SETUP.exe" all over again.

People don't read any message boxes' contents, they only see the "Ok" button and click it. It's amazing, but unfortunately true.

</comment><comment><USER48> But where would the business incentive be for the app writers? If they can't spy on you for later extortion techniques, how will they make money?

</comment><comment><USER49> Why the hell does he have 43 connected apps? Is this the norm?

I have three: GoogleTV, Mobile, Iphone. (I used to have TweetDeck and a couple others, so 6 total.)

<comment><USER50> I've got 33.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I agree. A simple solution in the meantime maybe to allow users to revoke certain access levels to specific services in an admin panel.

</comment><comment><USER52> Facebook does a decent job of this, with the exception that you don't get to have a line-item veto. Users deserve a line-item veto.

</comment><comment><USER53> The problem with twitter in particular is that it lets you do two things: read and post messages. What granular options do you see?

<comment><USER16> His post wasn't Twitter specific; he just used Twitter as an example.

But since you asked, here's a couple I can think of: * A rate limit on the number of Tweets per hour/day/week * Ability to follow or unfollow * Ability to index my tweets if they're private

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I wish android did this.</comment>


NBC will shut down the Breaking News app - <AUTHOR> http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/12/when-10-million-followers-isnt-enough-nbc-news-will-shut-down-the-breaking-news-app-on-dec-31/ <comment><USER2> I have more questions now...

1\. Why was this app created?

2\. How expensive is it to run this app? (no seriously, even at scale, I can't see this getting more expensive than a few thousand $ a month - which at NBC's level should not be too much of an issue?)

<comment> angry-hacker They can't monetize it and because they want people to read their paper instead (watch ads), they shut it down. At least that's what I make of this reading those tweets.

<comment><USER2> it'd be easier to push ads on-to the app (or the app to load the news article as a webview with ads in it).

^ more views, more money and probably more profits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Funny--the app being shut down is announced in a series of tweets, the last one being:

"Stay tuned for more later, including details on how you can hire the best mobile/social talent in the business."

(presumably their own mobile app development talent...)

</comment><comment><USER4> This was always the first app to send me an alert when news happened often by a long time. I always wondered why they didn't charge for that, it's the kind of thing I'd happily pay what I no longer spend on a newspaper for to get. Though I must admit, the last time I routinely bought a newspaper it was $0.35 a copy. and $0.75 on Sunday. $2.85 a week, and no coupons, or ads which in a newspaper were part of the value so I'd easily pay $1 a week.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm sad to hear about this. The Breaking News app became one of the most used apps on my phone. The push alerts for emerging stories were always sent out before any of the other major news apps. This service will be missed.

</comment><comment><USER6> Closest thing I've found is [https://twitter.com/BNONews](https://twitter.com/BNONews) which is run by the original founder of @BreakingNews on Twitter, which was sold and later became the app and NBC service.

Curation is what I am after. Breaking News had (presumably) a large team monitoring vast numbers of Twitter accounts and other news feeds to bring them together into a single place where you got a nice feed of important stories without being overwhelmed with all the noise of thousands of individual tweets.

</comment><comment><USER7> Am I missing something? Why would they build an app to consume a twitter feed? I guess that's what someone who actually knew what the heck they were doing said when they asked why they were spending a bunch of money on the app. It's amazing how much money can be wasted at a corporation because it's other people's money.

<comment><USER8> If they're anything like the place I work at it comes down to mindshare. Yes, it's just consuming a Twitter feed and maybe some other proprietary datasource but some exec "needed" an app because then our logo (icon) is on the phone's screen. It's visible and quick for people to access the news feeds instead of going elsewhere.

Sadly, most of the decisions we question are driven by marketing.

<comment><USER9> Having been pretty close to many mobile apps that came out of NBC in the early boom days, I can confirm that this was the case for many/most of the apps I ever touched. Most of them were pretty bad, just RSS driven web pages in a native wrapper. Getting the brand onto users' devices was the primary goal, experience be damned. I can't speak to Breaking News, that was a different team.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hmm, it's unfortunate that this is being shut down. If you're looking for alternatives, I've been using the New York Times app, CNN, and Buzzfeed News. You need to deal with some annoying notifications (for example, CNN sent me a "Hero of the Year" notification today), but it's better than nothing.

<comment><USER11> Or just use the DuckDuckGo app.

<comment><USER12> I'm already aware of the content of ever MSM feed, no matter the platform. At least 50% is complete opinion pieces questioning every choice and sentence spoke by the POTUS-elect, at least one article giving false hope that the election could still be over-turned, an article about how hot Ryan Reynolds or Ryan Gosling is, an article that is just a video (or recap) of SNL mocking said POTUS elect, an extremely vague article about why the Obama's where so amazing, and one buried article about something new and interesting that most people should be aware of.

<comment><USER13> Hmm I'm sensing some bias in your comment...

<comment><USER12> Well, check out basically any news source besides Fox, which I don't care for either, and tell me how I'm wrong. I'm not a Trump supporter, but MSM has become identical to Facebook news feed. It's popular opinions dressed up as news. I don't feel like it's informing me of much.

They're not going to get much traction with the Fake News narrative if they don't enact some real change on their part. If I'm wrong and there's a news source out there that isn't comprised of this, I'd appreciate you guys pointing me to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Quite an ironic decision by NBC. At the same time the consumption of news from mainstream outlets is falling, they decide to shutter a service which was gaining in popularity instead of working out ways to monetize it.

</comment><comment><USER15> [https://virwire.com](https://virwire.com)

Breaking and trending news curation continues to elude much of the the MSM, we created Virwire to solve critical automation and bias issues.

<comment><USER16> I opened it and a Daily Mail story was on the top. IMO, that's a good sign "bias issues" are hardly solved.

<comment><USER17> Thanks for checking us out!

Virwire prioritizes news based on what people are consuming and not on editorial agenda.

Bias is subjective to say the least, but do you want the media telling you what you should read?

By filtering articles via social signals Virwire exposes all sides of the 'story' and trusts readers to sort out the bs. We believe 'people' are smarter than we give them credit for.

<comment><USER16> > We believe 'people' are smarter than we give them credit for.

We literally have a wealth of evidence to contest this. For example: [https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/fake-news- survey](https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/fake-news-survey)

<comment><USER17> I going to believe that you are being ironic, quoting Buzzfeed as your single source of truth :)

<comment><USER16> Buzzfeed cites a study, links to the results and calculations, and gives good detail on the methodology, sample size, etc.

They've also been using their clickbait revenues to do some great long-form journalism, like [https://www.buzzfeed.com/albertsamaha/a-matter-of- time](https://www.buzzfeed.com/albertsamaha/a-matter-of-time).

You're really not selling me on your ability to solve bias issues.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Infantorium - <AUTHOR> https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-infantorium/ <comment><USER2> So our new baby came out two months early and had to spend six weeks in the NICU. The local hospital had just built this NICU so it was of the latest design. Instead of rows of incubators, every family gets their own little room (twins share, triplets+ get multiple rooms). The room has a couch, incubator, sink and rocking chair. This NICU costs about $100 every hour your baby is in there. Our feed/change/weigh cycle was every four hours. The nurses will handle it if you are not there. Doctors and med students did rounds twice a day.

If baby is too small to nurse they are fed via a nose tube and syringe pump. Dinner options include formula, donated or BYOB human milk, and special concentrated human milk with vitamins. If baby is not doing well they can feed via IV. It is not easy to get an IV into a tiny baby, but they manage.

This design does make it harder for the nurses to keep an eye on all the babies so they rely on the vital signs monitoring equipment a lot. They measure HR, blood O2, respiration and skin temp. They can get alerts in room A if baby in room B vitals drop. There is also a cell phone thing they can watch vitals on if they are away from the rooms for some reason.

You don't really get to see the other babies, and sadly there are no carnival games. It did feel a bit isolating but this system does have advantages, each room can be turned into an OR if required and germ transmission is reduced.

They can handle very small babies, down to 24weeks. They have diapers the size of postage stamps for the little ones. The ward had 30+ babies when we were there and not one death the whole six weeks. Pretty good.

<comment><USER3> > So our new baby came out two months early and had to spend six weeks in the > NICU. [...] This NICU costs about $100 every hour your baby is in there.

Sorry, so the bill was $100,800? I'm from the USA and... I know... should be used to this savagery by now, but wow. This makes me jealous of my counterparts living in countries with civilized health care systems, and extremely grateful that my own daughter was born on time and healthy. I could barely afford the (post-insurance) multi-thousand dollar bill I was charged for a normal delivery!

<comment><USER4> The total bill for our kiddo's 37 day stay in NICU was ~$400,000 including hospital charges, doctors, and tests. That doesn't include the delivery which was billed under my wife's stuff. Her bill was ~$100,000 for a 3 week stay (high blood pressure plus other factors).

After 30 days our state's Medicaid program decided that she was a household of 1 and paid for everything our normal insurance didn't, and continues to pay secondary for everything she needs because she has a rare medical condition.</comment></comment></comment>


Cydia hack enables Airplay in all apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.9to5mac.com/38336/cydia-hack-enables-airplay-in-all-apps <comment><USER2> Kinda sad that this ends up on the front page, when there's a lot more technically interesting stuff in Cydia, like Cycript (dynamic JavaScript/Objective-C bridge, <http://www.cycript.org/>) or MobileSubstrate (runtime code patching and hooking, [http://www.iphonedevwiki.net/index.php/MobileSubstrate#Examp...](http://www.iphonedevwiki.net/index.php/MobileSubstrate#Example_code)).</comment>


THE DIGITAL 100: The World's Most Valuable Private Tech Companies - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/2012-digital-100

<comment><AUTHOR> Bloomberg is at the intersection of technology and financial content. I'm surprised that more startups don't try to go into this segment.</comment>