Don't Call Yourself a Programmer - <AUTHOR> http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/ <comment><USER2> Okay, I guess as someone with hard-won expertise I'm duty-bound to take slight exception to this line:

 _Put a backpack on and you can walk into any building at any university in the United States any time you want._

First, the nitpicking: Technically you can't get into Harvard's excellent libraries without actually (a) being a Harvard student, or (b) working for Harvard. (And if you're a programmer, I'm not sure which of those options is going to prove more expensive.) But, of course, the rest of Harvard is open to the backpack-wearer, and MIT even opens their libraries (I'm proud to routinely impersonate a graduate of MIT) so this isn't much of an objection.

On a slightly more serious note: They also won't let you into the labs with just a backpack. If you'd happily accept a sub-market wage to be taught laboratory research techniques, in a piecemeal and haphazard fashion, by sleep-deprived world experts equipped with state-of-the-artish equipment, engineering graduate school is the game for you. And I did kind of enjoy working in the lab, just not enough to keep that as a career. It's not that great a career; you have to love it to stick with it forever.

Now, having said that, I cannot re-emphasize this line enough:

 _After you've escaped the mind-warping miasma of academia, you might rightfully question whether Published In A Journal is really personally or societally significant as opposed to close approximations like Wrote A Blog Post And Showed It To Smart People._

All my journal publications mean nothing compared to the stuff I've scrawled in the margins here at HN.

<comment><USER3> _They also won't let you into the labs with just a backpack._

In a literal sense, no, that's not enough. In a practical sense, if you're serious about doing research and have the necessary background to be able to do good research, finding a faculty member who will invite you to join their group as an unpaid "research assistant" is trivial.

<comment><USER2> This is _literally_ true.

But I come out of experimental physics, semiconductor engineering, and biology, where "the necessary background to be able to do good research" generally translates to "you have the kind of lab skills training that you can only get by getting a Ph.D. in a lab just like ours, plus you know how to write (or at least contribute vital portions of) successful grants to pay for the equipment you'll be using and the reagents and parts and live animals that you'll be consuming as you work". The thing is, lab benches are expensive, _outlandishly_ expensive in many cases, so you'll have to earn your spot at that lab bench by outcompeting whoever else might want it. The net result is that, yes, with a modicum of talent you can probably always be an unpaid research assistant, but the practical difference between that and a full-time career in research is just a few thousand dollars in salary. ;)

(Or you can learn to build scientific equipment out of hardware found on the side of the road. This can work well, if you choose your field carefully.)

Now, in a field like math or CS where adding you to a research group may require only the occasional spare chair to park you in and a modest 5% increase in the coffee budget: Absolutely, you can dabble in university research as much as you want. This is one of the charms of such fields. Didn't Erdös run his entire career out of spare chairs in other people's offices and apartments? And, of course, MIT is legendary for the excellent work done by people hanging around Tech Square snarfing up spare CPU cycles.

<comment><USER3> I think we're disagreeing mostly on what "getting into the labs" means. Sure, you can't walk into a lab filled with expensive equipment and start doing your own research; but you could absolutely walk into someone's lab and start helping to do _their_ research. My father studies chemical reactions in supercritical water using a beam of spin-polarized muons from a cyclotron; there's many millions of dollars of equipment involved in his experiments -- yet he still hires undergraduate students, because there's always plenty of grunt work to be done.

<comment><USER2> Ah, okay, if you want to be an unpaid lab tech I agree that you can get that job pretty darned easily.

It hadn't occurred to me, recently, to have such low standards for hanging around in a lab. ;) The novelty wears off, you see.

EDIT: just to summarize for the audience, I believe cperciva and I are in agreement with Patrick that it's easy to flawlessly impersonate a university _student_ for free; We are debating the extent to which one may also impersonate a _junior professor_. ;)

<comment><USER3> Yes, "unpaid lab tech" is a pretty low standard. But if you hang around as an unpaid lab tech for long enough, you start picking up more useful skills and have a good chance of eventually getting paid. (No, I never did this. But I know people who have.)

As for impersonating a junior professor: I wander into seminars and if anyone doesn't recognize me they just assume I'm from the university on the other side of town. Given my age they usually assume I'm a postdoc; but if I was ten years older I'm sure they'd assume I was a faculty member.

Of course, "faculty member from a different institution" doesn't really get you very much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love corporate, boring, "soul-crushing" work. Why? Because I can sit down, whip out a basic CRUD form with a small approval cycle in a day. It saves a company 100K over the year, I am loved by the customers, and because it is so simple, it normally requires no maintenance. Maybe we update the fields once a year or so.

At the end of the week, I've already saved the company more than my salary. After a year, I am a critical asset to the company.

After 3 years, I've optimized everything, the ROI slows down, and I move on.

This pattern is not a tragedy. It doesn't crush your soul. It makes you a prized commodity in the business world, with a chance to make a change in your life every few years.

I have usually alternated between 3 years doing this, then 2 years doing startup work. It has given me a much broader base of experience and skill than anyone who stick to one one side of the coin. It also has given me years of experience in large industries (banking, energy, etc.) which I then use to find very real problems to which a startup can be applied.

I have led a very satisfying career, doing this for almost 20 years now.

<comment><USER5> I find that pretty interesting, and quite the opposite of my experience. I'm guessing that it has to do with the size of the boring corporation.

I worked for a mega corp, and redtape and layers upon layers of bureaucracy would pretty much make any project take months instead of a day. Additionally, there were plenty of times where the right arm was working on something and the left arm didn't know about it, so it was also working on the same thing. Finally, the customers didn't really know what they wanted, the databases weren't designed properly by a solid DBA, and really good system architects weren't brought on early in the design, which resulted in an extremely poor working applications.

All-in-all, it was definitely soul-crushing, and I personally have no desire to do it again. YMMV.

<comment><USER6> I'll add in that I expect 90% of enterprise programming is maintaining someone else's code. It isn't making small CRUD apps, it isn't innovating, it isn't bringing costs down, it isn't bringing profits up.

It is simply maintaining the behemoth they spent a fortune on N years ago which was over-, under- and poorly designed all at the same time. It is just keeping it working well enough that it can continue being used because as long as it is working there's no reason to rewrite it. The words "rewrite" to an executive mean, "do a lot of work and spend a lot of money to make something we already have."

And there will have been non-FizzBuzz programmers working on that project before you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _> >"Programmer" sounds like "anomalously high-cost peon who types some mumbo- jumbo into some other mumbo-jumbo." If you call yourself a programmer, someone is already working on a way to get you fired. _

I call myself as a programmer because I enjoy programming and do a lot of programming as part of my job.

It is unlikely that I'll get fired because I run the (tiny) company I work for :). and customers seem to like the products we sell in the app stores.

Prior to starting this company, I was a Principal Development Manager,SDE Lead and Software Design Engineer at Microsoft. Describing myself as a programmer or a developer didn't hurt me there either.

This is not to say that Patio doesn't make a good case about the need to focus on value created. Regardless of profession, you have to focus on the value you create. A doctor saves lives, a construction worker builds homes, a pilot takes people home etc.

It is definitely possible for all of them to use MBA-speak mumbo-jumbo job- titles to describe what they do. Alternately, one could be a bit more of a plain-speaking, straight-talking person and just say that you're a doctor or a programmer or a pilot etc.

<comment><USER2> Once you run the company it doesn't matter what you call yourself. That is probably a great topic for another essay, assuming PG hasn't written it already.

It might matter what you call the _company_ or the _product_ , however, since that is the brand that the people who pay you are seeing.

Programmers are so literal. Let me try and translate: When Patrick says "don't call yourself a programmer" he isn't necessarily saying "never use the word 'programmer' in the same sentence as your own name". What he's saying is: When someone asks you what you do all day, don't just say "I program... stuff" or "I program in Lisp". _What_ do you program? _Why_? What value do you create thereby?

<comment><USER8> I'm a programmer. I program things. What, specifically, changes pretty frequently still. Going into detail can be useful when trying to score social points from the smalltalk question of "So, what do you do?" But depending on what you program, I think for most people "programming" is sufficient compared to "I currently write software to manage an elastic computer server farm running data analysis jobs for people."

In fact I think the former "programming" can give you more social cred--if you program things the other person can't comprehend an immediate use for, it may hurt you. "Oh you're one of those people that don't do anything useful." If they really want to know, they'll ask, and ask for more details if they care.

Of course, I agree in general that when whoring yourself out to the corporate world it's best to make yourself sound as important as possible as long as possible, which is basically what I got from Patrick's post. "Programmer" doesn't contain enough information to make you seem important enough in BigCo. It's fine for scoring social points.

<comment><USER9> I think the point is to make your job description _less_ technical, not more. You're not a programmer, you're "the guy who made $X for your company last Y".

<comment><USER8> That's a good point, it's not just about what you do, the effects matter. But again it fits into the scoring social points game and making yourself look extra important to companies.

<comment><USER10> It's not just social points, it's access to fulfilling work. The better you do at conveying your unique value, the more likely you are to find someone who's willing to pay you appropriately for work that's right at the edge of your abilities. If you don't market yourself properly you'll be stuck on an HR salary scale (e.g. Programmer III at 105% of standard compensation) doing fungible work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Back in the day, John Carmack would micro-blog on the finger protocol (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_protocol>). _finger firstname.lastname@example.com_ got you Carmack's .plan file, a well-written and, for a time, frequently-updated journal of whatever programming challenges he happened to be facing at the time. _finger @idsoftware.com_ got you the id corporate directory, a simple list of about 20 names and titles. The only titles were CEO, designer, and programmer. In a tech world awash, even then, with countless software engineers, senior software engineers, senior members of technical staff, architects, chief architects, CTOs, rock stars, and ninjas, it was always refreshing for me to see Carmack's humble programmer listing.

All of my heroes in the field are programmers.

<comment><USER12> When you have become sufficiently well known for your technical expertise, you can once again call yourself a programmer. If you're lucky, you may have gotten there while calling yourself a programmer. Patrick's point is that most people can more easily get there by not calling themselves programmers.

<comment><USER13> This is because -- with the exception of computer scientific research -- the impact programming parts of one's contributions nearly always pale in comparison to the product or service one has created. Feel free to call yourself a programmer, but be prepared to answer the questions "of what" and "to what end"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > If you really like the atmosphere at universities, that is cool. Put a > backpack on and you can walk into any building at any university in the > United States any time you want. Backpacks are a lot cheaper than working in > academia. You can lead the life of the mind in industry, too — and enjoy > less politics and better pay. You can even get published in journals, if > that floats your boat. (After you've escaped the mind-warping miasma of > academia, you might rightfully question whether Published In A Journal is > really personally or societally significant as opposed to close > approximations like Wrote A Blog Post And Showed It To Smart People.)

The degree of arrogance in this article is astounding. I've worked at Google, Microsoft, and IBM, and the work I've found _most_ satisfying is in grad school.

To each his own. If you let something like this guide your life decisions, you have much bigger issues to deal with than finding a so-called "README.txt for your career as a young engineer".

<comment><USER2> How long have you been out of grad school?

If you are still _in_ grad school... Write us back in ten years and tell us how academia is coming along. Meanwhile, _carpe diem_.

If you're out of grad school, tell us how much more awesome your career is than those of your relatively-untrained peers. More money? More respect? More challenges? What?

I went to grad school, and then I did a postdoc, and these things were indeed _very_ fun hobbies [1], though very very expensive in lost income and opportunity cost. But now I support a large number of PHP apps, make significantly more money than I did as a researcher, have significantly more impact on human lives than as a researcher, work less hard than a researcher... And am, gosh, approximately ten years behind my peers career- wise. Oh, those expensive hobbies!

Still, nothing wrong with having hobbies. Just do be sure to know the difference between hobby and career. It can be similar to the difference between the transient and the steady-state.

And if you're out of grad school and have managed to secure an awesome steady- state career as an academic researcher with job security _and_ good pay _and_ time to spend with your family, your other hobbies, and your community, please do write back and tell us again how arrogant we are.

\---

[1] In much the same way, I imagine, that the triathlon is fun.

<comment><USER15> The main arrogance, I think, is his claim that journals are just blog posts with more elitism, combined with a strange sort of anger towards academia (which doesn't seem to be based on knowledge of how academia works; it's not much of an ivory-tower fairy land, but really quite industry-like, with professors as managers in charge of running moderate-sized organizations, which they need to do PR, mentorship, and management for, along with generating revenue streams to keep the lab provisioned and grad students / postdocs paid).

As for journals, I like blogging, and hope to see academic publishing move towards a more online, networked open model, but I simply don't think we're anywhere near that. A typical blog post and a typical journal article are miles apart, today, and _very_ few novel scientific results are produced in blog posts. So if your goal is to advance science, you're probably going to be part of academic culture in one way or another, and probably going to publish your results in conferences or journals. That's also possible to do outside academia or an industrial research lab, but relatively few people outside those kinds of settings actually manage to get the time to do so, since their local incentives don't reward it. In some cases they actively hinder it; I've been working with some game-industry people who hope to publish some of their AI techniques in venues like (<http://www.aiide.org/aiide11/>), but publishing is often vetoed by their management.

<comment><USER2> All sorts of stuff in there.

Patrick stated that you can submit journal articles without being employed by a university or think tank. This is true.

He also stated that, while it is perhaps thrilling to get a journal article published to an audience of hundreds, it is perhaps _nearly_ as thrilling, plus one hell of a lot less work, to write essays on HN for an audience of tens of thousands. This is also true.

Don't conflate the two statements. Scientific papers and blog posts are not the same thing, I don't think Patrick is claiming they are, and I'm actually quite doubtful that they'll ever _be_ the same thing. (Anonymous peer review is important, blogs don't support it, and the online systems that _do_ support it don't look much like blogs, they look like online scientific journals.)

Now, on to other good stuff:

 _academia... [is] really quite industry-like_

Indeed, it is very much like an industry. One with a tiny handful of customers, one of which is usually a major government. Often the government is the _only_ customer. The difference between working for, say, a major military contractor, or a major pharmaceutical company, and working for a university is getting smaller every day.

It's nice work so long as your customer is buying. Once your only customer stops buying, however, finding another one can be a real pain.

Meanwhile, it's true that industry doesn't generally give a hoot about publishing new discoveries, often preferring to keep things secret. This is too bad. However, before we conclude that the only alternative is to become a professor, let me suggest that one could also look for a job where you can sell solutions to customers _and_ keep control of your own IP, publishing it as you will. If you want to be told many stories about how this can work, go to an open source software conference.

<comment><USER15> _let me suggest that one could also look for a job where you can sell solutions to customers and keep control of your own IP, publishing it as you will. If you want to be told many stories about how this can work, go to an open source software conference._

I believe this is _possible_ , but if your goal is to do novel scientific research and publish the results, it's exceptionally _uncommon_. I rely on all sorts of statistical and machine-learning techniques developed by other people, for example. It's relatively common to set up shop as an independent data-mining consultant, and you can fairly easily pay the bills that way. So you might think that they've produced some of the results I rely on. But the way the economics work out, independent consultants rarely spend much time on basic research. The actual techniques and advances, as a result, come almost _exclusively_ from researchers in academia and industrial research labs.

In fact, I can't actually think of any influential advances in machine learning from the past few decades developed by independent researchers. Heck, looking through the R packages I use, even the software seems to come mainly from a mixture of universities and places like Rand (biggest surprise in this mini-inventory: lots of stuff from Merck, who I wouldn't have expected to be open-source-friendly).

Nonetheless, that's actually my medium-term goal, so I hope you're right. ;-)

<comment><USER2> _the way the economics work out, independent consultants rarely spend much time on basic research_

Am I wrong to read this as: "After forty hours a week spend on doing well-paid work for clients, it's hard to find another thirty hours to scour literature and write up results, while still having a life?"

Because I'd be cautious in assuming that academics work much less than seventy hours a week. ;)

It's true, though: Doing an actual stint in academia is the right way to get a lot of scientific publications out. But: It doesn't pay well. It's not the most effective way of keeping yourself alive, or creating clear and saleable value for others. That's why I call it a _hobby_. You are taking time away from more valuable pursuits to advance the field, teach people, and maybe even practice a little art.

I'm sad to see that people think my use of the word _hobby_ is so demeaning. I'm a big believer in hobbies. Here's my philosophy of the ideal life: You're born, you enjoy a series of hobbies (some of which may be _deadly serious_ , like Steve Jobs' hobby of inventing the future), and then you die. I suppose I could look for a better word, but if the word doesn't express the concept of _loads of fun_ it's not the right word.

Apparently writing essays on HN is the hobby of the day for me...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> One of the things that I see among hardworking smart people is they somehow tend to use 'difficult work' as a yardstick to measure 'good work'. Difficult work need not necessarily be good work. Unfortunately if you fall for this, you will end up wasting a lot of time, effort and energy over years and at the end wonder why you are not as rich as someone who does has half the difficult work as you do.

'Good work' or something that brings long term financial success and happiness is something that adds value to business you are serving to write software. There are also many academic kind of jobs which involve a lot of algorithms, math and precision science which won't deal with much of flavor business software has today. That's not wrong if you are a academician by profession, but that's a serious problem if you are doing software development for a living.

Much large of software development today, has got to deal with learning tools, knowing how to use a programming language to quickly turn idea to code, or fix a bug or add a feature. Apart from this you must also know how to quickly discover solutions to problems, even by searching on the internet. Being able to discover has become more important that being able to invent these days.

Additionally you must know how to push long hours, work late nights and may be on weekends. All this has fundamentally nothing to do with software.

All passion of working on something interesting, changing the world et al is perfectly acceptable in your early 20's when you relatively have lesser responsibilities. As we grow older our responsibilities will only increase, the bills and expenditure will grow up. For vast majority of people, thinking pragmatically in this case is important(I'm not saying this for everybody, some can. Not all will make it, those how will not have to take the most pragmatic way out).

That's probably why start up's are not for everyone. And that's why php et al is still alive. Anything that helps you make those first dollars will win.

This is the sad thing about the real world.

Learn, but use the most pragmatic tool at the moment to serve your business.

<comment><USER17> > "One of the things that I see among hardworking smart people is they somehow > tend to use 'difficult work' as a yardstick to measure 'good work'. > Difficult work need not necessarily be good work. Unfortunately if you fall > for this, you will end up wasting a lot of time, effort and energy over > years and at the end wonder why you are not as rich as someone who does has > half the difficult work as you do."

A connection just went off in my head; this sentiment is echoed in Sirlin's 'Playing to Win' series of posts.

"I've never been to a tournament where there was a prize for the winner and another prize for the player who did many difficult moves."

It's good advice. I mean, enjoy solving difficult problems, but it is important to recognize that it can be... self-indulgent sometimes. There certainly exist hard problems that are also good problems, but they are not measured with the same units.

<comment><USER18> True, but when entering a new line of business, the ability to solve difficult problems is a competitive advantage that a small start-up can leverage against a large company.

"Use difficulty as a guide not just in selecting the overall aim of your company, but also at decision points along the way. At Viaweb one of our rules of thumb was run upstairs. Suppose you are a little, nimble guy being chased by a big, fat, bully. You open a door and find yourself in a staircase. Do you go up or down? I say up. The bully can probably run downstairs as fast as you can. Going upstairs his bulk will be more of a disadvantage. Running upstairs is hard for you but even harder for him."

Source: <http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html>

<comment><USER16> That wasn't point of the post, the point was mere doing technically difficult work and then assuming that will help you get that edge is often wrong. Or putting it the other way, you must do what it takes.

The problem is few people take it as a gospel truth that if the problems you work on are difficult you've got win bigger than the guy working lesser difficult problems.

This goes even further with some people who consider the only way to win big is to work with difficult problems.

That is when people get it completely wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > If you call yourself a programmer, someone is already working on a way to > get you fired.

If you work at a place like that, I feel sorry for you.

Even the owner of my company lists himself on Twitter and his blog as just Programmer at RAD Game Tools. Besides being the sounding board for us when we have problems and ideas, he still writes more code than most of us can regularly muster.

<comment><USER20> >If you work at a place like that, I feel sorry for you.

I came to the comments to express the same sort of opinion. I work at a place that understands and values programmers. I can't imagine working in any other kind of environment unless I was between real jobs and really strapped for cash. If you're at a place run by a bunch of clueless MBAs that don't understand the value of their in-house engineers you just don't have a good (or reliable) job.

<comment><USER21> Are those MBA's clueless? Programmers are costs, and expensive ones at that. We start off underwater on the value proposition. Saying "I'm a programmer" is saying "I'm a large, fixed cost." The question for the businessman is always: what value do you add, and does it exceed your costs?

Yes, there's value for an in-house engineering _team_ , but with widely varying skill distributions and unevenly matched compensation. Managers know this, and Patrick's point is that "I'm a programmer" is starting off on the wrong foot as it just re-affirms that you are a large, fixed cost, saying nothing about your specific contributions.

<comment><USER22> The value of programmers tends not be linear with cost though. Paying an extra 25-50% for decent ones gets you at least a 2x improvement, possibly more if they can rewrite large chunks of your corporate code to improve it.

<comment><USER21> That's precisely my point. The question in the businessman's head is "are you one of the decent ones? are we getting our money's worth?"

<comment><USER22> Yes, and it should be, but the answer, unfortunately, is that they typically have _no idea_ who is a good programmer and who isn't, so they only end up hiring cheap programmers.

In other words - yes, they are clueless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm not too into gatekeepers, so I'd like this to be true:

 _you might rightfully question whether Published In A Journal is really personally or societally significant as opposed to close approximations like Wrote A Blog Post And Showed It To Smart People_

But honestly I have never found a blog post that I could see as replacing journal articles, if your goal is to promote advancement of scientific knowledge. I _like_ blogs, and read them often, but they aren't normally in- depth, with solid scientific evidence for their results, with discussion of how they relate to existing results, etc. The closest is probably in mathematics, where some of the mathematics blogging is quite high-level and results in actual new discoveries--- but those blog posts are mostly written _by math professors_ (e.g. Terence Tao's blog), which doesn't seem to be what this article is proposing.

Where on the internet can I find blog posts of the same scientific standard that one finds in, say, <http://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/> ? I read quite a few statistics, data-mining, and machine learning blogs, and while there is a lot of good content, I haven't found anything that I'd say replaces a journal article; it's more along the lines of tutorials and tips and tricks (which are also very valuable, but a different kind of contribution).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I spend a bit too much time on HN, as evidenced by the timing of this post, and one of the dangers I've noticed is that I can become so fascinated with the interesting things other hackers are doing that I lose perspective on how valuable & relatively rare my combination of skills are. I suspect this is true for others here.

Patrick gives insanely valuable advice for hackers who could be both create more value and capture more of it by being aware of the big picture & the motivations of others.

</comment><comment><USER23> Does anyone else think that this article is in poor form?

On the perils of describing yourself as a programmer: If you're hiring someone to provide a specific skill set (programmer) you want them to be good at programming. Would you hire an accountant if they didn't know accounting? Should lawyers not describe themselves as lawyers? Doctors as doctors?

On the perils of selling yourself as an expert in a certain technology: I spend a fair amount of my time learning about the specific technologies I use. I've been doing this for a while and I don't know everything about sql, postgres, mysql, mongodb, javascript, html, css, ruby, rails, unix, chef, capistrano. But I've put thousands of hours into these things and the tools themselves took thousands of hours to create. Either I'm really bad at learning, or there is a lot to learn there and that information makes me more valuable to potential/current companies. Sure, there is a baseline level of skill you can achieve in programming where you can not suck at most stuff but there is still a lot of valuable information that you don't know if you just half assed your way through a Beginning Ruby on Rails book.

<comment><USER24> Reprising a comment of mine from earlier: the _actual work_ performed by most lawyers is letter-writing at $X00 an hour. No lawyer describes themselves as a "professional letter-writer" or "professional letter-writer specializing in Mostly Empty Threats."

When "programmer" starts showing up with lawyer and doctor on "high status occupations used as the canonical examples of professional jobs since you were three years old" then programmers should _definitely_ start describing themselves as programmers to anyone who will listen.

<comment><USER23> How about a surgeon? Their actual core competency is performing surgery. Should they not describe themselves as Surgeons?

Edit:

Are accountants high status? I'm not sure. They are generally regarded as making a fair bit of money but they are boring. Probably a bit more high status than a programmer, perhaps. But I wouldn't suggest to my accountant friends that they stop selling themselves as experts at accounting.

And anyways, high status = social status, and how is that relevant to any of your points? Social status is mostly useful for when you're trying to get laid (because that's mostly when you are trying to impress people) or prove something to your parents. We, as programmers, still get paid very well and are valued by many many companies.

The lack "high status" thing in comparison to doctors and lawyers is just because:

A) Laywers and doctors generally make more money. A lot of lawyers and doctors make over 200K. Programmers, not so much.

B) Laywers and doctors are almost certainly better educated than programmers. This education is validates a person in lots of ways, in that you are automatically learned about a variety of topics with which to converse with at parties, and that you are smart enough not only to perform as a lawyer/doctor but to achieve the level of education necessary to do so (unlike programming, where you only need to be good at your job and not necessarily good at 6+ years of higher ed).

C) The laywer and doctor professions have been around longer and are therefore safer. Doctors are the most ancient and historically valuable professions. Laywers, not nearly as much so, but for the past few hundred years they have emerged as a staple profession. I like law a lot but I would devalue lawyers over doctors a bunch.

D) It's harder to become a lawyer/doctor than a programmer, so it's a bigger achievement.

E) The jobs generally require more social skills than working with computers.

Programmers will probably never be a high status job because of the above reasons. But that doesn't really affect your argument, which is describing how you should sell yourself to potential employers.

I'd like to reiterate that I'd prefer to well rounded people who are good at programming and specifically good at our tech stack. That's the ideal. Take classic ASP.NET programmer and tell him to write a complex Ruby on Rails project and watch him flounder for months no matter how good he was at ASP.NET. There's just a lot to learn. Now, for someone who is more seasoned, used to unix, used to working with actual HTML+CSS+Javascript (instead of .net controls) used to writing tests, used to dynamic languages, that person will adjust fast, but not everyone will.

<comment><USER16> Engineering is a older profession that Medicine. Remember it was wheel and before that tools to invent the wheel that got invented.

Software is a sub branch of engineering. Like veterinary doctors. In fact man kind had taken huge leaps in engineering before they took in medicine(Stuff like Pyramids of Giza etc).

Doctors and Lawyers have a nature of work which if done badly or of subjectively low quality a persons quality of life gets very hugely impacted.

Its like high risk, high gain.

<comment><USER25> That's why "Engineer" actually is a high-status profession. "Programmer", not so much. There is a reason many programmers have tend to refer to themselves as Software Engineers.

<comment><USER26> This is so true.

I went with my co-worker to talk with a client a few weeks ago. Even though we do the exact same thing, we introduced ourselves differently.

I said I was a programmer, and the response was "oh, that's nice"

He said he was an Engineer, and the response was "Oh, that's so impressive"

Also the fact that here in Japan the average salary for "Software Engineer" is almost twice that for "Programmer" and you can see why you would want to shy away from that nomenclature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> >> "What is your previous salary?" is employer-speak for "Please give me reasons to pay you less money." Answer appropriately.

What is the proper approach to answering this question?

<comment><USER24> "You're better situated to judge my worth to your company than I am. What do _you_ think I should be paid?" Counter with better offer.

My other stock answer: "As a matter of professional courtesy, I decline to comment on specific policies of previous employers. You should appreciate this, after all, someday someone will be asking about yours."

<comment><USER28> EXCELLENT suggestions. I'm 100% positive that being blindsided by the "previous salary" question cost me thousands of dollars when negotiating for a previous job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> _90% of programming jobs are in creating Line of Business software: Most software is not sold in boxes, available on the Internet, or downloaded from the App Store. Most software is boring one-off applications in corporations, under-girding every imaginable facet of the global economy. It tracks expenses, it optimizes shipping costs, it assists the accounting department in preparing projections, it helps design new widgets, it prices insurance policies, it flags orders for manual review by the fraud department, etc etc. Software solves business problems. Software often solves business problems despite being soul-crushingly boring and of minimal technical complexity._

Wasn't this precisely the insight of the founders of Infosys in the late 80s? Together, the Indian outsourcing giants, Infosys, TCS and Wipro have amassed huge armies of "programmers" to meet these needs. I stay away from CRUD stuff, because 1. I don't expect to be very successful competing with armies. 2. I don't like being a part of a huge army.

<comment><USER16> You are not getting the whole point about business. Businesses run on supply- demand scenarios. Only every once in a while something new comes around like iPhone, or Google search or Windows operating system etc etc. And the likeliness of you working on them are as close to negligible. Otherwise what ever you will ever work on, where ever you will ever work at, and its success will often have to often abide by the laws of supply and demand in the market. And the money and long term success flows in the direction where the supply- demand flow is.

When you are talking of big IT bellwethers, they are in a business of supplying services at affordable costs. Aren't you seeing the massive potential in this business? today maintenance and services massively outweighs product development and this is time tested truth. Because once you develop something you have to maintain it all the time. Also this is the only business, where you can retain your technical hands on and still climb the corporate management ladder. Combining both parts of the world. This will give you an edge, to add value in both areas. Also these companies, offer massive infrastructure, training and experimenting grounds which a start up in India can never possibly offer. You also get access to great books, and huge network of good people. If you are lucky you get opportunities to travel around the world, doing business,learning and enjoying various cultures around the world. Also their pay is difficult to match.

The start up scenario in India is really messed up badly. After so many years we get to see only one flipkart and Infibeam. And from what I have been hearing its no honey and milk there. Its your usual 'safest way to production' route that they take. They are generally Java heavy shops. I wonder if all this trouble is worth. If all you want to work is on Java.

After few years if you see you peer in a big IT bellwether(who is/was as good as you) being more successful in terms money and life style. Don't be surprised, he is in a place where there is steady supply of money and opportunities.

Its like you will be average among the best. And he will best among the average.

Another thing that I have noticed is start up's in India and especially founders are extremely stingy. They tend to see developers as tissues(use and throw entities). And chances of large number of people making into start up's are also lesser. And there aren't too many good start ups.

Also these Indian IT companies did a major job of propelling India to global IT forefront. If they were to go away, we will loose massive amounts of employment opportunities, exposure and more importantly confidence to open start ups in the future. Remember they were themselves start up's some time back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The language stuff is only part true. It's true enough, perhaps, that it's not usually the most important thing to emphasize on a resume, especially if you're doing simple CRUD apps, but nevertheless programming languages and their implementations are varied and complex.

Yes, you can become productive in a new language after 6 months of using it, but most people will still have a long way to go before they can claim a reasonably high level of proficiency, especially if there's significant dissonance between the languages. Going from Java (or most languages, really) to Python isn't going to be too difficult, but a lot of that is because Python is a very easy language to get started with. But even with Python it will probably be a lot longer before you really understand some of its less obvious features, pitfalls, performance profile, and are comfortable writing idiomatic code. For a more complicated language, like Perl, or a more distant language, like Haskell, it'll probably be a lot longer.

</comment><comment><USER31> Fantastic post. I'd also recommend any "programmers" to invest a couple years in a systems integration engineering role as well. It's generally a great place for picking up some skills many programmers / engineers lack:

* Communicating with internal and external customers

* Understand systems from a broader (higher level) perspective

* Ability to translate wants and needs to technical requirements and specifications that are implementable

* Ability to sell yourself as well as the product / service

* Give constructive criticism as an internal customer to programmers / software engineers (great chance to view the role @ 180 degrees)

<comment><USER32> I'd also add - meet all the influential people in different teams. From my limited experience, even if you're on a low position you suddenly start talking to team leaders and people who they assign to talk to you (usually the ones who have a clue). Great start for networking.

<comment><USER31> Honestly, for networking purposes, look no further than participating and volunteering in a national non-profit group. It'll give you access to both depth and breadth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I agree wholeheartedly. That's how I promote my consulting biz, "More money for your business."

It is amazing how devs think that dollar value should equal effort. It does not. And this doesn't just apply to software. It applies to anything and everything. The value of something is what someone is willing to pay for it in that one split second when they click "charge my card".

<comment><USER34> _It is amazing how devs think that dollar value should equal effort. It does not._

I think most consultants and contractors reach a point where this clicks. At first they think, well this will take me X hours, so it's worth Y dollars. Later they think, this is apparently worth X dollars to the client, so I'll bill Y dollars, where Y is way closer to X than any how-long-it-takes calculation.

It's the difference between "hard work should be rewarded" and "value should be rewarded."

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Patrick has some great advice.

I'll add my own anecdote: earlier this year I had an interview which required taking a plane. I decided to wear my suit on the plane, and it was an entirely new experience. I can't put my finger on exactly what it was, but the people simply seemed nicer, more pleasant and accommodating. If you want people to think of you as a professional, dressing the part certainly helps.

<comment><USER36> I hate the fact that people get treated differently because of what they wear. It's ridiculous and unfair, but that is reality.

And that's one of the biggest things I took from this piece: Yea, it all sucks and is ridiculous most of the time, but it's the way the game is played. Play it or get left behind.

<comment><USER35> It's definitely a game. One that's rigged (and not in your favor), but you better do your best or you might not get a second chance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> _Many asked how to know what programming language or stack to study. It doesn't matter._

It does matter in so far products come and go and you don't want to accumulate knowledge on a product that's going to disappear from the market.

I worked with SGI IRIX from 1991-1996. The company has since gone bankrupt twice and IRIX has disappeared from the market. All the knowledge I accumulated on IRIX is worth nothing because it's no longer in demand. Practically noone still has IRIX machines in production.

In 1996, I switched to Linux. It had a vibrant community and you could feel it's growing rapidly. Turns out that knowledge is still valuable.

So it's really important for engineers to keep a close eye on the marketplace: If something's getting out of business or out of fashion, stop investing time in it. Instead, be on the lookout for stuff that's growing. In general, open source stuff has a longer lifetime because it can be forked if need be, wheras proprietary stuff is often problematic as companies change their mind on a whim. HP/WebOS is a recent example.

<comment><USER38> The programming language or stack does not matter to whoever is hiring you.

The fact that you knew IRIX was a good indicator that you'd be able to pick up Linux.

It's also today a good indicator that you'd be able to pick up Windows if you set your mind to it.

Your advice is solid from an engineer to engineer point of view, but Patio's advice takes an egineer to business perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> > _Many people already successfully employed as senior engineers cannot > actually implement FizzBuzz. Just read it and weep. Key takeaway: you > probably are good enough to work at that company you think you're not good > enough for. They hire better mortals, but they still hire mortals._

This is one of the most important career lessons I've learned first-hand of late.

</comment><comment><USER40> _71~94: Your equity grant is worth a lump sum of money which makes you about as much money as you gave up working for the startup, instead of working for a megacorp at a higher salary with better benefits._

Or phrased differently, you get to work for a startup you believe in and enjoy instead of a soul-crushing megacorp, with (almost) no cost.

This counts as a win in my book.

<comment><USER16> You are making the assumption that working in a Start up always compensates for the losses through equity. That is true only if the Start up wins and ends making money or sells for good enough amount to money pay you that chunk.

But if it doesn't you loose time and money. And have to deal with added frustration of that loss and finding a new job.

At the same who is almost as good as you would have never been through all that. Made more money with the same learning experience as yours.

Its not about the positive scenario that's the problem here. Its the negative scenario.

<comment><USER40> The "positive" (actually breakeven) scenario is what the "71-94 roll" refers to in the OP. The more common negative scenario is if you "roll 1-70", I didn't dispute that. I simply did a half-full glass rephrasing of the 71-94 case instead of the original half-empty version.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> This article has tons of gold in it besides the "don't call yourself a programmer" part. I actually thought the paragraphs past that were better, especially for the younger crowd. I want to send this post to every kid that's about to graduate college.

</comment><comment><USER42> Great read. Probably patio11's best yet (TLDR: A summary of pretty much all his comments here on HN). Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER43> Not very good advice. It's basically an accountants view of engineering, which can be summarized as follows:

\- Only be interested in increasing profit or reducing cost

\- Don't care about what you do unless it conflicts with the above

\- Treat people you meet as commodities

\- Produce cruddy code, because "good enough" is all that matters

\- Good engineering is not a "profit center"

\- Don't bother keeping up with new programming languages or new techniques

<comment><USER38> You may disagree with those views, but if they are predominant among the people who have final say in hiring you, and at what salary, then the advice is good.

The whole point of the article is to force a typical engineer to look at how most of the world perceives him, and work with that.

If you have to talk to another engineer as part of a hiring process, talk all the shop you want. If you're talking to business people, try to talk about the business advantages of what you do.

<comment><USER15> _You may disagree with those views, but if they are predominant among the people who have final say in hiring you, and at what salary, then the advice is good._

Are they, though? I can see they might be if you're in consulting (as the author of this post appears to be), but I've never heard of an interview at somewhere like Google or Intel that wants to hear you talk about Providing Value; they want to know your technical skills.

<comment><USER44> No, the technical interviewers want to know your technical skills, because they advise the people who pull the trigger on your hiring whether you will provide value. Now, it's been a while, but my Google interview involved straight technical interviews and several interviews that were less about technical detail and far more about discerning my longer term value to the company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> "Want to get trained on Ruby at a .NET shop? Implement a one-off project in Ruby. Bam, you are now a professional Ruby programmer — you coded Ruby and you took money for it. (You laugh? I did this at a Java shop. The one-off Ruby project made the company $30,000. My boss was, predictably, quite happy and never even asked what produced the deliverable.)"

Unless an employee actually gets permission to do this, this makes him incredibly selfish, and is a good way to get fired (and deservedly so), no matter how good he is.

<comment><USER46> Technically, the employee would not be fired right away.

He or she, however, would be red flagged for close observation by being put on a Performance Plan.

Basically, a PP is required to legally fire you. For example, if you had a bad record of coming in at a consistent time, they could put you on a PP. In this PP (which you would have to sign as a condition of further employment), there would be a contract for coming in between 9 and 9:15 for the next thirty days, with a small margin of forgiveness. PP are used to document that you have behaved poorly or acted wrongly in the corporate context. Once you are put on a PP, it is a prelude to a firing. You can successfully get out of a PP, but it is stressful.

For the hypothetical Ruby programmer in the Java shop, the PP would probably involve something insidious like LOC.

<comment><USER34> _Basically, a PP is required to legally fire you._

Where are you talking about? Laws vary, even among the states in the USA.

<comment><USER46> When I mean _legally_ , I mean to protect the company against being sued for firing you. Yes, there are cases where there are immediate terminations. PP assist in the less egregious cases where there is gray areas. In fact, you can argue that the entire point of an HR department is to protect the company from getting sued.

<comment><USER23> It depends on the state. You can't (successfully) sue a company in Massachusetts (like California) for any reason besides discrimination. They don't need to give a reason why they fire/lay you off. They just fire you and that's how it goes. Not all states are like this.

<comment><USER47> > You can't (successfully) sue a company in Massachusetts (like California) > for any reason besides discrimination.

Being fired while belonging to an Identified Minority is harassment and discrimination unless done according to a documented failure of a Personal Improvement Plan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> A little cynical, but overall mostly rings true. I also have found that focusing on business/product goals and good communications skills dwarfs the ability to hack when it comes to success.

</comment><comment><USER49> Personally, I think this is an interesting article, and I got two things out of it:

1\. Effective communication with people from various backgrounds is important. This is incredibly hard, and it does require practice. Those that succeed typically communicate very well.

2\. I mentally replaced the "don't call yourself a programmer" mantra for "tell people _why_ you're doing what you do - what problem do you solve and how is it valuable". If you work for a business, you also need to have some basic understanding of business. Successful organizations probably have more people that really try to find their role in the "big picture" of the company, and they strive to use their place to create value.

<comment><USER10> I'm going to start reversing my elevator pitch. From now on I help save my company millions of dollars each year by enabling analysts to find and address operational inefficiencies in our national retail operations. Oh, and I do this by leading and implementing a range of business intelligence solutions using a suite of .NET-based BI and data warehousing tools.

I think I used to say something about programming web applications to generate numbers for middle managers to review.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I think this is the best OP has written yet. A lot of people in this thread are fighting with his b/c they make apps or run a small company.

Not living in the bay area I see what he is saying, most programmers are not selling apps, or selling small consumer applications. Most make internal apps, and many of those internal apps are more interesting than mobile apps or web apps.

</comment><comment><USER51> I'm new to the startup game, and most of my hunches that Ive formed over the past 6+ months are proved true by this post. This is insanely good advice in this post, one of which involves modesty and confidence.

I'm never going to be modest from here on out and will act like a pompous douche when deemed necessary. I see people act this way ALL the time, and I figured people could see right through their bullshit. Apparently not, as it clearly does not matter if they are right - only if their bullshit is passable. Apparently being modest does not work to my advantage. I have no choice but to play the game.

<comment><USER24> Restrained, professional confidence will work as well or better as "pompous douche", and it won't compromise your principles.

Picture a heart surgeon. Given an opening like "Wow, you save people's lives all by yourself" he doesn't say "Oh, it's nothing", he says something like "My team saves people lives. It is a privilege to work with them."

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Does this cause people to read "The Genius and Tragedy of Patrick McKenzie"

[http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/the-genius-and-tragedy- of-p...](http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/the-genius-and-tragedy-of-patrick- mckenzie)

(posted last month by an observer of the author of the submitted post here) with a different reaction?

<comment><USER53> It was posted in 2010 and generated the following discussion: <http://apps.ycombinator.com/item?id=1720244>

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> It seems like the author had a really hard time. If you're a software engineer, work at a software company if you want to be happy. Negotiation isn't what's going to get you the job either, programming is.

<comment><USER55> I agree. Working at a software company makes it more likely you'll enjoy your job as you're around a lot more people that just get it. In an IT dept. you're frequently battling the culture of whatever company you're in to create conditions suitable for building good software. Plus you're a little too close to the customer (the business).

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Well now I can honestly reward myself for picking the University of Waterloo. All of the points made by this article are well understood by second+ years of Waterloo Engineering.

How?

The coop program i.e. the four month work then four month study program.

Except maybe for the startup stuff. That said, there are are overarching initiatives being undertaken by uWaterloo to infuse entrepreneurship and student success. The most popular one? <http://velocity.uwaterloo.ca/>

</comment><comment><USER57> > Perceptive readers will note that 100 does not actually show up on a d100 or > rand(100).

It also jumped out at me that the zero case is not handled (it occurs on the rand(100), if not the die).

He's got a great point about learning negotiation skills, too, but I've read a lot of things and feel that what I lack most is actual live practice. I think this is similar to the point about meeting people and shaking their hand and how different that is from meeting some person online.

</comment><comment><USER58> >Actual grooming is at least moderately important, too, because people are hilariously easy to hack by expedients such as dressing appropriately for the situation, maintaining a professional appearance, speaking in a confident tone of voice, etc. Your business suit will probably cost about as much as a computer monitor. You only need it once in a blue moon, but when you need it you'll be really, really, really glad that you have it. Take my word for it, if I wear everyday casual when I visit e.g. City Hall I get treated like a hapless awkward twenty-something, if I wear the suit I get treated like the CEO of a multinational company. I'm actually the awkward twenty-something CEO of a multinational company, but I get to pick which side to emphasize when I want favorable treatment from a bureaucrat.

is it really expected or even appropriate to wear a suit to an interview in the valley? i remember doing that during for my internship interview and i felt silly sitting next to my interviewer at lunch who was wearing shorts and flip flops.

<comment><USER59> The point is to dress _appropriately_ , not to wear a suit every day. Some companies expect you to show up in a suit and some don't. So figure out which and act accordingly. If your interviewer is wearing flip-flops then you clearly overdressed.

</comment></comment><comment> cool-RR Thanks for this manifesto patio11! I read it a couple of times and thought how I could apply it to my career.

There are 2 parts in it that I have difficulties with, and I'd appreciate clarifications:

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

"In the real world, picking up a new language takes a few weeks of effort and after 6 to 12 months nobody will ever notice you haven't been doing that one for your entire career."

How can you say that? Sure, an experienced and intelligent programmer can learn to program in Language X in a few weeks, but do you think that after a year he will reach the same level of efficiency of a similarly experienced and intelligent programmer who has 8 years of experience programming?

Sure, you'd know most of the important things that the 8-year guy knows, but I was taught that the worth of programmers is exponential to their talents. Say that if you're at the 99% percentile of Language X developers, there are (say) about 1,000 people like you in the world. If you're in the 99.99% percentlie, there are now only 10 people like you worldwide. Wouldn't that result in a much bigger price that you could put on your services?

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

"Profit Centers are the part of an organization that bring in the bacon [...] Cost Centers are, well, everybody else. _You really want to be attached to Profit Centers._ "

I don't understand this.

Let me see if I got the terms right: Profit Centers are "where the money comes in from", and Cost Center are "where the money comes out of". But of course, Cost Centers do not exist because CEOs are looking for ways to flush money down the tubes-- it's just that Cost Centers bring in money in indirect ways. For example, let's say that you're a CEO, and you have hired an expensive programmer to write a script that periodically checks that your backups are valid. That would qualify for a "Cost Center", right? And everyone would agree that this is a wise investment.

So what am I supposed to do if I'm hired to do this kind of job? Decline it because it's a Cost Cetner?

You also suggest to "engineer your transfer [from Cost Center to Profit Center] after joining the company". Wouldn't that be kinda douche-y? I mean, I'd be pretty pissed if I hired a guy to do Job X and then he was trying to engineer his way into Job Y because that's where the money is.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

Thanks again for the post!

<comment> barry-cotter Cost centres are to be minimised as far as possible. This occasionally means they will be minimised more than is wise and there will be an emergency when this shows up and someone has to fix it.

Nevertheless _a Cost Centre is a kind of janitor_ , an absolutely necessary thing that should be done, at the minimum cost that lends itself to an acceptable standard. Another concept that might enlighten you in this context is _Core Competency_. Everything that is not this can in theory be outsourced. In practice it may not be worth outsourcing because it would cost too much in time, money or communications overhead but the company exists to charge money to do its Core Competency and everything else is detail.

 _Don't be detail._

If you are hired to work on a cost centre you attempt to make or save money and either get a raise/bonus for doing so, or move to where you can, whether in the company or in another one.

Finally, being only "kinda douche-y" makes you vastly less douche-y than just about everybody in the executive suite. Your colleagues are mostly not your friends. Your manager is definitely not your friend. Your manager's manger's job is partly to get as much value (work) out of people like you for the least money possible.

If you are ever in a job where you and your (over)manager are directly antagonistic run like hell, but 100% aligned incentives are very, very rare. If you want keywords try "principal agent problem".

You are not a sarariman, you will never have either job security or loyalty from above so don't act loyal from below, it just makes you a chump.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Is this article's claim about Google -- that the programmers closest to Adwords revenue have highest status (edit: and/or pay) -- true? It contradicts what I've heard.

<comment><USER61> I don't think he said they had the highest status...I think he said they were the best paid. I'm not sure if that's true or not, but it's a very different claim.

(I too have heard differently)

<comment><USER62> This is not true -- pay is not based on project.

<comment><USER63> But bonus is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> I'm kind of terrified of "At the end of the day, your life happiness will not be dominated by your career." Hopefully he means that primarily for employees, not for startup founders, and even then, I know a lot of people who work in research, engineering, etc. where career is by far #1.

<comment><USER65> Hopefully he _doesn't_ mean it just for employees. The Hacker News community has a bent towards "startup = happiness" which I disagree with, but all things considered, is better than the screddit "eSports is important, and it's important to practice Starcraft" bent.

<comment><USER16> >>The Hacker News community has a bent towards "startup = happiness"

This is something that even I have observed, in some cases I have even seen when people take it like "only startup = happiness".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> One of the takeaways I get from this is that if you can't prove value, you can't demand payment for it. Proving usually involves measuring.

How does one go about measuring? They're not about to give a "mere programmer" access to the sales data or whatever.

</comment><comment><USER67> _I recently stumbled across a web-page from the guy whose professional bio is "wrote the backend billing code that 97% of Google's revenue passes through." He's now an angel investor (a polite synonym for "rich")._

Any idea who this person is?

</comment><comment><USER68> I did appreciate the section about programmer skill and not to underestimate yourself too much, simply because it was a feel-good paragraph. By regularly reading a variety of tech blogs and trying to keep up with software goings-on, I've put myself on a drip feed that constantly reinforces: "Holy crap... every programmer out there is developing mind blowing software in languages you've never heard of in the course of a weekend. Meanwhile, you're dribbling out a few dozen lines of C in a day."

Who knows where the truth lies, but for the next few minutes I'll just enjoy the slight buzz from the article.

</comment><comment><USER69> My employer calls me a programmer. They print it in on my business cards and hang a sign on my door that reads "Senior Systems Programmer"... so I'm a programmer and I'm not ashamed to be called that.

<comment><USER70> Seriously, how dense are you to think this article has to do with the title on your business card?

This is about programmers that seem to love to undervalue their skills, and then anonymously bitch in online forums about how stupid everyone else is and underpaid and under appreciated they are.

<comment><USER69> I only mean to point out that _I_ don't call myself a programmer, but others do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> "Your GPA largely doesn't matter (modulo one high profile exception: a multinational advertising firm)."

Nice jab at Google.

</comment><comment><USER72> Enjoyed the post. Do programmers really not know who Peter Drucker is?

<comment><USER73> It would be sort of sad for programmers to not know who Drucker was, since he's the guy who coined the term "knowledge worker" to name the class of job roles that encompasses programmers (and also a large percentage of the people who use computers and software in the business world).

(See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_worker.>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> I feel like this article takes a very pessimistic view. To be great or have success in any field, doing anything, you are going to be up against "bad odds". If the odds of success were in everyone's favor then it wouldn't be "success" anymore. If anything this is a very discouraging article for people who may be aspiring to accomplish something great which I feel like the HN community is all about.

Perhaps I've misunderstood the authors intentions? The parts about young people in start-ups, and how it becomes a downward spiral if you aren't in the lucky 10% is such a negative view it hurts. Specifically the "odds" of succeeding and the relative unimportance of the connections you make during that time because [paraphrased] "most of the connections you make in the start-up world are with other start-ups who are likely to fail as well". This is just such a losing mindset to have. If the only thing you are concerned about is not failing then you have no chance to do anything of importance. The choice is yours.

I apologize if I've missed the point here as I know there were a lot of other parts in the article about adding value to your career and understanding how corporate structures work. I do believe those are great things to understand but the tone of the whole thing really struck a nerve.

</comment><comment><USER75> Patio is like a modern day Phillip Greenspun. Trying to turn childish programmer nerds into responsible engineering professionals.

</comment><comment><USER76> My favorite from this article: Networking: it isn't just for TCP packets.

Seriously, get out there and grow your network. Do it by getting over being shy and smile more. Ask how you can help others. And ask for nothing in return. You will be shocked (over time) by how much you actually get back.

</comment><comment><USER77> On the not calling yourself a programmer part: It may be a local thing, but the term engineer was usurped by government to essentially refer to someone who does things by the book. As such, engineer has come to mean someone who has trouble seeing the bigger picture and won't break some rules to deliver something amazing.

Obviously that is not true of many engineers, but the damage to the term is already done (again, perhaps only locally). I find it hard to take programmers who call themselves engineers seriously as a result, even if they are really good at what they do. My advice is not call yourself an engineer if you develop software. You want to use a title that makes people think you do amazing things.

<comment><USER78> To be honest I cringe whenever I hear programmers refer to themselves as "engineers". Maybe it's because here in canada engineering is regulated and you are not allowed to call yourself an engineer by law unless you posses an an engineering degree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> In most domains engineering is not the biggest challenge. The challenge is in a dozen intersecting domains that have little to do with engineering. Calling yourself a programmer is like a guitar make telling people he is a carpenter.

</comment><comment><USER80> _In the real world, picking up a new language takes a few weeks of effort and after 6 to 12 months nobody will ever notice you haven't been doing that one for your entire career._

I wish more HR/recruiting people understood this.

<comment><USER81> I have put in at least a few weeks trying to learn Haskell. I certainly never got to the point of being able to solve real world problems with it. Even after 2 years of coding in C most days of the week I wouldn't claim to know it well, and wouldn't be able to keep up with a 'real' C programmer. I've also spent far more than a few weeks (cumulatively) using Javascript and don't really have a solid grasp of the language (although in that case I have made no effort to actually learn the language).

Maybe this just reflects my poor aptitude for programming and I've very much behind the curve, so to speak. In which case it is probably correct that recruiters would do well to avoid recruiting me and to filter out those who are not able to learn new languages in a few weeks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> _At the end of the day, your life happiness will not be dominated by your career._

That said, a crappy career can put a serious chokehold on life happiness. You spend close to half your waking hours at it, after all.

</comment><comment><USER83> Best quote -- "He's now an angel investor (a polite synonym for "rich")."

</comment><comment><USER84> _Strive to help people. It is the right people to do_

A heads-up for patio11: There is lots of good stuff here, but it needs to be copyedited. There are a bunch of little errors like the one quoted above.

<comment><USER85> This could be another little error, or it could be intentional. It's hard to tell:

 _It is <%= Date.year %>_

<comment><USER32> Seems intentional. I find it slightly funny - about the same level as d100. You need to be min. lvl5 nerd to get it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> _For example, consider an internal travel expense reporting form. Across a company with 2,000 employees, that might save 5,000 man-hours a year (at an average fully-loaded cost of $50 an hour) versus handling expenses on paper, for a savings of $250,000 a year._

I should have demanded a bonus for the in-house purchase req system I wrote to replace the antiquated, pen & paper system we had been using for years. I feel better about the salary I was drawing with this in mind.

</comment><comment><USER86> This post touches on nearly everything. Some interesting snippets - well worth a read if you are a [insert appropriate spin on how you add value as a programmer].

</comment><comment><USER87> I don't agree with _everything_ he said, but in terms of completeness about working as a software developer vs what you learn in school this is spot on.

</comment><comment><USER88> >If a Python shop was looking for somebody technical to make them a pile of money, the fact that I've never written a line of Python would not get held against me.

>Much of Fog Creek uses the Microsoft Stack. I can't even spell ASP.NET and they'd still hire me.

A bit presumptuous, perhaps?

</comment><comment><USER89> You might like to read this too, "Are you a programmer or a coder?" <http://brajeshwar.com/2007/are-you-a-programmer-or-a-coder/>

</comment><comment><USER90> Networking, networking, networking... "The classic its not what you know but who you know". Also super confidence (even if your wrong). I wish it was different but then again I'm not smart so maybe I'm glad :)

<comment><USER91> I agree. However, I have begun modifying it slightly to describe what I think to be the true objective of what networking is: "It is not what you know but _who knows you_ ".

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> Paul Graham, Computer Programmer

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham_%28computer_program...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham_%28computer_programmer%29)

</comment><comment><USER93> We must create bacon, not bring it :) Like that pg's rant.

</comment><comment><USER94> I have a degree in engineering, but when people ask me what I do, I say I'm a computer programmer because that's what I am and I'm proud of that.

</comment><comment><USER95> "Producing beautiful software is not a goal." Speak for yourself! That is my goal; money is a mere byproduct enabling it.

</comment><comment><USER96> This is definitely some of the best advice I've heard. Thank you very much for posting this.

</comment><comment><USER97> Excuse me, but the company decides what the titles for positions are, not the applicants. And I'm sure no one with "Software Engineer" in their title ever got laid off. "But the article is really telling you to pick a job where you'll be considered King Shit!". Thanks for that great advice.

</comment><comment><USER98> Is it okay with you if I call myself a programmer even if I become CEO?

</comment><comment><USER99> fantastic article...

</comment><comment><USER100> I think Patrick is missing a niche segment of Hackers who have been making a lot of money in last few years.They are the independent Mobile App Developer(iOS/Android)

If you choose this path then you dont even have to start a company,all you need to do is make awesome apps.It might be a little hard to start but in a year you should be making good enough money to go independent and then sky is the limit.It is not only possible but probable that you will write better applications (using services like Parse) than entire megacorps.

<comment><USER24> Everyone knows I pay my rent by making bingo cards for elementary schoolteachers and bear no ill will for small businesses, right?

If you are sufficiently skilled to create a popular iPhone app, you can sleepwalk your way into either $100k+ as a salaried engineer or $200+ an hour doing contracting work. The _vast_ majority of app devs will not reach these numbers.

<comment><USER100> With all due respect...I think that the factor we are trying to maximize is not money...It is overall life satisfaction and happiness as a hacker.

Personally I would choose 80K a year building my own awesome apps ,making a name for myself,travelling the world ,meeting awesome people than making 200K at xyz corp where I spend my day exchanging bullshit emails with upper management.

<comment><USER24> I'm very, very sympathetic about those goals. :) Please do more research about the app market. Most people will not achieve $80k or anything close to it as independent app developers. I wish you every success.

<comment><USER101> I deal with app developers every day. I read a feed of iTunes store rankings regularly in the course of what I do. 80K is not an extremely rare level of success. In fact, even one of my old college buddies with a total MS-stack background has eclipsed it.

I'm not really in a position to share details, but for A-level geeks, there is much, much more than 100-200k to be made. It's true that most people won't achieve that. Much like 90% of sales-people's income are at sub-median levels, it's closer to a power distribution than a gaussian one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER102> Good read, i totally agree with some of the points made.

</comment><comment><USER103> How jaded.

Sounds rather like a "Guide to Success in High School" written by the guy that graduated with perfect grades but got his ass kicked every day.

Well, not everybody gets their ass kicked every day.

I absolutely cringe at the idea of a bright-eyed young programmer becoming prematurely jaded based on somebody else's experiences.

"This post aspires to be README.txt for your career as a young engineer."

Definitely failed in that regard for this young engineer and I hope it fails similarly for my cohorts.

<comment><USER104> I'm sorry to hear that. Well, you can become jaded in the normal course of events if you prefer.

When that happens, remember that this article exists. It's good for tactics later, when you realize you can use it.

I've been programming professionally for 15 years, and programming at all for almost 25 (now I feel old). I'm a fantastically skilled, experienced and versatile programmer, even for that experience level. I am, by any reasonable metric, highly successful. I work on very interesting problems. I work for a cool yet profitable company. I do code and not management, and I otherwise get the computer programmer dream job. I may be jaded by long experience, but I'm not bitter and I have no reason _to_ be bitter.

Patrick is totally, completely, 100% on the money with this article. Everything he says is true. Remember where you saw this so you can come back to it in a few years.

<comment><USER51> Not only that, but I am printing this article out and saving it to remind myself of how it really is and not to fool myself into ever thinking otherwise.</comment></comment></comment>


ASP.NET with SPA (NG2, React) and Node.js - <AUTHOR> https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/ASPNET-Events/ASPNET-Fall-Sessions/ASPNET--Spa#c635828376460833547 <comment><AUTHOR> Nice to have Node functionality in ASP.NET. Nevertheless I switch from the Microsoft stack. No need for ASP.NET any more. NG2, Node, Firebase is more productive (and cheaper) for me.</comment>


Netherlands to close prisons for lack of criminals (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://vorige.nrc.nl/international/article2246821.ece/Netherlands_to_close_prisons_for_lack_of_criminals

<comment><USER2> Yeah... only optimists think they won't need those prisons as the Muslim immigrant population grows. Gang-rape is skyrocketing in Europe.

</comment><comment><USER3> 19-05-2009</comment>


California Prisons Are Deleting Records of Social Media Censorship - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/03/california-prison-officials-are-deleting-records-inmate-social-media-censorship <comment><USER2> FTA

 _First, CDCR said its rules prohibit inmates from accessing Internet- connected devices or computers. So, if an inmate used a contraband device to go on Facebook, that means the prison can get that content taken down.

By that logic, if an inmate gets a tattoo with a contraband tattoo needle, the prison would believe it had the authority to have the tattoo removed. Or, if an inmate had a letter smuggled out to a newspaper, the prison could ask the newspaper to delete a story citing the letter. Take the CDCR's argument to an even further extreme: if a non-incarcerated person steals a computer, writes a novel on it, gets the novel published, law enforcement could ask bookstores to pull it from their shelves.

To reiterate—the CDCR is not claiming that inmates' speech isn't First Amendment-protected activity. But amazingly, CDCR is claiming the right to censor protected speech because of the manner in which it was transmitted. While possessing a contraband phone should be a punishable offense, we believe that must be separate from any speech created with that device.

CDCR's other claim relates to how an inmate may have a family or friend post to Facebook on their behalf. CDCR claims that this amounts to illegal computer hacking, because an inmate is causing computer services to be used without authorization.

It is unclear from the letter what unauthorized access CDCR is referring to. CDCR could be saying that by using a third party to access Facebook—which is a violation of Facebook's terms of service—the offender is committing a criminal offense. If that's CDCR's argument, it's plainly wrong: in United States v. Nosal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that violating terms of service is not unauthorized access.

It's even worse if CDCR is arguing that an inmate is breaking prison regulations or engaging in illegal hacking by having someone access the Internet on their behalf. Under that scenario, any inmate who asks a family member to do Internet legal research would be criminally liable._

That's a horrifying precedent, especially if it has no real legal basis. They decided to censor inmates because they can, no justification.

<comment><USER3> > They decided to censor inmates because they can

They've already disenfranchised and disarmed prisoners and we've stood by and allowed it. What makes the 1st amendment any different from the 2nd or the Constitution's protections of voting?

The horrible precedent was already set and prisons are simply following it to its logical conclusion. We should have revolted when we stripped millions of citizens of their right to vote...that was the bigger overstep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thanks, eff, please keep doing the good work. How about trying to figure out a way to get surveillance to end, get snowden back in the world :-)</comment>


Brain cancer rates have risen by a quarter over the past three decades - <AUTHOR> http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/vsob1/cancer-statistics-registrations--england--series-mb1-/no--41--2010/sty-brain-cancer-awareness.html <comment><USER2> There's no mention of compounding factors like an ageing population and improvements in detection. Without this there isn't much one can read into this.</comment>


Financial Times: Does capitalism need saving from itself? - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/b35342fe-cda4-11e9-99a4-b5ded7a7fe3f <comment><USER2> paywall</comment>


Show HN: Don't wait for your terminal. Get notified on your phone - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/variadico/noti <comment><USER2> If you use IPython a lot, I wrote a similar tool that may be useful (alerts you when a command/cell has finished executing): [https://github.com/samwhitehall/ipython- bell](https://github.com/samwhitehall/ipython-bell)</comment>


Yes, I know how to write programs.  How do I *run* them? - <AUTHOR>

Over here I set out the basic question:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2713391
It seems clear that I've asked the wrong question. Or at least, not asked the question I thought I asked.  But certainly not asked the question I wanted to ask.
I know how to program.  I have written JavaScript code by following the example syntax and adapting the given examples.  Fine.
How do I run the bloody thing?
For Python, I do this:
* Open an editor.
* Write the code
* Save the code as code.py
* Exit the editor
* Type "Python code.py"
* Job done.
I can chmod +x the file and put it on my path and use it as an executable.
I'm looking for the equivalent(s) for JavaScript.
I think that's the question I intended to ask.  This information seems sorely lacking in all the "tutorials" I've come across so far. <comment><USER2> I don't want this to seem like a dismissal, but I'd strongly suggest taking this kind of thing to Stack Overflow or similar. Stack Overflow is optimized for "How do I do this programming task?" kinds of questions, whereas Hacker News is a badly overloaded news/link aggregator. Your question won't get pushed off the Stack Overflow JavaScript category by a story about how somebody built his blog of cats in wedding dresses up to $300/mo in revenue.

</comment><comment><USER3> Based on your original question, it sounds like you want to run js in the browser and not do server side js?

If that's the case create this html file:

And place it in the document root of the web server running on your machine, with your js code in a file called whatever.js alongside it. Then navigate to localhost in your browser, the js will run when the page loads.

</comment><comment><USER4> Download a javascript engine that can be run from the command line like v8 or spidermonkey.

This should do you: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en/introduction_to_the_javascr...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en/introduction_to_the_javascript_shell)

Edit: Spidermonkey and v8 are packaged up for pretty much any linux distro. Once installed the command to run spidermonkey is `js`, and `d8` for v8. Just add the name of the JS file you wish to run as the first argument.

<comment><AUTHOR> Apparently not on my reasonably recent version of Ubuntu. I'll look at installing them. Thanks.

<comment><USER4> Downloading the source from github and compiling is easy enough. Either way, good luck and have fun!

<comment><AUTHOR> This also works:

      colin@Rrrr:~$ js

      The program 'js' is currently not installed.
      You can install it by typing:

        sudo apt-get install rhino

      colin@Rrrr:~$ sudo apt-get install rhino

(waits 10 seconds)

Done.

Thanks again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I just read your original post. Learning to use javascript on the command line isn't the best way to learn to use it for web development. I'd suggest moving on as soon as your comfortable to chrome developer tools or firebug and using the built in console to manipulate web pages.

</comment><comment><USER5> Can do the same with NodeJS (server side), only two steps differ from those in your question:

* Save the code as code.js

* Type "node code.js"

You download additional packages/modules with "npm".

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've found this: <http://www.wooji-juice.com/blog/javascript-article.html>

* Is it accurate?

* Is it "the best"?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you everyone - I've now installed rhino which gives me the js command. Now I'm running in a minimal setup, so I've started.

Thx.

Now I just need to work out the DOM details ...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2713391>

</comment><comment><USER6> apart from node.js being for writing javascript servers, would it not do exactly what you're looking for, essentially just a more useful version of the v8 engine with npm for adding useful packages to simplify coding. `$ node yourfile.js`

</comment><comment><USER7> you fail to understand that javascript was meant to run inside a browser. inside any html page just add script tags and execute your script. you don't need a webserver to run javascript.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, I _do_ know that JavaScript was originally meant to run in a browser. I also know it can be run "server side," or even just used as a general programming language. My mentioning of the web server was similar to my mentioning of Ubuntu, to try to ensure that the reader knows I'm not a complete computing dweeb.

I also know that one can just embed code between


The Henry Ford of Books - <AUTHOR> http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/01/james-patterson-best-selling-author

<comment><USER2> > Indeed, Patterson is to publishing what Thomas Kinkade was to painting

That seems like a better comparison than the Henry Ford one. It's not like Patterson is making books more affordable for people or radically changing how books are produced.

</comment><comment><USER3> The Stratemeyer Syndicate (responsible for such endless series as Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, etc.) had this perfected long before Patterson was even born.

In fact, Stratemeyer and Ford were almost exact contemporaries.

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

</comment><comment><USER4> tl;dr A bio on prolific author James Patterson.

<comment><USER5> Thanks; useful enough to be the title.</comment></comment>


Mobile Marketplace EggDrop Hits Half A Million Downloads - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/20/after-ditching-auctions-mobile-marketplace-eggdrop-hits-half-a-million-downloads/

<comment><USER2> Hmm. I thought this was going to be about the _real_ EggDrop, <http://www.eggheads.org/> (nice to see it's still being updated).

It seems crazy to me that they managed to get $1MM in funding, for an app, before it was even released or had a proven track record.</comment>


Heroku2scalingo: migrate from Heroku to Scalingo in a minute - <AUTHOR> http://blog.scalingo.com/post/130326633413/heroku2scalingo-migrate-from-heroku-to-scalingo <comment> adam-_- Has anyone used scalingo? How has the experience been? The pricing is favourable but I've never heard of them.

<comment><USER2> Maybe they're leveraging the recent outrage over Heroku/CISA?

[https://www.youbetrayedus.org/heroku/](https://www.youbetrayedus.org/heroku/)

<comment><USER3> Which isn't even a thing. [https://www.salesforce.com/company/news- press/press-releases...](https://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press- releases/2015/09/150925.jsp)

<comment><USER2> That's nice!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks interesting for Europeans that don't want their servers accessed / seized by the FBI, but they should clarify if they own the servers or rent them to an US cloud company (Amazon / MS etc).

On their data-center page they just show a map with their 2 data-centers (both are in France, they might use OVH).

<comment><USER5> I assume you mean rent them _from_ a US company?

<comment><USER6> No, they are French, based in France.

<comment><USER7> "they should clarify if they own the servers or rent them to an US cloud company (Amazon / MS etc)."

I think that was a grammatical question. As in, they don't rent _to_ AWS or MS, but _from_ them. (not that they actually do either)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is very nice to see another contender in the PaaS arena, one that also uses the mechanisms Heroku put in place. What really remains to be seen, however, is the reliability of the service. Our production app has been on Heroku for over a year now and we've had very little issue with things, and there is certainly a lot that can go wrong in a complex environment.

<comment><USER9> Good point. I have different reliability requirements, I think, from most developers. Since I like to travel a lot, my measurement for reliability is how secure I feel that my apps will stay running on server reboots or equipment failure/replacement.

I consider most VPS vendors to be reliable in the sense that as long as /etc/roc.local, or a modern equivalent, starts all services on reboot. But, I feel more secure with a PaaS provider who I trust. For now I am using Azure for VPS (Bizspark participant) and Heroku and Bluemix for PaaS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like to use PaaS so it is good to see competition. It looks like a 512MB instance is about half way between Heroku hobby and professional plans: $7 to $18 to $25 per month.

The Heroku hobby plan, which is what I use, lacks the easy horizontal scaling.

</comment><comment><USER10> How do you keep containers isolated?

Do you just run multiple docker containers from different apps on the same host?

Do you provide any sort of network isolation between apps?

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently, we are running multiple containers from different apps on the same host. These containers are running with unprivileged users and reduced capabilities but in the same network. It will probably change in the future for a higher level of isolation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is "Leo Unbekandt" the real name of your CTO, or a pseudonym ?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it's my real name, proof underneath :-)

[http://i.imgur.com/onAPdMr.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/onAPdMr.jpg)

<comment><USER12> Any interesting story behind the surname?

(Might be worth explaining why it sounds made up/like a pseudonym: Unbekannt in German means unknown; similar variations has the same meaning in a range of Germanic languages)

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting not really, someone in my family made some research about its past and return to the XVIIth century. From there, we can only make assumptions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting. You should look into providing servers in Japan. Heroku won't and it's a big issue here in Tokyo.

<comment><USER14> Heroku private spaces is available in Tokyo now...

[https://blog.heroku.com/archives/2015/9/10/heroku_private_sp...](https://blog.heroku.com/archives/2015/9/10/heroku_private_spaces_private_paas_delivered_as_a_service)

<comment><USER13> As far as i know private spaces are part of Heroku Enterprise and prohibitively expensive for most startups.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> How is it with plugins and Scalingo? We use a lot of heroku plugins for mongodb, logging, monitoring etc.

<comment><USER16> You may find what you want from our addons list here: [https://scalingo.com/addons](https://scalingo.com/addons) We have an addon provider API [http://developers.scalingo.com/addon-provider- api/](http://developers.scalingo.com/addon-provider-api/) and we're now working with several third party providers to enrich our marketplace.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does Scalingo offers free plan like Heroku?

<comment><USER16> Unfortunately, we had to discontinue our free plan. Too much work for no money :/ We setup a free trial instead (30 days, no credit card required).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What are the uptime metrics on Scalingo? I see there are no uptime guarantees /SLAs. [http://www.paasify.it/vendors/scalingo](http://www.paasify.it/vendors/scalingo) Here is heroku's uptime metric by way of benchmark. [https://status.heroku.com/uptime?region=EU](https://status.heroku.com/uptime?region=EU)</comment>


John J. Mooney, an inventor of the catalytic convertor, dies at 90 - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/25/climate/john-j-mooney-dead.html <comment><USER2> He was a graduate of my Alma Mater. Heard about him a lot when I was there!</comment>