Perfection does not exist - <AUTHOR> http://www.inter-sections.net/2008/05/19/perfection-does-not-exist/#more-68

<comment><USER2> Related article: [http://lostgarden.com/2007/02/rockets-cars-and-gardens- visua...](http://lostgarden.com/2007/02/rockets-cars-and-gardens- visualizing.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> e^i*pi + 1 = 0 is clearly a refutation.

<comment><USER4> Did you read the article that stated pi should be 2*pi instead?

<comment><USER4> It was one the old reddit once. Can somebody find it? It was way less crazy than it seemed at first.

<comment><USER5> <http://www.math.utah.edu/~palais/pi.pdf>

Yes, it is an enlightening article. After I read it the first time, I immediately began going through my old Complex Analysis and Physics textbooks. That was one of the few experiences I would describe as 'thunderstruck'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "You, I'm sorry to say, don't have the first clue what your users really want."

And you, I'm sorry to say, don't know the first thing about me. And many like me.

Many of us are "in the pits", developing and implementing for our users every day. Our ideas come from them. We don't have the luxury of sitting in some ivory tower or think tank "wondering" what users would like. They tell us every day.

"there will be many side-steps, jumps and skips along the road. These are all perfectly natural and to be expected."

Only by those who don't know what they're doing. There are a couple of "lost arts" that, when performed properly, prevent the things that OP calls "your fault". They're called Project Management and Systems Analysis.

I would change "perfection does not exist" to "success is elusive". You have to know how to achieve it. The article's conclusions makes me wonder how much the OP actually has.

<comment><USER7> _There are a couple of "lost arts" that, when performed properly, prevent the things that OP calls "your fault". They're called Project Management and Systems Analysis._

Project Management and Systems Analysis create a straightforward path to success? Wow. Then how come they are "lost arts"?

Actually, I know how most advocates answer this question. They say it wasn't (to use your phrase) "performed properly". This is the ultimate teflon defense of any software process theory. If it succeeded, you performed it properly; if it failed, you must not have.

<comment><USER6> There's a lot of voodoo going on that's called "Project Management" and "Systems Analysis", but isn't.

My logic?

a. OP claimed that his readers don't know what their users want. I am his reader. So I don't know what my users want.

b. I _do_ know what my users want because I have conducted "proper" systems analysis. (Perhaps "sufficient" would be a better word that "proper".)

Therefore:

c. OP must not know what Systems Analysis really is or he never would have made his initial claim.

A few comments about some of the things needed to conduct "proper" systems analyis:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=84977>

I wonder how much of this OP did before he claimed that his readers didn't know what their users wanted. Often people claim that something can't be done because they have never done it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> is perfection a dichotomy paradox?

</comment><comment><USER4> Yet.</comment>


Don't Benchmark Yourself Against Normal - <AUTHOR> http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/dont-benchmark-yourself-against-normal <comment><USER2> I have a feeling few people on HN have this problem.

I bet a much more pernicious problem for people on HN is the opposite; comparing yourself to the most successful 0.1% of your field and wondering why you're not as successful yet.

So, for HN, I'd suggest the opposite. Take a step back once in a while and do compare yourself to normal. Not to gloat, but to put all of your "successful in the first world problems" in perspective.

<comment><USER3> Yep. I have a solid amount of respect for Sebastian, but in my particular case it's absolutely vital to take a step back and take a breath once in a while.

I'm so focused on how far behind I am, and how much farther I want to go, that it's a huge source of stress. So, whenever the stress starts to get to me, I sit back and I compare where I am now to where I was last year at this time (and the year before...). I realize that, even though the bank account still isn't where I want it to be, that I can do so much more now than I could last year; that even though there are projects still languishing, a bunch of them have been completed.

On the other hand, I know people who are content so long as they can find someone else that's somehow below them to compare themselves to. "I might drink a lot, but at least I don't drink as much as..." That seems to be a trap that just leads further and further down a hole of bad behavior. Pushing yourself to keep pace with exceptional people is a good way to never fall into that trap.

As badly as I want to get to a particular destination one day, I'd like to enjoy the journey a little bit along the way. To use a PCT thru-hiking metaphor, trying to keep up with Scott Williamson would make the trip of a lifetime a lot less fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is silly, benchmarking against normal is the only reprieve I get from worrying that I'm 24 and knowing that I am thus too old to have done a lot of things that I feel I should have by now, like publish a fiction book or two, found a successful startup, publish a couple of academic articles of the transformative kind to computer science and so on. At least publish any academic articles at all.

I mean, do you know that Turing was just 24 when he published the Turing Machine paper? And a mathematician whose name I can't remember right now, practically revolutionized set theory at ~22.

There's a bunch of other examples like that.

Hell, I have friends my age who've published more than one academic paper. Some of them highly acclaimed (enough so to present them at MIT)

Comparing to normal every once in a while is definitely the only way to keep one's sanity and allow oneself to get some sleep now and anon. OP has no idea what they're talking about.

<comment><USER5> Don't read up on Gauss ;)

I'm just shy of 31 and I have to say when I look back 23-24 was the peak of feeling like I was "too old" to accomplish anything meaningful.

I think one of the hardest things for me to see at 24 was just how non-linear and strange life is, and likewise how truly meaningless it is to try to establish a useful system of measurement and comparison between individuals.

For what life advice from a stranger on HN is worth: Get out of the game of comparing yourself to others as fast as you can. Focus on what you think is interesting, and also take a few moments now and again to really appreciate the wonder that is life. Aside from being happier, you'll most likely accomplish more if you don't spend energy casting yourself in the shadows of others.

<comment><USER4> Oh I know, I keep getting penalized from everyone for "not caring what anyone thinks and wants to compare me to"[1]

But, y'know, sometimes you still want some perspective on how you're doing :)

[1] for instance my mum and grandparents keep throwing people my age who are "starting real adult lives already" at my face, whereas I'm just playing around with freelancing instead of looking for a job job

<comment><USER6> Ugh. "playing around with freelancing instead of looking for a job". I hate what society has become in regards to jobs. I find it so backwards that so many people believe what everyone should do is go find some boring huge company to slave away at until the majority of your life is over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is solid advice, and similar to the "Why settle for average?" pieces. Basically if you convince your brain that you have 'succeeded' then you lose your motivation to do more.

Whereas if you don't try to score it, you can keep pushing on the problem.

The challenge though is that you have to _also_ be in the frame of mind that the journey is the reward, not the destination. If you have convinced yourself that you will only be successful if you reach some 'endpoint' you can become lost and depressed when that endpoint turns out to be on the other side of a really wide chasm. I love playing piano, and I suck at it. When I think about how not-musical my efforts at reproducing music can be, I can get depressed. But when I'm exploring all the weird and clever ways that notes and harmonies can interact I have a blast. It just doesn't sound like music to most people :-).

</comment><comment><USER8> Why benchmark at all?

Benchmark yourself against people "lower" than you, you feel unsatisfied; against people "higher", you feel depressed.

Why not just do what makes you happy?

<comment><USER9> Some people use benchmarks for various reasons other than simply measurement of personal growth or achievement. In especially those other cases, this needs to be considered seriously.

For example, I have a friend who keeps wanting advice on how to get better at things. One thing I've been telling her a lot recently is to stop making assumptions. She makes an astounding number of assumptions in everyday life, and it leads to poor decision-making.

Case in point, she asked me if there was anything she could do to recover a document when her word processor crashed, but she hadn't saved yet. Then she assumed that it was an impossible task and set about writing a brand new document. I stopped her and got her to think about her problem. She was able to figure out that autosave functions existed in modern word processors, and she was able to figure out how hers was configured. Bam, there's the autosaved document.

She was ecstatic. But then I reminded her to stop making assumptions, and she got really frustrated with me and asked, "Don't you ever make assumptions?"

If you're benchmarking your personal achievement against others for the sake of personal satisfaction and happiness, yes, you can have the results that you discussed above.

But if you're doing anything else with your benchmark, such as making excuses for why you can't or won't get things done, then OP's point about benchmarking is a very good one. There are many reasons why one might benchmark against others. And in some of those cases, OP has a very valid point where everyone should take heed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> My problem is the opposite. I always benchmark myself against the best in the world and am then disappointed when I'm nowhere near them.

</comment><comment><USER11> >Benchmark against your own potential, and against your desires.

In my case, doing this has been extremely depressing. This is a habit I need to unlearn, lest it ruin my happiness and my life.

<comment><USER12> It's crazy. Benchmark against your recent past, not your dreams.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Reminds me of Marcus Aurelius:

A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.

<comment><USER14> Huh, it seems to me that the first way produces both/either aspiration or ambition, whereas the second way produces complacency...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This reminds me of Derek Sivers' excellent "There's no speed limit": <http://sivers.org/kimo>

</comment><comment><USER16> I think that a good strategy of self-improvement is setting the bar a little bit higher than you can reach. You can achieve much with many little steps. Every step you take reminds you that you're making progress and motivates you to work.

I experienced it when I was studying mathematics. I read modern mathematics textbooks/papers at a snail's pace because mathematics is like a tall tower - in order to get to higher levels you have to climb the lower. When I looked at what I learned in a single day I didn't see much progress at all. But after a few months of learning I saw that I'd progressed much.

</comment><comment><USER17> Benchmarking yourself can be dangerous. Some people will find it motivating. Others will find it a burden. Personally I'd rather benchmark against myself - it's more fulfilling to beat myself than to beat some stranger. It certainly doesn't feel good to start thinking of yourself as +20% better than your friends.

Good thought-provoking piece.

<comment><USER18> If you really want to achieve something, you need to benchmark what you have accomplished against your goals; not benchmark yourself against other people, or even against your earlier self, its the accomplishment that matters, not you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'd extend the title of the post with _... but definitely don't benchmark yourself against the folks on HN either_.

</comment><comment><USER20> there was a similar article sometime back on HN.It spoke about achievement (ie) if one should compare them self to Silicon Valley stars or not . It addressed issues of peer pressure and depression among folks in the Valley. I ve been looking for that , Does anyone recollect which article it was ?

</comment><comment><USER21> It really doesnt matter as long as you are working on hard problems.</comment>


New MPI scandal: World's top empathy researcher accused of mistreating employees - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/08/she-s-world-s-top-empathy-researcher-colleagues-say-she-bullied-and-intimidated-them <comment><AUTHOR> Many more details in this piece on Buzzfeed: [https://www.buzzfeed.com/de/pascalemueller/mobbing-max- planc...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/de/pascalemueller/mobbing-max-planck- leipzig) (german though)</comment>


Goodbye to all that - <AUTHOR> http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~zkurmus/html/didion.html

<comment><USER2> She's a beautiful writer with a very distinct voice. Observant, noticing the telling details.

Her essay compilations "Slouching towards Bethlehem" and "The White Album" are essential reading if you're interested in California in the late 1960s and into the 1970s -- she lived in LA at the time, and is definitely an outsider to the hippie/boomer explosion, some of the side-effects of which are in the essays. (The essay above was about her move from Manhattan to LA; she grew up in Sacramento.)

Another influential essay of hers is "The Deferential Spirit" from 1996 (teaser at [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1996/sep/19/the- def...](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1996/sep/19/the-deferential- spirit/?page=1)) which demolishes the technique and works of Bob Woodward.

</comment><comment><USER3> I really connected to this piece a lot: I'm in my 20s, in NYC for the first time, grew up in the South, and am completely infatuated with this place for some unable-to-be-explained reason.

      I suppose that a lot of us who have been very young in New
      York have the same scenes in our home screens. I remember
      sitting in a lot of apartments with a slight headache about
      five o'clock in the morning. I had a friend who could not
      sleep...

It's so easy to fall in love with this city but so hard to describe the reason why. She did a great job.

</comment><comment><USER4> See also: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good-Bye_to_All_That>

</comment><comment><USER5> This was so beautiful that i almost cried. But what it certainly did was enhance the charm for NYC. I am a 24 year old Indian with little hope of making it to NY in my 20's but when i get there eventually, i will try to remember this piece.

</comment><comment><USER6> Fascinating read, but would benefit from the attention of an editor.

<comment><USER7> This was printed in Saturday Evening Post(in 1967), so it did have the attention of the their editors.

On the other hand, Didion said that she submitted pieces there because the pay was good, and the editors "would let you do whatever you wanted".</comment></comment>


Clojure-scheme: Compiling Clojure to Native Code via Scheme [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/presentations/clojure-scheme

<comment><USER2> I'm interested in this, but why not just write natively in Scheme? I really like Clojure, but if you don't need the Java interop, Scheme seems just as nice.

<comment><USER3> For one thing, one might get interoperability with clojure libraries (at least those that aren't just wrappers around java libraries). For another thing, clojure has some nice language features and I'm all for supporting multiple lispy dialects on top of various compiler/runtime environments. My personal wish is to have clojure running on SBCL with trivial interoperability between common lisp and clojure code.

<comment><USER4> Clojure was initially implemented on cl. You should be able to find the lisp version in the history of the repo somewhere. Might be an interesting starting point.

<comment><USER5> I'm pretty sure this is wrong.

Rich originally made two other JVM/lisp hybrids, one was running java code inside CL, the other was CL on the JVM. [1]

Clojure originally targeted the JVM and CLR, but AFAIK, one of the main motivators was always to run on a major platform.

[http://sourceforge.net/projects/jfli/](http://sourceforge.net/projects/jfli/)

<comment><USER6> He did not made any Lisp/JVM hybrids. More like foreign object interfaces to Java and .net.

One was a Lisp(Works) FFI to Java (jfli) and the other was a generalized version of that (foil).

I have seen too the early sketch of Clojure in CL.

Look here: [http://clojure.googlecode.com/svn- history/r454/trunk/src/lis...](http://clojure.googlecode.com/svn- history/r454/trunk/src/lisp/)

<comment><USER5> Right, I didn't mean to imply that jfli and foil were new languages.

I didn't realize there was a CL version of the compiler, cool! Thanks for the link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Also don't forget about Clojure-c, which recently got fairly good iOS / Android bindings:

[https://github.com/schani/clojurec](https://github.com/schani/clojurec)

</comment><comment><USER8> Fascinating! We use Clojure heavily, but the JVM is sometimes a bit of a headache-inducer in our environment (especially w.r.t. its eager gobbling of memory), so I'm always excited to see new potential runtimes/backends for Clojure.

</comment><comment><USER9> I love it when several incredible technologies come together to allow things you wouldn't think possible. Take this thing over there, stir in some of that, and boom, you've got a working project that is crazy full of potential. Great work Nathan.

Really, when I think about it, it's why I love the world of programming.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is great, especially since it removes the TCO limitation from running on the JVM. I will definitely give this a try.

<comment><USER11> I don't know much Clojure, but I thought that lack of TCO was not a problem because you can just manually add `recur` ([http://clojure.org/special_forms#Special%20Forms--%28recur%2...](http://clojure.org/special_forms#Special%20Forms--%28recur%20exprs*%29)) when you need it. Are there situations where `recur` doesn't work but tail- call optimization would help?

<comment><AUTHOR> In my talk I use a finite state machine as an example of something that can really benefit from proper tail calls. In this case, the difference between proper tail calls and loop/recur is the difference between "compiling" the FSM and running the FSM in an interpreter loop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Also in this space is Tim Baldridge's mjolnir project, which generates native code directly from Clojure using LLVM. It looks very promising, although there haven't been any commits in the last few months.

</comment><comment><USER13> There's also other jvm lisps that you give you natives too. Kawa scheme (native chicken,bigloo,racket). Armed bear common lisp (native sbcl,clisp).</comment>


Using Jenkins CI with Github - <AUTHOR> http://devops.rackspace.com/338/continuous-integration-part-2

<comment><USER2> If you're looking for a truly easy way to do CI with GitHub, you can set it up in literally one click with Circle: <https://circleci.com>.

We'll do everything else, from setting up the DBs you need, to caching your github checkouts so that they're really really fast, to optimizing your test VMs for test speed (don't you know bad IO from cloud machines cause tests to randomly fail!).</comment>


This is How You Measure ROI of your Inbound Marketing Campaigns for your Startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.inboundio.com/blog/measure-roi-inbound-marketing-campaigns/

<comment><AUTHOR> I know this won't get any upvotes but still thought to share it with the HN users, may be someone find it useful</comment>


Why Must You Pay Sales People Commissions? - <AUTHOR> https://a16z.com/2017/09/11/sales-commissions/ <comment><USER2> Why do sales people get commissions and engineers don't? Because the sales person knows exactly how much money they bring in and can claim "if I didn't make the sale, that money would not be coming in" even though it's not always true it's a good story. An engineers actions are so far removed from revenue that they can't make a claim so directly. Also, if they did want to claim a portion of product revenue they could just as easily be fired and the revenue would still flow. Such is the delay between engineering work and revenue.

<comment><USER3> > the sales person knows exactly how much money they bring in

I agree this is the key factor. Any job where a person can argue a clear, direct, measurable link between their work and profit is a job that can be paid based on financial results. Other jobs where you see this: financial traders, consultants with direct client contact.

To take the other extreme, look at teachers. They have the potential to generate huge value based on how effectively they develop society's human capital. Unfortunately the effects of a single teacher are so noisy and indirect that it's basically impossible to measure their performance. The lack of firm data is why the debate about teacher compensation is so fraught.

<comment><USER3> I'll just put one citation into this discussion. Raj Chetty and his collaborators produce amazing research. I attended a talk when he visited New Zealand a few years ago. In this paper he's attempting to address the dream of measuring teacher value, by measuring changes in test scores against changes in lifetime income.

Yes there are other ways of measuring teacher "value" too, but income changes are relevant to this discussion, since they tell us how much a teacher could theoretically ask for in "commission". The paper suggests that an average teacher vs a bottom 5% teacher makes a $250,000 lifetime difference in income (present value).

"The Long-Term Impacts of Teachers: Teacher Value-Added and Student Outcomes in Adulthood" [http://www.nber.org/papers/w17699](http://www.nber.org/papers/w17699)

Take a look. He does a neat job controlling for different factors, trying to tease causality out of correlation.

<comment><USER4> 250k lifetime? So he should get another $6k. Teachers and engineers don't work for money. And there are often bad consequences for people who "don't work for money."

I worked in sales so I could afford to be an engineer later. There were plenty of ex-teachers in sales. They did well.

<comment><USER5> >Teachers and engineers don't work for money. And there are often bad consequences for people who "don't work for money."

This is a metnarrative[0]. It is a thing that people say not because it is true but because it is useful to create a larger narrative that is perceived as useful within the social sphere. Peopl, especially engineers, are socialized to believe it and normed to say it. The result is very simply lower pay for their labor. It is a post hoc justificication.

[0] Sorry to lazy at the moment for a real cite so heres a wiki one...[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metanarrative....A](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metanarrative....A) metanarrative (also meta-narrative and grand narrative; French: métarécit) in critical theory and particularly in postmodernism is a narrative about narratives of historical meaning, experience, or knowledge, which offers a society legitimation through the anticipated completion of a (as yet unrealized) master idea

<comment><USER6> So true! Case in point: people considered it "oniony" for a top teacher to leave the state for one that pays teachers better. The metanarrative has made it _risible_ for high-star teachers to shop around for better salaries like star basketball players would! That's ridiculously unfair, press them into a kind of charity role.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/6ktzx1/teacher...](https://www.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/6ktzx1/teacher_of_the_year_in_oklahoma_moves_to_texas/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting last comment (from November 2016) to the original article:

" __ _Important Update_ *

I am currently employed at Pluralsight, and I feel obligated to point out that the author of this article, our CEO, no longer believes or stands behind any of the content in this article. Pluralsight does not operate under the Deming philosophy. As of January 2017, Pluralsight will be implementing sales commissions again. We have reverted to the typical high-pressure, high-stress quota models found in most companies.

I'm sharing this because I don't want anybody to read this article and follow the bad advice found here. Maybe commissionless sales organizations can work, but apparently not at Pluralsight."

<comment><USER8> I'm confused why you think the old Pluralsight comment is relevant to this article:

1) The author Ben Horowitz is a VC and not the CEO of Pluralsight.

2) The article explains the psychology & incentives for sales commissions instead of advising companies to pay their salespeople zero commissions.

<comment><USER9> thinline's comment is just misposted at root level; several of the other comments on this page refer to: [https://www.inc.com/aaron-skonnard/why-sales- commissions-don...](https://www.inc.com/aaron-skonnard/why-sales-commissions- don-t-work-in-the-long-run.html)

<comment><USER7> Yes, meant as a reply to one of those...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A strong argument would at least consider the systemic consequences of commissions, rather than just extolling the assumed virtues in a circular argument. What is their impact on product? On support? Engineering morale? On the customer experience itself? Just a myriad of effects not even considered here when commissions are looked at in isolation, the system be damned.

It's probably very true that it's not plausible to do anything but commission- based sales in this market, and competing with other companies offering so much more money for the same job is just not worth the effort. But it's lazy to assume that their isn't a better holistic model, taking into account the whole company system, and not solely myopic sales metrics.

Edit: is Pluralsight a big enough counterexample? Maybe some food for thought from Aaron Skonnard here: [https://www.inc.com/aaron-skonnard/why-sales- commissions-don...](https://www.inc.com/aaron-skonnard/why-sales-commissions- don-t-work-in-the-long-run.html)

<comment><USER11> It's not a circular argument to point out that excellent sales people will take the commission job, while bad sales people will take the salaried job. All the things you mention (support, morale, ...) are second-order considerations -- the first order consideration is getting the best people.

<comment><USER10> This assumes a specific philosophy of how companies work (good individuals) while an alternative model of good working systems is also effective. A systems view is less dependent on good individuals.

As W. Edwards Deming said, "A bad system beats a good person every time."

<comment><USER12> I've read articles from credible people talking about building commission-less sales cultures and I like the idea.

But from experience in a few different companies, one of which involved me directly working with a decent-sized sales team, adverse selection is empirically a major issue.

Among the things I feel like I've learned is that the sales people who are most engaged with the product space and can converse most intelligently about the product you're building are _not_ necessarily the people who are best at actually driving revenue, and that a fledgling product for which the numbers don't exist to guarantee a pretty steady stream of commissions will drag very intelligent-sounding ineffective salespeople out of the woodwork.

There seems to be a species of salesperson that has evolved to sell executive management on continuing to pay them while blaming the rest of the company for their inability to close deals, rather than selling prospective customers on a product. I've had the misfortune of working with some of them. At the time, they even had me on their side! It's really quite creepy in retrospect.

I'd go way out of my way to avoid attracting the sort of salesperson who is driven by anything other than transactionally closing deals as quickly as possible, just to avoid the possibility of having to work with someone like that again.

<comment><USER10> That's a much less lazy argument. Horowitz should take notes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A couple of things I learned in a career in sales and engineering: 1\. Salesmen make most of their money pushing and closing on a hot product with a true advantage. This is easy big money, and it's a lot lot of fun. During this mode, when they come to town, they screw the secretaries in the marketing department (back then.). This mode can't last; market saturation and the competition intervene. The company is wasting a lot of money during this period on commissions, but the good times can build some loyalty in the sales force, but not much. Top salespeople leaving for the competition when this period ends is common. During this period, the sales manager should fire at least one salesperson who is above quota, but who is slacking off and not making the one extra call. That salesperson doesn't get it, and a rookie with a good understanding of the sales material can do great in this environment, and for cheaper. 2\. Sales greatness is measured by stolen sales. By this, I mean that if looked at objectively, better specs/price, or historically, customer is used to buying from company, in many sales situations, one company starts out with an advantage. A great salesperson can reverse that advantage, and in doing so, outcompete his counterpart. THIS is why you pay a commission. 3\. A salesperson is different from anyone else in the organization. He has to look the customer in the eye and ask for the order. And deal successfully with what follows. The people in the Apple Store are not salespersons, and are not paid as such. Imagine: 737 vs A320. Capiche? 4\. Salespeople have contempt for engineers, whose heroics make them rich. Bad salespeople don't hide this effectively, and get fired. 5\. Good salespeople know: "The customer is the star." Not his product, not his company, and not him.

</comment><comment><USER13> I suspect that developers are not so much upset at salespeople getting commission, but rather why they get paid so much compared to developers.

Personally I don't buy that sales skills are so much more difficult to find or are in higher demand than software development skills. Some of the difference in equity certainly has to do with the higher risk of getting fired for poor performance in sales.

But beyond that it's probably that sales and business people are motivated mostly or only by money and thus have spent decades as a collective optimizing getting more money for themselves. In contrast, developers and designers are motivated by accomplishing and creating good things before money and end up not focussing on optimizing money making.

If developers were compensated like lawyers, I doubt they'd be so worked up over salespeople getting commissions.

<comment><USER14>
        > I don't buy that sales
        > skills are so much more
        > difficult to find or are in
        > higher demand than software
        > development skills

Sure, and sales people don't understand why the entire engineering function of the company can't be done on eLance for $10/hr.

We can talk about 10x developers all we like, but if you sit in a sales meeting of many companies you'll find there are 10x sales people whose presence is easily measured.

<comment><USER13> There may or may not be 10x employees in either camp, though I don't quite see what that has to do with the income difference. Should a 10x salesperson earn three times what a 10x developer earns? If so why?

<comment><USER14> Management can easily recognize who the 10x sales people are, where 10x developers may be a myth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Putting prediction hat on before reading article: "because your competitors pay commission"

> Company A pays commissions and, if you do what you know you can do, you will > earn $1M/year. Company B refuses to pay commissions for "cultural reasons" > and offers $200K/year. Which job would you take? Now imagine that you are a > horrible sales person who would be lucky to sell anything and will get fired > in a performance-based commission culture, but may survive in a low- > pressure, non-commission culture. Which job would you take?

There it is.

<comment><USER16> Survivorship bias. If you were wrong you wouldn't have posted :-)

<comment><USER15> Hush, you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> To me, it is obvious why sales people are paid by commission. It's because the most efficient thing for a company to do is pay someone their precise marginal value, not more or less, as that leads to the incentive of people doing the best they can given special constraints that only they personally know such as their own personal productivity function and how much they value their own time and effort.

Companies would do similarly for managers and engineers if there were a discreet _non-gameable_ measurement of their output (I'm sure you don't need much imagination to see why paying per JIRA task completed wouldn't work). Unfortunately there's no such measurement system, so the best solution companies have found so far is pay them a salary and try to incentivize effort through bonuses, raises or promotions.

<comment><USER18> _Companies would do similarly for managers and engineers if there were a discreet non-gameable measurement of their output_

The sales process is gameable especially in software. The salesperson can sell vaporware and promise the customer that the company can deliver. That puts pressure on software development to work overtime - unpaid - to meet the deadline.

<comment><USER14> This can be easily worked around. In a previous CTO role we started talking about development costs coming out of sales commissions, and the problem went away.

<comment> yoz-y I would LOVE this to be done everywhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you didn't pay commissions sales people would start coasting once they made their numbers. Imagine you have to make a million on sales per quarter, and three weeks in you strike gold in the form of a $1.1m contract.

Sure, you get bonuses for exceeding your numbers, but you could spend the next two months slacking off, which would probably be worth the lost income.

Worse, from the company's perspective, you might try to make sure your new prospects don't close until next quarter, just as a little bit of insurance in case it turns out to be leaner than this one. You're already drinking the coffee - what's the rush?

Sales is a tough job. It's a lot of travel, a lot of rejection, and a lot of stress. If I had to do sales you can be damn sure I would expect a lot of compensation.

<comment><USER12> The theory of not paying commissions is that salespeople will be incentivized the same way other employees are. You don't code on commission and tend not to coast once a revenue number is hit.

<comment><USER19> I've met quite a few software developers who pad their estimates heavily and then coast when the job is complete.

<comment><USER20> Which is great for everyone. The company gets predictable estimates, the developer gets a stress-free life. A shorter but unmet deadline is worse for everyone, specially the company, even if the product is still delivered sooner than the padded deadline.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I like how he inadvertently admits that engineers are compensated less well in part because they mistake their jobs for something fun they'd do anyway.

<comment><USER22> Yeah, certainly there are a lot of programmers writing software because it's fun for them. They're contributing to FOSS projects because they believe in them. Are they doing what _you_ want them to do just for fun? Probably not.

<comment><USER23> I agree with your observation, that was a badly broken analogy within the OP. Of course the OP can "guarantee your sales people never sell enterprise software for fun."

But I'll bet those salespeople take more than a passing interest in buying a car, tending an estate sale, dividing up household responsibilities, or negotiating a lease.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have seen one scenario where engineers get sales commissions: quants in investment banks. Typically in banks traders will get 3% of PnL before costs are stripped out, or 10% after costs. Traditional sector coverage sales will get a volume based commission. This always leads to tension between sales and trading as one is compensated on volume and the other on margin. Etrading sales get sales credits on channel volume, not sector volume, which is often another source of tension. And finally, the quants coding up new pricing models may get sales credits on trades priced with those models. No doubt there are some interesting comp models at automated or systematic trading hedge funds where there's no real distinction between traders and coders, but I have no first hand experience there.

</comment><comment><USER25> Best advice I've ever heard on this subject is never hire just one. Sales teams need competition to thrive so it is to be at least two people.

</comment><comment><USER26> Two reasons -- you don't want to pay salespeople who don't sell anything, and you want to attract salespeople with technique and a book of business that makes them sell more.

The best salespeople I typically work with have built a relationship with the clients. I take meetings with them because they do not waste my time and they understand my company's needs. I'm more likely to take a call from company X if I know the rep from past business.

On the counter-side, I've run into many, many salespeople who bounce around and suck. They focus on doing the dance and checking boxes in Salesforce instead of actually selling product and dump their internal corporate drama on the customer. They bounce because they miss their quota and get canned.

</comment><comment><USER27> What an enormous echo chamber. I moved from senior dev to sales.

My contract is 100% commission, because it aligns performance with business requirements. Good sales is every bit as difficult as good dev, maybe harder.

The only people who think devs are not well compensated are devs who can't negotiate or are marginal.

If you've never told an interviewer to go fuck themselves over stupid questions or whiteboarding in an interview, you're probably not making an effort.

<comment><USER28> Try negotiating your salary in a corporation, see how well it works, then attempt censure.

People find it easier to up the salary by moving instead of negotiating and it is not due to lack of skill. Otherwise they wouldn't be getting raises that way. You essentially did that by moving to a managerial job. Some people become contractors to expedite this process.

The whole structures are designed to prevent you from negotiating. From useless reasons to not give one a raise like easy to misinterpret and worthless KPI, through bureaucracy preventing even slightly risky projects, office politics, levels of indirection, use of statistics on personal level etc. Even if you are great you may have real trouble showing that you are. So people hop jobs. When hopping, what matters is the resume and salesmanship indeed.

Only very small companies don't have those bureaucracies and instead they cannot just offer you what they don't have. Unless they have huge VC funding, but that can also evaporate bringing it back to job hopping.

Even measuring the effect of your work is difficult, much less selling it, even less so in a way that bypasses all the layers of junk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'd let the sales person generate the $10 million elsewhere and get the commission.

Because I can guarantee you that you'll make more profit from the low pressure sales.

Commission based sales leads to a turnover based culture and as the saying goes - turnover is vanity; profit is sanity.

If you want to align sales people, give them equity and pay a dividend.

Or run a cooperative. Then everybody gets a share of the spoils.

</comment><comment><USER30> "Sales is the highest paying hard work and the lowest paying easy work."[1]

With sales, you want to pay for performance and pay for outcomes. And with sales, it's easy to measure quantitatively and simply. Good sales people love it and make good money—bad sales people don't get paid and/or leave.

 _This is the ideal world._ As a employer _and_ an employee, you wish all your departments could be measured and rewarded like that.

Not everyone is cut out for sales, and that's fine, but the model works and works well. Examples where it _doesn 't_ work well (e.g., over-promising, over-paid) are companies that have poorly balanced incentive commission plans.

[1] [https://www.nasp.com/article/FF282761-5D6C/sales-is-the- high...](https://www.nasp.com/article/FF282761-5D6C/sales-is-the-highest- paying-hard-work-and-the-lowest-paying-easy-work.html)

</comment><comment><USER31> >I guarantee your sales people never sell enterprise software for fun.

And I guarantee you your programmers aren't working on your enterprise software outside of work. Conversely, your sales people are practicing the exact same activities (social interaction, manipulation, etc) outside of work on their personal time.

<comment><USER32> Saying they practice _social interaction and manipulation_ for fun outside work, so they shouldn't receive extra incentive is possibly the worst argument I have ever seen on Hacker News.

A prostitute would gladly sleep with a star NBA player for free, so should she/he not be compensated for sleeping with an aging/overweight and smelly client?

I enjoy playing high quality video games in my free time like Zelda. Should I not receive composition for bug testing the latest mind numbing Bejeweled mobile game crap at my job?

What I am saying is this... everyone interacts with other human beings. There is a large range in the quality of those interactions. Businesses must incentive heavily someone to make them actively seek out the most difficult and profitable of those human interactions.

Because someone chooses to interact with another human in their free time does not mean they shouldn't be paid for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> CEOs tell everyone if you want great CEOs you gotta pay them.

If you wanna great salespeople you gotta pay them.

You want great devs. You should put in a ping pong table and give out free soda.

The myth that great developers aren't interested in compensation is terrible for our collective pay.

<comment><USER34> You don't see CEO's being CEO's in their free time. Nor do you see sales people selling stuff just for the fun of it. With open source, developers will spend time and effort building very valuable stuff for free. This perpetuates the perception that programmers like programming so much they would do it as long as their living expenses are met.

I honestly think open source has depressed the wages of programmers. Linux probably has generated billions of dollars of value, but it has not really accrued to the programmers. In addition, open source allows companies to get very valuable intellectual property without having to write it themselves or buy it from someone. Basically it devalues the cost of software and there the value of programmers.

<comment><USER35> > Nor do you see sales people selling stuff just for the fun of it.

Do you hang out with many sales people? In my experience, it's a very personality-driven field and they certainly do at least act like sales people outside of work, even if not literally selling a product or service for money.

<comment><USER36> Exactly, I knew a sales guy at a former start-up who, when not selling for our company, was off selling watches or hustling something else. He lived and breathed sales in his free time, like an open source programmer lives and breathes programming in his free time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> There's a simpler explanation: people are afraid of rejection. Sales is difficult because it requires acknowledgement and constant interaction with rejection.

It takes more of a psychological toll than engineering, and some people don't want to deal with it, or do not have the personality to brush off repeated rejections in order to get a sale.

</comment><comment><USER38> Why? Because sales people are good at sales! Their whole job is negotiating the highest possible compensation for the value they provide.

Apple doesn't need sales people to move millions of their products into "the Enterprise," and neither does any other company with products as good as theirs.

It's just that most companies make shitty "Enterprise software" and then try to push it with aggressive sales tactics.

There's more than one way to succeed, and making great products is a lot more interesting than a cocaine-powered salesforce.

<comment><USER39> Except Apple actually does. [1] Yes, it's relatively limited but Apple has selectively hired sales people for enterprise sales.

[1] [http://www.techrepublic.com/article/apple-posts-huge- gains-i...](http://www.techrepublic.com/article/apple-posts-huge-gains-in- its-25-billion-enterprise-business/)

<comment><USER38> Ah, technically correct, the best kind of correct ;-)

It's true they have some people who will talk to you if you're a big customer, and even let you use the VIP room, etc. But, it's nothing like the model that A16Z promotes, where you push bad products with aggressive sales people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Their contribution to revenue is so direct that this kind of bonus can be incentivized in a very valid way.

Engineers at Google get 'bonuses' as well, all of them, so you could very well ask 'why are they paid bonuses'.

If Engineers could be incentivized so directly, I'd imagine they would be.

<comment><USER41> Google actually had to dial down the bonuses circa 2011. For one thing, to keep the comp looking competitive, it makes sense to have a larger component, because until this rebalancing bases were unimpressive there. For another too large a bonus creates more competition than one would like in the engineering discipline, where the overall success depends on people working well together. So they just cut the bonus in half and added it to the base.

<comment><USER42> I've personally seen this in action, and it leads to all sorts of issues in engineering where the team output is really what matters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> a competitive selling environment, which is horowitz's conclusion in the article, is definitely part of reason to pay commission, but it's actually larger than that.

whether you have sales people or not, and whether you pay them commission or not is dependent on all parts of the marketing mix: your product's scope and complexity, its price, its visibility in the market, and how it's delivered.

the more complex your product is, the more customization it requires, the more (higher-skilled) people the customer will need involved in deploying your product. that requires more convincing (i.e., sales). the higher the price, the more senior people are needed to be involved in the decision, requiring sales. the more complex your product, the less likely an ad will be effective, and the more likely that the purchase is a big deal.

sales is the marketing channel of choice for highly complex, customizable and expensive products precisely because sales is very effective, yet expensive, so it only makes sense for products with high costs (typically at least 5-figures). you'd typically use less expensive account managers for 4-figure sales, and other marketing channels for less than that.

and lastly, the percentage of compensation that you pay as commission is directly correlated with the riskiness of the sale. the harder the sale, the higher the commission as a percentage of comp. account managers, who typically do sales via email and phone, usually get most of their pay as salary. outside sales people typically get a large percentage of sales as commission.

</comment><comment><USER44> Sales is very important, a salesperson can sell shitty app and still make money, meanwhile i have seen some really good softwares n products being dumped for lack of budget. So I think hardworking smart salesman deserves to be paid well. And marketing is very important.

</comment><comment><USER45> Agree that value is derived from all contributors to a project, but the value/income from a project is gated most at the level of the sale.

Projects can be created but not sold, or sold poorly, deriving little to no value for the organization. But great salespeople can even sell projects that have not been created (not always a good thing).

Also, where does the money come from to pay someone? With a sale, it's clear: The salesperson went out and harvested money directly. With everyone else, it's derived through politics, formulas and philosophies.

</comment><comment> Chiba-City Salespeople also come in tiers with overlapping recruits and cattle calls. The recruits get bigger or quicker commissions on "who-they-know." Some cattle call younger salespeople find a mentor or get lucky. But attrition rates are high. I brought in IBM fed sales head for a talk years back. IBM only adjusted base salaries once around 1974 or so. They just let them die on the vines otherwise when sales go down.

</comment><comment><USER46> Solid article, there is a middle ground that is missing, that or a base plus bonus of the team. Some of the best sales teams I've ever know work based off a bonus for the whole company meaning they have a huge incentive to help the other members of the team get better and collaborate for the betterment of the company.

This will create the best sales team, but will not attract the top X% of sales people.

</comment><comment><USER47> It comes down to quality of product vs competitors. Where you have a very in demand brand, you can get away with no sales people (eg Telsa).

In a field where your products are indistinguishable from competitors, you need to pay for sales people.

And in field where your product is probably worse than cheaper (or free) alternatives, you have a company entirely made of sales people (eg Oracle)

<comment><USER48> Tesla has a sales team, you're just not looking in the right place. Their sales team works with investors, and sells them on a story.

<comment><USER47> Definitely but I think goes into the marketing/advertising category. But either way almost every other car company has an end sales person used to jack up the price, while tesla can sell cars at a fixed price off a website. And this is solely because of the perceived quality of the product.

<comment><USER48> My point is that Tesla can lose money on every sale. Other companies don't have that luxury, and so need salespeople.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I wonder what an org would look like where engineers got compensated as well as salespeople--as a percentage of sales, where if you made a great product that sold like gangbusters, you got showered with money, but if it doesn't sell you get very little or fired. I bet at the very least the products would look very, very different.

<comment><USER49> You could make the argument that in (growing) startups, this is closer to the way things are- engineers create value over longer time periods (and efforts are often harder to tie directly to economic value creation). Equity-based comp is a good way to compensate for these kinds of efforts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> You gotta be careful with commission-based sales people. They will promise the sun, the moon, and anything to close the sale. While this may work for some products, it can lead to pissed off customers.

Commission can encourage a short-term attitude that doesn't consider the long- term relationship with the customer.

</comment><comment><USER51> I would be interested in an experiment. Do sales with comission and without and compare the results. Also consider that without having to pay comission you could hire more salespeople for the comissionless model.

I bet that there should not be a significant difference in the amount you are selling.

</comment><comment><USER52> Here's something that's only touched upon:

Sales people can vary a lot in the amount of money they bring in, and the variance isn't necessarily explicable by things in their CV. In other words a guy can talk a good talk as well as have a positive record, but when you drop them into your org, you're taking a chance on whether they manage to get anything done. (Which is true for devs as well, but people tend to think -wrongly- they know how to identify devs.)

So paying them on commission is necessary because if they fail you want them out and you cannot afford to pay them anyway. If they do well they share in some of the upside from the uncertainty crystallising to positive.

</comment><comment><USER53> Problem is, only 1 in 10 or less salespeople are any good. Most are just there to try and get some easy inbound leads and close those off. Very few will actually try and do some work around finding projects, different ways into a company. It's ridiculous that salespeople will get 10-15% of a deal when they typically don't know jack shit about the technology. Honestly I think todays new companies would be wise to allow companies to sign up directly and save themselves 10% of the price. Yes these same companies would have to bolster their corporate staff to ensure redlines are done, etc but the world would be a great place.

</comment><comment><USER54> I could go on and on about how my company screws this up. First, even though they get commission they also get large base pay despite a salesmans performance which makes the salesman stop working around making 70k a year, second horrible tracking of what the deal in each contract will cost our company in developer hours and hardware etc etc so they get paid full commission on a $20,000 that ends up being $4,000 revenue. What our company needs is a strict standard but it's a endless loop of oh salesman can make a sale if you can create this so stop what you are building and welcome to the chaos.

</comment><comment><USER55> Sales people have it the best; they are partially responsible for creating market bubbles by overpromising results/features in order to get sales... Then when the bubble which they created reaches popping point, stock prices collapse and companies go bankrupt; engineers lose all their stock options but sales people are fine because they already got their commissions. Overpromising allows them to get all the upside and none of the downside.

The only downside is that sales gets more competitive at the peak of the bubble; so it's harder to get those big commissions.

</comment><comment><USER56> > I guarantee your sales people never sell enterprise software for fun.

A funny line, yet his "sales people" are really consultative problem solvers. Such people probably would apply their skills in areas such as community projects (e.g. sporting clubs, hobby/user groups, scouts, school, church), politics (e.g. local councils) and charities... for free.

These probably bear about the same relation to selling enterprise software as an engineer's side projects have to _making_ enterprise software.

<comment><USER57> > Such people probably would apply their skills in areas such as community > projects (e.g. sporting clubs, hobby/user groups, scouts, school, church), > politics (e.g. local councils) and charities... for free

They wouldn't necessarily volunteer to deal with the absolute tosser at BigAccount, make the 4am call to Asia or spend their entire time at the conference trying to find new customers as opposed to having a leisurely chat with someone who isn't going to buy though. For similar reasons, engineers who would happily write code all day for free get very highly compensated to work on fixing bugs on the somewhat similar but less exciting corporate CRUD app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Well you have commissions or stock options. I think you get one or the other. Then again the best sales people probably get both.

</comment><comment><USER59> No chance of this happening, but the ideal is on the other side: customers should refuse to buy from anyone who gets a commission. The conflict-of- interest is too strong. If customers all really understood that, then all the sales tactics that get commission-based sales people to be so rich would stop working. Then, you wouldn't need commissions.

</comment><comment><USER60> Totally wrong in my point of view. If you have a good product it will sale by itself, only poor product need aggressive sale people to sell them.

It's not about who is selling, but what are you selling?

My father is selling product, did a very nice job, but because he did too much result, get is commission removed or downsized but yeah the commission is the solution...

</comment><comment><USER61> I recently read the author's book "The hard thing about hard things". I understand many people here will be familiar with it. To those who aren't, I recommend checking it out. It finally made me "get" VC and what it's like to work on VC-backed startups. (I'm bootstrapping my companies.)

</comment><comment><USER62> Are there any examples of competitive sales organizations that don't pay commission of some kind?

<comment><USER10> Not competitive exactly (it's not necessary when you don't have commission) but Pluralsight: [https://www.inc.com/aaron-skonnard/why-sales-commissions- don...](https://www.inc.com/aaron-skonnard/why-sales-commissions-don-t-work- in-the-long-run.html)

<comment><USER63> Thinline responded to that article in another post:

Interesting last comment (from November 2016) to the original article: "Important Update * I am currently employed at Pluralsight, and I feel obligated to point out that the author of this article, our CEO, no longer believes or stands behind any of the content in this article. Pluralsight does not operate under the Deming philosophy. As of January 2017, Pluralsight will be implementing sales commissions again. We have reverted to the typical high- pressure, high-stress quota models found in most companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> I agree, I think, but the points are made so badly I cringed as I read. Every point is made by begging the question. It's dripping with pro-sales bias. There's no content here, just preaching to the choir.

</comment><comment><USER65> I have feeling sales people have too much leverage in general.

Almost every company I worked for had a sales CEO. God, they are software companies! All the successful software companies have engineers as CEOs...

<comment><USER66> Engineering is about providing a tool/service that fulfills a customer need. But in the end it is not about making customers happy, as most engineering focussed blog posts would suggest. In the end it's about getting this very rare ressource called money in amounts big enough to pay your regular costs (for instance your engineer) while maybe even making a profit.

In some regards the battle for money and solving customer problems are interdependendent and can happen together by coincidence, but they are not necessarily connected. For instance a few months ago I was forced to pay a four digit lawyer bill (could've been bigger) in exchange for the lawyer actually telling me face to face he's not willing to work for me, after signing the contracts. Still can't do much about it.

What the sales people provide as value is a high spirit of competition for money, together with an acceptance for how immoral and shitty this world is. And these two skills are also valuable for climbing up the Ladder. The desire to live in a comfortable fantasy world of people helping each other all the time is not good enough. Therefore most of the CEOs are managers or sales people and not engineers.

And your companies, while maybe being shitty in the engineering department, may have still made more money than some engineering lead corp.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> I'd rather have a sales person that is as much a part of the team as anyone else.

Daniel Pink's ["To Sell Is Human"]([http://www.danpink.com/books/to-sell-is- human/](http://www.danpink.com/books/to-sell-is-human/)) makes a strong argument against commissions, which is echoed in these articles:

[https://hbr.org/2012/07/a-radical-prescription-for- sales](https://hbr.org/2012/07/a-radical-prescription-for-sales)

> Mitch Little began questioning the received wisdom on sales commissions in > the late 1990s, shortly before he became vice president for worldwide sales > and applications at Microchip Technology, a large semiconductor company > headquartered near Phoenix. He oversaw 400 salespeople whose compensation > plan was the industry standard—60% base salary, 40% commissions.

> "That made sense 40 years ago, when the Fuller Brush salesman went door-to- > door," Little told me. "But the world of business-to-business sales has > shifted fundamentally." So in an act of sacrilege for a onetime sales guy, > Little killed commissions altogether. He established a new plan in which > salespeople received 90% of their compensation in a high base salary, and > the other 10% was linked to corporate (rather than individual) measures such > as top-line growth, profits, and earnings per share.

> The result? Total sales increased. The cost of sales stayed the same. > Attrition dropped. Retention rose.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/21/business/smallbusiness/for...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/21/business/smallbusiness/for- some-paying-sales-commissions-no-longer-makes-sense.html)

> The proponents of ditching commissions believe they foster negative > behaviors, such as focusing on an individual's profit over the company's, > emphasizing short-term outcomes and encouraging unproductive competition > among sales representatives. Even companies that pay commissions can face > costly turnover as representatives chase more lucrative offers.

[https://blog.fogcreek.com/why-do-we-pay-sales- commissions/](https://blog.fogcreek.com/why-do-we-pay-sales-commissions/)

> In the year since we dropped the commission system our sales have gone up. > In fact, four of the last five months have been record months. We can't > reasonably say that our record sales were caused by this change, but we can > reasonably say it didn't hurt, and that's worth having a hard think about in > your own company. There is no guarantee that this will work for everyone, > but it's unlikely to be a disaster either.

> Our salespeople all estimated that they were spending about 20% of their > time just keeping track of what money was due them. There was constant horse > trading. And, most worrying, we created a heavy disincentive to do all the > service stuff that makes customer service shine. Why would you want a system > that sets up after-sales service as competition against new sales, > especially if you have a small sales team? Reputation and retention, after > all, are both paths to revenue.

> Removing commissions has changed the sales team. It has taken their focus > off their compensation. They have all that administration time back for more > useful things. They take a longer view of the value of a prospect, and are > less worried about who is going to buy right now. They feel less stress > about taking vacation. They don't quibble among themselves over accounts. > And best of all, they feel more integrated with the company.

<comment><USER68> The Fog Creek link is 404: [https://blog.fogcreek.com/why-do-we-pay-sales- commissions/](https://blog.fogcreek.com/why-do-we-pay-sales-commissions/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> coders should get commision

</comment><comment><USER70> Sales people earn commission because their work is "non-deterministic," meaning they could execute a perfect sales strategy to win an account but the opportunity could still fall through for circumstances beyond the rep's control (budget is yanked, project is delayed, etc.)

By comparison, an engineer's work is "deterministic" in that is fully under his or her control to complete the goal.

Sales is a risky job and it's compensated accordingly. It doesn't matter if you crushed your numbers 2 quarters ago. It's the reason why there's a saying that a sales rep is always just 6 months out of a job.

<comment><USER71> > By comparison, an engineer's work is "deterministic" in that is fully under > his or her control to complete the goal.

I hope you don't manage engineers.

<comment><USER70> Having empathy for fields outside your own is exactly why this article is written.

It sounds like you only have a single perspective, which is fine, but having more perspectives would help you move beyond being so rigid in your thinking.

<comment><USER72> The parent didn't display any rigidity of thinking, they simply criticized your inaccurate characterization of engineering work... a point which your non sequitur reply does not address.

<comment><USER70> > By comparison...

is the operative phrase.

Your fallacy is conflating engineering work and an individual engineer's scope on said work.

Projects can fail, engineering teams can face delays - all common things. But an individual engineer is very unlikely to lose his/her job over it, in contrast to a sales person missing on his/her quarterly number repeatedly.

<comment><USER73> The point under contention is whether or not the completion of the project is completely under the engineer's control.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


CSS only submarine - <AUTHOR> http://codepen.io/hugo/pen/FesfC

<comment><USER2> Cool! I really enjoy seeing how people make this stuff. The reason I find it impressive to see these things made in CSS (as opposed to Flash, or whatever) is because while you can essentially make any shape in CSS, it's not always straight-forward. So the impressive part for me is the inventive ways that people build these things.

BTW this didn't work in Chrome for me, but it did work in Firefox Nightly.</comment>


Do you feel uncomfortable with your laptop position?  let's see eXtable - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiegogo.com/project/preview/794c5eaf

<comment><USER2> good idea, but please get your submission proof-read. There are too many grammatical errors, I can see this as a good idea going to waste due to a poorly structured and worded submission.</comment>


Chinese inventiveness shows the weakness of the law - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2020/01/02/chinese-inventiveness-shows-the-weakness-of-the-law <comment><AUTHOR> [https://outline.com/bb83Vd](https://outline.com/bb83Vd)</comment>


Ask HN: Am I producing low quality links? - <AUTHOR> I try to blog once a month in average. And I almost always share the links on HN.
And even though with every post, a decent amount of traffic is generated, most of the time there is no feed-back or any kind of interaction in the comments/votes.
Am I doing something wrong, like posting in wrong times, about subjects that don't interest this community?
Or is my writing style not that interesting/engaging? <comment><USER2> From your blog:

> _I have received some criticism lately about the way I title my blog posts. > And I got accused of clickbaiting the readers in order to get more views. > But you have to understand now that with social media , writers have to get > interested in a story in just 60 characters and a picture while you're > scrolling. In fact you have to get you interested enough to stop scrolling, > click the link and read a portion of the content._

That stuff might work for BuzzFeed and ClickHole but HN is shock full of weary intelligent people who come to the site to _get away_ from all that nonsense.

They probably feel condescended to by the type of headline and post created with the idea that "the quality of the post doesn't really matter, what resides is the message of the title" and they will run at the faintest whiff of such a cynical approach.

> _We were not all born as evil clickbaiters it is just that you readers won't > click on anything else, and if my articles stop getting hits (even though I > don't use any Ads network) I will stop writing for lack of interest._

HN people can tell. If you instead write about stuff you really care about, they will tell that you are genuinely trying to participate in the community, and then even if they don't think your stuff is most amazing stuff ever you will probably get more community response and comments.

</comment><comment><USER3> I read one of your posts, the one on security challenges facing IoT devices. It just didn't seem to have been informed by a difficult technical challenge for which you had created a novel solution. Just a small amount of advice that, truthfully, I think would have been obvious to anyone working in this space.

I'm inclined to believe that blogging with the intention of attracting attention is more likely to embarrass than earn you professional credibility. If you happen to have some truly original thought, or you've discovered something interesting that someone might benefit from learning, or even if you've just organized a collection of useful technical information that had previously been scattered across multiple sites, _then_ write a blog post. Otherwise it's just one of a billion other walls of text written to directly or indirectly make money, which nobody whose attention is valuable has time for.

</comment><comment><USER4> It sure looks that way by skimming your past submissions which trace back to your site. Most of them look like brief summaries of something which has been already said in numerous other locations.

Additionally any post title in the format of "# ways/reasons/tips for X" is generally a solid indicator that the content is low quality IMO.

</comment><comment><USER5> Is the material new? Is it novel? Is it unusual? Is it technical? Is it something you've done, or are you just thinking out loud?

What time of day are you posting? Do you check how long things are staying on the "newest" page? Have you checked whether anything on the newest page has got votes?

Have you done any analysis at all?

Let us know what you've done. Perhaps you could do a deep analysis of time-of- day-of-posting versus number of hits on your site, then blog in-depth about the results, and submit that.

</comment><comment><USER6> EDIT: after seeing /u/mbrock's comment: fully agreed to that, he picked out very well what I couldn't put in words.

There certainly is a lot of chance with what gets picked up and what not -> often enough you see a link go nowhere, someone posts the same 2 hours later and it goes up the front page.

That said, I agree with /u/fundamental, and I guess many people don't even click on headlines like that, because the chance that there is something high- quality behind them is slim. Looking at the first page of your submission history, there are quite a few that follow this pattern. For others the title doesn't, but the content is similarly very shallow.

The few articles that seemed interesting to me:

"Privacy conscious Two-factor authentication": might get interesting discussion, maybe resubmit as a "Show HN:"

"Hack your way to presidency": headline doesn't really give context, not sure if relevant right now (it was 2014, what came out of it later? _THAT_ might be an interesting analysis)

"When Engineering fails": Again, headline doesn't describe the content properly (and if people expected something else they IMHO are less likely to comment).

Look at the blog posts that get very high on HN and are not announcements of some product etc. and compare.

</comment><comment><USER7> For me, seeing that each page hits GoogleAnalytics and Gravitar and DoubleClick turns me away immediately.</comment>


Android may have just won the smartwatch war - <AUTHOR> http://nothingjustworks.com/android-may-have-just-won-the-smartwatch-war/

<comment><USER2> Android may win the smartwatch war but not for this reason. I was expecting Apple to knock it out of the park with a curved unbreakable sapphire wonder- watch that redefines watches. There is a ot more scope for innovating the packaging of smartwatches than there is in phones. Apple did almost none.</comment>


A Google Patent mentions my prior art - <AUTHOR> http://cmdrtaco.net/2011/11/google-patent-mentions-my-prior-art/

<comment><USER4> It's a bit funny to notice how the folks on HN generally haven't studied the site they are using. Sure, there is source code available for the forum through arclanguage.org, but it does not include all of the secret sauce that PG is actually running on HN.

If you believe that you have unlimited voting on HN, you are mistaken. Some votes and flags don't count, or better said, count less. There are thresholds in place to prevent excessive voting, up or down, and excessive flagging. How you vote/flag is weighted in a number of ways. For example, if you flag submissions that are heavily up-voted by others, your flags might count less, but if you flag submissions that are heavily flagged by others (till [dead]), your flags might count more.

Can I "prove" the above with actual code running on HN? --NO. The most I can do is point out posts where PG has (vaguely) explained how things work, and of course, things may have changed since he posted his explanations. Also, there's probably tons of other secret sauce that he has very intentionally never mentioned.

The meaning of "up" and "down" votes has never been defined. Some might use votes to indicate agreement or disagreement. Others might use votes to indicate appreciation, contribution, or other personally defined metrics.

I'll flag spam submissions and posts, but I'll only down-vote when someone is clearly and intentionally being an ass. Though it might seem odd compared to other forums, I often up-vote people I disagree with (or who disagree with me -- same thing) because I appreciate the time they took to share their views and opinions with me and everyone else. None of us have a monopoly on knowledge, so finding other ways to look at something is always beneficial. Agreeing or disagreeing with another point of view is less important than appreciating and learning from other ways of looking at things.

<comment><USER5> _How you vote/flag is weighted in a number of ways._

I've certainly noticed that my own karma isn't strictly related to the number of upvotes/downvotes I get in a certain time period, (a day for example). Moreover is seems that posts that are heavily upvoted may not reflect on my karma for a day or two - in fact my karma seemed to be increasing due to a post I made about a week ago, even though I hadn't posted in the meantime.

I always figured that was some sort of anti-spam fuzzing (similar to what Reddit does) in calculating karma, but it's even better (IMO) if what you wrote is correct.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't believe Daniel Hillis or Bran Ferren work at Google; they are the principles of Applied Minds, a consulting/R&D firm. Applied Minds spun out Metaweb which Google bought in 2010, I wonder if this patent was part of the acquisition?

Both Hillis and Ferren are also listed as "Our Inventors" on notorious patent firm Intellectual Ventures' website: <http://www.intellectualventures.com/whoweare/Inventors.aspx>

</comment><comment><USER5> _I found that the most significant factor in diminished reliability was simply to let people have infinite moderation powers all the time._

Interesting observation since, IMO, unlimited "moderation powers" has been the biggest problem with Digg and (as of late) Reddit. I'm hopeful that HN can avoid this fate (no downvotes until the karma threshold is reached seems to help somewhat).

<comment><USER7> Personally I see HN's fate as worse than that of Digg and Reddit. HN's karma rating system reinforces an exclusive community. If someone who 'goes against the grain' tries to add diversity to the HN community, they will never get any karma, which means they will never have any power.

IMHO, the worst part about HN is the extreme homogeneity, and the system is designed to reinforce this. The recent discussion about display points is an example of this. Removing points is said to "reduce arguments" ... which is really just another way of "reducing disagreement".

<comment><USER5> I disagree - I don't fit in perfectly with the typical HN demographic (I'm black and I'm not a programmer), and I've made comments that disagree with consensus, and so long as I've been able to back up those comments, I've gotten upvotes.

Contrast that with Reddit where I can link to all kinds of supporting studies but if it's contrary to the hivemind's opinion, I'll get downvoted to oblivion while someone with a differing opinion based on something he heard from his best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend will get an upvote for an unsupported opinion that aligns with the group.

Of course that's just anecdotal experience on my part, so perhaps you're correct and this comment should be downvoted :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > just seeing the Slashdot mention in such a document is awesome.

I think this is the right attitude towards patents, if they do what they're supposed to: advance the state of the art, be inventive/non- obvious/clever/original and so on. (IMO) cmdrtaco is saying that he's happy that an advance in the state of the art builds on his inventiveness - <USER2> is standing on the shoulders of him. If only software patents really _were_ what they're supposed to be.

I wish patents were a celebration of inventiveness, as they are in other fields, instead of often obvious and consequentially hated in ours. Inventiveness is the highest ideal of our field; and patents, really, _should_ be about that.

A secondary problem is that the description isn't intelligible to him - <USER3> invented prior art for it. One of the requirements of a patent is that someone skilled in the art is able to construct the invention. If the originator of slashdot, who is cited as prior art isn't "skilled in the art", who is? Software patents have truly lost their way.

</comment><comment><USER9> wait, i'm confused. google is essentially patenting the /. moderation system, and you're happy about it?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's not really my reading of the patent, although there is overlap in the ideas.

<comment><USER10> The abstract:

>The invention provides an evaluation system for reliably evaluating large amounts of content. The evaluation system is managed by a primary authority that designates one or more contributing authorities by delegating to each a specific quantity of authority. Each contributing authority may in turn designate and delegate authority to one or more additional contributing authorities, subject to the restriction that the total quantity of authority delegated does not exceed the quantity of authority the contributing authority was itself delegated. Each contributing authority, and optionally the primary authority itself, may evaluate one or more portions of content by associating a rating with each evaluated portion of content. A composite rating for a particular portion of content may then be determined based upon the ratings associated with the portion of content. Preferably, the ratings are combined in a manner that affords a higher priority to the ratings provided by contributing authorities to which a greater quantity of authority was delegated.

Isn't that more or less exactly how the Slashdot moderation system was initially seeded?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is more or less how the Slashdot _tagging_ system works, but more advanced than how the moderation system works. But still, abstracts in patent filings are generally oversimplifications.

<comment><USER11> I think one could argue that the Google system foretold by your tagging and moderation system and thus should fail the novelty test.

To your question about bonuses though, when I worked there they were aggressive at getting things filed and just filing was a bonus (didn't have to issue, if it issued that was another (bigger) bonus). Someone once pointed out the not so strange correlation between patent filings and needing a bit of extra money for Christmas shopping :-) So not to worry the Googlers in question were well compensated, enough for many many beers.

<comment><USER12> That correlation doesn't sound plausible, given the long and unpredictable lead times in the process.

I did an IDF for something June 2010 or so, the patent application was eventually filed in April 2011, and I just got the bonus this week. (And to top it off, I'd left Google in the meanwhile, so getting that bonus at all was a bit of a surprise).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I find it hilarious that Malda doesn't know who Danny Hillis is.</comment>


Apple Is Doomed - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/11/09/sobotta

<comment><USER2> Skip the punditry and read the original article here:

[http://readwrite.com/2012/11/08/whats-it-like-to-work-for- ti...](http://readwrite.com/2012/11/08/whats-it-like-to-work-for-tim-cook-a- former-sales-exec-dishes)

<comment><USER3> He links to the original article at the very begining.

And you mean, skip the analysis and read the punditry?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The truth probably lies somewhere in between what the flaming fanboy and Mr.Disgruntled are saying.

Apple seems to make the most money when they open up a new market and lock out the competition for a long period of time, as they did with the iPod. The iPhone's dominance was challenged quicker than the iPod's, and the iPad's quicker still. If you consider 7" tablets their own market, Apple is actually late to the party. Why are other manufacturers catching up quicker or even taking the lead? _They all remember the iPod._

So what does this mean for Apple? The profits aren't going to come as easy as they did before because the competition moves a lot quicker than they used to. If Apple opens up a new market they're going to face competition in it almost immediately because the competition knows they have to move _fast_ and is capable of doing so. No more decades of dominance and easy-money. Does that mean Apple is doomed? Absolutely not. Apple is still wildly profitable even though they are no longer completely dominant in even one market they make products for. Their production chain is lean enough that they _can_ compete in markets dominated by commodity pricing. That focus on production efficiency is not going to change under Tim Cook. Quite the opposite!

There does seem to be evidence that we'll see an extended period of decline for Apple under Cook though. In the last couple years Apple has released several half-baked products and polish seems to be declining. e.g. OSX Lion and Mountain Lion have both had an aberrant number of bugs, even by the standards of other OS's. Jobs, unlike what many people think, was never an idea man. His value was in knowing who to copy and when to say "No", and Cook needed to say no to things like Apple Maps, or at least give them more time to bake. Even if Cook has truly horrible tech instincts it will probably take a very long time for Apple to decline to the point of losing money. Despite how far MS fell in some people's eyes, they never failed to turn a profit. Apple is also sitting on such a gargantuan pile of cash that they could lose money hand-over-fist for decades before running into real trouble.

Apple might not continue to be the leading juggernaut it's been for the last decade, but they're in no danger of going out of business.

<comment><USER3> "Apple seems to make the most money when they open up a new market and lock out the competition for a long period of time"

They are doing quite well on PCs in the modern era.

<comment><USER5> [http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/ios-devices-account- for-7...](http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/ios-devices-account- for-76-percent-of-apple-revenue)

iTunes is probably a significant chunk of the remaining quarter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another blog spelling doom for Apple. A few months back there was one similar for Google, then there was the Microsoft one. I must say 'Blogosphere is Doomed'

EDIT - I was close to reporting the story, but then even though trite, it's an opinion.

</comment><comment><USER7> Apple is doomed because they're not focusing on desktop computers? Um..... _what_?

Alternately: Apple is ignoring desktop computers because _the market is mobile and laptops_ , and really it's just corporations and enthusiasts that will go out of their way for a desktop... ya know, the kinds of people that aren't going to buy a Mac anyway. So why _should_ Apple focus on a market that they're making obselete?

<comment><USER3> They're not exactly failing at making profitable and successful desktop machines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> $COMPANY is doomed because they're ignoring $BUZZWORD. It's sort of like $INANE_ANALOGY.

I give them 3 months, tops.</comment>


Do More Faster - <AUTHOR> http://www.hn-books.com/Books/Do-More-Faster.htm

<comment><USER2> "There is one thing that the hundred of founders I meet each year have in common, and that is that their plan is wrong. Sometimes it's the big things, sometimes it's the little things, but the plan is always wrong"

I completely agree with that. The plan needs to be flexible and changes all the time. Also, because you would not have much experience of the execution when you make the plan, the chances are high that the plan is wrong.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great review Daniel, I'll definitely pick it up. I had forgotten about hn- books.com and found a few books that will be useful... Thanks and keep up the good work!</comment>


Make the Most of Muxtape: A Field Guide to Playlists - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/04/make-the-most-o.html <comment><USER2> Muxtape is getting a lot more coverage than YC's own Mixwit, despite the latter looking a lot cooler and more polished. Unintuitive...</comment>


Show HN: Labyrinth Video Game - <AUTHOR> Hello All, I'm currently working on a very simple video game that I'm planning to release on the Android Play Store. The purpose of the game is to complete a labyrinth before time runs out. There will be around 50 labyrinths. The link [1] below has a video of the game play. As you can see it is still very rough but I think that the game mechanics are pretty much all set. It has taken me a lot longer than expected (9 months so far) to complete this because I decided to go the crazy route and create everything from scratch. I even created a level editor so that it would be easier to create each labyrinth. I may show a video of the level editor if there is any interest on this game.
I'm currently going to spend the rest of my time polishing it as much as I can and creating new levels.
Any feedback is appreciated.
[1] https://youtu.be/AA4GSmYAQyk
P.S. Reposting to hopefully get some traction this time <comment><USER2> I think it would be cool if the track/roadway had some degree of transparency so when you're at a peak you could see what's ahead and be prepared for if you need to adjust the controls.

Another thought is if the level builder could import stuff. It reminds me of some mountain bike trails I used to ride, & if I were to do them with a GoPro camera then play the video back so it could do that kind of loop in the game.

<comment><AUTHOR> >>I think it would be cool if the track/roadway had some degree of transparency so when you're at a peak

Thanks, I may give it a try and see how it looks.

>>Another thought is if the level builder could import stuff. It reminds me of some mountain bike trails I used to ride, & if I were to do them with a GoPro camera then play the video back so it could do that kind of loop in the game.

If you are talking about importing a set of waypoints then this would be easy enough to implement since a set of waypoints is all I need to generate the roads for each level. If I ever release the level editor this may be something nice to implement. Thanks for the idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Clickable:

[https://youtu.be/AA4GSmYAQyk](https://youtu.be/AA4GSmYAQyk)</comment>


All Hail the Pizza Saver, the Tiny Piece of Plastic Protecting Your Pie - <AUTHOR> http://www.eater.com/2016/9/27/13033254/pizza-saver <comment><USER2> A cute song about the inventor [0], apparently from a British comedic radio program(me), "John Finnemore's Souvenir Program" [1]:

[0] [https://soundcloud.com/otterintheflightdeck/carmela- vitale](https://soundcloud.com/otterintheflightdeck/carmela-vitale)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Finnemore's_Souvenir_Prog...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Finnemore's_Souvenir_Programme)</comment>


The Inside Story of How One Company Didn't Mine Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/06/facebook-thefind/ <comment><USER2> _Checking 5,000 possible candidates against a list of 7,000 known stores couldn't happen instantly on login. That could be 35 million comparisons per user, which is a big number, no matter how well you optimize your algorithm._

Some days I weep for our industry. You can do this, trivially, in one lookup per favorite-d store. Create a hash set of the stores you are interested in, grab the favorites, check if they are in the hash set. The worse case performance will be 5,000 times the cost of one hash lookup. (You can do it in the application server's memory or in memcached/redis/etc.) The typical case performance will be virtually instantaneous since most users will have virtually no favorites.

In practice, the bottleneck will almost certainly be how fast you can get results from the Facebook API.</comment>


526 Mailable Live Animals - <AUTHOR> http://pe.usps.gov/text/pub52/pub52c5_007.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> You hear about chickens going via the mail every so often. I think if you sent bees to a prominent government official you'd go to jail as a terrorist. Not sure you could pull an "upskirt" and argue that it was legal and win. But the law would change, and overnight bee farmers who rent hives to orchards would be all but out of business because they use USPS to ship hives.

Legislation is reactionary. Which is why there is so much of it, and why it is often made to protect one group at the expense of others.

Scorpions in the mail seems like a great way to ruin someone's day.</comment>