Holacracy is Bullshit - <AUTHOR> http://cbracy.tumblr.com/post/79876957198/the-github-debacle-why-holacracy-is-bullshit <comment><USER2> This is fucking stupid, given we have almost literally no information about what has happened at Github, nor the extent to which any events were due to an absence of hierarchy.

I really wish people would dial back on the gloating promotion of their own pet theories and maybe wait until a little bit more information is available before jumping to conclusions.

<comment><USER3> These aren't pet theories but an excellent starting point for a discussion.

I would have expected a community of smart individuals to sincerely examine these accusations, even if they are not the whole story behind this current scandal, because we could only benefit from such a discussion.

That this article has been flagged by several people only demonstrates a great level of immaturity and that we, as an industry, more than deserve scorn. We can certainly not claim to be open minded and thoughtful after this.

<comment><USER4> > I would have expected a community of smart individuals to sincerely examine > these accusations

From my experience, smartness, sincerity and a sufficiently malleable ego (that enables one to look at accusations constructively) don't always go hand- in-hand. They seem like orthogonal qualities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> To me, Github's structure is largely an overreaction to the culture flaws elsewhere. Belief that managers are more valuable than doers, and thus paid more. Belief that engineers are infinitely replaceable. Belief that one should be paid proportionate to the number of people below them in the org chart.

Management has a purpose - but companies poor treatment of engineers over the years has blinded many engineers to this. A great manager ensures their people are pointed in the right direction, makes sure that they're not running into roadblocks, and frees up their people from dealing with bullshit so they can be the best they can be. This really doesn't have anything to do with "oppression", or whatnot.

Managing is orthogonal to engineering - and saying either is worth more than the other is simply wrong. If we can decouple the ideas of "managing" and "building" with systematically being valued / paid more or less than others, we'll have progress. Right now, most are erring on one side or the other.

<comment><USER6> Managers' higher pay isn't some kind of conspiracy squatting in the industry. It's the result of market forces. Those outside pressures will not evaporate simply because we do not like them.

Pay grades are telling us things we do not wish to hear:

\- engineers _are_ more replaceable than their managers

\- management staff are consistently difficult to find

<comment><USER5> Is the market saying that? There were higher starting salaries coming out of my CS undergrad than my management masters. That was 5 years ago, and I don't think things have shifted away from engineers since.

Look at the acquihire prices engineers are getting these days...

<comment><USER6> That is another unpleasant lesson: credentials don't make the man.

Your master's degree in management appears to be much less valuable than experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> After Jeri Ellsworth was fired from Valve, she had said that the "flat organization" of Valve masked an informal but very real hierarchy that was made up of elites and their cliques. I realize that flat organization is not the same thing as holarchy, but it could be that they both are trading formal hierarchies for informal ones rather than dispensing with them.

<comment><USER3> Found it[1]. She says, "The one thing I found out the hard way is that there's actually a hidden layer of powerful management structure in the company, and it felt a lot like high school... There's popular kids that have acquired power within the company, then there's the trouble makers and everyone in between."

[1]: [http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-07-08-valves- flat...](http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-07-08-valves-flat- structure-leads-to-cliques-say-ex-employee)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > _When you allow a power vacuum to emerge someone will fill it, and it's > usually the people who have traditionally held power_

I've never really given this issue much thought, but it sounds reasonable. Illusions can be dangerous, including the illusion of equality.

I was instantly reminded of the famous commandment in Animal Farm : _" All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others"_. It now seems almost naive to pretend that there wouldn't be people in the organization with vastly more power than others.

All that said, until very recently I was someone who admired GitHub's flat hierarchy from afar. If they were being naive, then so was I.

<comment><USER9> It's not that you can't have flat hierarchy, it's that you have to ensure that it's supported by transparency and process to then prevent it actually being a mask for another power structure.

That is the major failing with a lot of the companies doing this. The belief that everyone shares the same ideals and it will work itself out without requiring very strict constraints and process.

All that happens is that the inequalities are layered behind façades, becoming a lot harder to address and resolve than if a traditional power structure was used.

<comment><USER10> > It's not that you can't have flat hierarchy, it's that you have to ensure > that it's supported by transparency and process to then prevent it actually > being a mask for another power structure.

To wit, this is the actual democratic experiment that people keep thinking they refer to when talking about America.

"Holacracies" aren't impossible. It's just that they're _hard_. Brady's point is more that many people refuse to admit this and, accordingly, run into the worst problems posed rather than having ways to deal with them as they arise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Holacracies still have a vested management power structure.. Basically you still have owners / top-tier management who's goals may not align with workers.

Want to be a really progressive start up.. become a COOP.

</comment><comment><USER12> Eh. I worked at a reasonably holacratic/flat organization (a high-profile agile consultancy, actually), and when I say it was flat, I didn't know who my boss was, or who to give notice to when I quit. It was honestly very flat, and in no sense did this mean "secretly rich white guys ran the show." It _did_ lead to a bit more cliqueyness than might otherwise have been desired.

I think that a holacracy, like most things dealing with human beings and their behavior, is dependent on the specific human beings in question with regard to whether or not it will succeed.

On a slightly meta level, it is interesting why the startup/development culture seems to flock to articles like this, saying "such-and-such thing can never work as a solution to people problems because it didn't work here" \- we see this crop up on HN constantly, pro- and anti-, with things like working from home, pair programming, etc. Maybe it's too much to ask that we say "different things work for different groups of people"?

<comment><USER13> I think I work at the "high-profile agile consultancy" you're talking about.

I've been there two months and I still have no idea who I talk to about X, where X is a variety of things. Before getting staffed on a project I spent time working on whatever I wanted to learn. At several points I wondered if there was someone I should check in with. It felt so weird to just do what I wanted without having to get permission or justify it to someone.

That said, I don't think I could ever go back to reporting to a manager, especially a non-technical manager.

>Maybe it's too much to ask that we say "different things work for different groups of people"?

I couldn't agree more. I think the flat model works at my company because harassment wouldn't be tolerated by anyone. I turned down positions at startups because their culture was too fratty. Even if they had a management system I wouldn't have felt comfortable bringing up issues.

<comment><USER12> > That said, I don't think I could ever go back to reporting to a manager, > especially a non-technical manager.

After working in a flat organization (I'm 99% sure we're talking about the same place here) like we do/did, I agree. It's amazing how much more productive you can be (provided you're a generally high-aptitude, motivated person to begin with) when you are left alone to do what needs to get done. I'd prefer only to work in similar organizational structures from now on. In my experience, even the little cliqueyness you get is hardly an argument against the alternatives (rigid organizational structure, difficult to move vertically, documentation, all the waterfall stuff, and/or the domineering personality of a god-complex startup founder)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My father, who I consider to have been one of the "real" hippies, told me that he couldn't deal with hippie communes. He claimed that when the group becomes large enough and everyone should be considered equal, a jerk comes in to take advantage of the situation, starts managing, and fucks everything up.

<comment><USER3> The dynamics of the counterculture communes has been studied, and it is of interest as counterculture was certainly a forefather to modern day Silicon Valley.

See here:

* [http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/01/how-silicon-valley-became-the-m...](http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/01/how-silicon-valley-became-the-man/)

* [http://vimeo.com/73536828](http://vimeo.com/73536828) esp. 54:10 and on

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you say "we don't have office politics at our company" the reality is that you _do_ have office politics and it's completely unrestrained due to the blind eye turned on it by "management".

If you notice that the cars you build tend to rust, and that water causes rust, you might say, "well, we're going to build cars that don't encounter water," and you'd be rightly laughed out of town. Office politics doesn't happen (or not) because the founders wrote it into their business plan. Office politics happens because offices are occupied by humans.

</comment><comment><USER16> Not to change the subject: Having just come out of a totally flat org that was pushing hard for 100% Holacracy I have to say if I didn't leave for other reasons it would have been that. It can be incredibly incredibly difficult to get things done in this environment and sadly made me feel like every day I had to wake up and battle my coworkers because everything was by committee. I'm all for collaboration, but I also believe at the end of the day someone has to be accountable and responsible for actions taken or not taken.

<comment><USER17> But that's not what Holacracy pushes for. The organization is supposed to have people with power to decide certain stuff and be accountable for it. It's just not supposed to have a single hierarchy that ends in the CEO and which concentrates all power, but a bunch of "circles" that have role-specific powers.

[http://holacracy.org/constitution](http://holacracy.org/constitution)

It seems that everyone is blaming the process without following it. Not that I claim that following it would have good results - I have no idea if it's a good system or not.

<comment><USER18> You got it right. I work with Holacracy and I can confirm... everything you read Holacracy being blamed for, as in Catherine Bracy's article, is actually not against Holacracy.

They think it's against Holacracy, because they mistakenly believe that Holacracy simply means "flat org". Then they build an entire argument around this error...

Since the Zappos story, people talk about "holacracy" here and there. In reality, there are few organizations actually using Holacracy® — the system defined in the constitution you link to. Github isn't part of them, Valve either. Zappos and Medium are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> >In the wake of this, I'm starting to think all of the problems we're seeing with Silicon Valley these days—the ineptitude at politics, the clumsiness with handling inequality in SF, the lack of gender and racial diversity in the industry—are actually rooted in a systemic failure to understand how power works

I'm completely lost here: so the way to solve the problem of people with a lot of power oppressing people with little or no power is to replace the oppressive people with power with _better_ powerful people?

Isn't this quite close to the idea that somewhat progressive dictators are good?

EDIT — _Kinda ad hominem-y:_ "Until November 2012, she ran the Obama campaign's technology office in San Francisco where she recruited technology volunteers to build software for the campaign."

<comment><USER20> > Isn't this quite close to the idea that somewhat progressive dictators are > good?

No, it's quite close to the idea that progressive _power structures_ are good, as opposed to anarchy followed by "obviously everything will end up being progressive now that I've torn down the structure of power".

<comment><USER17> But isn't that why the people behind the Holacracy concept have a whole structure (with pretty pictures!) that is supposed to replace the managerial layer?

[http://holacracy.org/how-it-works](http://holacracy.org/how-it-works)

I have no idea if holacracy is bullshit or not (it does feel like a concept invented to sell training classes), but claiming it replaces managers with nothing is plainly false.

<comment><USER20> If I'm understanding the linked article correctly, she wasn't claiming holacracy guts management, she was claiming that it introduces a power vacuum. And from what I can tell in that pretty picture you provide, she's probably actually right.

E.g. who sets the "strategic direction" for the company? Who guides the unending governance meetings to decide who the managers will be that day? Who decides which spouses get to work on company property without pay, and which employees are allowed to date other employees?

The way those things get resolved will show you who's really in charge.

<comment><USER21> > E.g. who sets the "strategic direction" for the company?

The circle whose focus is strategic direction.

> Who guides the unending governance meetings to decide who the managers will > be that day?

Unending governance meetings and "decide who the managers will be that day" both seem like signs of a circle with a poor governance process (probably, one that is trying to force things into a non-holarchic structure.)

<comment><USER20> > > E.g. who sets the "strategic direction" for the company?

> The circle whose focus is strategic direction.

Sweet. Now we know who's actually in charge, it's whoever is a member of that circle. That wasn't so hard.

<comment><USER21> The idea that having focus on long-range, broad-scope problems is intimately tied to authority is a typical assumption of traditional heirarchies, but there's no reason it has to be true in holacracies.

<comment><USER20> It has nothing to do with whether you call the direction "strategic", "next quarter" or "tactical". If you have the authority to set the direction at all you're the one (or few) in charge.

We prefer these types of direction to be long-term if only to avoid having a business do its own random walk through the markets, but don't confuse scope with authority.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> evil rich white men article though an evil rich woman was the power vacuum filler.

github can keep their managerless system, they just need to adopt a shop steward system like unions have. This is somebody who can advocate for employees during disciplinary meetings with management, arbitrate petty disputes that don't need heavy handed management involvement with threats of termination, and anonymously bring problems to management if the grieving employee doesn't want to be identified. This person is elected and wields zero power.

It's the only thing I remember liking from being in a union once and would work for github. This girl could have gone to the steward, then the steward could complain about the founder's wife harassing employees to HR without identifying the employee to management for silent discipline, when they try to get rid of you for complaining or whatever personal vendetta (it can happen).

</comment><comment><USER23> I was expecting the article to educate me on why holacracy is less effective than hierarchy. However the argument that "holacracy does not work because rich white men fill power vacuums" is fluff.

</comment><comment><USER24>
        "When you allow a power vacuum to emerge someone will fill
        it, and it's usually the people who have traditionally
        held power (rich white men)."

Why? If there is a power vacuum, exactly what forces support rich white men filling those roles? Why can't woman or person of a different race fill the role?

Near as I can tell, the only thing I can see that supports this likelihood is base rates. A greater percentage of the participants in a tech holocracy are likely to be white men (because they are well represented in tech), so when you have 70-80 white male marbles in a bag of 100 marbles, the probably of picking a white male marble is 70-80%. Is there some other force other than simple statistics that increases the probability of a white man taking over power in excess of their representation in the population in question?

<comment><USER25> Yes, but all such questions can lead to un-PC conclusions, therefore you may want to keep quiet.

<comment><USER26> Like what?

<comment><USER25> Just game out possible trails of thought. The most 'offensive' one may be true. That's all I'll say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> vezzy-fnord _The problem with management isn't managers, the problem with management is bad managers._

Which you have an incentive to keep, as you do not want to immobilize your good engineers, as per the Dilbert principle.

The problem is not holacracy itself. Plenty of companies are doing just fine using decentralized and autonomous organizational methods, including Valve and Flying Wild Hog.

The problem lies in having a culture of apathy and immaturity. Not having managers doesn't mean one should not be able to forward complaints to an appropriate person and have the situation handled.

Also, ironically, in the GitHub debacle, it was a woman who rose up and disrupted the power balance.

</comment><comment><USER27> Hierarchy may be superior but I think it might be a bit early to declare holacracy a failure. Presumably there are a multitude of successful holacracies that we aren't hearing about because they are actually working.

<comment> aaron-lebo Valve is a prime example of this.

Though, I'm guessing Gabe Newell has a ton of defacto power, and you hear plenty of complaints from people that minor bugs and issues go unhandled because they aren't sexy to work on.

<comment><USER28> Jeri Ellsworth's accounts of working within Valve and the issues with the structure there were pretty widely published after her firing. She mentions a fair few more problems then just unsexy bugs being ignored it's worth a listen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've always found these attempts for "holacracy" as efforts to square the circle. There is actually a solution to this problem - it's called democracy. Every person gets the same amount of power - one vote, and they can decide things (or decide they don't care). This is compatible with hierarchies, both formal and informal, but the authority is challenged all the time (which is a good thing). Some companies work like that, they are called worker cooperatives, but they are rare. Any eventual power cliques have hard time to be stable in such environment, because the power is equally distributed by default and according to a fixed, well-known rule. This actually allows participants to focus on production rather than politics.

But this is seldom what the owners of the company (who invested capital) want. They don't want people to run things, they want people to run things on their behalf (and get rich from the process). And even if they were sympathetic to this idea, it's very hard to grow such a company at all stages (in small group it's very prone to hostile takeovers and later there is no incentive to grow, since the power of individuals is always the same compared to number of people).

I don't see transition to democratic workplace happening unless lots of people give up any hope to have more power than other people. Interestingly, in political system, this largely happened, although it's still not enough and there is resentment from some.

</comment><comment><USER30> I added an edit here, pointing out that GitHub wasn't actually employing holacracy. That was my (pre-breakfast) sloppiness. My main point still stands, though. And Tom Preston-Werner describes his "management" structure here in pretty great detail so we do have some insight into what was actually going on inside GitHub: [http://www.oscon.com/oscon2013/public/schedule/detail/29555](http://www.oscon.com/oscon2013/public/schedule/detail/29555)

<comment><USER18> Catherine, you are confusing "Holacracy" for a generic term that means "flat organizations" and "lack of structure".

Holacracy® is a specific system with clear rules (available here: [http://holacracy.org/constitution](http://holacracy.org/constitution) ), and is far more structured than what you describe in your article. See for example the structure of my organization running with Holacracy: [https://glassfrog.holacracy.org/organizations/5](https://glassfrog.holacracy.org/organizations/5)

It's mistake to associate Holacracy to flat organizations — Holacracy is actually FARTHER AWAY from a flat organization than it is from a conventional hierarchy. It pushes very strongly about the looseness and lack of clarity around accountabilities in a structure-less org. It even pushes against the lack of clarity in conventional hierarchies as well. Overall, Holacracy instills _more_ structure in an organization, not less.

Ev Williams, who uses it at Medium, puts it this way:

"Holacracy is the opposite of the cliché way to run a startup. People think "freedom, no job description, everybody does everything, it's totally flat, and that's cool because we're all down with those rules". But actually that creates tons of anxiety and inefficiency, and various modes of dysfunction, whether we have to build consensus around every decision, or I'm gonna do a land grab for power... People romanticize startup cultures, but I know it's fairly rare that people in startups say "this is it, it is amazing and everybody is super-productive and going along". So in Holacracy, one of the principles is to make the implicit explicit — tons of it is about creating clarity: who is in charge of what, who is taking what kind of decision — and there is also a system for defining that, and changing that, so it's very flexible at the same time." (source: [https://medium.com/p/89fb713a8786](https://medium.com/p/89fb713a8786) )

So... I'm afraid your assessment of Holacracy is really backward. I'm not saying Holacracy is perfect, but it's certainly not flawed in the ways you describe.

@oliviercp

<comment><USER18> I've explained the difference further in a blog post: "Holacracy vs. Hierarchy vs. Flat Orgs" [https://medium.com/holacracyone- blog/d1545d5dffa7](https://medium.com/holacracyone-blog/d1545d5dffa7)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The problem at Github isn't a good example of the supposed deficiency of holacratic enterprises.

In the first place, the problem became as serious as it did because it involved Github's management, such as it was. Secondly, the founder involved in the incident was put on leave, and an apology was promptly and unreservedly issued. It is easy to imagine a more hierarchical organization circling the wagons, instead. In the end, Github may be an example of serious problem with a founder that was handled as well as possible.

There are a lot of ways software development does not fit within traditional management structures. For example, if you take traditional project management tools and try to predict a non-trivial software development schedule with them you are going to have a bad time. So we invent new, usually less-structured tools.

You can't do entirely without those structures, but minimization of hierarchy is the logical way to adapt management to the challenge of keeping software development orderly and making a business out of it, if that's your aim. If there is a deeper problem at Github it is likely that they didn't follow some of the other rules of thumb for software development organizations, like "don't hire jerks."

</comment><comment><USER32> _The problem with management isn't managers, the problem with management is bad managers._

So, on the one hand, we have what we might call the _Lord of the Flies_ narrative - that Github's pseudo-anarchic non-management just enables people's worst traits to come to the surface; it doesn't remove power imbalances, it just hides them and makes it harder to challenge illegitimate use of that power because it's harder to identify.

On the flip side, we have what we might call the _Milgram Experiment_ narrative - that authority positions are naturally corrupting, making belief in good management seem utopian; sure, we'd all like to be managed by someone that we respect, admire and trust, but we're just as _likely_ to be managed by someone that we fear, pity or loathe, and the explicit hierarchy turns out to be just as hard to challenge as the implicit one and often even more so.

Lots of people seem to have decided that one of the above is the greater evil, and are willing to risk the other. Github is in the minority of companies that (hitherto) has seen the latter as the greater evil, or at least that is how the company has presented itself (I don't work there and don't personally know anyone who does, so I really can't comment on anything other than the rhetoric).

What we need is, boring though this may seem, some kind of balance between the two. In an anarchic company, people are going to over-step the boundaries (e.g. by reverting a co-workers commits due to a personal dispute). Some authority needs to police this. However, that authority only really needs to be reactive - it should punish wrongdoers rather than order people around on a daily basis. Most of the time, people do the right thing and can be left to get on with it, and hassling them while they do it is harmful.

To get overly philosophical, I think we can have the best of both worlds by borrowing the concept of 'complex equality'[1], which comes from the book _Spheres of Justice_ by Michael Walzer[2]. In a nutshell, he suggests that we can avoid power imbalances by ensuring that natural and legitimate imbalances within different 'spheres' do not spill over into other ones. In the context of tech companies, we might have, say, a 'discipline' sphere where managers are in charge, a 'technical' sphere where engineers are in charge, a 'design' sphere with designers in charge, and so on. Being the top engineer doesn't give you the right to overrule a designer on a design question, and being a top manager doesn't give you the right to overrule an engineer on a technical question. If we're dealing with a personal conflict, this falls under the jurisdiction of management, and they should have full authority to resolve it. If we're dealing with a technical debate, that should be resolved by engineers. Resource allocation should be handled as democratically as possible.

Once you think in this way, it becomes obvious why some companies and projects fail: managers demanding authority over technical matters (e.g. estimates, software development workflow), engineers demanding authority over design (I'm sure we can all think of examples), or anyone demanding authority over management practices. These are all likely to lead to abuse and mismanagement; in any case they are unlikely to be optimal. What companies need _is_ formal structure, but structure that _constrains_ authority rather than simply entrusting it to managers and thereafter hoping that they turn out to be, against the odds, good ones.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_equality](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_equality) [2] I am _dimly_ aware that Walzer is controversial in some circles. I know nothing about him apart from the book, so please do not take anything I say as an endorsement or condemnation of any of his other views, which are beside the point here.

<comment><USER33> > In a nutshell, he suggests that we can avoid power imbalances by ensuring > that natural and legitimate imbalances within different 'spheres' do not > spill over into other ones. In the context of tech companies, we might have, > say, a 'discipline' sphere where managers are in charge, a 'technical' > sphere where engineers are in charge, a 'design' sphere with designers in > charge, and so on. Being the top engineer doesn't give you the right to > overrule a designer on a design question, and being a top manager doesn't > give you the right to overrule an engineer on a technical question. If we're > dealing with a personal conflict, this falls under the jurisdiction of > management, and they should have full authority to resolve it. If we're > dealing with a technical debate, that should be resolved by engineers

I don't disagree with the theory, but in practice power would come down to who gets to decide which sphere applies.

<comment><USER3> That's what the CEO is for, and hopefully clear and helpful rules.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I don't know how Github runs, but it sounds nothing like Holacracy. The author is confused (as are many people on this thread).

Six months ago, I switched my company (over 50 full time employees in 3 cities) to Holacracy.

I'm here to tell you that I'm 100% convinced that it's a huge step forward in terms of any organizational system I've come across.

There's nothing 'flat' or 'manager-less' about it. It's a complex and intricate system that leads to greater clarity, less politics, and better distributed decision making.

Accountabilities are clearer, meetings are more efficient, and more voices are heard. Holacracy explicitly avoids design/decide by committee.

If you're running a company with more than 10 employees, I highly recommend you take a serious look at Holacracy. It's the best decision I've made by far, and I'm never going to work for, or start another company without running it this way.

If you're earnestly curious, drop me a note and I'll be happy to talk about it more with you.

</comment><comment><USER35> _The problem with management isn't managers, the problem with management is bad managers_

I agree with this. However, in my experience, bad managers are really good at politics, and their aptitude with politics biases many organizations towards bad management. Holocracy isn't so much a knee-jerk reaction to bad managers, it is a knee-jerk reaction to bad politics. I would posit that if bad managers were never promoted, people wouldn't have the same holocratic ideals. They would just switch teams or switch companies, and be done with it. They can't do that, because sooner or later, Bad Manager Bob comes back as Bad Director Bob.

<comment><USER36> But I think the point the article is trying to make is that people who are good at politics will end up with power whether you officially have a flat structure or not. So then management needs to be used as a way to keep the whole thing in check. I'm not sure how best to do it, but I think it's a good point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Actually, if you look at the situation, it was the very nature of having a _Founder_ involved. If there were no _Founders_ or other powerful people, then that wife's all edged bullshit never would have taken off.

Holacracy is not Bullshit.

<comment><USER6> In other words, holacracy as a concept is incompatible with a startup's typical ownership structure?

<comment><USER21> I don't think so; operational/management structure and ownership structure don't have to interact the way they did here. OTOH, without formal rules and control mechanism to assure that those rules are respected, the ownership structure is naturally going to impact the operational/management structure, which will make holarchy unlikely with any ownership structure (other than ownership through an identical fractal network of teams as the intended operational structure.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I think that a "no managers" system can work either with a very small number of employees (<15) or in a company of very, very talented people, but if you need to hire fast, you're going to sacrifice hiring quality, and wind up with people who may not be the best.

The "GitHub Debacle" seems to be more an issue of a lack of professionalism and an unwillingness to confront serious problems (a bully non-employee spouse in the office creating trouble for what sounds like a good employee) before they came to a head.

<comment><USER36>
      > ...very, very talented people...

But what does that mean? People who are very, very good at building software aren't necessarily good at interacting with others or following basic social rules. Same goes for any field (replace "building software" with "practicing law", for instance).

Tricky to hire only people who are very, very good at _everything_ necessary for a healthy culture.

<comment><USER38> But if you aren't in the kind of bind that a company like GitHub is in, or any company that needs to grow quite fast, you can hire and fire at your leisure, creating the team that you need.

<comment><USER39> > you can hire and fire at your leisure

That's very US centric advice, in many countries you absolutely cannot fire someone "at your leisure".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> They definitely need to work on things, but I don't think that this debacle means GitHub's decentralized model is invalid. They experienced rapid growth and there are bound to be some aspects that slip through the cracks, doesn't mean they should give up trying to retain a flatter hierarchy as they expand. I hope they don't anyways, it's a core reason GitHub is one of my favorite tech companies.

</comment><comment><USER41> This public spat is good for the investors (a16z) at GitHub. Investors want structure and accountability, and holacracies don't have that. They may get better results (I'm on the fence) so GitHub is probably on a long leash, but this will be a topic when Ben Horowitz and the executives at GitHub sit down for their quarterlies. Wait, holacracies don't have executives...

</comment><comment><USER42> Oh God, "holacracy"? It's too late to change that, isn't it? It should be "holocracy"...

</comment><comment><USER43> I wonder if the frat house culture, the opulent office, the drink up debauchery and the "holacracy" may create a delusional sense of grandiosity that permeates from the company level to the employee? Just a thought.

</comment><comment><USER44> Waaaaay too soon to be writing off holacracy. Fad or not, it's at the crawl stage (crawl-walk-run). And to compare it to business-as-usual running-- when it's as broken as it is-- is premature.

</comment><comment><USER16> Manager != leader.

Managers can = leaders, but the two are not mutually exclusive.</comment>


Scalability of Stackless, Fibra and Kamaelia (Benchmarks) - <AUTHOR> http://entitycrisis.blogspot.com/2009/03/concurrent-scaling-benchmarks.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The author put the benchmark code in the previous blog post:

[http://entitycrisis.blogspot.com/2009/03/benchmarking- stackl...](http://entitycrisis.blogspot.com/2009/03/benchmarking-stackless- kamaelia-and.html)</comment>


Student-Loan Debt Is Crushing Millennials - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-11-02/student-loan-debt-hobbles-next-generation-of-u-s-workers <comment><USER2> Often times when student loans come up people blame exclusively the borrower. We should keep in mind that in a properly functioning lending market both the borrower and lender take on risk. The lender should not left out of the equation on who to blame. Both parties are at fault. But we don't have a properly function student loan industry. Lenders assume very little risk in this market but they should not be absolved of blame or have less outrage directed at them.

<comment><USER3> I agree. I feel like most of the problem would be solved by allowing student debt to be erased by declaring bankruptcy. It's absurd that isn't the case.

<comment><USER4> What's absurd about that? The bank has no salvageable assets to claim. They can't claim 4 years of European Literature from your mind.

<comment><USER5> You can wipe out medical loans, which also have no assets to claim, with bankruptcy. Or do you think we need to make _Repo Men_ a reality?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Student loans always did feel kind of predatory to me. We're asking 17 or 18 year olds whose brains haven't fully developed the ability to prioritize long term consequences to take on 10s or 100s of thousands of dollars in debt when in many cases, they don't even know their path through college (major etc).

Now don't get me wrong, I don't have some sort of magic plan to fix this (maybe allow them to declare bankruptcy would be a start?) but the whole industry just felt a little predatory to me.

<comment><USER7> > bankruptcy would be a start?

Yes. This is the start and the end. Bankruptcy will stop lenders from making predatory loans. It puts risk on both sides.

Tuition costs will naturally (and quickly) drop. Because there will be fewer people able to pay a crazy loan fueled price without a crazy loan given to them.

<comment><USER8> Maybe. The other option is that higher education will just be for the global rich. It's a myth that markets need everyone, in fact it's a core tenet of modern economics that markets can hum along just fine while excluding a large class of people, with no incentive to bring them into the fold.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The normalisation of lending is a huge issue in general.

There's a pervasive idea that being able to actually afford things is abnormal. That everyone should just take a loan out for education. For a car. For a house. For a cellphone.

Yes, there are benefits to being able to get things 'earlier' than otherwise would be possible. And if everything goes right, the situation a borrower is in at the end of a loan may be better than had they not taken it.

But the actual result of this seems to be that, for example, ~everyone in Britain is tied into full-time employment to pay off various creditors.

It's commonly posted on here that the average American has savings amounting to effectively a bag of crisps.

That's the obvious result if you use every available bit of income, even if it's "investing" for a future that never comes.

<comment><USER10> it's very reasonable to take out a loan for an income producing asset (like education), as long as the expected return is greater than the cost of the loan.

but those sensible loans have also normalized loans for non-income producing assets, and that's where it's better to be able to pay up-front (unless you get an interest rate below inflation or the fed rate).

<comment><USER9> The variance is more important than the EV.

An individual human is N=1. It's a single trial. You only live once. ;)

An example would be taking out a mortgage. The highest EV is generally mortgaging yourself to the hilt. But in various circumstances, you'll then lose everything.

Oh, and during the period you've basically given yourself a guaranteed annual cost you can't discharge without potentially taking huge losses on a house. (In the student loan example, you stay for the period, or you get no fancy bit of paper at all).

<comment><USER10> yes, i've assumed a functioning market where the interest rate correctly accounts for risk, but that does mean a small but non-zero chance of loss.

but simply being alive is risky; there are no guarantees in life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As a foreigner I don't get it. Why are students allowed to get a debt that they can't pay. Why they take it?

<comment><USER12> You're told from the day you start school that if you don't go to college, you're not going to 'make it'. There aren't enough scholarships to go around. So people will pay literally anything. And since they can't discharge the debt in bankruptcy, lenders will throw money at them.

<comment><USER13> Lenders are also required by the feds to throw money at them. They don't have a choice.

Cost of money went dramatically down, so tuition inflated something like 4x

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There an interesting argument to be made around non-guaranteed loans with rates dependent on course of study. Want a degree in medicine? Enjoy your 3% loan since you'll probably be able to pay it back. Social Sciences? Get ready for 20% interest to compensate for a high default rate. Interest rates are an important signalling mechanism and could help stear students into educational fields with greater economic demand.

</comment><comment><USER15> If creditors were allowed to discriminate based on risk factors [probably grades, attendance, degree field] we'd never be in this situation.

But, since these are government backed loans, people are pretty much guaranteed to be funded, no matter their risk factors, are and the taxpayers are going to foot the bill when they default.

</comment><comment><USER16> Student debt plus the skyrocket price of real estate worldwide is killing this generation. Low interest means no retirement, also. How lucky I was to be able to save money in the 90s. Worried about my kid, though.

</comment><comment><USER17> I feel like banks _and_ students should get a choice. A couple of assertions:

A) Interest represents risk as well as the time-value of money

B) A non-dischargeable loan is risk free to the lender.

Given those, there should be two products:

1) Offering a loan dischargeable in bankruptcy, at whatever rate the market will bear.

2) Offering a non-dischargeable loan, with interest capped at the current rate for a 10-Year Treasury Note.

If there's no risk, a bank doesn't get to add it in, and the money is cheap enough that the student can pay it back.

If there's risk, a bank gets to charge whatever they can, and a student has recourse to bankruptcy.

</comment><comment><USER18> It'll be a good learning experience for the next generation.

<comment><USER19> we are on the next generation. there are people just escaping crushing debt ready to put kids into college. this didnt just start.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> There are too many perverse incentives in the system; the incentives need to be realigned.

The amount of money coming from students incentivizes a university to provide worse education to more students.

Easy loan money discourages discernment all along the pipeline--at universities, lenders, students, parents...

<comment><USER21> The expansion of loans came because state governments cut funding to their universities and colleges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why don't people move to countries with cheaper/free education then?

Two major possibilities come to my mind:

\- US employers don't accept non-US diplomas.

\- Studying in the US gives you networking opportunities. If you come back after Europe, you don't have enough connections to compete with local graduates.

<comment><USER21> I did.. went to college in the UK. Germany has free University too.. US employers accept the non-US diplomas.

However, the networking issue may be a thing.. The real networking though is in sororities and fraternities I think. Or those secret societies... Then again you can always do an MBA.. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The figure 8% of GDP sounded mind boggling. But apparently it's true.

Quoth the wiki: "Approximately 43 million have student loans, with an average balance of $30,000. In 2017, average student loan debt reached $39, 400, an increase of 6% compared to 2016. Americans owe more than $1.48 trillion (44 million borrowers) which is roughly $620 billion more than the overall credit card debt in the country."

Just to compare to a communist I mean socialist country (Finland in this example), where we had an article about the massive increase in student loans (doubled in the last 10 years).

400 000 people with loans totalling 3 billion (about 7600eur per person). To scale that with the population of the US so about 60x we get the number 180 billion vs. 1480 billion.

Man you have it tough there :) Good thing that you all will be multi billionaires (or so everyone apparently thinks when voting) so no need for tax reform or any other kind of communist/socialist crap :)

</comment><comment><USER24> People aged 18-29 vote at a rate of _twenty percent_. Ain't nothing going to change for them, ever.

</comment><comment><USER25> Why do we encourage a group to vote who remind us daily about their inability to survey their options and make good decisions?

<comment><USER26> I am so tired of the "Millennials are lazy and make bad decisions" narrative. You can't make blanket statements about an entire generation. Please stop.

<comment><USER27> Yea that's a crazy sentiment considering who encourages these young people to go to college (their parents, primarily) and without considering the absolutely unbelieavable increases in college tuition costs with no discernible benefit to the attendees (while Professors become adjunct and paid less).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> There are just so many poor bastards that spent lots of money on useless degrees.

It is kind of a problem in the marriage market, because more women go to college and end up with massive college debt, which makes them financially unattractive.

<comment><USER28> I am curious why this is a hugely unpopular fact.

<comment><USER29> It's more the not-even-veiled misogyny than the statement about the relative worth of degrees that caused my down vote.

Also, most/all of this generation are told that it doesn't matter what your degree is in, just that you get a degree. That idea combined with some generic distain for trades is what drives kids to college regardless of cost. Men are also taking out loans.

We need to respect trades and respect that not everyone wants or needs to spend 4 more years in school.

We also need to stop being misogynistic, but that should go without saying.

<comment><USER30> Is it necessarily misogynistic, though?

At the population level, women's degrees are worth less than men's because women more often exit the job market to raise children. If someone wants to do that - and I 100% stand behind that being a valid and important decision, for either sex - then college debt would be a very poor financial decision.

I'm not convinced it's a systemic problem, but it would be interesting to see default rates broken down by gender.

<comment><USER29> The comment was, yes. First, it isn't a problem that is specific to women in any way, shape, or form. Second, it paints women as only existing to find a mate, and this is hampering that. Why should women be singled out in this? They should be able to explore their intellectual side as well.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Deregister and Turn Off iMessage - <AUTHOR> https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage

<comment><USER2> they are submitting forms to [https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister- imessage/empty](https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/empty), source says

<!-- Empty JSP created for faking form submission -->

hmmm

<comment><USER3> It's not as nefarious as you think, I didn't dig into deep enough to know why they are using the empty iframe to submit forms to, but the send button submits an ajax POST request

      main.js:460
      $.ajax({
        type : "POST",
        url : pageContext + pathPrefix + "/turnOffiMessage",
        data:data,
        success : function(data, textStatus, jqXHR) {
        ...</comment></comment>


Show HN: Remote Path, a filterable database of remote career paths and companies - <AUTHOR> https://remotepath.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN,

after not finding another database/list of remote companies that had the information I wanted, I decided to start building my own. What I came up with is a database of companies and careers that you can filter by the things you care about like paid co-working, average salary, etc.

The idea is that no matter if you are just starting to get interested in remote work, or a seasoned nomad you should be able to find value from the site.

If you are early/curious about remote work check out our database of careers to see what options you might have with your skill set, otherwise find a company that has the perks you want.

It's still very early (I have a lot more content to add), but try it out and let me know what you think!</comment>


Ask HN: How to wget pages with javascript? - <AUTHOR>

I need to wget a url, allow the javascript to execute, and capture the result in a file. I've tried wget, curl, httrack,plugins like lget, and links(2) and none of them execute JS.
I want something like $: firefox <url> -s <file>
Does anyone know how to accomplish this behavior without using JS? <comment><USER2> You can write a NodeJS script using the JSDom module to do this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion. Any idea how to accomplish this task without using JS?

I'm surprised chromium, konqueror and firefox don't offer this functionality for offline browsing.

<comment><USER2> Selenium (<http://seleniumhq.org/>) might work but it's not a simple command line script.

<comment><USER3> Selenium will do this, although it's not pretty. I spent about 4 months on a contract doing exactly that, and it sucked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> iMacro? Rhino?

</comment><comment><USER5> Personally, I'd use <http://www.phantomjs.org/> and create a script which loads the page like a browser. Once you've done that you can get it to take screenshot or use JS to pull data off the page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I really want to get this done with the command line and it looks like Phantom JS will do the trick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> perfect use case for celerity <http://celerity.rubyforge.org/></comment>


Fulfilling the promise of an officeless world - <AUTHOR> http://blog.screenhero.com/post/47232460599/fulfilling-the-promise-of-an-officeless-world <comment><USER3> I love coding and engineering, but I do sometimes regret going into software development instead of, say, medicine or dentistry. And it's not about the money per se--it's about the location. One of my friends growing up is about to start his medical residency and I occasionally think about how a doctor will be able to work really anywhere in the country and be guaranteed a very comfortable six figure salary (at the minimum). If I want a similar salary, however, I feel constrained to go to a few of the tech hubs--Silicon Valley, NYC--where I will be faced with extraordinary cost-of-living expenses. I think back to my dentist growing up who had a little private practice in my home town. He surely made what a Google engineer makes, at the minimum, but he lived in a town where $500k gets you a literal mansion and $1m homes don't even exist.

Certainly this is a first world problem in its purest form. But remote development to me represents one way for software developers to realize the dream of high-paying jobs anywhere, even in a rural town in Missouri.

<comment><USER4> _I occasionally think about how a doctor will be able to work really anywhere in the country and be guaranteed a very comfortable six figure salary (at the minimum)_

I would contest the "very comfortable" part. For one thing, the training and education a doctor has to go through is an order of magnitude more intense - and it is expensive as hell[1]. For another, after med school doctors continue to work like crazy. My parents, who are in their late 50s and early 60s, still work 12 hours a day on a regular basis, and have to consume entire journals/periodicals and travel for international conferences just to stay on top of new things.

Among the hundred or more doctors I personally know of among my family's circle of friends and acquaintences, only one or two live "comfortably," by working a few days a week and making a ton of money. But that's because they:

a) have hyper-specialized so that they are one of the few experts in their sub-field b) live in a geographic area where they can charge a ton for their services

Compared to this, a software engineer making a low six figure salary lives a very comfortable life. AND software is much less location-dependent, since you can work remotely (unlike doctors).

[1]A software engineer goes to college for four years and then gets a job as a programmer. In stark contrast, a doctor though has to do four years of undergrad, four years of med school after that, and then three to seven years of residency. If they want to become highly specialized? Two to three years of fellowship after residency.

<comment><USER3> If your parents are doctors, I will gladly admit you probably know more about this than I do. So it would be silly for me to try to contest everything you wrote. However, I do have a few points:

> it is expensive as hell

It is incredibly expensive, but there are a few points to make here:

* $150-200k are the minimum salaries for doctors in many areas. Certain specialists can make $300-450k anywhere in the country. I'm sure a select few make far more even than that, but then again a select few software developers are billionaires, so perhaps we'd best steer the discussion away from the best of the best here, otherwise it just gets silly.

* There are army scholarships which eliminate the debt entirely. The catch is you have to work as an army doctor for several years after residency, and the pay there is less than civilian doctors make (although still a lot, even in cheap areas).

* Let's say a medical student goes into $300k of debt (which is an overestimate for most cases). The difference in cost between a nice house in San Francisco and a nice house in a small town is far more than $300k. So in a long run, the doctor who chooses to work in a small town can still come out on top--and with a greater salary as well once the debt is paid off.

> My parents, who are in their late 50s and early 60s, still work 12 hours a > day on a regular basis, and have to consume entire journals/periodicals and > travel for international conferences just to stay on top of new things.

It would seem to me that this is not much different from many lesser paying jobs in the software industry, even (in fact, especially) in hot spots like Silicon Valley.

> software is much less location-dependent, since you can work remotely

That is the hope, anyway.

<comment><USER4> Doctors don't start out with $150-200k. Remember that they have to go through residency first, during which they make $40-60k. Which may sound decent, but when you realize they have to work 80+ hours AND with a ton of debt, it's actually pretty dismal.

Even after that though, they make around 125-175k. Most doctors do not start making over 200k until ten or more years of practice. And again, that's with around 1500-1900 hours per year, which is considerably more than most software engineers.

<comment><USER5> 1500-1900 hours per year is considerably more than most software engineers? Are you sure you haven't miscalculated somewhere along the way to derive that?

Assuming we're talking about the US, I just don't see how that assertion can hold water. 2000 hours per year is a widely-held rule of thumb for "full time" employment - 40 hours a week * 50 work weeks per year. 1500 hours means you average a 30 hour work week or take a tremendous amount of vacation - <USER2> of which sound anything like the employment situations for "most software engineers."

<comment><USER4> Sorry, I fat-fingered it. I meant 2500-2900 hours per year.

<comment><USER6> I don't want to nit pick, but even 2500 hours a year is only 52-53 hours a week with _4 weeks_ off for vacation every year. Use the 2900 figure and you're still just barely over 60 with a month for vacation. Not a bad deal to make ~4x the median US salary.

I understand what you're saying though. It's a lot "easier" to go to school for four years, make $90-120k and have $0-40k in student debt than it is to go to school for a decade, make $125-175k and have $80-150k in student debt. But truthfully, when you have that kind of buying power you can live like a student for just two more years and completely pay off your debt (or very close to it). Software developers usually don't have that kind of buying power. Outside of the Valley and NYC an entry-level developer may only make $30k a year. Even a $200-300/mo student loan payment at that income is tight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> First, an office less world is a dream right now. If you plan to be hyper- competitive, there's no substitution to 'water-cooler' talk. Technology is nowhere near being able to reproduce that.

Second, why would they put the picture of a communist leader who used to shoot defectors and kill artists? Why is he any sort of hero?

<comment><USER8> > Second, why would they put the picture of a communist leader who used to > shoot defectors and kill artists? Why is he any sort of hero?

It's a play with the word "revolution".

<comment><USER9> So, at how many RPM does Che turn in his grave?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been working remotely (1500 km from the office) as a programmer since Sept. 2006. I believe there is huge potential for innovation here and that current collaboration tools are pretty primitive, although I have to say, Webex is a lifesaver. This Screenhero application looks like a great complement.

Companies can gain a lot by allowing people to work remotely - they vastly increase the talent pool and they save money by not having to supply office space. But like the article said, there's a cultural issue here. The whole thing reminds me of online dating ten years ago, when the perception was that it's for losers. Now seemingly everyone does it.

What's needed is basically validation for this lifestyle. Once that happens, the awesome tools will follow. Screenhero seems like a great first step for sure.

<comment><USER11> Have you seen the people are online dating these days? I don't think much has changed.

<comment><USER12> As someone who works in online dating, it has absolutely changed. Online dating is more or less accepted in all major urban centers of the country, in fact becoming a core part of how people date in some (larger) cities like NYC, SF, and DC.

The attitudes re: online dating a few years ago vs. now are like night and day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is the inevitable future, but something else - and related - I've been thinking about is the rise of the freelance. These two processes go hand in hand on the path to a more efficient yet flexible employment.

<comment><USER12> Flexible sure, but not efficient. There's no way freelancing is overall a more efficient allocation of labor than employment.

The problem is that in freelance you're getting a bunch of specialized labor to spend a considerable portion of their time performing a non-productive task: i.e., sales.

This is suboptimal use of time for the worker, since those hours aren't billable. This is suboptimal use of time for the employer, since evaluating bids and candidates isn't free either.

In cases where the employer does not have enough work to justify a full-time hire, this is an acceptable cost of doing business in order for the work to be done. It doesn't scale beyond this group though.

Having a bunch of engineers spend a significant portion of their time performing salesmanship rather than engineering is very inefficient, though it may achieve locally optimal results for the individual if you account for flexibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> As an exchange student that doesn't want to go home for his final year, remote degree would be nice too. Mobile work is a relatively trivial problem compared to a long-distance relationship.

</comment><comment><USER15> Meh, screen sharing is only part of the solution. I want to see who is available, who they've been chatting with, and I want to instantly share screens when I want.

The only tool on the market that does this is Sococo; I don't understand why it never gets mentioned in these conversations.. <https://www.sococo.com/home#screens-carousel>

<comment><USER16> I would never want to work for you.

<comment><USER15> Why is that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I can't help but think of the environmental repercussions of this, should it come to pass. I can imagine that the cost of heating millions of houses and apartments during the day far exceeds the cost of heating a lesser number of shared office buildings and other collective spaces.

An alternative would be if those millions of information workers worked out of coffee shops and the like during the day, but at that point, what is the benefit over working in an office?

<comment><USER18> Why not have communal workspaces in your neighborhood? Have friends over to work at your home, or vice versa? I'm an extrovert working from home, and occasionally struggling with it, but I can see where it would work beautifully.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> UI nag: the fixed header is not functional (how often do people search a blog)?

</comment><comment><USER20> Beardy: _"$8/month billed annually"_</comment>


PIPA Senate whip count - <AUTHOR> http://www.opencongress.org/wiki/Protect_IP_Act_Senate_whip_count <comment><USER2> Interestingly, six Republican co-sponsors have asked Harry Reid to postpone the vote.

[http://www.opencongress.org/articles/view/2461-Six-GOP-Co- Sp...](http://www.opencongress.org/articles/view/2461-Six-GOP-Co-Sponsors-of- PIPA-Ask-Reid-to-Cancel-Vote)

</comment><comment><USER3> The page says "be sure to identify yourself as a constituent, and give your mailing address for verification." Is there a technical/legal reason for this, or is it mainly etiquette?

I've donated to Franken in the past and much of my family still resides in MN but I'm in CA now. Is there any reason for me not to call? (Would it also be bad form to send a check with a letter saying 'cash-me if you reverse position' -- is this tantamount to the corporate donations that lead to such legislation?)

(I'll be calling CA reps, too, but just curious about all this.)

</comment><comment><USER4> Rand Paul and Rob Portman have their states mixed up. I wonder what other mixups exist on this page. It's not going to be too effective to have people calling the wrong representative.

</comment><comment><USER5> Wow. Seems like half of the senate co-sponsored. =/

Btw, who designed this? Was it the OP?

This could be laid out sliiiiightly neater. Takes so long to get to the bottom. Do we really need that big of a picture of each senator & does each seneator need "Tips on calling/emailing". Makes me want to do my own. hmmmmmm.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've interpreted the current tally to have a few more in the "For": column and one more in the "Against": <http://projects.propublica.org/sopa/pipa#roll_call>

For: 49 Against: 5

I base it on the assumption that anyone who was part of the unanimous vote to move PROTECT-IP or the vote to move PROTECT-IP's previous incarnation (COICA) out of committee, or was a sponsor of COICA, counts as a supporter of PROTECT- IP...until the senator says otherwise.

My tally includes one more supporter, Sen. Mark Warner, because he joined up with Wyden to discuss the OPEN act, though he has not signed on as a co- sponsor.

Again, these are _assumptions_ but may be worth knowing as you contact your senators.

<comment><USER6> Case in point: Sen. Mike Lee's (R-Utah) office contacted me to point to a press release in which Lee stated that he would vote against the bill unless it were changed. I previously listed him as a "Supporter" because he was part of the unanimous vote to move it out of committee. He's now "Unsupportive" as opposed to being an "Opponent" <http://projects.propublica.org/sopa/L000577>

Depending on your level of opposition to the bill, you might declare him as good as a "Yea" vote if you feel that the changes he wants are largely nominal. Others would disagree. So, all in all, a moving target depending on what happens before the actual floor vote.</comment></comment>


Luna, the in-house web framework developed at Asana - <AUTHOR> http://asana.com/luna/ <comment><USER2> For the record:

[http://www.quora.com/Why-is-Asana-developing-their-own- progr...](http://www.quora.com/Why-is-Asana-developing-their-own-programming- language-\(Lunascript\))

To quote:

        Update: For the last few months, Asana has moved from
        writing Lunascript for our application code to Javascript.
        The two main things that were slowing down our development:
        too much remaining research-level work to make the compiler
        output more performant code
        lack of tool support

        We're *not* a framework company, so we didn't want to devote
        years to this work at the expense of building our product. We're
        still using the framework primitives we developed for the
        language -- most importantly, systems for reactively recomputing
        our UI and synchronizing changes with the server -- we're just no
        longer using the slightly nicer syntax (and functional style)
        that Lunascript provided.

        Long term, we may revive the Lunascript compiler. We think this
        may be especially appealing once we shift from focusing Asana as
        a single product to Asana as a platform. But for the immediate
        future, we're focused on releasing our first product at the
        expense of continuing work on Lunascript proper.

<comment><USER3> Nice find. I think it Lunascript might the classical case of programmer naiveté: "I can re-invent the wheel so much better, and it will take not that much time". Usually is part of the process of maturing up as a programmer/engineer. Get the main stuff done (wow, this looks like a cool idea), but soon you are treading in deep waters as soon as the technology start hitting the edge cases, and day to day usability.

My self have started a couple of these overambitious projects, without realizing the amount of work it takes to get something in production level. Sure you can cover the base functionality pretty quickly, but it is the edge cases and polishing and making a robust solution that actually take the most time.

Sometimes these over-ambitious projects, succeed (Linux is the prime example), but usually they do because there is a huge need in the market for such product.

Perhaps Lunascript is something more 'interesting in paper, but not that great in practice'.

<comment><USER4> > Sometimes these over-ambitious projects, succeed (Linux is the prime > example), but usually they do because there is a huge need in the market for > such product.

Linux was not _that_ ambitious to start with. That's why it succeeded: while everyone else was waiting for Hurd or AT&T-free BSD, Linux was rapidly gaining momentum.

<comment><USER5> > I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and > professional like gnu)

[http://www.thelinuxdaily.com/2010/04/the-first-linux- announc...](http://www.thelinuxdaily.com/2010/04/the-first-linux-announcement- from-linus-torvalds/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That blog post is from a year ago. In the intervening time, Asana's actually moved away from developing Lunascript. [1] Instead, they're just coding in Javascript. There's a lesson in there somewhere [2]

[1] [http://www.quora.com/Why-is-Asana-developing-their-own- progr...](http://www.quora.com/Why-is-Asana-developing-their-own-programming- language-\(Lunascript\)/answer/Jack-Stahl)

[2] <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000018.html>

<comment><USER7> :P It's important to note that we abandoned (or "put on hold") Lunascript, but _not_ Luna. The vision for Luna always revolved around making it easy to write bug-free, real-time, responsive, collaborative, interactive webapps. The syntax of Lunascript over directly using the framework in Javascript was always a nice-to-have.

I'm not denying your lesson, of course. To this day we still have some Lunascript in the codebase, and it does create some developer friction that costs real time. In retrospect, I'm sure it seems obvious that we should skipped the language and just built the framework.

However, it's important to understand that the language itself was built mostly by Justin very early in the company's history, and basically no work was poured into it after we hired employees and built out the product. One framing of Lunascript is two guys taking a few months to try a few big ideas out before building a company they want to do the right way. We always knew we would have to compromise on ideals once we moved forward, but we wanted to see what stuck. I think a lot of the reason we're under scrutiny here is because people look at the time since D+J left Facebook and are like "what did you guys do with all that time?" The answer is the company didn't get started in earnest until almost a year later when we hired Greg and Malcolm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Rewriting a web framework from the ground up is so often a trap made alluring by the illusion of repeated code. Could there be a more optimal way of writing UI code? Of course. But a lot of UI code should just be treated for what it is: largely unmaintainable and unextendable, especially in the face of design changes. I'd love to spend a weekend hacking out a sexy, interactive app, but I'm not yet willing to invest 2 years to save a couple days of redundant development. I'll leave that for the companies not worried about making money or do it on the side through an open source project.

<comment><USER9> Two people, six months - most of it discussion, ~40K C# code, in my previous job we had a framework, compiler, debugger, mini IDE, app server with a kind of tiny in-memory database (supported object-graph-style navigation) that let us write interactive UIs using databinding with minimal repeated or hacky code, and a whole bunch of other hard-to attain features (for example, application code version rollovers with old sessions running in parallel with new versions until they're finished with, without needing to restart any process or machine anywhere). I've seen it done - more than that, I've been part of doing it - and I have yet, in the intervening 4 years, to see anything as well suited to its purpose.

It's cheap and easy to be cynical about these kinds of things. But it's very important to realise that there is so much that is possible today, but will be dismissed by cynics, that tomorrow we'll say "sure, that was easy, anybody could have done it" - but very few did.

<comment><USER8> I've never seen this problem better solved in a web framework than in some combination of libraries. I'm sure it can be done and I welcome people who want to do it, all I'm saying is that I couldn't justify the ROI on it myself. On our projects, we get 90% of the way there by using a server-side REST library coupled with a small Javascript library on the client to handle the common paths.

Anywho, cynics are useful- they make us reconsider the value proposition we are putting forward. However, an idea shouldn't be discarded just because a cynic addressed it :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Short version:

 _A Lunascript application specifes a data model and a function from the model to the view or user interface, annotated with handler functions from user inputs to model mutations. From this the Lunascript compiler produces a functioning Web 2.0 application — the client-side JavaScript, the server-side SQL, and everything in between_

 _Debugging can still be somewhat tricky, but we are disciplined about creating and improving debugging tools_

 _We hope to release Lunascript more widely once it's more mature_

</comment><comment><USER11> the few core features of the video seem generally unnecessary. automatic data binding on multiple clients and auto syncing with offline storage is cool- but not really imperative for most apps to get started (which is where tools like this will shine).

that said, the project is obviously young and i obviously know very little about it, so i am interested to see how it develops.

 _that_ said, this is a problem many have tried to solve (without writing their own language), and (imho) failed. backbone is (imho) taking the first step in the right direction. to be clear, i am not comparing lunascript to backbone directly. they seem to be two very different solutions for the same problem.

</comment><comment><USER12> Been posted to HN a few times before. Here is one from just over a year ago with lots of comments: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1097235>

</comment><comment><USER13> To some extend Angular is doing something similar today and it's available, <http://angularjs.org>

It does not synchronize multiple clients yet, but I certainly wish it will ; with Comet becoming increasingly easy to integrate, this may happen sooner than expected.</comment>


Zsh v5.0.8 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh/blob/master/NEWS#L7

<comment><AUTHOR> One of my favorite features of this release, is the inclusion of text objects and visual mode for vi-mode (bindkey -v).

If anyone uses vi-mode instead of the default emacs-mode, they know how sorely text objects support was missing. Here's an example: in normal mode, if the cursor was at "e" in the word "hello", you would have to hit "b" to go to the beginning of the word and then use "ce" or "cw". Now you have the full power of text objects, which means you can use ciw, diw, etc. With visual-mode support, you can even now cut a region, or yank and paste.

<comment><USER2> If you like the text object support, make sure to check out the select-quoted and select-bracketed functions under Functions/Zle. They implement things like ci" and ci( but you have to manually enable them because they're shell functions. There's also a surround function that works like the popular surround vim plugin. Also note that ia and aa are text objects for shell arguments using zsh's internal lexer.</comment></comment>


Why England and not China and India? The history of the Industrial Revolution - <AUTHOR> http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=7284880

<comment><USER2> This is a very detailed account of geography and its effects on national development. I have lived in China and studied Chinese geography a lot, but I learned new facts from this article. This article connects well with Thomas Sowell's remarks on how African river systems influenced the development of civilization in Africa.</comment>


Canadian Startup Looking for Some GuidancePT 2 - <AUTHOR>

PT 2 of Canadian Startup Looking For Some Guidance...
(again, sorry for the length)
Our goal is to apply in October for the Winter Y Combinator program as we have I have a few friends in the program now and have nothing but amazing thins to say about it, the people and environment the are immersed in right now. Sad part is, the application process does not begin till October and by the sounds of it, does not start for a few months post that....
I guess my question to the community is this.... What is our next best move?...a). go balls to the wall and just keep loading up on partners/clients...potentially overloading ourselves and crashing and burning from not being able to keep up? b) Concentrate on the 4 partners, build even more B2B and B2C traction and then seek funding? c) Seek funding/investors right now?  d) Get my butt out to the Mountain View or surrounding area prior to October/Winter?  d)None of the above, Try this instead.....
Thanks for any and all comments, thoughts, suggestions, ideas and/or help...
George <comment><USER2> If your partners actually care about your product, get them to pay for it, enough for you to continue working on this product. If you need to find more partners to make $, do it. Put yourself in a state where funding is no longer a requirement, and you will then find more funding. Yeah, it's weird how this works.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply Kirllzubovsky...

For the most part as soon as the product is launched (about 2 weeks) they will be paying...60% of all monthly revenue generated. More partners are definitely ideal...just scared shitless (pardon the language)about overwhelming our entire group as were stretched thin already...but you're right...more partners certainly does = more money coming in, as well as more proven traction...

Appreciate the feedback Kirllzubovsky. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Have you talked to these guys, perhaps they can give you the kind of funding/advice you need:

[http://www.highline.vc/](http://www.highline.vc/)

Personally, if I had traction, I'd try to build-up myself, but perhaps you're fearing "others eating your lunch"?

<comment><AUTHOR> I did not know about Highline, but I will look into them right now. Thanks so much for the link.

Its been a balancing act between keeping the momentum going and heading out looking for funding. Sort of the chicken before the egg situation...keep finding and attaining traction or spend more time looking for funding.

With a small team, Im finding I have had to pick one or the other...and my thought has been...keep the momentum going and funding will come...but if you cant keep up with the momentum...then sadly (and quickly) you have to start looking for funding...Feels like an impossible scenario...lol.

For the most part, Im not fearing "others eating our lunch" as our major competitors are in fact established...but that also makes their model established and in some sense, they are stuck with it. Further sort of makes our model standout.

Thanks so much for the tip and feedback throwaway000002. Appreciate it.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: how to do market research in the markets that you are new to? - <AUTHOR>

I'm in customer discovery phase, building a product for eBay sellers, both professional and not.
However, I'm struggling to reach out to them - very few of my friends do it.
How do you reach out to markets that you are not in and/or very new to?
P.S. And if you are an eBay seller, please, please! let me talk to you for 15 minutes - I just need your Skype or phone # http://bit.ly/X2vIMA <comment><USER2> Open eBay account. Contact sellers. Tell them about how product will make them more money. Offer free trial. Rinse and repeat.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure thing, I gave it a try, however you can only contact 6-7 people per day, with so far my success rate of those willing to talk is next to nothing.

<comment><USER2> A lot of sellers have external online stores which usually have an email address listed. Plus it's going to take you a lot of time to do this. Nobody said it would be fast. Welcome to the world of trying to make a real business work. It's hard. Takes time. There is no way to simy hack it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can you start off in a market that you are deeply familiar with? It takes way too damn long to break into a new market and understanding it to a point where you have an unfair advantage. At least if you start off with something you're already an expert in you'll have a leg up.</comment>


Douglas Adams was right:"Genuine people personalities" are coming to our gadgets - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/12/douglas-adams-was-right-get-ready-to-talk-with-digital-personalities/ <comment><USER2> The Encyclopedia Galactica defines a robot as a mechanical apparatus designed to do the work of a man. The marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines a robot as "Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun to Be With. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing devision of the Sirius Cybernetic Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes".

<comment><USER3> >The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing devision of the Sirius Cybernetic Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes".

And indeed:

>Curiously, an edition of the Encyclopedia Galactica which conveniently fell through a rift in the time-space continuum from 1000 years in the future describes the Marketing Department of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as: "A bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Mind the training set... "genuine people" can be quite awful: "kill your foster parents"

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Glad to be of service</comment>


Ask HN: How do you manage spot instances in AWS or lower AWS costs? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Try - www.parkmycloud.com You will get spot prices from on-demand instances when you park them when not being used. Let me know if you want any more info...</comment>


A New Approach to Multiplication Opens the Door to Better Quantum Computers - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-approach-to-multiplication-opens-the-door-to-better-quantum-computers-20190424/ <comment><USER2> I wrote the paper that this article is describing [1], and can answer questions.

The paper is probably more approachable than you think. Basically I rewrite code like `let intermediate_value = recursive_call(...)` into code like `output += recursive_call(...)`, which allows you to make recursive calls in a way that avoids ever storing the intermediate value. That's important in contexts where you can't simply discard information, namely quantum computing.

[1]: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.07356](https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.07356)

<comment><USER3> How do you deal with reversibility? I assume that is the hard bit, as tail recursion is not new (and I would have assumed been the first thing picked up if it was easy)

<comment><USER2> It's not really tail recursion, it's just similar in that you get the recursion into a particular form in order to enable an optimization that avoids the need for intermediation.

For tail recursion, that form is the last thing executed in a recursive method should be "return recursive_call(...)". It allows you to tell the sub-call to give its result directly to the current method's caller, avoiding the need for the current method to act as an intermediary bouncing the result from its callee to its caller.

In this paper the special form is "output += recursive_call(...)", where output is a mutable reference to the location where the result should be stored. This also allows the current method to avoid acting as an intermediary between its callee and its caller, since the callee will take a mutable reference to (a subsection of) the output and directly mutate it.

<comment><USER4> If I'm understanding you correctly (and I haven't RTFA yet, sorry) this is a bit like Operational Transform, allowing you to run some or all steps in parallel and achieve eventual-consistency. As opposed to TCO, which is simply restating recursion as iteration, but still requires the operations to run in sequence.

<comment><USER2> The thing I'm describing doesn't allow the steps to run in parallel. In fact it prevents it, because each of the three recursive calls require exclusive access to overlapping regions of the output.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Vedic math for the win: [http://mathlearners.com/vedic- mathematics/multiplication-in-...](http://mathlearners.com/vedic- mathematics/multiplication-in-vedic-mathematics/)

<comment><USER6> One should clarify that techniques such as these which are described as _Vedic_ seemingly have nothing to do with Indian mathematics of the Vedic period.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedic_Mathematics_(book)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedic_Mathematics_\(book\))

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_mathematics#Vedic_perio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_mathematics#Vedic_period)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I learned to do multiplication in my head in a similar way, except I'd usually split on a multiples of 10 for simplicity.

For 25x63, I would go: 60 _10_ 2+3 _10_ 2+5 _60+5_ 3

<comment><USER2> That's schoolbook multiplication. It has quadratic complexity in the number of digits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I hate to repeat myself, but analog quantum computers are the future. Digital quantum computers are dead on arrival.

<comment><USER9> "Digital" quantum gates on superconducting quantum processors are implemented by changing the system Hamiltonian (by e.g. changing the magnetic flux through the qubit Josephson junction loop or driving the qubits with microwave radiation), so in that sense those quantum processors are analog. Most current quantum algorithms require a series of discrete operations to be performed (e.g. the Grover search is basically a for loop that executes a phase-encoding search function and a diffusion operator in each step), so they require a specific gate set to run them. That said researchers also used superconducting quantum processors to simulate other quantum systems using an analog approach, which is often more efficient than using a digital approach (so-called Trotter based quantum simulation), so both techniques are relevant I'd say.

<comment><USER8> > Most current quantum algorithms require a series of discrete operations to > be performed

Ok so what?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous- variable_quantum_in...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous- variable_quantum_information)

<comment><USER9> That means that an analog quantum computer will not give you much advantage when running e.g. Grover search if there's not a more efficient implementation using a continuous variable approach (which to my knowledge isn't), so it is not even clear how analog quantum computers could replace the gate-based approach there.

<comment><USER8> Like, I'm not particularly married to Grover's algorithm or any other gate based algorithm. Throw them all out of the window for all I care.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: is it possible to earn a living US wage at oDesk? - <AUTHOR> I wonder - is it possible to earn a living wage by freelancing at sites like oDesk or eLance? And I mean US living wage, not Eastern European living wage, for example. <comment><USER2> I put myself through college about 6 years ago contracting. I found most of my clients through similar sites (Rentacoder and scriptlance). I was making about $30k a year working part time during the school year, and mostly full time in the summers. Not a spectacular wage when you compare it to full time Silicon Valley wages, but I'd definitely call it a "living wage" for the US.

The key to being successful on these sites is to view them as a way to meet and get to know longterm clients. It's much easier to charge higher rates once someone has gotten to know you and the quality of your work. I often did one or two projects through the site on a fixed rate while we got to know each other, and then would work directly with them on an hourly basis after that.

<comment><USER3> If I'm not being mistaken, you are the one who answered my question two years ago on StackOverFlow ([http://stackoverflow.com/questions/763883/options-for- a-deve...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/763883/options-for-a-developer))

It was a long road. I have had lot of non-related issues and difficulties but I almost got there. I made $10K doing it last year and I may make 3 or 4 times that number this year.

You are one of the persons who changed my life, although it was a simple response. Thank you.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for linking and for sharing as well :) .

I'm in Uruguay, we have a decent developer culture here, but I want to go the freelance route as well (I'm sick of my current job - it's safe and pays a reasonable local wage but is Dilbert-esque).

My programming skills are similar to what you had at the beginning. Did you blog about what you went through?

<comment><USER3> No. I'm not sure if I'm the best person to talk about it. But if I can give you an advice, it's: Go and do it. I didn't know that my skills at that time weren't high enough, so I went and I did it. I learned everything (programming, marketing, writing, handling clients, running a business...) in the road. And yes, I was alone. There are no developer/freelance culture in my small city.

<comment><USER4> Thanks :) . I will do it (and hopefully blog about it if I'm not too tired !).

My goal is to quit my job on April (I get a small bonus at the end of March which, coupled with some little savings, will help me through the first few months), but to start my first freelance job in January to test the waters.

<comment><USER2> I think starting freelancing before you quit is very wise. One of the things about switching from full-time employment to freelancing is that it often takes much longer to get paid, and cash flow is much less steady. It also takes a while to build up enough of a pipeline of work that you stay busy all the time. This all boils down to it being nice to have a paycheck while you're ramping up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's a link to the responses I gave last couple times this came up:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2619439> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1195524>

Short answer: Yes. Just be sure to differentiate on quality rather than price. Your fellow oDeskers are racing to the bottom on price. Let them. Casually walk to the top on quality and you'll find yourself all alone with a nice stack of work from good clients.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, good points

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Over the past 7 years using the different sites I've turned down 20 projects that I've been asked to bid on, and have only taken one when I was really in dire straits. You could probably make more on odesk than at mcdonalds, but you'll make 5-8x as much by building up a network on linkedin, and by posting your resume to craigslist once per week. I set my contracting rate on a sliding scale from $250/hour down to $125/hour based on commitment, project, and how much I like the guy I'm talking with. I manage to bill out 750-1250 hours per year depending on how much I care to work versus how much I desire to travel. I couldn't fathom managing to bill out at more than $35/hour on oDesk, and even then I would be considered expensive.

oDesk/elance/etc is where cheapskates who don't know what they want or how to ask for it go to get what they pay for from guys in India and Romania who don't know how to accomplish the work they're being paid to do.

<comment><USER7> What do you actually do, for $250 an hour?

<comment><USER6> Primarily devops consulting. $250/hour is what I'll charge for emergency work from unknown entities, poorly managed entities, or for piece work from customers who aren't likely to be a significant source of project work. For small projects I don't bill hourly, but rather I'll decide that a piece of work is about 4 hours of my time, and that I'm uninterested in doing it for less than $1k.

<comment><USER7> Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you're smart enough to ask this question, why are you thinking of ways to shoehorn a business into oDesk? It's a seller's market for dev talent in 2011 and probably for all of 2012. The ability to solve business problems using software development skills is not a commodity. It isn't sold by bidding prices down. No, the opposite of that.

This is one of those places where a reasonable amount of extra effort yields a disproportionate amount of benefit. You don't make linearly more money positioning yourself as a real consultancy; you make much more money.

<comment><USER9> I don't think anybody's actually saying, "I'm looking for a place where I can sell my services at a lower price."

Here's what happens: No matter how you position yourself, billing $500 an hour to the zero prospective customers you (the general "you") have right now is still not very profitable. Most developers have about as much idea of how to find customers as they do about how to perform open-heart surgery. Connecting developers and clients is the one area where oDesk shines — and since it's the same area where engineers are weak, many can't help but consider it.

<comment><USER8> For a freelancer, not being able to find customers is a scarlet-fever-grade problem, and oDesk is an aspirin-grade solution.

I'm not going to berate anyone for using oDesk, especially if they've found an oDesk groove that works for them. But I'd strongly encourage freelancers --- especially prospective freelancers --- to put lots and _lots_ of effort into figuring out how they're going to do customer acquisition _outside of sites like oDesk_.

Whatever you may think about how convenient oDesk is, you are at the nadir of your professional competitive positioning on sites like that, and will probably (and avoidably) get your worst possible bill rate as a result.

I'd generally like HN'ers to be better at freelancing (it's the best way to start a new company, and it's the direction the industry is moving long-term), and so I'm prickly about things like oDesk which make it harder, not easier, to be a going freelance concern.

<comment><USER10> This is something I struggle with. Do you have any suggestions for how to do customer acquisition remotely?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Depends where. You probably can't live in Manhattan working as an oDesker, but you could easily make enough to make a good living if you're in the midwest.

Your strategy though would be to build up a resume with oDesk. You're probably going to hit a limit though - I mean I've worked with $20/hr Eastern European developers that would be $100k developers in the Bay Area/NYC so it will come down to: what is your reputation and how much can you command.

After you build up a portfolio, you're going to have to use it as a spring board to get a fulltime job or fulltime onsite contracting for like $40/hour, etc. at a company.

From there you can basically build a "normal" software career and get the industry contacts, start networking as a programmer and if you decide can go back to remote contracting for a better-than-living-wage.

This isn't the path I took, but I know a lot of developers who have took this path, worked their way up the ladder throughout the 90's/2000's around the US, then 'retired' to a good life with their family in say Kansas/Nebraska (insert midwestern state) doing contracting work and getting to enjoy life the way they want (life Silicon Valley/NYC isn't for everyone).

REMEMBER, software as a career is going to be mostly networking and people skills in the long run - good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I know a gentleman who swears by oDesk, mostly as a billing/mediation platform for custom Twilio apps. I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole, but he charges enough to make it viable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why won't you deal with it? Bad experience? On the customer or developer side?

<comment><USER12> Short version: it adds nothing I need, positioning myself against the competition there would be certifiably insane, and the type of clients I most successfully work with would avoid me like the plague if I proposed working through oDesk.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, Patio. I gather you were on the workforce side, correct?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I make around $1k a month just off of Elance. The key to success in freelancing is finding a niche.

The downside to freelancing is once you're in that niche it's hard to crawl out of it. I have been doing solely WordPress stuff on sites like Elance,etc. for the past 9months I have reached a point of boredom yet I can't get anything outside of that because everything in my portfolio is WordPress. So now I am screwed.

<comment><USER14> Not to throw the thread off track, but have some q's for you. Would you mind dropping me a mail? Your e-mail isn't listed. gy92663 at gmail. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "US living wage" isn't very useful. A living wage in Manhattan is an integer multiple of a living wage in Montana.

<comment><AUTHOR> What term would you suggest?

<comment><USER15> I'd suggest being more specific than "US". Either name a part of the country, or, better yet, just name an income.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough. I'd say 80K for a 50 hour week (since freelancers are expected to buy their own health insurance, do not get any paid time off, so 80K is a very modest wage for a developer in those circumstances)

I realize a college student/single guy does not need all that much, but for a 29+, with a family, I think that's the minimum (again, with all the self- employment taxes, insurance etc).

<comment><USER16> I have a ruby on rails outsourcer that gets paid $5000 USD per month for 60 hours of work. I referencing my earlier post - I think specializations and showing competence in your chosen language / API / platform or type of work you do is key.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've used oDesk to hire several contractors. Currently, I have a Chinese C++ developer working for me who is bringing in close to $5k per month from my project alone.

I know I could get by on $60k per year but it really depends on what constitutes a 'living wage.' :)

</comment><comment><USER18> It's definitely very possible. There are US-based contractors who successfully charge $40-50/hour and get lots of business. The competition is steep though, I wouldn't recommend this as a way to get business if you're based in US.</comment>