Google is not a search engine, but an ad engine - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1205582897593430017 <comment><USER2> Yes Google spams search results with ads. But instead of using a different search engine such as duckduckgo.com, we're calling for the government to break up Google?

That's plain ridiculous. I'm not opposed to breaking up oligopolies, but calling for the government to fix this particular issue is like asking to be put under legal guardianship.

<comment><USER3> Many of those people who want to break up Google are not looking at it from the user perspective, but as a company running some website.

As a site owner you have the problem that people searching for you are using Google and your site will only come up below adds for your competitor. Even when searching for your company name. Thus unless you pay a "Google Tax" (paying for ads) many people won't find you. In some cases even Google themselves will add features to compete with your service (flight booking is a relatively recent example)

If splitting up will solve that is questionable to me, though. The search has to be financed and unless we make it some base service paid by tax or similar they need a revenue service and ads is the only which seems to be working.

From a "civil rights" perspective to me it is also clear that Google has too much influence and power. But still fail to see a good way to regulate that.

<comment><USER4> The same way that Standard Oil and "Ma" Bell were?

Now, one issue here is that Google the search engine cannot be "just split". The least good, but easy way, is probably to nationalize it (since it's akin to basic infrastructure at this point.) A better, but harder way, is to figure out how it can be decentralized...

<comment><USER5> What do you think will happen when politicians control a search engine? Would you also want to nationalize the press?

<comment><USER6> BBC is perhaps the most famous state owned media corporation. What happens because the British politicians control the BBC?

<comment><USER5> I don't know. But I do know that NPR and PBS have at times been targets of conservatives because of the little funding they get from the government.

I'm sure there would be just as much consternation from Democrats if the situation was reversed.

It also encourages giving "both sides" equal weight whether they deserve it or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think until now there's been quite little talk about just how wild wild west the Web is, so I like the talk about breaking up Google.

The problem is that Google can use its cross-platform cross-product cross- industry reach to have a significant uncompetitive advantage. A banal example would be Google hassling non-Chrome users to use Chrome, or a link to Gmail sitting at the corner of your Google Search screen. As far as the market goes, that's stealing, because you're getting market share not through competition, but by bypassing competition.

Google didn't become a behemoth in so many markets just because its products are good, but because it had an uncompetitive advantage, which is a cryptic way of saying that they were very big in an unregulated environment and they used that.

I'm not talking about how Google became big, which is a nicer story about a great product. I'm talking about how after it became big it became humongous.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, and once it became big, the government should have stepped in and forced it to split. Now it's too late, the only options now seem to be either nationalization or complete shutdown of the monopolies like Search, Maps and YouTube. And until that is done, the situation is only going to get worse...

<comment><USER8> The situation will be worse if you break it up, what do you think will happen to a nationalized Google Search, a nationalized Google maps and a nationalized YouTube ? The services will be badly managed and get worser and worser

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's really frustrating when you need to find information about a specific product on Google but anything you search for yields e-commerce related results. I don't mean the ads - even the organic results will mostly be for shopping or review websites. Google clearly tries to push the user towards those. Sometimes I'm looking for specific technical details and I have to dig around a lot to find anything meaningful.

<comment><USER10> Nowadays my searches always consist of "reddit + search" to get actual user reviews or comments

<comment><USER11> I do the same, but it seems that more and more reddit comments are also astroturfed so my faith in them is faltering. Finding authentic recommendations at this point is extremely tiring because I have to constantly be gauging a user's sincerity.

There are too many benefits to fake reviews and few downsides. And it's easy to spam these fake comments and reviews especially if you have the budget for a dedicated marketing team.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't disagree with the core point, but I sort of hate click bait more.

It's pretty hyperbolic to call Google results a "full page ad". For example, if I do a Google search for "clickbait", on mobile all I see above the fold is a dictionary definition stub followed by a wikipedia snippet. There is actually no sponsored content at all. Even scrolling doesn't turn up any ads.

And yes, of course, there are other types of searches where the first thing you'll see is shopping results, followed by more sponsored results. And yes I hate it as much as everyone else.

But I don't think it's reasonable to say it's an "ad engine".

The amount of real estate devoted to monetization has been increasingly silly for years. It will no doubt get worse. They do have an effective monopoly. It sucks for the internet that this is the case.

But Google is still an impressive search engine underneath all the monetization. One where a huge part of the mindshare at the company is still devoted to organic search. I don't think HN is a place where you can reasonably hope to get away with claiming otherwise.

<comment><USER13> > It's pretty hyperbolic to call Google results a "full page ad".

If I search for "lake district cottages" on Google, the first screen is covered by an ad; scroll down, and the second screen is covered by ads too. The third screen is a featured snippet with a map - I have no idea whether this is paid-for. Only halfway down the fourth screen do I get to a genuine organic search result.

iPhone SE, Safari, standard text size.

<comment><USER14> I tried the same search on Android.

A "featured snippet" covers the first page and more. Tapping on "About Featured Snippets" at the bottom of its UI tile tells me a lot of stuff about it, but doesn't say it's an ad; it says they "come from web search listings" and are highlighted "if it would be useful". I haven't known Google to ever be evasive about whether something is an ad or not, so unless that's changed, I'm confident in concluding this is not an ad.

The next thing I see is a tile with a map at the top and three "places" under it, with a way to expand the list via "More places". This doesn't appear to be an ad either. Again not identified as an ad, and I presume these are the most relevant objects from the "places" database that you normally see on Google Maps.

After that, it's a series of tiles, each for a web site that appears to be coming from organic search results. So again, not ads.

In summary, when I try the same thing on Android, I get no ads at all anywhere.

I suppose your results might be different than mine, though. "Lake district cottages" is a term I'd never heard before, and it appears to refer to something in the UK. I'm not in the UK, but maybe you are since you thought to suggest that. (And maybe the ad systems know that and nobody wanted to buy an ad to show to me but somebody did want to buy an ad to show you. That's just speculation, though.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What I think would be interesting is to introduce something like "GPL for Ads". If you have a binary, you should be able to obtain its source code. Similarly, if you see an ad, you should be able to see who's paying for it, how much it cost, and what was its bidding/selection process, etc.

This doesn't just apply to Google. All TV ads and paper ads will also have to provide a way to obtain this information. It doesn't necessarily have to be accompanying the ads. It can even charge a (reasonable) fee to access that information, but it has to be accessible to the end user (ad viewer). Rationale: consumer protection.

This won't directly solve the monopoly situation, but it will force them to be transparent, and in a long run it will reduce their questionable ads and their revenue. And the consumer is more informed.

<comment><USER16> I very much like the idea and direction, but this is a good idea only in theory. It would be comparable to every financial firm opening up their bidding algorithms.

Ad buyers work very hard and spend a lot of money to create the best strategy/algorithm and that solution would just let a competitor copy it for free.

Not for search or social ads, but programmatic/display are literally bought by creating a very complicated algorithm with potentially unlimited variables to automatically (programmatically) place bids.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I just don't understand the sentiment. I've been googling for things since at least mid-noughties, typically finding relevant information, and practically never clicked on an ad. What am I doing wrong?

The loudest complaints about Google's ads that I am hearing are generally coming from entrepreneurs who want their company/page to be in the top of search results rather than from people who are searching for things.

</comment><comment><USER18> At some point, the slowly-increasing quality curve of DDG's results crosses the rapidly-decreasing organicity curve of Google's results and you switch. For me the curves crossed two years ago.

<comment><USER19> break out of your bubble. Try using DDG with sth. else than english. Then try sth. related to programming. Good luck. I'm so tired of people claming that DDG is better in every aspect, it's not.

<comment><USER20> It's not better. Specifically, autocomplete doesn't work as well, and you're missing not just google but maps, images, and translations. But it's getting better all the time, and at this point you'll be hard-pressed to come with a query (even programming related) which doesn't have the result you want on the first page. The point of the original author is that the quality of DDG continues to improve, not that it's better.

<comment><USER21> > At this point you'll be hard-pressed to come with a query (even programming > related) which doesn't have the result you want on the first page

No problem for me, unfortunately. See my post below, but these really were my first three after switching to DDG.

\- 'debian convert from i386 to amd64'

       Should show https://wiki.debian.org/CrossGrading

\- 'kodi idx white box'

       Any bug report to idx subtitles showing white boxes

\- 'building kodi'

       https://kodi.wiki/view/HOW-TO:Compile_Kodi_for_Linux

It seems DDG has much more problems with SEO spam, which unfortunately is rampant for Kodi. However, it's a mistery why for instance the Debian Wiki would not show up in the first search.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Furthermore the quality of the attached search engine (measured as useful for a sw engineer) has been declining since 2009.

At this point duckduckgo is just as good and less annoying, not because they are crazy good but because they are about as good as Google was in 2009 and because Google has been going downhill meanwhile.

<comment><USER21> > At this point duckduckgo is just as good and less annoying

I see this repeated all the time and I'm starting to wonder if I'm the only person who finds DDG results to be _much_ worse. I tried DDG again this week and turned back within an hour.

Examples:

\- I wanted to migrate a Debian 32Bit system to 64Bit. So I searched "debian convert from i386 to amd64". Google's top results are the official Cross- Grading docs from Debian Wiki, whereas DDG points to some outdated private pages and mailing list posts, with the official Debian Wiki not even in the Top10. Completely useless.

\- I had the problem that with idx-Subtitles, Kodi would show white boxes instead of the proper text. So I searched "kodi idx white box". Google points to bug reports for my exact problem, whereas DDG shows pages for "fully loaded Kodi boxes" and "Best adult addons for Kodi". Again, completely useless.

\- I wanted to build Kodi from source. So I searched "building kodi". Top Google results is the building instruction in the Kodi Wiki, DDG again shows obscure pages for the Titanium build and Steamlink ports.

This is all done in Firefox in private mode, so this is not because Google has tracked my behavior.

<comment><USER23> Here's some quick search results from DDG:

[debian migrate to 64 bit][search]

1st result: [https://wiki.debian.org/Migrate32To64Bit](https://wiki.debian.org/Migrate32To64Bit)

[kodi subtitle white box][search]

2nd result: [https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=335337](https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=335337)

[kodi compile][search]

1st result: [https://kodi.wiki/view/HOW- TO:Compile_Kodi_for_Linux](https://kodi.wiki/view/HOW- TO:Compile_Kodi_for_Linux)

Are you sure you aren't over-exaggerating DDG's supposed incompetence?

<comment><USER21> Thanks, you're actually proving my point: DDG is only successful if you use the exact wording used on the pages. Google is obviously much smarter, since it uses a semantic model that determines that 'building kodi' is the same as compiling it, that 'idx' refers to a subtitle format and 'converting' and 'migrating' are similar things.

<comment><USER23> > DDG is only successful if you use the exact wording used on the pages.

IMHO, your search keywords gave subpar results for an entirely different reason. For instance, the search terms you chose for your first two examples are overly technical considering the average users of Debian or Kodi. As for the third example, the term "build" is ambiguous because it's also frequently used to refer to binary releases. I was able to find the right results from DDG because I chose keywords that aren't confusing, not because I knew what to search beforehand. It's not so hard.

<comment><USER21> Yes, there are people out there using "overly technical", "confusing" and "ambiguous" search words. I'm afraid any company who wants to rival Google with have to deal with that fact; that's pretty much the whole problem of search in a nutshell.

<comment><USER22> Yet Google still manages to dtive me nuts to the point that I enjoy using duckduckgo :-/

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The US government has no authority to break up a monopoly just because users don't like its ads. Google continues to provide a valuable service, and your cost is the ads you're served that you don't want. Google's not a charity. I'm tired of opinions about "user hostility" and so on from tech people about valuable services as they ramp up user revenues. If you don't like Google's ads, use DuckDuckGo or Bing.

<comment><USER25> There's another perspective to that, my clients, if google is spamming with ads how will i be able to reach them over search? Google had become somewhat too big, that me not using it, does harm too. But indirectly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The US doesn't have a great history when it comes to the effectiveness of breaking up monopolies. The breakup of the Bell system just resulted in regional monopolies for example. How would you break up Google? Into search, sites, youtube, android (devices) and cloud hosting? Search and youtube would just stay monopolies on their own but they couldn't cross-finance android development and google sites anymore. And I don't think Android would be a worthy competitor to iOS without Google's ad billions. Stricter regulation with regards to privacy laws and online advertising would probably work out much better for the consumer.

<comment><USER27> Or break up search into a utility that provides crawling/indexing service, that provides an API to third party search result providers. Similar to how many power companies are split up.

Then DuckDuckGo would have access to rebrand googles search but keep its privacy benefits, while other providers could compete on other search value add.

<comment><USER12> If a company in tech has to give their technology to competitors, what motivation do they have to invest the resources to keep iterating and improving? When I hear the "utility" idea I realize that a lot of people, even in tech, don't understand how big a challenge search is.

The technical complexity difference between power distribution and internet search is so large that you can't compare the two.

Motivation to keep improving is vital in search. It's a decades old arms race between quality results and black hat algo gaming. And it plays out on a dataset that's always growing, and that growth is always accelerating. If iteration slows down even a little, black hat wins and everyone else loses.

Your suggestion would effectively kill Google, which is maybe the goal, but unless it applied only to Google it would kill the searchability of the internet along with them.

Remember Altavista? It would look like that.

Which is not to say there aren't regulatory answers to Google's dominance. Forcing a firewall between their interests (i.e. search and advertising) would be a start.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Larry and Sergey are probably spinning in their graves, I mean private islands. Google has become what they so despised.

<comment><USER29> Looking at their earliest investors I don't think google ever intended to be what they said they were.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Mmm this is nonsense, from economíc perspective most of the money Google generates comes from search. What are you going to do? Have a single search company, other one a browser? To match technology that Google has developed through the years is close to impossible. From both business and Tech perspective there is no easy fix. Let the world runs as it is.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'd prefer to let the market fix this when something better appears and gets traction. Giving more power to the government is the go-to solution in third world countries. The US is supposed to be better and much more mature as a nation.

Disclaimer: I live in a third world country.

<comment><USER32> That is actually how anti-trust regulation is supposed to work. Competitive markets for goods and services tend to produce better results, or at least, that is the line we hear in Econ 101. But capitalist growth tends to concentration of wealth and power—success grows toward monopoly. So government must wield the hammer of anti-trust to free markets.

<comment><USER31> Sometimes it's government policies themselves that unbalance the market and allow the proliferation of monopolies. I'm not sure it's the case with Google, though. Would appreciate a comment from someone more informed.

<comment><USER12> The answer is no. There aren't any significant policies (related to internet search, crawling or intellectual property) which create a barrier for little guys but which Google has the resources to handle (which is usually how regulation stifles disruption, sometimes by design).

Don't underestimate the EU though, given some of the ignorant tech regulation they've already passed, it could happen at some point.

As Bing has demonstrated, Google's dominance in search is a result of superior technology and a huge lead. Even a company with the resources of MS hasn't been able to do anything but follow behind and create almost good enough copies at each step.

Although to be fair that's what MS has always done so maybe a more nimble company might have a shot some day.

In the near future AI and machine learning coupled with computing advances could be a way into search for competitors if G doesn't get there first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> In my view 90% of the Silicon Vally is either Entertainment and Advertising, or IT support for such. Uber and ABnB make for some exception.

I'm not hating, just saying we need to know where we stand in the grand scheme.

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm so sick of this continuous ranting against google, if you dont like big G services/product use something alse! but please please stop busting our balls!

<comment><USER35> I don't use Google for search, and I don't use Chrome for browsing... yet a large number of calls go to google ad network endpoints from within my home network. It's no longer a simple matter of opting out - google's intrusive practices have become so pervasive that end users have to go to great lengths to detach from the Google surveillance apparatus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Url changed from [https://jlelse.blog/links/2019/12/google-ad- engine/](https://jlelse.blog/links/2019/12/google-ad-engine/), which points to this.

</comment><comment><USER37> Can there exist such a search engine that can stay objective in the long haul?

I'm not particularly mad about Google putting ads, since the world is waking up and I believe in the future it will be obsolete.

But as I see it, the problem is that all search engines have this issue where the more volume it has, the more lucrative it is to game it. Let's say DuckDuckGo becomes vastly superior and widely used, what's preventing it from becoming another spam machine where SEO is the name of the game.

As I see it, there's no really good solution here. Maybe some open source indexing algorithm and a different search engine for different types of content.

<comment><USER38> Yes. There are well-funded university and scientific CS departments across the country that could design and maintain such a system, free of these influences as a technology iniative. It's how the internet was built and where page rank came from originally.

<comment><USER5> Indexing is easy. It's a solved computer science problem that you just need to throw hardware at. Ranking and relevant searching is the hard part and is partly influenced by adding usage data of millions of people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Maybe not the entire Internet but certainly the Web is an advertising machine. People are often berated "How dare you block ads" in your browser taking money away from websites. As if ads were the sole purpose for anything to exist. Even if you do block ads your mere existence as a user is valuable data so I'm not sorry for blocking every advertisement I can.

In the early days of the Web or even just the public Internet in general the Ineternet was an infrequent pastime. If nobody was using the one telephone your entire family owned you could surf the Web, maybe. Even then you only used your dial-up account to briefly use some of your limited hours per month. Most of the time people with computers were offline.

From my point of view advertising has really ruined the Web and the Web itself has made people less computer literate. People use maybe a half dozen websites and that's it most probably use a tablet. I know back when I had my first PC in the early 1990s you had to be much more aware of configuring it. That wasn't a bad thing it really meant you learned about how the computer and OS worked. Being aware of its operation meant you were able to fix it, and your data wasn't stored anywhere but your PC locally at best on a floppy, or dozen.

I know people would counter with the "free" services we use like webmail, streaming video, search engines. I'd pay for it if they were cheap enough but even then your information would be right back in the hands of a large corporation.

It's to the point now where the Internet is vital for government services. If anything governments are going to have to offer cheap (or "free") Internet access, email, and other basics.

</comment><comment><USER40> I guess they are one of the last to figure it out? Next up "Sky is blue!"

</comment><comment><USER41> Used to be borderline militant in avoiding anything Google. I've calmed down a bit in that I no longer preach at my girlfriend about it. But I have to this day not used any Google app or service other than when mandated by work. And never ever on my own hardware. And yes, still using Windows Phone. I also admit, to my shame, to feeling a bit smug about it.

</comment><comment><USER42> No surprise. Larry and Sergey said pretty much the same, themselves, some time ago.

 _" The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users."_

[http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html](http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html)

<comment><USER43> I used to work for a company that ran a vertical search engine (products/shopping). Search results were essentially results for ads. One of the engineers demoed a project where you change the weighting of relevancy and yield in the results. The internal complaints of bad results were mostly explained by yield optimization.

The company ~died when Google started removing aggregators like this from its results (the Panda update) and doing product ads, itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Blog spam of: [https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1205582897593430017](https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1205582897593430017)

<comment><USER9> Indeed. OP should have linked to the tweet instead as his blog post is not adding anything.

<comment><AUTHOR> I added a link to a list of alternatives for Google services. I wanted to link to it, but then forgot to actually do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> DHH's point that Google is just an ads engine is only true for searches of a commercial nature. If you're searching for something like a programming problem or a snippet of poetry or whatever, it' still an amazing search engine.

So when he says it's "a catalogue with a search engine attached" I think he's exactly correct, but I don't see it as negatively as he does - it's great that the money from Google ads is being used to fund the continued development of one of the most important contributions to society ever (and I don't think it's just for "PR purposes", I think that having the best search engine is in fact the core of Google's long term success, so their incentives are aligned well).

As the owner of a commercial enterprise, I think DHH comes off as entitled and whiny here. The period of time where you could get free traffic to your business from search was a brief historical anomaly. Advertising isn't going to be free.

</comment><comment><USER46> Why can't they be both?

<comment><USER47> Some people are unable to classify things on a spectrum. You're either a programmer or you're not, a company is either evil or good, piracy either has no effect or a full effect on software sales, NPM is either a disaster bringing down the JS ecosystem or the reason it's great, the economy will either fail or become booming in 2020...

IMO non-spectrum thinking is one of the largest falacies in thinking and debates in the modern era.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> If other search engines had the same data available as Google, they could offer similar search results without ads. This includes the auto complete feature, and much more. No other company is in a position to ever catch up in terms of data collection and utilization.

Google has become so important for advertisers that in many cases there is no similar alternative. The percentage of users searching Google is such a high percentage, as well as the primary way people search for product X or Service Y that failing to pay Google can make or break their success.

</comment><comment><USER49> Sure thing - this is going to happen because their incentives aren't fully aligned between users and their own long term vs short term goals.

It's fascinating to watch. It feels like the aging of any industry titan. First they were innovative, lean, and mission-focused. It seems like they've been progressing to a bloated company fully concerned only with short term profits.

It'll be curious to see where this goes and if they'll continue to suffer from their own momentum. Maybe we'll start to see newer, niche, nimble competitors start to pick off chunks of search.

</comment><comment><USER50> Quite often I find useful information from blogs or forum posts. I never seem to get the right keywords to find those in search results.

Another super annoying thing is that "filetype:pdf" is full of spam websites with same template, such as "we have <almost exact search term> pdf. Click here!", while the data sheet I was looking for would be two pages down.

It's almost like that the content inside the linked results are no longer relevant to what you search for.

</comment><comment><USER51> Competition _is_ literally a click away. The truth is that Google is the best so people are willing to put up with the shitty ads on some searches.

</comment><comment><USER52> A direct link to the tweet would have sufficed.

</comment><comment><USER53> No surprise. Also, who can seriously claim that other proprietary search engines (yandex, Baidu) don't sell uprankings?

</comment><comment> Fire-Dragon-DoL What about Amazon search engine, can we use that for recycling? All I get from it is garbage...

</comment><comment><USER54> Have people forgotten that there used to be search engines that did the same pre-Google?

<comment><USER8> Altavista wasn't as good

<comment><USER54> Good enough for its time and Goto.com was built on this very premise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Agreed, I used to easily be able to find our local info regarding volleyball tournaments and festivals, now the same searches don't give anything even 7 pages down, it's as though the engine removed the sites from the web

<comment><USER56> Did all of that move to Facebook and get stuck in a walled garde?

<comment><USER55> I wish it had. Some of these are pretty important to me and I searched for them in exact terms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> How come a sensational post like this finds its way to HN front page?

</comment><comment><USER58> Maybe we should publicly fund it search since splitting up Google would not change the incentive structure.

</comment><comment><USER59> Been saying this for the past 5 years seems only when a tech celeb says it it gains momentum in news

</comment><comment><USER60> perhaps we need a nationalized search engine that is independent of financial motive.

</comment><comment><USER61> Google bad, my blog good!

</comment><comment><USER62> When the incentive to monetize crosses the line into manipulating and exploiting results, users and policy, I think there is a dynamic threshold there where some folks will consider it heavy-handed capitalism (required for profitability), where others will clearly see a monopoly. Take the money out of the equation and look at the product for even wider perspective.

If knowledge is power, the for profit, curated Internet is trash.

Google has turned into a librarian that puts misinformation and diversions before actual results. I liked them better when they were more like the dewey decimal system of search, instead of the manic, bipolar curator with low quality information, just like MSM.

</comment><comment><USER63> > Google is not a search engine, but an ad engine

Google was a search engine, but is now an ad engine.

When I legitimately want to research something, the first few pages are prices and where I can buy. So infuriating.

</comment><comment><USER64> Is there anything to "search" anymore ?

</comment><comment><USER65> Because: people love to take the Faustian deal.

</comment><comment><USER66> Google is an ad company. What do you expect?

</comment><comment><USER67> DHH is obnoxious. someone needs to take him down a peg

</comment><comment><USER68> Google's competition is not DDG, it's Brave

</comment><comment><USER69> Yeh

</comment><comment><USER70> I'm guessing it's some sort of a rule here to have at least one anti-google link on the front page at all times but I think this needs addressing:

1\. Ads keep the lights on and they are labeled as such.

2\. The Basecamp guy was complaining that ads for competing services are showing when searching for his service which is something that courts have affirmed time and again as being pro consumer because it exposes new users to competing services.

This describes a recent case and links to others: [https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2018/05/another- court-...](https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2018/05/another-court-says- competitive-keyword-advertising-doesnt-cause-confusion.htm)

<comment><USER71> The anti-google (or anti-amazon, anti-FB, basically anti-FAANG) garbage that gets plastered on HN is really childish and tiring.

Reminds me of all the "M$" bashing back when slashdot was still relevant. I can recall top comments for articles about larger HDD's were usually people decrying "bloated software" or wondering who would ever use all that space. Articles about LCD monitors were full of people bemoaning the loss of "superior CRT's". Anything new was suspect. Of course all that "M$" anti-tech bashing eventually made them completely irrelevant and now they are but a footnote in history.

Dunno where I'm going but besides being "two minutes of hate", these anti- FAANG articles totally remind me of slashdot.

<comment><USER72> I don't think that had anything to do with why Slashdot faded into obscurity. Slashdot refused to allow users to post stories, so Digg (and then Reddit) ate its lunch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> Regulation is not necessary. DuckDuckGo is a great alternative. YouTube on the other hand..</comment>


Culture Fit Interview Questions - <AUTHOR> https://hire.google.com/articles/culture-fit-interview-questions/ <comment><USER3> Things that are more useful to know:

\- What's your mechanism for bias self-check?

\- If someone gives you specs and you notice that something is off, what do you do?

\- If you have to solve a problem you haven't solved before, how do you approach it?

\- What's your take on accessibility on the web?

\- What's your process like for deciding that you're at the point in your career where you can mentor others?

\- What do you prefer to do when you see someone else getting nit-picked?

\- You're just about to finish a feature and have a great idea for improving it. What do you do?

For all of these things, people will likely give different answers but those answers will tell me a lot about whether or not they would end up being really useful for the kinds of teams I build.

<comment><USER4> I don't like these questions at all. My initial reaction to these is: Why do you insist the candidate reads your mind? Some of the questions can be useful if rephrased to not require mind-reading the best range of answers.

The purpose of the interview for the interviewer: deciding between "no, don't hire this person", "maybe, we'll decide later with more data or after comparing with another person", and "yes, hire".

The purpose of the interview for the interviewee: deciding "yes/no, I want to continue with this company" and conditionally if yes trying their best to get the interviewer into the "yes, hire" state.

I'm only going to pick on one of these questions, but they all have the same problem in that they're not (to me) very effective means at fulfilling the purpose since they'll select for candidates most capable of reading your mind, not actually really useful candidates. When you ask "what's your take on accessibility on the web?", the candidate is thinking many things at once. Here are some: 1) do I have a take and what is it? 2) what's the answer the interviewer wants to hear? 3) if my answer is wrong does that make it impossible to get into the "no, don't hire" state? 4) will I know once I answer?

Maybe you want a take that says accessibility is important despite the added costs, because humanism or whatever. If they say accessibility isn't important, because the costs don't justify it, you put them in the "no" bucket. Or perhaps it's vice versa, or you analyze the issue through some other framework. Maybe you really just want to see if they can converse about it at all, and will devil's-advocate the opposite of what they say, and only put them in the "no" bucket if they can't converse or start screaming at you.

In any case, I don't think you're being fair to the candidate and you're likely wasting time. If you just want to test ability to converse, and don't actually care what they personally believe, state that in the question and don't ask for their actual belief: "I'd like to have a sort of philosophical discussion with you about accessibility on the web. Let's imagine I ask you ... and you feel ..." If you actually have a specific range of answers in mind that can put someone in the "no" bucket, _put that information in the job description requirements_. "Expected to design with accessibility in mind." fits the first of my maybes, "Expected to move fast and not spend time on non- MVP work like accessibility." fits the vice-versa. Presto, no mind games, no wasted time for everyone because it wasn't clear until you asked your question that you hold opposite views and thus this is a "no". Maybe you're worried about liars, which you have to be anyway since plenty of people apply to coding positions without being able to code, so you might ask a more specific question (like we do by asking them to code something) around accessibility that makes clear what conclusion you expect (it matches the job description) and that you're looking for some sort of reasoning for why that conclusion is such in their mind.

Maybe since you're mentioning "end up being really useful" (as opposed to just useful) you don't weigh answers to these questions as hard "yes" or "no" filters, but just "maybes" that you can subjectively reflect upon later (e.g. by adding up a bunch of "maybes" you've recast to point-weighted soft yes/nos that can cancel each other). Fine, you can still put "Bonus:" in the job description, rather than "Required:", so that candidates know ahead of time that if they can only get to the "maybe" state the presence/absence of those certain "Bonus" attributes will influence their chances of moving from "maybe" to "yes". If they're already uncertain about "yes", and see a lack of "bonus" attributes on top of that, they're likely to not bother, again saving everyone's time.

It's fine to distinguish between "really useful" and "useful". Questions that can distinguish between degrees of "maybe" between candidates aren't bad, but they should be back-loaded as much as possible, and only used when the front- loaded yes/no questions have been asked and you're still in a state of uncertainty about which candidate would really be better, lamenting that you only have the budget for one of them. How many of those do you get?

<comment><USER5> Not the OP, but I just wanted to chime in from an interviewer's perspective and describe how candidates should approach these types of questions.

Disclaimer: This is just my personal experience.

For starters, if you're asked a question that is directly relevant to your future work (e.g. "What's your take on accessibility on the web" for a Web developer), you're best served to state your honest opinion.

 _Do not_ try to "figure out the right answer." The right answer is the one you believe and _you can defend_. If that means your answer is "I don't know, I've never had to deal with it, but I know its important," _say that_ and it helps improve the overall signal of the interview.

You might think of this as wasting time, but the interviewer is asking you _the same questions_ that you'll be asked in your new job, but in a simplified form. Just be honest and try to treat the interviewer like a coworker as much as possible.

As I always tell my candidates, "there are no right or wrong answers in this interview."

(Once again, YMMV depending on who is interviewing you or what type of job you want.)

<comment><USER4> I've been doing more giving than taking of interviews in the last years and think almost all the problems are on the interviewer side, but yeah, it's useful to speak to the candidate faced with this. My own perspective is somewhat different, and is really meant for these context-light scenarios, real scenarios will have a lot more context that will help both sides of the table do better at accomplishing their respective purposes. Anyway given that mind reading is impossible, and that you want the job, what to do? The answer is.. you have to guess based on the context you do have available.

There's not really a good general solution here, and you might guess in a way that really screws you up. It's easy for the interviewer to tell if the candidate is attempting a "just feed me what I want to hear" strategy, _if_ the candidate has guessed wrong about what I actually want to hear, and now the candidate appears deceitful, a double-whammy. If they have guessed right, though, it's much harder for the interviewer to pick up on it -- which is why for hiring programmers at least it's common (even if rife with its own pitfalls) to do more objective things like asking for a demonstration of basic coding capabilities, because sometimes some people who must _really_ want the job and have Masters degrees and can talk somebody's ear off in a confident enough way to get this far still somehow _can 't seem to program_ when asked, the primary activity we need them to do.

Life's not about maximizing the chances of getting a particular job, though. I like ethical policies of being maximally honest, even if you shoot yourself in the foot by revealing you're a bit crazy about homoiconicity or whatever... And generally speaking it's not a terrible guess to assume the interviewer just wants an honest answer primarily even if secondarily the content of the answer isn't what they were hoping for. It's also easy to execute on that guess, since it's usually easy to come off as honest if you're being honest. If the interviewer asks a question that does seem job related (like this accessibility example), honesty is also helpful in that even if your honest answer differs from the interviewer's expected answer, and you don't get hired like you wanted, you might have dodged a bullet by at least surfacing that the difference in opinion or expectations was apparently a big deal there before actually taking the job. Wasteful interviews are wasteful, but it's even more wasteful to take a job, start going through onboarding, and only then you and/or the employer beginning to realize things probably won't work out.

Though if the interviewer asks a loaded question, i.e. one which is well known to be a topic of contention in the industry, it's worth re-evaluating your guess and to respond accordingly. I wouldn't suggest ever outright lying, but the honest, direct answer might not be your friend and as with any adversarial conversation (interviews are _not_ casual chats at a meetup with industry peers, even if they can sometimes feel structurally similar) giving too much information can be detrimental.

Example, the interviewer might toss out "So, tabs or spaces?" Maybe you honestly believe spaces, and maybe you also honestly believe this is something worth flaming about and are ready to go at it if the interviewer dares claim for tabs. You might reveal the basic answer of "Spaces", I wouldn't advise revealing the latter information. Here's an opportunity to guess the intent though, maybe the interviewer just wants to see if you'll try to be funny about the answer rather than answer directly. Ideally the interviewer would guide the interview so that whatever their intention is will be clear.

> "there are no right or wrong answers in this interview."

It's good to tell the candidates something about what your expectations are, that's my whole point! Though I might rework this one a bit. Some personalities would be instantly alarmed by such a phrase... For myself, I'd ignore it and proceed as normal, though part of me would want to ask "So you've already decided on yes/no? Want to regain the hour?"

<comment><USER6> > "Anyway given that mind reading is impossible, and that you want the job, > what to do?"

> "Example, the interviewer might toss out "So, tabs or spaces?" ...and maybe > you also honestly believe this is something worth flaming about ... I > wouldn't advise revealing the latter information. Here's an opportunity to > guess the intent though."

To me, this reads as "if you want the job then you [should/are entitled to] misrepresent yourself to bypass the filtering mechanism". If that's the case, then your whole reply reads as a complaint about how hard it is to cheat when anti-cheating tactics are in place.

Am I misunderstanding?

<comment><USER7> >> the interviewer might toss out "So, tabs or spaces?" ... maybe you also honestly believe this is something worth flaming about ... I wouldn't advise revealing the latter information.

> this reads as "if you want the job then you [should/are entitled to] > misrepresent yourself to bypass the filtering mechanism".

I don't think so... it's more like, if you have a deeply held viewpoint, can you effectively work with others who have different viewpoints? If you can strike a compromise or convince them to change, that's the best. If you can bury your differences, that's not ideal but at least workable.

Given the spaces/tabs example, if you are sincerely passionate about using spaces instead of tabs, and you're able to convince a tab-user to switch to spaces without upsetting them, that's the best, demonstrating leadership. Almost as good, is if you can explain how much you like spaces but have happily worked together with tab users (tabbers?). Finally, if you say you like spaces but you're happy to keep silent about it (or if you don't mention it at all), that's not as good as the others, but probably fine too.

Any company that values innovation should encourage differing viewpoints to be raised, but not to the point that it becomes a distraction and hinders overall productivity.

<comment><USER6> If one of your strongly held beliefs is "spaces over tabs" and you think that belief is information that has sway in the interview AND you take the advice to not reveal the information, then how are you not misrepresenting yourself?

You're answering like a person who doesn't hold strong beliefs to a question designed to identify strong beliefs, knowing that you are a person who holds those strong beliefs. Is that not misrepresentation to bypass the filtering mechanism?

We might be talking about slightly different things - if you have a strong belief then I agree you should try sell it, and doing so would demonstrate leadership qualities.

<comment><USER7> > If one of your strongly held beliefs is "spaces over tabs" and you think > that belief is information that has sway in the interview AND you take the > advice to not reveal the information, then how are you not misrepresenting > yourself?

In your example, yes, you would be misrepresenting yourself. But the OP's example is different. Anyone who believes strongly in "spaces over tabs" would/should also know how many silly unproductive flame wars they've started, and also how there may be reasonable arguments on either side. If you do indeed believe strongly in something, then by all means go ahead and say it. But you'd better be able to talk about it intelligently and have considered both sides of the argument. If you're not as educated on the subject, then it's probably not the best idea to wade into the subject during an interview.

That's all this is. Just know your own positions relative to others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How can you even answer any of these questions except with fluff and bullshit if you want to be hired? Google is supposed to be a data-driven company, but it's impossible to extract any information out of bullshit, bullshit by definition is orthogonal to observable reality, it is neither truth, nor falsehood, it's pure empty words.

<comment><USER9> I'm interviewing 20+ candidates a month, and I have to say: these questions are really good to understand a person. It's almost impossible to answer questions like 3 and 4 with fluff or BS, because they are asking for actual cases. This case-based interview technique allows you to go deep into the way people act, how they argue, how they try to influence people, how they view themself.

It's important to understand that these questions are just the starting point of a conversation to understand how a person thinks and acts. It's impossible to make things up with a good recruiter because there's no way you know beforehand how deep and where he will go with his follow-up questions

<comment><USER10> Actually, I'd argue its very easy to dream up entire situations and completely lie about the kind of experiences these questions are asking about. Not saying I've done it in an interview before, but that's my honest opinion.

<comment><USER11> I'd rip you to shreds on that one. It's my second favorite question and after an innocent opening of "What project was the most exciting one you recently did?", I'm usually launching a barrage of follow-up questions that zoom in and out all the time, like:

\- Why were you selected for the team and who selected you? \- What were the biggest challenges the team faced? \- How did you measure you were doing the right thing and you did good work?

And on and on, always drilling down on their answers. It's close to impossible to come up with BS on the fly at that speed and pressure.

This really splits the wheat from the chaff and pure talkers and "team players" who didn't actually contribute anything to their teams' success stand there naked.

<comment><USER12> > I'm usually launching a barrage of follow-up questions that zoom in and out > all the time

I would probably fold under this style of questioning even when describing a completely true and even interesting project that stands apart from the random grunt work I usually do. When interviewing other people myself, my style is borderline diffident while asking the candidate, to reduce the chance of nervousness/anxiety influencing their answers.

That being said, I love Justwatch, so clearly your techniques are throwing up _some_ good candidates. All the best! :)

<comment><USER11> (*) I'd rip you to shreds if you tried to make up a story on the go.

Happened to me about three times during way more than 300 interviews.

About ten times more candidates actually thanked me for the nicest and most informative interview with actionable feedback they ever had with a company. YMMV.

Looks like I was triggered a bit by parent, it's always interesting how much more unbalanced any nuance comes across in writing.

Other than that, I stand by my technique, but it's mainly a question of tone. The first whole paragraph of my carefully A/B tested script solely concerns itself with making a candidate comfortable, as interviews prefer natural extroverts.

90% of that time, this question actually ends up in a mutuably enjoyable conversation.

<comment><USER13> >> Happened to me about three times during way more than 300 interviews.

Yeah - because the other people would simply prepare for their interview, be it bullshit or not.

If I were to come to your interview and were to bullshit you - I would have spent enough time in front of the mirror trying various ways of copying the behaviour of people who did all the work for me. It's not that hard to build up a story once you know where to start from.

>> Other than that, I stand by my technique, but it's mainly a question of tone. The first whole paragraph of my carefully A/B tested script solely concerns itself with making a candidate comfortable, as interviews prefer natural extroverts.

I don't know. There are loads of issues I had to deal with and I don't remember how I did that any more. There are even more issues which I would completely agree were "dumb decisions" but be absolutely logical if I looked back and realised were political decisions. Now, if you allowed me to look back at my IM history/code comments and see why I did what I did.

>> 90% of that time, this question actually ends up in a mutuably enjoyable conversation.

So basically what you're testing your interviewees for is how much they have prepared for interviewing with you (they're happy because they were preparing for your questioning/you're happy because they made the right answers). The question is whether their ability at being interviewed correlates with their ability to excuse themselves from doing the job.

<comment><USER11> > So basically what you're testing your interviewees for is how much they have > prepared for interviewing with you (they're happy because they were > preparing for your questioning/you're happy because they made the right > answers). The question is whether their ability at being interviewed > correlates with their ability to excuse themselves from doing the job.

No. All I'm asking them is to come up with a single interesting project within the last three years that they did, be it professional or even a fun one and have some conversation over it. If they didn't do any remotely interesting work or can't talk about it at a high level, how could I possibly expect them to come up with own ideas or communicate about them in the future?

Other than that, you'd be extremely surprised at how little candidates actually prepare on average, even if I _tell them in advance exactly what happens in the interview and what I 'll be looking for_ (which I do).

So I do respect your points, but I don't really get them. You may be right. I'm getting the results I want and my teams are happy and productive.

Here's a mail from an interviewee last week:

> Thank you so much for the response! I would have loved to work with you > guys, but I do understand. The experience was very helpful to me anyways, > [...] Thanks again, and maybe we will work together in the future!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> as a serial victim to sets of questions exactly like this earlier in my life, i've come to realize that 'Culture-fit' is really just a coded honesty test -- and the most deceptive thing about it is that straight honesty is one of the quickest ways to do poorly at it.

in other words, answering '1\. Why do you want to work for our company?' with "Because I want a salary and I need to avoid destitution.' is a wholly appropriate answer, but it's wrong.

They actually just want you to evangelize the company for a few minutes and lay on how envious you are of those that have 'the opportunity' to 'be a part of the revolution at X-Co'.

<comment><USER15> To be fair, most Software Engineers are able to secure multiple offers and even more interviews. Or at least that's my impression which may be the result of survivorship bias.

And it only gets easier after your first gig.

In that instance, where an engineer can easily leave your company, it makes sense to want to ensure they really want the position since interviewing and onboarding are very expensive for a company as well as having someone leave with a bunch of institutional knowledge built up over the years.

It's also probably the easiest question in the world to totally bullshit with just a vague grasp of what the company does.

"One of the things that really excited me about <company X> is the problems you must face dealing with <such large amounts of data, securing your system, supporting N users on the app at once, syncing data across data zones>" etc etc. or "I think it'd be really neat to work at a company in the <healthcare, finance, whatever> industry because I've always wanted to <improve lives, learn about high frequency trading>"

And even if it's an easy enough thing to BS it should also be genuinely easy to find an exciting reason to want to work somewhere in our field.

<comment><USER16> It depends heavily on your area and the current economy.

For example, almost nobody was hiring for software in my area during the Great Recession and I was laid off from the job I did have. Ended up having to relocate so I didn't starve.

Nowadays there's plenty of people hiring but companies around here tend to underpay.

<comment><USER17> _> Nowadays there's plenty of people hiring but companies around here tend to underpay._

Mind sharing which area are you referring to? Sounds like Europe :)

<comment><USER16> No, I live in the NE USA, but outside of any big cities but definitely not in a rural area. My country has a population of ~300,000.

Nowadays I'd probably be paid more if I still lived in my hometown that I had to leave (ironically).

Job hopping definitely isn't a big thing around here like in tech hubs - <USER2> hires don't get huge salaries starting out no matter how much experience you have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A lot of people are jumping on #3 (Tell me about a time you solved a problem at work). While I agree that #3 deserves criticism, I feel like #6 (Tell me about your preferred workday) and #8 (Describe your preferred relationship with coworkers) are even more problematic. As an introvert, as someone who likes quiet, my ideal workday consists of me getting into work at ~7:30am, working until ~4:30pm with about an hour off for lunch. I accept that meetings are a necessary evil, but I maintain that their necessity does not diminish their evil. I especially despise the "daily standup", which is a completely pointless 15-20 minute interruption right during my peak concentration hours. And yet, if I actually gave that response to question #6, the _best_ I could hope for is a sympathetic nod from my interviewer, and a mention about how they attempt to have a single day without meetings. Instead, I feel like I'm supposed to lie about how I like "collaboration" (code for meetings).

#8 (Describe your preferred relationship with coworkers) is, if anything, even worse. As someone who doesn't like parties, and who doesn't drink, I find it really awkward and draining to go out with coworkers. No offense, but if I'm with the same people for 40 hours a week, the last thing I want to do is spend more time with them (especially on a Friday afternoon or evening, which is when most after-work outings tend to occur). And yet, I feel like if I actually gave that answer at a lot of companies, I'd be immediately dismissed as "not a culture fit", even though my skills are a very good match for the position.

<comment><USER15> We got rid of standups on my current team and it's definitely very nice.

I think you could probably massage that answer though "well standups aren't my favorite thing really, it's sort of a lot of context switching and a lot of times the conversation isn't relevant to me. But I understand it's generally more for the managers than it is for me."

And for the latter one

"I like a very professional, cordial, and relaxed relationship with my coworkers. I tend to do my own things on weekends which leaves me refreshed and happy to see everyone on Monday."

It's just a bit smoother than "the last thing I'm going to want to do is spend _more_ time with you".

Instead of emphasizing the drain it'd be to spend more time with your coworkers, emphasize the benefits of coming back refreshed on Monday :-). They're the same answer but one's more positive.

<comment><USER19> On the coworker relationship question, why can't you just answer something like: "Anywhere from cordial professionalism to best friends who do everything together, it depends on who I 'click' with." I mean people are people, I'm happy spending free time with some coworkers, others I'm just ambivalent to, just like in all other parts of life.

This points out how bad that question really is, the interviewer wants you to mind-read how he/she sees wants the relationships at the company to be and answer accordingly.

<comment><USER18> In practice, the purpose of the question is to weed out people who don't display a particular level of commitment to the organization. Allow the company to take over your social life makes it harder for you to leave the organization. I've definitely had experiences where I've stayed in bad jobs longer than I should have (at a cost to my health and sanity) because I liked my co-workers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The most generic and obvious set of questions ever.

Every single interview I've participated in (on both sides) has included some or all of these questions. There isn't really anything new or interesting here.

<comment><USER21> "Why do you want to not be destitute? Also, tell us you like us!"

<comment><USER22> That's question one from the article: Based on nothing but what you've learned about this company from the outside, please tell me why we're great and you're great and we will be great together?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Many of those questions are iffy, a potential minefield or uninteresting, but this one (#3) is key and we use it a lot:

"Tell me about a time you solved a problem at work. What was the issue, and how did you approach it?"

What I like about it is that it isn't a trick question. Also, knowing beforehand you're going to be asked this won't help you to bullshit your way through -- either you did stuff and can answer questions about it or you don't. This question lets the interviewee discuss something they did and that they feel comfortable talking about, how they approached it, what their problem-solving approach was, etc. It also lets the interviewer ask follow-up questions about whatever sounds interesting to discuss in more detail.

<comment><USER12> For a lot of the work I do, this is heavily grounded in context and therefore useless to the interviewer.

"I undid some hacks that Dave who left two years ago had put in the test suite because he just really liked stacking Python decorators, and they were getting too complex to figure out when some test broke. I updated some documentation that hadn't been touched in 5 years and was terrifyingly out of date. And then I sat in for two useless meetings because leadership really likes holding them." is not likely to communicate any positive messages, but it is the reality of what a lot of us do at our jobs instead of solving complex race conditions in elegantly designed distributed systems.

Not saying that that might not contribute some kind of signal to a potential interview, but it's very likely to be one that labels me as incompetent :)

<comment><USER24> You're right, that's a terrible answer. But not because the content is bad, but because you threw a coworker under the bus and because you didn't mention the impact that any of these changes had.

"We had a large module that we were making lots of changes to that used Python decorators to add behavior. This pattern ended up growing to be really difficult to debug as we were changing the code, and when tests would break it would take hours of tracing through the code to figure out the reason. I (rewrote each method to not use decorators | inlined the decorators manually | whatever) to clean up the code. One of the other reasons working with this module was difficult was because the documentation was terrifyingly out of date, so as I was cleaning up the decorators I also updated the documentation."

If you can say anything about the quantifiable impact, then do it, but I don't think this example necessarily requires it. The meetings had nothing to do with your problem.

<comment><USER12> Hey, thanks! That's a good, positive way of restating the issue that I had completely missed. I'll try to think of things more in this way in the future, and state them that way in potential interviews.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> After significant experience on both sides of the table I am completely lost.

As interviewer I feel the best I can do in the short time I have is to weed out those so incompetent and badly fitting where I wonder why they even applied for the job. E.g.Java developer position and they can't do a simple stream.filter.map.collect task.

As interviewee I rarely even get the slightest interest of actually taking the job if they want me.

I usually don't feel any enthusiasm on the other side and I have a hard time appearing to be enthusiastic myself. Candidates interests usually boil down to "I want more money", "I want a less outdated tech stack", "I want better management" and "I am depressed and want change for change's sake".

In the end, most software development jobs suck and employers are just looking for code monkeys, hoping they will find some that will stay for more than a year or two. Applicants are fed up with pretending they have any personal interest in software development beyond the wages they get for it.

</comment><comment><USER26> So, I've been self-employed for 20 years, doing custom software development at home and short-term (typically <2weeks) on-site consulting).

I've been thinking about going back to work for a company full-time, as I'm getting tired of dealing with sales and marketing. I do it poorly.

I don't know how to answer these questions, by which I infer that long-term self-employed people are rarely hired at Google.

#2: the last company I worked at was in 1999. I don't remember enough about the culture to give a coherent answer. The on-site work I did for clients wasn't long enough for me to understand their culture.

#3: "independent troubleshooting and initiative" is all that can apply for someone who's self-employed.

#4: "a team project you did at work". The best I can do is describe how I work for other companies in my development work.

#5: I ... don't know how I would like to be managed. I guess, work with a manager who can help me figure out how I can be managed in a large corporate environment.

"Follow-up questions: Tell me about a disagreement you had with your last manager." ... Again, 1999.

<comment><USER27> I got my first full-time job at age 41 after being a homemaker for two decades. I basically had nothing on my resume but education and volunteer work. I started at better than minimum wage at a Fortune 500 company in a job that some of my co-workers spent years trying to qualify for.

If you have hobbies, volunteer work or other experiences that are more recent, I would not hesitate to say something like "Because I've been self-employed for two decades, the last time I had a disagreement with a manager was 1999. But last month at (local non-profit/recent group project in a class I took/whatever), I disagreed with how the people in charge were handling X and..."

They probably really don't care if you talk about work experiences per se. They want to know things like how you handle interpersonal friction.

Can you play well with others at all? Or have you been self-employed for two decades precisely because no one in their right mind would want to put up with you for more than two weeks?

So try to think about some recent experiences that would provide some kind of evidence supporting the idea that, yes, you can get along with other people and they won't regret inviting you into their social group known as X Department at Google.

I will add that they probably frame it as _work related_ because they don't want to hear about your spat with your wife or teenaged son. So don't pull out _personal_ anecdotes of that sort. The social setting needs to be comparable to a work relationship.

<comment><USER26> Thank you for your comments and for sharing a bit of your history.

I think I didn't describe my situation well enough. I have 25 years of professional software development experience, so I do have a lot on my resume. I meant instead to point out that the questions suggest that Google doesn't often interview people who have been long-time self-employed.

Which, to be fair, isn't a common case.

I'm also unlikely to work at Google. I'm much more likely to work in my field, where I have enough of a name that I'm not going to be asked these sorts of questions in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Useless "world-as-you-want-it-to-be" rather than "world-as-it-actually-is" questions. These questions simply encourage the interviewee to guess _expected answers_ and provide them with a smile. They mean nothing.

Until and unless companies learn that "Honesty" and "Trust"(from both sides) are the only things which matter when it comes to measuring intangible character traits these sorts of questionnaires are bunkum.

<comment><USER29> I must be lucky because I'm at the point in my career where I give these kind of questions direct but nuanced answers and let the chips fall where they may.

I'm definitely not everyone's "cultural fit" (a dog whistle term for legitimizing discrimination imo), but for companies that appreciate what I bring to the table, it's all the better.

Honesty and trust are definitely top values for me, and people who can't handle respectful and frank discussion can't handle me, so better to find out immediately, as early in the process as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Does anyone have good ways to determine if a company is a good culture fit for you, as an interviewee? I had an in-person this week where I tried the reverse of some of these - "Can you tell me about a typical workday?" "How is the work-life balance here?" and I just got BS fluff answers like "Well there's a variety of technical problems to solve here".

<comment><USER15> I tend to ask about things interviewers don't like, would change, or that have been challenging for the company.

If you can't name a single issue in your org that smells fishy to me, but an honest answer indicates an open culture and decent people.

<comment><USER31> As an interviewer, I like these kinds of questions as it shows interest from the candidate. The worst is no questions from the candidate. If a candidate has no decent questions for me, I'll usually and enthusiastically suggest some, starting with "what is most enjoyable and what is the worst thing about this role/department/company?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > _How would you describe the culture at previous companies you've worked at?_

Somehow this one sounds like, "tell me what you hated most about your last boss," insofar as it's a bit of a minefield to answer in a professional way.

<comment><USER33> I like to ask "what is/was your favorite and least favorite part of [Company's] [Department's] culture, that way there's a rough range that's specific to the department rather than ambiguous cultural perks.

<comment><USER34> The problem I have with that is shit talking your previous work is generally seen as unprofessional - yet, you're also leaving them for a reason.

I would probably be evasive if asked your question (at least, in terms of 'least favourite'), which also wouldn't work in my favour.

<comment><USER35> Why does it have to be shit talking?

Surely there are value neutral things you didnt love about your old company.

We couldn't install our own tools which hampered creative problem solving.

We weren't given enough direct access to our customers to make better design decisions in the product.

We didn't have a strong culture of documentation so we relied too much on tribal knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Pirate-of-SV > 1\. Why do you want to work for our company?

I don't feel comfortable asking this question. Many of the people I interview are "headhunted" into an interview by an talent acquisition team. Are they even looking for a new job?

<comment><USER36> > My honest answer to "why do you want to work here?"

I want to chill and pace myself here. I'm looking to do 30+ hours of work per week on my projects outside of this dayjob, so it's important for you not bother me too much during my 40 hours here.

My only goal is to build a company on the side. I've turned down better jobs just so I work in an environment and with coworkers that I fucking hate, so that I am extremely motivated to do whatever it takes to have my own business. Overall this job is just a paycheck - a necessary distraction to maintain a reasonable standard of living, and completely irrelevant to any of my goals in life. If contract work didn't cause too much stress/friction for me, I would be doing that for money. I hope you understand that I want to see you fail, this company fail, and any project I'm on to fail miserably. I will do the work you assign me according to spec, but please remember to leave me the fuck alone.

So... when can I start?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> We have such silly silver-bullet-like talking points at my company. I don't follow them. It is to me too easy to make up/twist past experience to match what the interview wants to hear. Oh yeah I hit that wall and used that clever way to ship in time... Oh yeah I learnt from such and such mistake... not a fan.

Instead, prior to the ITW I define clearly (with myself or an other interviewer) the information I want to hear or the parts of the intellect/emotions I want to feel.

Example: wanna check if the candidate is autonomous? Instead of asking him if he prefers working in a big or small (or no) team and get a generic/boring answer, I will ask the candidate how they prioritize tasks when no workflow can help them. Do they rely on gut feeling? perceived ROI? ask the manager? the client? In this mindset I know directly if there's a clear match, and if not it is easy to dig in their way of thinking with a follow-up question (why/how?).

Takes a bit of improvisation/reactivity but at least I feel like I keep things interesting for everyone in the room when doing so.

</comment><comment><USER38> Also worth noting for candidates: These are great questions to ask your interviewers, to see if the company is a place you want to work at.

</comment><comment><USER35> Classic HN, assuming these questions are only for technical roles.

If the only true signal in an interview is weeding out completely unacceptable candidates, these are great questions because the only goal should be staying in your lane with two hands on the wheel.

Also, reversing the questions can be insightful as a candidate.

Personally I think the biggest disconnect comes in the job descriptions and postings: a lot of these preferences companies have about their candidates could just be openly posted and the candidates could self select themselves for fit.

</comment><comment><USER39> These questions are good and seem standard to me. Whenever interview questions come up on HN there are always many comments refuting them. Any behavioral/culture/softskill questions will be bullshitted by sociopaths and liars. Any technical questions will be biased toward competitive coders and leetcode cramers, and they aren't relevant for position X anyway. IQ tests and brain teasers are less relevant for the job and in some cases potentially illegal. Take home tests take up too might time that you don't get compensated for. Contract to hire takes even more time and doesn't work for candidates that already have full time work. Not everyone has side projects that can be evaluated or contributes to open source, and even if they do it's impossible to tell if the candidate did th actual work. Every way of evaluating programmers sucks unless I'm missing a magic bullet?

My question is at what point does a candidate show such skill at gaming interview system(s) that it doesn't matter if they are bullshitting or had to study for your interview? If they apply the same skills to the job they're likely to be successful in most tech roles, and given corporate or start up structures and politics these candidates might be significantly better than more "genuine" candidates. The only places I think standard tech interview variants might break down is hiring for creativity and for ethical behavior (ethical behavior and rule following being different things). I'm not sure if either of those are important in most tech roles and they might actually be determintal.

<comment><USER40> Ask developers about projects they've worked on and have the technical skills to evaluate the depth of their answers. It works every time for me, it's fair and even fun for the interviewee and it's really fast. I'm often to a hire/no hire decision in 30 mins.

No culture questions (I'm happy to manage all kinds of people). No technical challenges. The more you do this, the better you get at it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> _Most candidates will probably be prepared to answer this common question. Nonetheless..._

as if being prepared for a question is a bad thing

<comment><USER42> I'm not saying I agree with this, but I think their implication is that the candidate will have prepared a generic answer that isn't necessarily honest or useful. If it's a question they haven't prepped for, they are more likely to give an honest answer rather than one they read on a blog post by a hiring platform company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> > 9\. How do you maintain a work-life balance?

Pretty sure the candidate is supposed to ask the interviewer that one...

<comment><USER44> IKR, work-life balance defaults to healthy until the employer starts requiring or additional hours on top of the normal 9-5.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> These questions assume the person has significant prior experience, which makes them unusable for a decent amount of hiring.

At my previous job, we got a set of generic questions like this on our hiring forms from HR. I don't think anyone in my group ever asked them. It's impractical to ask a bunch of open ended questions like this, and also engineering questions, in a 45 or 60 minute time slot.

<comment><USER7> > At my previous job, we got a set of generic questions like this on our > hiring forms from HR. I don't think anyone in my group ever asked them.

I would love to be wrong, but interviewing still seems more magic than science. I've interviewed for positions and think I did great, and did not get a job, and for others, did poorly and did get an offer. On the other side, I've hired promising candidates that turned out terrible, and questionable candidates that turned out great.

There are some things you can do to filter out the worst of folks (e.g., a fiz-buz test or evaluating basic communication skills), but these generally just filter out the bottom 20%. It's maddeningly difficult to differentiate between the middle 50% and the top 20%.

When you occasionally find a rock-star, they generally know they're a rock- star and demand rock-star pay. The top 5% of candidates is rarely 2X more productive than the top 10%, but they can demand much higher salaries because they are easier to identify.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> From the WSJ recently..."The Dangers of Hiring for Cultural Fit"

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dangers-of-hiring-for- cultu...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dangers-of-hiring-for-cultural- fit-11569231000)

<comment><USER47> From your article:

> "What most people mean by culture fit is hiring people they'd like to have a > beer with," says Patty McCord, a human-resources consultant and former chief > talent officer at Netflix.

From Google's article:

> However, culture fit evaluations can invite bias into your process if > interviewers see it as simply a way to assess a candidate's likeability, > rather than how they align with your company's core values. Assessing > culture fit is about much more than whether or not you'd like to hang out > with someone at a company happy hour.

Disclaimer: I work at Google; opinions are my own.

<comment><USER48> "...how they align with your company's core values"

This phrase seems kind of common, but it seems a little odd in that it sort of implies different companies have significantly different "core values". Like, Google's core value is of course, "don't be evil". So, they get all the non- evil candidates, and someone else gets the spawn of Satan?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I honestly don't even know what I would answer for #2. It really sounds like one of those terminology questions to get people who think in the exact terms you use.

</comment><comment><USER50> Google should give people a chance to adapt to their work culture instead of rejecting them.

</comment><comment><USER51> Orwellian in more than one manner.

</comment><comment><USER52> Keep in mind this is content marketing for a dead Google product, nothing more

</comment><comment><USER53> this is terrible

</comment><comment><USER54> OT: Google Hire has been discontinued.

<comment><USER55> That's how you know it's a Google product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wouldn't have published this.

</comment><comment><USER56> Off topic but I interviewed at Apple (SWE) and brought a cheap Chinese phone (Xiaomi) to the onsite. I didn't get the job. A factor?

<comment><USER57> No

<comment><USER56> What would be?

I felt all my rounds were positive.

<comment><USER58> One downside of the interview process is that candidates hardly get told _why_ they were rejected.

It is unlikely that your phone cost you the job but Apple as a company does seem to live in a bubble of "Apple is best. Apple for everything " so there's always the slim chance that you got an interviewer who lives by that and decided to not like you much. Pretty unlikely though but it shall remain one of those great mysteries of life

<comment><USER59> Actual feedback is rare and extremely valuable.

Mostly you will get "decided not to go forward", or "they felt you didn't have enough depth in <SOME SKILL>", which might or might not be true.

What recruiter is going to say, "Jeff said he could never work with anyone who would carry a cheap phone".</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Looking for Co-Founding Technical/Design Team - <AUTHOR>

I am a working on a new startup venture "MusicRewards.com" and looking for technical and design co-founders that would be willing to work for sweat equity. I have raised some money, built a working prototype, but want to add more features, better UI and design before going live. My last music startup grew to over $15 million in annual revenues.<p>If you want to learn more contact me at firstname.lastname@example.com or call me at 678-447-1360. You can also find me on Facebook or Linkedin. <comment><USER2> Are you in the Atlanta area?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> No, I am currently located in Boca Raton, FL near West Palm Beach.

</comment><comment><USER3> Too bad you weren't looking 2 years ago. I high-tailed it out of Coral Springs and am quite happy in San Francisco. We do need more startups in South Florida though. I looked around for several years for a decent job and there was basically nothing. I moved out to SF and in a matter of a couple months had a job making 3x as much as I was in Florida, doing basically the same work.</comment>


Raising your kids in the city? Here's why it's the best - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/9/9/20746436/raising-kids-in-the-city <comment><USER2> > Raising your kids in the city? Here's why it's the best

As someone who works in NLP with media, the simplest way to identify a click bait headline is the use of when/where/why/what/how and either a question mark or exclamation mark</comment>


Study: Why good-looking men get all the funding - <AUTHOR> http://www.pehub.com/2014/03/hot-or-not-why-good-looking-men-get-all-the-funding/

<comment><USER2> I'm sure Meg Whitman or Marissa Mayer would chuckle at such articles.

First: { you should know that "among high-growth-potential ventures, only 11 percent of U.S. firms with venture-capital backing, past and present, have been founded or led by women }

You should know that among high growth potential ventures, 0% of U.S. firms with venture capital backing, past and present, have been founded or led by Aliens.

What does this tell you ? There are simply not enough women starting and/or leading companies. Like it or not, most companies have been started and are led by men, so most companies who will ever receive backing, will be led by men.

You have a 100 people starting a company, 90 are guys, 10 are women. Say 20 will receive backing. Of those 20, would it be surprising if most were led by men ?

Combinatorics, do you speak it.

Second: { women-led ventures have received only 7 percent of all venture funds." Considering that about 51 percent of the U.S. population is women and that there are loads of studies that demonstrate better financial returns from businesses run by women, this trend persists year after year. }

How many Mexicans are in the state of California ? 30.6 %. How many backed startups are created or led by Mexicans.

Is it racism or discrimination ? I don't think so. There are just not many Mexicans starting Tech companies. And I don't see them bitching about it's an "old white boys club".

Demographics, do you speak it. That's when you profile your typical hacker, it's _most probably_ a male, _most probably white_ and _most probably young_.

So, if people stopped coming out with articles as to "why" life is so "unfair" to them, and how they're repressed and discriminated.. I call bullshit.

Build a great product that solves a need, nobody will care who you are. People would buy something they _need_ , even if provided by someone they _hate_. It's just a matter of supply and demand.

Now, those women who received backing ? They deserve it. That's because they don't dwell writing articles with a picture of a giant man stepping on a "strong liberated woman". They just do shit that matters.</comment>


HN Meetup Munich: May 2012 - <AUTHOR>

It's HN Munich Meetup time again.

  Date:       Thu 31 May 2012
  Time:       19:00 -- open-ended
  Location:   Reitmor 3
              Reitmorstrasse 3
              80538 Munich
              http://www.reitmor3.de
 If you'd like to present something, please give advance notice for planning. There is a beamer but keep in mind that people will be drinking beer while you talk.
If you are (part of) a startup, company, or financier, this is an excellent opportunity to step in front of the HN Munich community.
For questions or suggestions, contact us at firstname.lastname@example.com.
See you soon,
HSO
PS: Please leave a comment indicating whether you're coming so we can get a rough idea how many. Thx. <comment><USER2> Looking forward.

If anyone is interested, I was recently in Mountain View for buddycloud's YC interview and can describe the preparation and process and interview.

<comment><AUTHOR> very interested. thx!!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great, thanks for setting this up again! Will definitely be there.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'll try to make it this time. Thanks for dropping me an email!

</comment><comment><USER5> Cannot attend but are many German meetups held in German/English? Ie could you get by with speaking English only?

<comment><USER3> I can't generalize on "many German meetups", but at this specific meetup series, conversation tends to be in english.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'll definitely try to make it this time.

</comment><comment> james-p Long-time lurker, first-time commenter. I'll be joining this evening. Looking forward to meeting you guys.

</comment><comment><USER7> And yet again, trying to make it! Hopefully it works out the third time...

</comment><comment><USER8> I'll probably be there as well.

</comment><comment><USER9> Will try to attend.

</comment><comment><USER10> will be there! Thanks for organizing :-)

</comment><comment><USER11> will likely be there as well.</comment>


Sage advice gone wrong - <AUTHOR>

Is there any current commonly circulated advice that you have tried and it was a total disaster and if so what would be your advice now?<p>I tried quitting my job and it was the worst 18mths in my life. My advice would be it's alright to take the conservative route such as school or job until your business starts to generate some sort of income. Furthermore, it might be better to do  b2b first then try b2c. <comment><USER2> A B2C success is like winning the lottery. I've had some of that and it really feels like that, even to this day I could have never dreamed of engineering something like that. And with a success I mean a substantial income for a decade or longer.

B2B is two orders of magnitude easier to turn in to a business, no luck involved there, it's just really hard work and staying power.

There is lots of 'advice' floating around and plenty of it is given by people that seem to ignore their own advice, and I think that's the biggest indicator that you shouldn't be following it. Have a look at the people that are building, slow but steady and that eat their own dogfood in terms of advice.

Not quitting your school or your job until you make enough money that you can salt away half a year to a years expenses is good practice, and cutting down on your expenses as much as you can is good practice too. It's usually easier to save a buck than to make one.

Whatever comes out of that 18 month stint, you are a _much_ wiser person now, so think of it as a school too, only a different kind.

best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm sorry to hear about that chegra84. Hope things are more on track now.

I don't know of pithy sayings, but something along the lines of "going through the proper channels" is deeply ingrained in a lot of people. Following that advice has meant I've passed up a lot of opportunities and allowed people to, however well meaning, say no to things I otherwise could have done. I'm somewhat of a believer in "It's better to ask forgiveness than permission," but like all advice, you really need to think through whether and how it applies to your situation.

One other note: "It might be better to do b2b first then try b2c." I've almost never seen people _advise_ businesses try to tackle B2C, and I think it's just the allure of being a recognizable name that attracts people to that market.

<comment><AUTHOR> No worries everything is find now. Thx for the concern.

Now you mentioned it, I never heard anybody give b2c advice. Implicitly, I get the sense they are saying b2c.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can you get a J1 visa for your startup if admitted to an accelerator? - <AUTHOR>

Hello, immigration is a perennial question here on HN.  Does anyone have any experience of sponsoring themselves as a J1 visa? Is this possible?  We have been admitted to a relatively prestigious accelerator in the bay area which I think should qualify for the training requirement for the visa.  My co-founder is American and with advisors and others my share is below 50%. <comment><USER2> Are you doing technical work? Why not work remotely? btw, J-1 is a non- immigrant visa. How long is the accelerator program?

<comment><AUTHOR> Program is six months (hence can't use ESTA), requirement for the grant they offer to be in the US for the duration

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Your country?

<comment><AUTHOR> UK</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Help a dev move to the Bay Area - <AUTHOR>

Executive summary: Are any companies in the Bay Area looking for developers?  Please drop me a line at firstname.lastname@example.com
Long version:
For the past two years, I've been working on Clutterme Inc., a Toronto-based startup with some moderate success.  I've occasionally posted about it here.  For a variety of reasons, my co-founder and I are closing up shop and heading our separate ways, and I would love to move to the Bay Area.
I am, unapologetically, a jack-of-all-trades.  I pick up new languages or tools quickly, and I love learning new things, but if an old tool happens to be better, I'm happy to use it:  best tool for the job.  This does means that I am not, and will never be, a guru in any specific topic, but it also means that I will not bat an eyelash at a sudden change of direction or at investigating or learning a new technology.  I pride myself on being pragmatic, and doing whatever it takes to get the job done and end up with a good product.
Some of the things I've made (short descriptions available at http://www.alexc.me):
- clutterme.com - WYSIWYG AJAX in-browser web page creation, made from scratch using Ruby on Rails, Prototype, and a lot of custom Javascript.
- Facebook applications - they currently have around 1 million installs, and were receiving 6 million page views at their peak.  Written with PHP, FBML/FQL/FBJS, and MySQL (no frameworks).
- Some personal hobby projects with CakePHP and MySQL.  Never as successful as the Facebook apps, but around 300,000 page views/month at their peak.
- Used a number of APIs - register.com, Paypal Website Payments Pro, Facebook, LyricFind.  Right now playing with the Google Analytics API and Wordpress.
- iPhone applications - LyricFind and LyricFind Lite, currently at #4 (Canada) and #9 (US) in the free Music category of the app store.  A couple more apps in various stages of completion or in app store approval limbo.
I've had a lot of fun working on a start-up, and I am definitely looking for a small, motivated team, that wants (and needs) to make things happen quickly.
I greatly respect the HN community, and I feel that a company whose people read HN is more likely to be a place I would enjoy working at - perhaps as an employer, you feel the same about me ;)
If any of this sounds like something you're looking for, please drop me a line at email@example.com.  I am visiting the Bay Area for a couple of weeks, and I would be happy to set up any in-person (or phone) meetings.
(if anyone just wants to meet up and chat about random stuff, send me an email too!  I had way too much fun at the HN Meetup last week, and I'm always happy to meet more people). <comment><USER2> I'm neither an employer nor do I live in bay area but I think this is the question employers might ask since you are from Toronto. Are you legally allowed to work in US?

<comment><AUTHOR> I should have mentioned that - yes, the TN1 visa makes it very easy for Canadians (the only thing required from the employer is the signed contract).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> this might interest you: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=584183>

YC company looking for a 4th member of their team

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I did see that - the lack of compensation is unfortunately a deal breaker right now :p

<comment><USER3> ah very true! that does suck. You probably know, but just in case: Craigslist is pretty active in Silicon Valley, so definitely keep your eye out there.

goodluck on your searches!</comment></comment></comment>


How to Disappear - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11999355

<comment><USER2> My experience from the armed forces is that cool new gear is always nice, but you should never become dependent on it because if it could fail in a battle environment, it's quite likely that it will.

Moreover, additional equipment requires more battery power which means more weight, something that troops already struggle with.

Another trap of fancy gear is that it could increase the perceived distance between you and the residents in the area you're supposed to operate in. Think of it, what would you think if somebody with a massive bullet-proof vest, invisible cloak, night-vision googles and a grenade launcher came walking by your house one night? Winning the hearts and minds of the people around you is critical for any operation, and if you walk around look like inspector gadget, it's easy to forget that the bling in the battle vest isn't your primary life insurance.

</comment><comment><USER3> The last paragraph was the most interesting. It's like using ambient light to spot something, rather than shining a spotlight out into the field.

Makes me wonder if there are other ways to take advantage of this.

<comment><USER4> Haven't you seen the Dark Knight?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a bonus, how many faces can you spot in the image at the top? I'm at 6 or maybe 7.

But seriously, these technologies are really interesting. The "shadow" of stealth bombers through standard cell waves is interesting. Eventually they may create a plane that emits white noise to cover up it's shadow.

<comment><USER6> Good catch - I count 7: <http://100.s3.amazonaws.com/camo.jpg>

<comment><USER7> Is there a person looking through binoculars midway between 4, 5, and 6?

<comment><USER6> Yes, I think you're right. Updated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I always wondered if the researchers ended up concluding that pixellized camo was the best simply as a result of their using digital hardware to run the experiments.

I mean, come on, _nothing_ is pixellized like that in the wild.

</comment><comment><USER9> How to create wealth: get a government contract and persuade them that they need your software. Charge massive license and consulting fees.

</comment><comment><USER10> How not to be seen: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4ZnGprplKU></comment>


My Project for 2020: Node on Rails - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/lampewebdev/my-project-for-2020-node-on-rails-1n4j <comment><USER2> I thought about doing something like this, but I think that JS lacks the metaprogramming power and nice syntax to make a nice Rails-like framework. But good luck!</comment>