Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth - <AUTHOR> https://triplebyte.com/blog/want-hire-best-programmers-offer-growth <comment><USER3> It's a little peculiar how this blog post really pushes the inclusiveness angle despite the numbers showing clearly that it is not a big priority for prospective employees. They even go as far as highlighting that the sampled women want inclusiveness 171% more than the sampled men, which sounds pretty strong, but hides the real story when you look at the _actual numbers_. Only 15% of women ranked inclusion as a top priority, which is telling.

It seems pretty apparent to me that most employees (and that includes all genders, races, etc.) don't care nearly as much about inclusiveness as their leadership seems to. After reading this post, it seems to confirm what I've suspected all long: people mostly want money and the potential to make more money in the future.

<comment><USER4> It is because it is SEO spam. TripleByte regularly posts these here in HackerNews to promote their hiring platform. People seem to like it nonetheless

<comment><USER5> It is SEO spam, and TripleByte does seem to use a lot of "growth hacks" or something, because I see their ads on pretty much any platform that I see ads for (like on mobile apps, where I don't have any easy-to-use ad blockers), and they're mentioned on HN at a surprisingly high rate.

But (I think?) I've seen people here genuinely recommend them, and I also don't think YC would work with and promote a company they didn't like or trust. Companies' marketing and sales teams can sometimes have a very different vibe and sense of ethics compared to the rest of the company.

<comment><USER6> They do advertise very aggressively, to the point where I think they risk damaging their reputation. But I guess they've done the analysis and decided it's worth it.

I went through their process and got lots of practice interviewing. Even though I didn't take any of the offers I got through them I was able to use one to negotiate a much higher salary at the job I did take. Their recruiters and interviewers treated me respectfully and professionally.

So I'd recommend it, especially if you're very good and/or smart but not an attractive candidate by conventional standards. If you have 5 years at Microsoft or something then you probably don't need them, since you can interview wherever you want at that point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm a software engineer with ~3 years of experience. I also want professional growth. Partially because I enjoy learning and growing my technical skills, partially because I want to move into more leadership roles, but a huge part of it is because I know that if I'm good, I will be paid a massive premium for it. levels.fyi sort of convinced me that being a good engineer is a life changing event for more than 1 generation. I answer questions like these as growth primarily because I know growth is an investment for my life long earning potential, and I just so happen to have a passion for growth to begin with---it's a lucky combination to be drawn to.

I'd love to see questions like this phrased to account for this: "Opportunity for professional growth, to grow my future earning potential." "Opportunity for professional growth, because I enjoy learning new things." "Opportunity for professional growth, to reach a role I cannot fill with my current skills."

I know the article tried to address this with the responses, but that's sort of the default answer you give in this field. No one really says, or enjoys hearing, "I want to learn more so I can make more money".

<comment><USER8> > _" Partially because I enjoy learning and growing my technical skills, > partially because I want to move into more leadership roles, but a huge part > of it is because I know that if I'm good, I will be paid a massive premium > for it."_

And it's one of the unfair things in life that jobs that pay more often get other benefits as well. Making $40k/year? Chances are you get 2 weeks vacation, inflexible work hours, inferior equipment. Making $200K/year? I'll be you also have top of the line equipment, no one keeping close tabs on your hours, 4 weeks or more vacation, money to go to conferences, etc.

A mentor of mine once told me that I should seek to make more money, even if that's not my motivation. He said that more money is always nice to have, but also that when someone pays you more, they respect you more, so you get all the benefits that come along with that.

<comment><USER9> > when someone pays you more, they respect you more

The counter-example to that could be that once you're senior enough, you are never 100% on vacation. If enough goes wrong, you _will_ get called back to work.

<comment><USER10> That has nothing to do with seniority, it's 100% about how you draw personal boundaries between work hours and personal hours. You can make it clear that you will be completely unplugged during vacation.

<comment><USER11> Once you are an executive, you often have contractual obligations. You are the key decision maker people escalate to. If time sensitive things that need a decision to be made the buck stops with you, no matter where you are.

To give an extreme example, the President (of the US) is never truly unplugged. In the cases where the president is truly unplugged, SoP is for that person to temporarily stop being the President.

<comment><USER12> Delegation of authority is key here. If not for the commander in chief role of the president it's conceivable they could just delegate decision making to the cabinet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder how many people in the survey interpret "opportunities for professional growth" as "opportunities to get rich". To me that makes the survey data more understandable. People, myself included, basically want more money for less hours (AKA work/life balance).

<comment><USER14> That equation is a theoretical one. On the whole, jobs that offer high $/hr will mandate crazy hours. Jobs that will allow you to go 20 hr/wk, or 10 hr/wk will usually not pay you well on a per-hour basis either. -- I predict that in response to what I just wrote, there will be people showing off about how they managed to make a consulting lifestyle business like that actually work because of how awesome they are. -- But keep in mind they are the exception, not the rule.

<comment><USER15> Taking time off between jobs is a real option for most programmers. Depending on how long you stay at each company it can even add up to a few years of time off without having obvious gaps on the resume.

<comment><USER14> You have to have the stomach for that... Personally, I couldn't get any real enjoyment out of a time period where I didn't know when/where/whether I have another job lined up, and opportunities to get truly trustworthy commitments on start dates that are a significant period of time in the future are rare.

<comment><USER16> I do that all the time - like literally my CV has probably 5 or 6 gaps of varying duration (between 3 months and two years). Often, during those gaps I spend some time working on something tech related, so I put that into the gap in the CV.

Even with those gaps, I'm having zero problem finding well-paying jobs. I think it's because, despite those gaps, I represent good value to the employer - I know the latest tech, have done good work in the past, can present coherent and mature opinions during the interview etc. Also, I only do long- term contracts where they explicitly don't care that I'm a job-hopping mercenary that is not ever going to believe the "company mission", because the assumption is that the whole arrangement is temporary anyway. In practice, they always want to retain me and I end up quitting out of boredom after a year of two.

To summarize, the gaps are probably important only when you're in close competition with lots of folks similar to you. But, if you're a bit of an expert in a specific niche (mine is Big Data - Hadoop and related crap, applied in enterprise IT context) and there aren't that many competent candidates around, the gaps suddenly don't matter.

<comment><USER17> Are you over 40 yet? It changed for me this last job hunt.

<comment><USER16> I'm 38. We'll see what happens in a couple of years. In any case, these enterprise companies usually have a position of architect on their teams, where grey hair are even an advantage. I don't like this job, as it's more headaches than coding in a lot of ways, but when if ages turns out to be a thing, then I guess I'll be architecting (I've done it several times already, so I have the CV for that).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Fuck that, I've been doing this for 25 years and what I want in order of importance is:

1) Pay me 2) Autonomy

<comment><USER19> I am willing to forgo #2 if #1 is high enough.

<comment><USER5> I'm the opposite. If my living and food expenses are covered, I'll prefer full autonomy over no or minimal autonomy. You can only spend so many years doing things you're asked to do which you don't really want to do before the value added by the extra money is outweighed by the value lost from life in general becoming more depressing and less inspiring.

<comment><USER20> You can turn extra money pretty directly into time with actual autonomy (i.e. not working) pretty easily, though.

<comment><USER5> That's true, but it depends on the income rate, I guess. If I need to work a soul-sucking job for 15 years to be able to spend the rest of my life with mostly full autonomy, I think that trade-off isn't worth it. If it were working a soul-sucking job for 1 or 2 years to get enough to be autonomous for life, then it's probably worth it.

<comment><USER20> Yes, there is some preferred balance between the two for any one person. But for reference, 15 years to retirement means shaving 25 years of full-time work off the typical career. That seems...pretty appealing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> So in a candidate response-based survey 54% picked the more palatable "Growth Opportunities" item but 42% also selected the far less attractive motivator of "More money".

Accounting for the "perceived gallantry" of these motivators I'd call that a statistical wash, but the article title "Want to hire the best programmers? Pay them the highest salaries." doesn't support the "best engineers / best companies" narrative very well.

</comment><comment><USER22> The vast majority of programming jobs, like the vast majority of ordinary jobs, are not going to be able to offer growth potential, at least, not growth potential that would actually look appealing to anyone posting here. If the only incentive on the company's part is increased retention, that's just not a good-enough reason to spend time on more than lip service.

My company is a weirdly-effective consulting firm with a staff-augmentation business model. I chalk their success up to two factors. One, there's no middle management, only team leads reporting to a cadre of developer-owners. Second, they've been really good at landing the right kind of clients.

It's rather funny watching them try to figure out how to engage their workforce, but with a staff-aug model, devs feel more like employees of the client rather than of the consultant. So everyone's just kind of meh. It feels a little The Office-ish.

The other consequence is that there is practically zero real growth potential, and no incentive to do anything other than keep butts in chairs. Nobody's going to let me jump from the consultant to the client, the only path up is out.

I hope this business model dies. It feels distinctly evil.

<comment><USER23> That sounds like something like Accenture, InfoSys, etc. I too hope this business model dies but I don't see it dying for a long time. As long as business school MBA types keep making decisions and hiring those companies, they will keep hiring butts in the chair.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Offer a quiet, private office. Two or more monitors. Free snacks and free lunches. Modern software stack (whatever that is).

Or full-time remote.

<comment><USER25> I'm 80-90% remote, and it's such a huge lifestyle perk that I'd need at least a 50% pay bump to even consider anything in the city. I hope this becomes more and more the norm for tech jobs because everyone deserves ample time with their family and friends.

For me now the baseline is remote + good work life balance and vacation package.

If we can throw exciting tech, more money, etc on top of that, great.

<comment><USER26> I can't imagine not having any remote days in the week. Unfortunately, many enterprise jobs in my area expect people in their seat 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.

I'm hoping to polish my skills and eventually find something 100% remote even if its less thank $100k. I want to buy a lake front house, and get on a jetski/boat during my lunch break.

<comment><USER27> I'm 100% remote working full time for a household name financial company. I'm making $150k, plus 6 weeks vacation, 401k match, etc. I'm in process negotiating a consulting gig that will pay a little over $300k that is also 100% remote. That one is a corp to corp contract, not an employee position.

Hang in there, you'll find your spot. My advice would be to make friends with a few recruiters for the big headhunting firms. With a little patience for terrible signal to noise ratio they should help you break the $100k mark for remote work. Sometimes you gotta shop around for the right recruiters. The first person you talk to is probably not the person with the right contacts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > Second, women engineers prioritize growth to an even greater extent than > men, and they place particular secondary emphasis on inclusivity and comfort > with their work and environment.

Woman in tech here. I agree completely, and I'd almost say that saying you want to grow your career in an inclusive environment is saying "I want to grow in a place that will actually value me and promote me." Been in so many places where talented women are just not promoted, and it can be so demoralizing.

<comment><USER29> true story: sister was hired at a big company as a tester with degrees in bio and comp sci. The manager had her doing manual testing for a year. She aspired to be a developer. Even offered to automate testing on her own time after work. The manager told her if she has extra time, she should do more manual testing instead. When a dev position opened up on the team, he just hired some coop guy instead for it without even considering her. She quit.

<comment><USER30> Why did she take a job as a tester if she was a CS grad with developer aspirations?

<comment><USER31> Why not? I do contract work for a big, public company, they have dozens of QA testers and every path is available for them (becoming a dev, analyst, manager, ... I've seen all). It's not even just an entry job for CS grads, many become senior testers as well and don't want to move to a dev position.

<comment><USER30> Edit: this was dumb I'm sorry I shouldn't get mad on the internet I apologize

<comment><USER32> My guy you read way too much into a comment about a manager who was not trying to nurture the career path their subordinate was aspiring for. That's part of being a manager. A manager who doesn't go to bat for people like that is a shit manager. Your response is really bizarre, like you were personally attacked.

<comment><USER29> maybe he's one of those managers. she was clear when she was hired that she wanted to be a dev. like i said, this was a branch office of a big company in a small city. many people moved from testing to dev and vice versa.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Don't treat developers like bricklayers. Sack any product manager or manager that does it. This is the root of all evil, radical as it may sound. There needs to be a balance between engineering and product delivery, but too much emphasis on product delivery leads to tech debt, cutting too many corners and poor tech choices. Not to mention stress and little to no job satisfaction. Give devs some time to build something they are proud of. Good devs are in it because they love and once that love is gone the dev is gone.

<comment><USER34> in my experience many developers want to be bricklayers (not to discount bricklaying, there's an art to it, but they're focused on the individual bricks, not the other aspects of the building). They get annoyed when they're asked to think about the bigger picture and just want to focus on the code, the architecture, and whatever is new and shiny. It is largely due to these sorts of developers that we've developed all the ritual around sprints/product owners/etc to put blinders on them because they cannot deal with deadline and thinking in terms of business value creation.

This sort of person is under-represented here on HN for obvious reasons but they represent the majority of people developing software. The opportunity to contribute more than just lines of code should be offered and encouraged, but don't be surprised at how few will be interested.

<comment><USER35> I am one of these happy bricklayers. It's the only way I can stay sane in a job. When I'm working on my own projects, I'm all in, and I love all aspects of the process. But in a job, on a project that 99% of the time is run badly, and my colleagues are writing terrible code, just give me the bricks and tell me what to build. If I try to care, I get frustrated and depressed.

Plus, I'd be fooling myself if I were not like this. I've seen people put their passion into a job, argue their case, and then they get made redundant. Don't be fooled.

P.s. I'm a very good, reliable bricklayer who makes very solid walls.

<comment><USER36> Yeah I agree with this. If you are not in a high-up position you will just get too frustrated caring about the bigger picture because you have little power when it comes to actually making bigger-picture decisions. So all you can do is suggest things which 1) may not be well received, could be perceived as some low-level employee overstepping their bounds 2) probably won't be heeded since then the managers/pms/directors/etc. have to concede power

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Am I the only one here that likes growth because I like learning? I try and grow all the time in non-professional areas of my life even though there is no direct monetary compensation for doing so (such as learning new languages, instruments, etc.)

<comment><USER38> Outside of work, absolutely.

At work though, I find my thirst for learning new technical things has disappeared as I've gone older. What has grown instead is the thirst for learning new things in or related to my industry (domain knowledge). Like the problems my customers are facing, or where the industry is headed, or why they have been doing things a certain way.

<comment><USER39> This matches me pretty well, too. I was lucky in that I had the opportunity to get a broad base of knowledge very young and now don't _have_ to run to catch up so much; because of it most of what I have to learn now are variations on a theme. Which is good, 'cause like you I've got way too many things to learn about the company and the industry and how to best apply those skills therein.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Can we stop with this "we hire only the best programmers?"

You are probably not the best company so stop trying to hire the best programmers.

It's like the fat, ugly, jobless guy that only dates accomplished super models.

<comment><USER36> Why would a company ever insult their employees like that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Want to hire the best programmers? Good luck.

Same as "want to pick the best stocks", "want to win the lottery", "want to marry the best person", "want to get the best price", ...

<comment><USER42> We rather look for nice, pleasant people. When I get excited to be around them, I do better job. I believe it works for others too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> _Engineers Want To Learn, Even If They're Very Senior_

But /what/ do they want to learn? Something about this bit is rubbing me the wrong way:

> " _In 2002, a very good COBOL or Fortran engineer was probably in a good > place as far as their job search was concerned, but today they 're unlikely > to get much attention from companies that have moved on to more modern > languages. Had that engineer focused on growth to keep up with changes in > the industry, they might have learned Python or JavaScript and been able to > keep up with the market._"

Is .. reinventing the wheel, or learning the same thing in a new language, really the same as "growth"?

Is it even "learning" in any way more than "memorization"?

Since when is "keeping up with the Joneses" the same as "(personal) growth"? Had that engineer focused on growth and learning, perhaps they'd now be a High Performance Computing specialist in Fortran, or a business analyst with an MBA overseeing a COBOL team's migration, or a founder of a COBOL codebase analysis tool company, or a bi-lingual contractor traveling to help foreign companies move away from COBOL, or .. anything, growing and changing instead of writing a database report in COBOL then in Java then C# then in JavaScript.

</comment><comment> git-pull Don't give coding quizzes if they can provide better evidence of their ability.

It's unfair in the least, rude at the worst to pigeon-hole "senior" programmers into scenarios / pop quizzes.

Let them show off recent personal projects. They'll probably have no problem spending a weekend hacking on something they're passionate about.

Be a serious employer:

Convince the best programmers (whatever that means) why they should reorganize their life around your business:

\- Pension plans / job security are nice. It's a good motivator to know that there will be an annuity when they're 60 / 65 and would rather spend time with their family.

\- Union contract (or something comparable) _or_ a labor system with robust employee rights and unemployment insurance. It's pretty unfair in the US with at-will employment.

\- Have strong financials. Be a business that'll be around in 10 years. Can your business keep paying employees if it's in the red for a year?

If you don't offer the above: Why feel deserving of the best?

I'm being facetious on the above points: It's tech, it's a fast cycle and inherently unstable. But when orgs talk about hiring - it irks me to see the entitlement employers have when they have little investment in the welfare of employees as persons (and families)

<comment><USER44> None of these things are perfect - I agree with you about quizzes and the like.

> Let them show off recent personal projects. They'll probably have no problem > spending a weekend hacking on something they're passionate about.

Nope. Not spending my weekend fooling around to impress some potential employer. I'm going to spend it with my kids, riding my bike, and enjoying life.

<comment><USER45> >> Nope. Not spending my weekend fooling around to impress some potential employer. I'm going to spend it with my kids, riding my bike, and enjoying life.

Okay, it is time for some harsh love. You won't like it, and I'll get downvotes, but whatever. It needs to be said.

My parents are both doctors, and they are in their 60s now. And you know what? They still work their asses off, on many evenings and weekends, trying to stay up-to-date with new developments in their respective fields. My dad just got back from an ophthalmology conference in Europe. My mom is a guest speaker at a pathology conference and she has been preparing furiously. And it has been like this _all my life_.

So yeah, I detest this sense of entitlement that programmers have, where they want to a) get paid a lot and b) have lots of free time on the side. How about this instead: if you want to have a high salary, then it is reasonable for people to expect you to make certain sacrifices, such as work on your own projects on the side experimenting with new technologies and ideas. Don't like it? Well, it may be time to pick another profession...

<comment><USER46> I'm not sure that the lesson to be learned from the medical profession's overburdening of its professionals is that other well paid industries should follow suit and overburden their own professionals.

<comment><USER47> Then salaries in our industry need to decrease if we don't want to be held to a standard of overburdening ourselves.

The salaries in our industry have a precedent which was set by individuals that overburdened themselves. That might have been irrational, but if we want to change that, then we need to accept less pay. We can't have the same rewards as they did while doing less work, even if the amount of work they did was unreasonable.

<comment><USER46> We aren't being rewarded for how hard we work, we're being rewarding for having skills that are in high demand while supply has not caught up yet. Salaries may well go down in future when the need for developers is less or the pool of talent is bigger. We also aren't trapped by the examples set by previous developers - our productivity varies depending on what we are doing, the tools we are using, what our team is like, etc - not just the raw number of hours we put in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I don't think hiring managers really want to hire the best programmers. They want people they feel comfortable managing, someone who isn't going to be challenging them. There is no risk in leaving roles open, in fact it contributes to their job security as long as there is VC money to burn. That is why the coding challenges are so popular, it communicates "here, do what I say."

<comment><USER49> I have been freelance for years, recently I did some interviews for full time positions and I can't agree with you more. Companies that need freelancers are primarily concerned with can you do the job, there's a deadline, there's a contract, there's some urgency.

Most companies I have interviewed with for full time roles advertise that they are a hiring for several roles but often are just hoping that someone who speaks at a lot of conferences or is a ex-FANG higher up will apply (I've heard this from friends on the inside).

I have been very open about what my experience is and what I'm looking for. Somehow every full time job interview feels like getting picked apart to pieces while most freelance interviews feel like someone genuinely trying to assess if you can be useful to them.

<comment><USER48> You and me both. I just went through the Triplebyte process after my last contract wrapped up. Passed their exam and interview and went on-site at multiple companies. In the end it was a total waste of time and very stressful. I would go so far as to say that if you have been successful with startups and equity that it would be a net negative for you because the 5 peers you will be interviewing with will feel threatened as well. Rinky-dink organizations really don't want very good people, they want people they feel comfortable with. Luckily I have a network which allows me to bypass all this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I'm not sure I agree with the conclusions. Sure I really want to grow as an engineer, BECAUSE I want to make more money. When I think of professional growth, I think of a company that will give me large pay bumps equal to what I could get if I left, because as time goes on I get more productive and more knowledgeable.

</comment><comment><USER36> I have seen employers grossly misunderstand "professional growth" to mean paying for tons of random seminars telling you the basics of being a professional like taking care of your appearance, carrying yourself, setting goals, etc. I don't think they understood that growth == promotions and income advancement.

I would have much rather taken home an extra $5k, or get a promotion two months earlier, than waste time sitting through self help seminars

<comment><USER51> Because the cost per employee of a useless self help seminar would be way below $5K and the HR might even get a kickback.

<comment><USER36> I don't think so because they also paid for hotels, airfare, food etc for multiple days. But yeah probably a kickback involved

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I love these kind of surveys. They just demonstrate time and time again how gullible people are, especially those that hire companies like TB to help with hiring.

Want to hire best programmers? Pay. Them. More. Money.

"I want to grow" is a polite way of saying "I want my compensation to grow".

P.S. Do you know why people bend over backwards at interviews for Google/Netflix/Facebook and do not for a Domino's? It is because if they do well on interview at FAANG they would be making mid to high six figures while they would be making sixties as managers at Domino

</comment><comment><USER53> There's no such thing as growth in the technology field. Most of the organizations just want a specific and narrow expertise in a particular technology. If you think your 7+ years of experience in certain technology is something then you are wrong. There'll be an 18 year old who has been programing in that technology since he was 12. You'll eventually get pushed over. Employers don't want a well-rounded person. They just want someone who know enough to do maintenance and their current products.

<comment><USER54> Your downvoted but there is some truth in this.

<comment><USER53> I've been in the technology field for 20 years. I'm also a female coder. I was a Java Expert. Then start again with entry level with other technology. Then start again with entry level web development in my third job. Whenever you start again with a different technology stacks you become an entry level. You cannot really climb higher or grow in this profession. And that's the inherent problem with information technology. It's changing to fast.

<comment><USER54> I think you can climb higher and grow, but not necessarily in ways most technologists would enjoy. For me I see the growth opportunities as

1\. Become a team leader, then manager, CTO, .. etc.

2\. Become an "architect". I.e. move away from coding and design systems, choose technologies and suchlike.

3\. Very rare: Become a very senior individual contributer with lots of freedom.

I can see why side hussles are popular as a way for developers to express creativity and try to make some money a completely different way.

> Whenever you start again with a different technology stacks you become an > entry level.

Totally. I can't (generally, there might be exceptions) get a full time non C# job without taking a paycut that would put me on the streets. Confounded with the fact that because of this people are going to lie about experience to change jobs to another tech stack, which I wont do, so I'm competing against those people too.

I too am (almost) 20 years in. Male (but I think these problems apply to everyone).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Growth is good, but it means different things to different people. Someone might want more money, another opportunities to attend and present at conferences, third a path to management, fourth a path to "technical expert at large", etc. etc.

And mistakes can backfire: offer a management path to a person who wants more technology and he may think "ouch, bureaucracy and PowerPoint ahead". I think a general (and genuine) statement of support for technical leadership, management and whatever other paths a company offers would go further than a generic "support growth" mantra. My 2c.

<comment><USER56> What does technical expert at large mean to you? I have some idea from my experience, but it seems like it's usually a nebulous role that nobody asked for.

<comment><USER55> This, in my experience, often means advising on several ( >3 ) projects with no (or very minimal) explicit technical commitments. And "no explicit commitments" means you get more freedom to attend conferences, close the door for a generic "I am working, please do not disturb" stretches, take vacation when convenient to you and generally be a master of your time.

Getting there may not be easy. IME the best path, especially in larger companies, is to:

1\. Be effective and gain wide domain knowledge, so your time is valued and multiple diverse projects want as much of your time as you can spare. This is (relatively) easy.

2\. As requests for your time rise, negotiate advisory instead of worker bee roles. Avoid writing code, even when you can do it quickly. Instead architect, mentor, advise, assess, etc. This is tricky. As you transition to advisory roles you need to stay valuable and not turn into one of the folks just hanging around with nothing meaningful to do -- those heads are first on the chopping block. If you stop getting invites to new projects, lean hard on #1 for a while.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> > "Opportunities for professional growth" is the clear winner, appearing 13 > percentage points above even "salary".

Ofcourse professional growth is the winner as more often than not is directly proportional to one`s salary.

As a s/w engg. "professional growth" is a hybrid of bunch of things - <USER2> new tech, Cloud knowledge(k8s, docker etc.), and well summarized in the lines below by the author:

> In short, software engineers of all stripes want, more than anything else, > to develop their abilities as engineers. They want it more than pay, more > than work/life balance, and more than autonomy.

<comment><USER58> I strongly agree - to me the term "professional growth" is synonymous with higher income and greater future employment opportunities. Not with learning a new framework or language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> When someone offers me "Growth" at work, it makes me cringe. We're all grown ups here - offer me either mission/things I'm passionate about or money. Ideally both. Don't offer me bull shit.

</comment><comment><USER60> Is it just me, or did they twist the data in order to put "inclusive workplace" at the first place in the rating? Even the adjusted table shows that only 15% of women care enough about inclusivity at work, but the summary puts a lot of emphasis on how women prioritize it...

</comment><comment><USER61> TBH I would settle for working on a sane codebase. Almost every codebase I have worked on except for my own are a complete mess. Basic things aren't done right e.g. Reproducible builds, source control, code review etc.

<comment><USER62> It blows my mind that there are still projects managed without git. I've seen entire production projects in a shared network drive with

appname_april_3_2014

appname_april_4_2014

appname_april_4_2014_new_order_schema

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> My wife is a traditional "professional". When she has a 1:1 with her boss, her boss gives her advice on how to move up. They talk about what she needs to do for a promotion etc. I've never personally experienced that. If I talk about growth, my bosses always think i'm talking about what new kinds of technologies I want to work with. I've been writing code professionally for nearly 14 years, it's still interesting, but I've increasingly become less interested in the technical aspects. I've worked with my current boss at 3 different companies. He's always took care of me, and he trusts me to write code, but the one time I talked about moving my career along to the next step to something beyond what I am today he was ready to let me go. His exact words were "I'd be happy to provide a reference for you". It became clear that he had no interest in helping me grow unless growth meant learning a new technology. I've just avoided the topic since then.

<comment><USER64> May because your boss sees you as an asset? As 'his' asset. And once you decide to grow out of that role, he'll slap you right back to 'where you belong'.

I'm being a bit uncharitable with my perception of your story, but it shouldn't be a stretch to believe that given how tech workers are generally perceived by 'business type folks'.

As I see it, his response shows his complete disregard and lack of respect for you as anything other than 'his IT guy'.

I'm way too proud to continue working with someone that thinks of me that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> If you want growth as a programmer, you need to learn how to see the business model of the company you are applying to and how your work integrates into it.

It wouldn't be very wise to expect growth if your job is to keep a legacy system running on the minimum possible budget. Or to maintain a "leave us your email" website where the business is all about sales talking to the prospects and all they need from the devs is to make certain a database entry gets created when a user clicks "submit".

You could expect growth if your job is about finding efficient ways to solve a business pain. Or creating a model that makes it easier to understand and navigate domain-specific data. Or anything else where the decisions you make affect how much the paying customers will appreciate the product.

Unfortunately, most developers don't want to go into that domain, and so most of the developer jobs focus on pretty much CRUD where "growth" could at best mean learning a new framework that will get obsoleted in a few years anyway.

</comment><comment><USER65> In my opinion this line of thinking may be good for the employee but bad for the company and its users. I bet a large chunk of the "Google Graveyard" is comprised of projects designed to get a few people a promotion or keep them around. And we're worse off for it.

My takeaway is that companies need to start focusing on matching jobs to skill level instead of always competing for the best

<comment><USER36> I have seen the opposite issue too, which is where if someone has sat in a chair in the company for X number of years and isn't terrible at their job, they are almost guaranteed advancement. And usually this is a bad recipe for stagnation and you end up with bad middle management (the Loser-Clueleess- Sociopath hierarchy comes to mind). Whereas if you force people to execute a project decently, at least you have the opportunity of those paying off even if most don't; for every 10 failures maybe you get a Google Maps or Google Docs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> > We're arbitrarily defining "great" candidates as those scoring between 95th > and 98th percentile on our technical interview, and "the best" candidates as > those scoring at 98th percentile or above.

This is an important qualifier. I'd argue that the _most technical_ candidates are not necessarily the ones who offer the most value to companies. In fact, I would argue that "notably de-emphasizing ambition" will cancel out your technical superiority in the overwhelming majority of cases.

Here's a choice for your company's next hire:

1\. A technically superior but comfortable candidate whose top priority is maintaining work-life balance and flexible work arrangements

2\. A technically adequate but hungry candidate whose top priority is moving fast and learning tons

Who would you choose?

<comment><USER67> 1., 2. Sounds like a pain in the arse to manage while I work at maintaining my work-life balance.

You're presenting a false dichotomy. There is also

3\. Technically superior whose top priority of learning things got them where they are. Maintaining work life balance is just one of the many tools this person has learned over the years to be consistently effective over the long term instead of running into burnout.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> "opportunity for growth" is ambiguous. TripleByte should really be asking about more specific things like "skill development" or "opportunities for promotion". I expect that you'd see some pretty different patterns with those.

</comment><comment><USER69> This article defines great and the best engineers by:

"For the purposes of this article, we're arbitrarily defining "great" candidates as those scoring between 95th and 98th percentile on our technical interview, and "the best" candidates as those scoring at 98th percentile or above."

A test that they've come up with internally. What makes this company an authority on determining great and best engineers purely on data structures and algorithms style interview questions that most likely a recent grad will be efficient with (for software engineers anyways*).

This article is standing on a house of cards. It's first principles lack and the assumptions it makes on top of those first principle is highly questionable.

J

</comment><comment><USER70> Is there a dark side to this? A lot of the "not invented here" and chasing the latest tech could be caused by workplaces not realizing that there are less breaking ways to learn new things. Agile is great at this, by encouraging self-review at all levels. Then there's getting from sufficient to masterful at all sorts of general skills such as testing, version control, refactoring, requirements gathering, presenting etc. But to advance _quickly_ in any of these you need mentors rather than self-study, because it's easier to learn directly from someone who has done it before and who can show you examples in the work context you already know.

</comment><comment><USER71> Is Triplebyte paying for product placement here now? They've taken over Reddit.

<comment><USER72> Nobody pays for or gets product placement on HN. You have to make something readers find interesting. I assume that's the case with the current submission, since it hasn't been affected by moderators or by any of the below.

We do sometimes place stories that we or a small number of story reviewers think the community might like. That program is described at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380) and the links back from there. Such stories get lobbed by software randomly onto the bottom half of the front page, whence they fall off in a few minutes unless people upvote them. The purpose is to make HN more interesting (because [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20curiosity%20optimiz&sort=byDate&type=comment)). Many good submissions fall through the cracks and this is a way to give some a second crack.

Anyone who knows of a story that deserves a second chance like this should email us at email@example.com and we'll consider throwing it in that pool. It's ok to ask this for one of your own stories, but it's better if you just ran across something and think it's cool.

By the way, you can see a partial list of these at [https://news.ycombinator.com/invited](https://news.ycombinator.com/invited). Those are the ones that were too old to be lobbed directly when we saw them, so we emailed the submitter and invited them to repost it instead. It's on my list to publish a more comprehensive set of lobbed stories.

There are two other types of placed submission that HN does as a way to give back to YC for funding this place: job ads ([https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs](https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs)) and Launch HN posts for startups ([https://news.ycombinator.com/launches](https://news.ycombinator.com/launches)).

<comment><USER73> This (or an abstract of it) might make a good FAQ addition:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

<comment><USER72> Yes, it's probably time to add that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Again, with the demonizing PHP as a staid old language to stick with.

So silly, and completely incorrect, as PHP frameworks and the language itself continue to innovate and keep Up and in some cases are cutting edge.

<comment><USER75> Don't worry. Give it a few years. The reason php has such a bad rap is that it was so important for low-skill web-devs, so there's a lot of bad php out there. In 10 years, React will have the same reputation. Again, not because it's bad, but because it's usefulness is so high that all the worst devs will be using it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> Author of this article here. As long as this initial data-dive came out, there are still a bunch of things we'd like to look at. Does location (say, NYC vs Silicon Valley vs affect these preferences? Does which track (generalist, front-end, mobile) a candidate takes through our process? How does this link with how candidates actually behave when given an offer? Our data set has enough information that we can investigate these questions, but this was long enough as it is.

<comment><USER77> As a Houston developer, that chart of motivating factors describes exactly what I'm looking for.

I won't work on an ancient Java codebase that has no tests or no deployment pipeline, because doing that is death. Gotta keep moving forward or find yourself sliding backwards. I would say your analysis is spot on and I could have written the same article myself.

Companies should realize doing things that seem "fluffy" and not entirely necessary, like moving to a newer tech stack, might be worth it as it will make it easier to attract new talent. And if they stay behind, they might encounter the famous "dead sea effect" and wonder why things break, and every new feature takes forever -- the best technically minded people have left for greener pastures.

However, I'd say that considering people who are great at interviewing are great engineers is flawed. There's a correlation, but it's probably a weak one. To get great at interviews, you have to practice interviews a __lot __. It 's a separate skill orthogonal to software. Basically, you're selecting the most motivated to succeed -- but motivation to succeed doesn't necessarily translate into the best technical ability. It makes sense that they care most about salary, impressive surroundings and fast pace, as they're probably the most careerist SEs out there.

> devoting (say) $1,000 or even $5,000 to classes or other forms of > professional growth is not particularly expensive, but it can have a > disproportionate effect on recruiting.

I don't need classes. When I say I want professional growth, it means I want to play with new technologies and gain experience with them at work. So if you're willing to hire me to work on a new hot thing, I'll be more likely to take it.

But please, please do away with the conceit that great interviewers are great employees unless you have data that suggests otherwise. Reading this, I'm under the impression you only look at candidates and don't have any metrics to understand their actual work performance.

<comment><USER78> > Companies should realize doing things that seem "fluffy" and not entirely > necessary, like moving to a newer tech stack, might be worth it as it will > make it easier to attract new talent.

Why are we as professionals (myself included, I'm not immune) so obsessed with shiny new things?

Updating a product's tech stack just to attract new talent and not because the product needs it is objectively strange. Imagine if roads were torn down and rebuilt just because civil engineers wanted to try out some new road laying thingy.

<comment><USER79> Road-laying technology doesn't develop at the pace that computer technology does. We went from room-sized mainframes to powerful pocket computers in 40 years. Working on "new things" is objectively more interesting and pays better - modulo the COBOL devs making $500/hr now.

<comment><USER80> You are describing advances in semiconductor performance whereas the person you are responding to has in mind things like new programming languages, libraries and frameworks, many of which we cannot even confidently say are advances at all.

<comment><USER79> New programming languages, libraries, and frameworks often tend to go in lockstep with semi-conductor and hardware advances.

<comment><USER77> Advancements in semiconductor research have led to wonderfully inefficient front end frameworks.

<comment><USER79> That too :-) But front-end frameworks don't constitute the entirety of new language and framework developments.

For instance, having cycles and memory to spare made using fun languages such as Python and Ruby practical.

Advances in hardware let (and force) us (to) write applications of far greater complexity. Writing a mobile game is way more involved than a payroll application on big iron.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> Not that I fully disagree, but with proper discipline growth can be found in maintenance work. no system is perfect and you can constantly improve, refactor, add coverage, add telemetry, reduce operations etc. It's not only Greenfield or "hip" projects that provide growth. like any endeavor it's up to the artisan to find meaning and challenge in any work

</comment><comment><USER82> At the risk of sounding cynical, this is really the standard drive in all jobs: money and opportunity for more money and higher status.

<comment><USER83> Personally I couldn't care less about status, but money is very important to me, because I want to "retire" (work on my own stuff and by my own schedule) by the time I'm 45.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> In my experience, most managers think _" If I can't objectively measure it, it doesn't exist."_

Therefore, since the benefits of fostering employee growth can't be easily quantified, most managers choose to believe they don't exist.

Same goes for things like flexible work schedules, work-from-home days and generous vacation policies.

</comment><comment><USER85> As the article mentioned, the importance of growth's influence can be explained in large part by a broad interpretation of the question. This article defined "Professional Growth" by saying:

> _" In short, software engineers of all stripes want, more than anything > else, to develop their abilities as engineers"_

This is true, but it's also the first-order answer. The follow-up question to ask is _why_ they want to develop their engineering ability. It may be to make a higher salary down the road (i.e. current salary is less important than future earning potential), to develop the skill set to found their own company, to gain prestige by moving up in an organization and managing other engineers.

Overall, really interesting post - definitely worth diving into the data further.

</comment><comment><USER86> The article title conflicts with the conclusion of their analysis.

 _The best engineers notably de-emphasize ambition._ is one of their conclusions based on their 'best' category indicating a higher priority on work/life balance than the 'great' and 'all' categories.

They say their data shows that all engineers care about growth, so the title would be more accurate written as 'Want to hire programmers? Offer growth'.

It would be nice if they included information on the source data, in order to go through their system it is my understanding that candidates need to be willing to work where they have clients, and that is going to bias their sample considerably.

</comment><comment><USER87> Anecdotal but "opportunity for professional growth" seems like the best answer to a recruiter trying to sell you. Flexible work arrangements on a high quality code base is what everyone I know wants to do....

</comment><comment><USER88> And here I am, 1 day after a presentation in front of the entire company, about pretty much the same topic.

Had I known about this article earlier, the execution would have been so much different (the presentation was terribad but whatever, I had good intentions). And the response would have been much better too (it's still very good, but I don't know whether that's good enough to push other people forward).

Regardless, thank you for posting this. The article and most of the comments in here echo my thoughts.

</comment><comment> c-smile Management is an art of creating motivations to your subordinates. An art, sic!

Each of us is different. Of course we can draw charts outlining average patients temperature in a hospital... with the same informational value.

I wish all of us to experience joy from what we are doing. Let it be in the number of happy members of your team, beauty of your code, amount of salary you bring to your family … It can really be anything. Just keep your mind out of Procrustean bed of common stereotypes.

</comment><comment><USER89> My main motivator, "close collaboration within the team", didn't even make the list.

Wonder what were the choices on offer in the survey ?

</comment><comment><USER90> Very interesting that women consistently rate salary as a lower priority and w/l balance as a higher priority than men.

</comment><comment><USER91> Interesting that Salary is the second most important. I think there might be an explanation for this.

I've always interpreted "Personal Growth" as basically meaning "I'll have a higher salary in the future". So perhaps "Salary" is still the main motivator.

</comment><comment><USER92> Off topic: this company's advertising on Reddit is beyond annoying. Has anyone else experienced this?

</comment><comment><USER93> Isn't this conclusion only natural? It baffles me that so many people responsible for companies don't understand basic human needs and instead blindly follow trends. I just don't get business stuff.

</comment><comment><USER94> Apparently no one is motivated by social or environmental impact

<comment><USER95> I think many people are, but it's not something that can be put first in your decision making process unless you are already successful.

If you're financially unstable, paying down student debt, etc., it becomes much harder to justify picking a lower-paying job that is more personally motivating if you have other options on the table.

<comment><USER94> I agree with you, but that's ultimately what this survey is about - how you weigh salary against professional growth, autonomy etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER96> Women value good code-bases more than men. Very interesting.

<comment><USER97> Of course they do... whose house do you expect to be tidier, an average woman's or an average man's?

<comment><USER98> I do not have anything to support it, but I think if you will be able to make such a study comparing women-into-programming vs men-into-programming there might be no difference in cleanness of one's house.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> Do they want to "grow" or just want to deploy shiny projects that showed on HN last week?

</comment><comment><USER100> seems an odd title to the article given the analysis of "great" and "best" engineers where they highlight other factors as being more important?

</comment><comment><USER101> Growth = new skills

New skills = more money

More money = better life

</comment><comment><USER102> I think this means we have to address some potentially specious statistical reasoning here. Assuming that a point cloud of pre transaction questions gives you the information to ascertain the career trajectory between great engineers and the "best" engineers is likely a fool's errand. What's the data source? Is it your technical screen? If there is any possibility that your technical screen doesn't track reality accurately, then your ranking metric is probabilistically very likely to be inaccurate. This is the risk of trying to quantify skill and potential levels before you try to qualify them properly. Most recruiting platforms work on a transaction processing fee on a per placement basis. Triplebyte is no different. The entire product is set up for a candidate to land a job. It is not set up for a candidate to structure and guide their entire career. The simple way to think of a transaction is as a point: point score on an assessment test, point score on a technical screen, point offer extended or not. You see these things being measured in this blog post, but that doesn't tell the full story to a hiring manager. If you're hiring an engineer that's actually growth oriented, you care about looking at the first and second order derivatives of all of these things, and you'll see them on a project to project basis, or on a person to person basis based on how they interact with their team and other teams.

I want to repeat myself and restate that most recruiting platforms work on a transaction processing fee on a per placement basis. It's erroneous to try and draw the wrong kind of conclusions from data points gathered from enabling this transaction, especially when it's just 1. When a candidate receives multiple offers that they're interested in, it's very likely that they'll make a holistic judgment based on a combination of factors, and their gut. Is the company "good" or "sketchy?" Do they feel chemistry with the people they'll be working with? Are they stimulated by the work the team will be doing over the next year? The truth is, for most talented engineers at early stage companies, any company that makes a desirable product and has substantial growth left in building and scaling its product will allow for growth in literal terms. The limiting factors there will likely be the team, if anything. If there's juice left to be squeezed from building further product edge, and the team is good, the org is good, and the leadership is good, it's very likely that an engineer will receive more than one opportunity that is "good enough" \-- good enough for them to exercise the upper limits on how far they can grow.

It's easy to pay lip service to offering growth, but it's hard to actually do. In many cases, companies shouldn't be trying to offer that with a straight face. In growth stage startups, growth as an engineer is bound to the combination of the growth of the company and the growth of the product. In most cases, if you want to hire any kinds of the best employees, you need to offer growth. But, your business model, company growth and stage of company and culture all have to offer that. That's the hard part. It's something that needs to come from the executive level as well as good timing and a ton of foundational work.

If you can offer growth, that's great. It will make it easy to hire the best. But, most companies are not in the position, and the ones that are certainly don't need this advice. So, this isn't really useful. Offering growth is not something you can turn on and off. You need to build a great company and build a great product that people want and which a great business can or is built around. If you can do that, expanding the engineering team becomes a matter of logistics instead of intractables.

I think TripleByte is a great idea, and it's at an interesting point right now. But to use your data to answer this question requires looking at things longitudinally, and that could be hard unless TripleByte becomes more of a career management platform as well as a two sided hiring marketplace. Having used Hired, Angellist and TripleByte before on both sides, I'm definitely really curious about seeing where things evolve.

</comment><comment><USER103> nuff said

</comment><comment><USER104> Hire database developers.</comment>


NBC's broken Olympic coverage - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2010/02/nbcs_olympic_coverage_manages.html?sc=fb&cc=fp

<comment><USER2> One of the comments at the NPR site suggested the IOC not have an exclusive broadcast partner and just open it up for everyone to cover it as they'd like. I think that this is interesting, but hardly a way to fund an event as massive as the Olympics. In order to any changes to work, you'd have to be able to make up the $800+ million NBC ponied up for the games.

So, here's an idea: why not let others (even competitors) bid on individual events. This could work from either the IOC doing to brokering or even NBC itself.

So, for example, if another network wanted to broadcast the USA/Canada hockey game, they could have bid for the rights to show either that game, or all of hockey. I'm sure that would be worth something. Why should a large part of the country have to miss out on a great event, just because NBC decided to show ice dancing?

Split the games up into smaller biddable packages, and I'm sure you'd end up with as much, if not more, revenue for the IOC, and more people could get to see a greater variety of events. Imagine if ABC/CBS/NBC/Fox/ESPN were all showing a part of the Olympics? Wouldn't this be more in the spirit? You'd get a greater variety of events and more depth in individual events.

<comment><USER3> To build off of your idea, what if the IOC had their own camera crews that would cover the live events and rather than bidding out the events? They could license access to the raw footage to buyers (i.e. NBC/ABC/ESPN) who would then choose how to use the footage as well as applying their own commentators and technologies (such as scores, replays, etc.).

Seems like the IOC would benefit from licensing to all the different networks, the networks would all benefit from being able to carry the olympics, and the people would benefit from the competition between the networks to provide better replays/commentary/analysis.

<comment><USER4> This is pretty much what happens.

There's an IOC subsidiary called Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS), which has crews/cameras/directors at every session of every event. If you're watching an event happen (as opposed to an interview), there's a 99% chance it's coming from an OBS camera. If the shot is coming from a site-specific camera - like the track-side camera at speedskating or the overhead curling shots - it is coming from an OBS camera. OBS cameras are the only ones allowed to go into the field of play; all other cameras have to stay on specified media risers outside the competition area.

When you watch an event on CTV, you're actually watching the OBS feed (with OBS graphics) overlaid with a CTV-supplied commentary track - the only sound OBS supplies is the ambient environmental ones, and it doesn't cut to any interviews or anything. Those of you who watched the Beijing Olympics on the CBC website may recall that there were eight or nine feeds available, but only one of which had CBC commentary. The commentary-free ones (which also didn't have commercial breaks or explanations) were the raw OBS feeds, without any additional CBC editing/directing.

When a broadcaster pays for exclusive national rights to the Olympics, one of the main things they're paying for is exclusive access to the OBS feeds. As for why they don't sell that feed to multiple networks? I assume they've worked the math and determined that they'll make more money by selling it exclusively, as opposed to cooperatively.

<comment><USER5> I assume that they haven't worked the math. I assume they are doing it that way because they've always done things that way, and that is what everyone expects them to do.

But if they went and looked at economic theory they would find that the expected price of a bundle is always less than the sum of the prices of the individual things that are part of that bundle. So theory says that selling things piecemeal should result in more revenue.

In the case of the Olympics you would do that by selling off sports one by one. If NBC values speed skating and skiing, let them have it. If CBS wants hockey, let them have it. If ESPN is willing to buy biathlon, let them have it. Any sports not purchased wholesale can be negotiated during the Olympics. So if nobody buys bobsleigh but an interesting story there happens, they sell the story just like any other story of interest gets sold.

A lot of paperwork, and a shift in mindset, but they should get more money that way. And interested viewers would get better coverage of a broader range of sports.

<comment><USER6> > _the expected price of a bundle is always less than the sum of the prices of > the individual things_

This also goes for viewers though. If in order to watch the 4 events that I want I have to buy 2 separate bundles then the bundled price of those 4 events, for me, is greater.

<comment><USER5> Actually not. Economic theory says that most consumers will spend less for what they get and get greater value for their money if they buy equivalent services piecemeal. The reason is simple, when you buy a bundle you get a mix of things you want and things you don't. You therefore are willing to pay the sum of the values of things you want. But once you have purchased the bundle the marginal cost of consumption goes down and you will use things out of the bundle that would not be worth your while to buy piecemeal.

However in practice consumers do not want the hassle and prefer bundles. Vendors like bundles as well because they provide a convenient way to get people to try things they wouldn't otherwise try.

However in this case bundle versus piecemeal is not the appropriate comparison. The problem now is that one vendor buys the entire feed, and then doesn't offer all of it. If it was sold piecemeal to different vendors, then you'd have the option of watching everything, including things like hockey that are not currently being shown. And for avid sport watchers the extra cost is nothing for the simple reason that you probably have already purchased a bundle from the cable company that gives you most of the likely channels on which things you want will be there. The result then for the end consumer is that the Olympics are on more channels with greater variety, and therefore people will get to watch more of what they want. The additional people in the seats will result in more eyes for advertiser dollars, and everyone is happier.

Incidentally there is an interesting fact about selling services piecemeal versus bundling. If two vendors compete in the same market with those strategies economic theory predicts a nasty price war until one is driven out. See <http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/price.war.pdf> for the gory details.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have been cursing at NBC for their screwed up coverage for a week. It is really really bad.

Did you know for example that they have a channel called Universal sports that is owned by NBC and that is an over the air and cable channel that broadcasts nothing but sports. You would think that would be the perfect place to broadcast the olympic games. You know what they broadcast? They broadcast winter sports, but not the olympics. Instead, they have replays of winter sports events that happened months ago. So for example, while the men's downhill was happening and it was not being broadcast live by any NBC channel, that universal sports channel was showing an old replay of another men's downhill that was not an olympic event (it was part of the world cup circuit and happened several months ago). While the US women hockey team was playing without being broadcast anywhere, the universal sports channel was broadcasting a fricking documentary about the US women's hockey team.

I mean it is as if they intentionally want to piss me off.

Oh and dont get me started on primetime. First of all they take up half an hour of prime time coverage with a show that is about the olympics but does not feature any olympic sports. Instead it is a freaking infomercial about Vancouver and british columbia, and various random products, restaurants, that may have a minor connection to the olympics. So NBC is broadcasting infomercials in prime time that is how far they have fallen.

The actual sports coverage is so badly presented that you always know who is going to win the race before hand. That is because the idiot commentators are not commenting live, they know what happened and they just keep talking about the people that they know are going to win. And they usually put in a human interest story about the athlete that is about to win. So why watch the race?

Here is a piece of advice to nbc execs -- the main reason I watch sports at all is because sports are NOT predictable.

So yes, in general it is not surprising at all that these are the same TV execs that thought up the entire Leno Connan fiasco.

</comment><comment><USER8> I was amazed that NBC shuttled the Canada/US hockey game to their SD cable news station. I remember watching some guys skiing with guns, and shooting at stuff... I guess, in HD, then having to switch over to SD to watch the only game anyone I knew actually gave a crap about. What a joke. But, I'm a Canadian, so I guess at least I didn't have to watch them lose in more resolution.

<comment><USER2> That royally pissed me off. Why did I have to watch the one game that I cared about in standard def? At least they could have moved it to CNBC, which was broadcasting curling in HD.

<comment><USER9> Hey I very much have enjoyed the curling matches this year :)

I didn't get to see the hockey game though.

<comment><USER2> I have too... especially streaming online. I just didn't think that it was a good call to have curling in HD and hockey in SD.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The events shown on NBC are so heavily edited, overproduced and filled with backstory glurge, it is like watching a made-for-tv movie _about_ the olympics instead of the olympics themselves. Bah.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is one the primary reasons I have not watched anything sports related on NBC for a long time. The rah-rah, the overly obsessive coverage of only US players and related history, the focus on all the wrong parts of the games, I can (with great effort) tolerate. But once you add the absolutely useless and inane commentary and the tendency to shove the schedule on me, I prefer to switch to other sources and I strongly recommend that to as many people as I can (while trying not to be a grouch).

This was done to such a degree during the last FIFA world cup that I chose to watch it in Univision even though the only two words I understood were pelota and goal. And even that was oodles better than NBC. I wish I could stream CBC from somewhere or at least pay for coverage that just keeps the damn commentators quite unless absolutely necessary. Unfortunately AFAIK the way the whole thing is setup, there really is no choice in the matter.

<comment><USER12> I was following the 2002 World Cup fairly closely and watched on Univision for a different (but related) reason: they actually broadcast the games when they happened. 4 in the morning? No problem. There was no question of knowing the results before the broadcast, which was already eight years ago a typical problem for those of us with decent internet connectivity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is pretty much the exact problem we're having here in Australia. We get 3 hours of coverage a day at 9am, which is summarised further and shown at 9.30pm. They only show us events that Australians appear in and barely show the rest. I think they showed about 5 minutes total of that USA vs CA hockey match in our prime time.

We have a 'pay tv' network which has 4 channels dedicated to Olympic coverage, and it costs $65 extra for the privilege.

<comment><USER14> Try <http://media.olympics.com.au/>.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> _Let us put aside for a moment the rah-rah, "Go Team USA" focus of the NBC coverage that often bugs viewers who would like a more global view of the Olympics._

That was the first sentence, and they lost me right there.

The first night I watched they went on and on (and on) for so long about _how absolutely desperate Canada was to win a gold_ (and on and on) I thought I was viewing Canadian TV. Later they showed the mogul skiing event (I believe it was) and were so focused on the fact that a Canadian had won gold that they never even mentioned how the US skier did. Only later did I find out he took bronze.

<comment><USER16> Agreed—I've watched many events, shown in their entirety, where the US (and often Canada) were not even factors. E.g. just recently I've seen multiple biathlon and cross country skiing events where Europeans dominate. There's cursory mention of an American back in 20th or so, but for the most part the coverage is focused on leaders. And these are long races too.

It sounds like the author was just mad that the US-Canada hockey game was pushed to MSNBC. I would have loved to have seen that game in HD on the main NBC, but that's a long way from the coverage being "broken".

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> _West-coast residents have been particularly incensed that they wait an additional three hours after the East coast gets whatever "live" coverage there actually is in prime time, even though they are in the time zone where the Olympics actually are. What this means is that even if NBC is showing "live" coverage of its big events in New York, which is across the continent from Vancouver, it delays them three hours for Seattle, which is less than three hours south of Vancouver._

Is there a business reason for giving the East coast preferential treatment West coast events and vice versa?

<comment><USER18> _Is there a business reason for giving the East coast preferential treatment West coast events and vice versa?_

It's not preferential treatment per se (east coast is seeing taped events as well), it's just that most people aren't home from work yet at 5pm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Thank goodness I'm in Canada.

We have three channels that are broadcasting the Olympics probably 12-16 hours a day. And it's not just because they're in Canada this year, it's pretty standard to have great coverage.

I remember being in the US during the Atlanta Olympics and couldn't believe that they were only shown for a few hours a day with limited events.

<comment><USER20> I'm glad it turned out nicely for you guys, given that the Olympics are in your backyard. I would've liked CBC to have Olympic coverage though, as it's the only Canadian channel broadcast in the Seattle/Puget Sound area. I could've then watched the US vs Canada hockey game yesterday, given my lack of MSNBC.

<comment><USER21> We've got three channels broadcasting, but not a one of them is as good as CBC. Hopefully this is the last Olympics CTV ever gets. :|

<comment><USER19> Yeah, I prefer CBC as well. CTV just paid more money for this package being that it was more lucrative with them being in Canada. I think the IOC sells the TV rights as a package for both summer and winter. So if you want the winter, you have to buy the following summer. If that's right, CTV will probably be broadcasting the London games.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If you are in Europe, you can access all the OBS live feeds, highlights, as well as all the stations broadcasting the event (bbc, ard, zdf, etc..) for free here: <http://www.eurovisionsports.tv/olympics/>

<comment><USER23> Anyone tried setting up a VPN server ( as a sort of proxy ) in Europe to stream the coverage to the states ( for personal use of course )?

I might try this later, if it works I'll report back.

EDIT: I got it working, the location I am right now has less than 1Mbps down so I cant tell if the lag is due to the VPN and the distance or the BW limitation. In a little bit I'll be home and I can test with a better connection (8Mbps)

<comment><USER23> Just got home and I have to say that it works great if you have a decent connection! I can even watch the 'HD' version.

<comment><USER22> There was already a site for the summer games in China, so I expect there will be a site for the summer games in London as well!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm not quite sure I understand everyones frustration. Why don't people just watch whatever events they want whenever they want online (it's all available there for free and with fewer commercials).

<comment><USER25> Because watching it on my computer isn't nearly as easy (stuttering, finding URLs, downloading players), convenient, relaxing, or high quality as sitting on my couch while watching an HD broadcast on my 50" LCD.

<comment><USER24> Easy, convenient: In the past I would have agreed with you. But by far, this year's olympics online broadcast has been very well managed. High quality with little to no stuttering (even for live events), content well organized and timely (replay of complete event available only minutes after they are complete).

As for the couch and large TV aspect, I suppose I would have to agree with you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've only been watching the curling, and as a Canadian living in America I _was_ annoyed by the lack of diversity in coverage, but it sounds like in some of the other events it's much worse.

<comment><USER2> You can watch most (all?) of the curling events live on the nbcolympics.com website. I've usually had a curling or hockey game streaming while at work for the past week.

One annoying thing about that though: you have to subscribe to a cable or satellite service in order to actually view it. Why should NBC care if I have DirecTV or not? It also requires Silverlight, which begs the question: why aren't they using Hulu for this?

<comment><USER27> I have the HD only programming from Dish Network. Even though I get CNBC and MSNBC, that doesn't count in NBC's eyes, so I can't watch live coverage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Is it particularly surprising that a company broadcasting primarily to the USA would focus more on its participants? For the average American watching sports they know little about, with participants they've never heard of, it helps if there is _something_ they can grab onto to maintain interest, such as rooting for their home country.

With that said, the other complaints this article raises I agree with.

</comment><comment><USER29> Reading through these commends, it seems like us people in Malaysia have it better than you guys in the US. I've been a bit disappointed with all the attention paid to Ice Skating/Dancing etc. but for the most part, they've (ESPN) shown a good mix of the events going on in Vancouver.

</comment><comment><USER30> If you are able to access the CTV webplayer from the US, I definitely suggest it. It has to be the best live web player I have ever seen.</comment>


Ask HN: Balancing project timelines with a small team - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/dT4wn4is <comment><USER2> It sounds to me like sales is future-selling, or selling dev time when you actually don't have the time to be sold. I would advise having clear discussions with sales and management levels, to identify the goals of your team and the company.

If the best thing for the company is to do this 1-off consulting work (from what I gather, that's what it is), then you may be surprised to find that's what you're doing exclusively. If the best thing is to improve the core product offering (my vote), then you should not do these 1-offs at all.

It all starts with clear communication between departments. I would say it's less about your team, and more about what your team is tasked to do against your will.

<comment><USER2> Also, if your team and you aren't bought into the timelines, you won't hit them. Buy-in across the entire team is very important.</comment></comment>


Seattle angel investor says few investors add value (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.capitalandgrowth.org/jon-staenberg/ <comment><USER2> "Yeah, it pretty simple. If it is hard to raise money figure out how you don't have to—get to profitability.

That discipline is healthy. There are very few companies that have the hyper- growth that allows them to forgo profitability in the short-term and everyone wrongly assumes those examples are the norm, whether it's a Facebook or a YouTube."

I think more Silicon Valley CEOs need to internalize this. They may have heard it, but from the looks of it, they have not internalized it.

<comment><USER3> It depends on your team/product. Are they going to build, max, a 1B business? Sure, than 10x is fine. Do they have potential for a 10B - 100B business? Than 100x return makes sense, because land grab and consolidation will likely be an aspect of the business - which requires significant capital and therefore returns.

<comment><USER4> As OP said, very few companies are in this realm. While many people assume this is the status-quo, it's not anymore.

<comment><USER5> If this were true, YC's batch sizes would be getting smaller, since they only invest in companies that could become as big as Airbnb or Dropbox. But the batches are getting bigger.

Maybe this is true for investors outside of YC's deal flow, though. That would have some interesting implications.

<comment><USER6> I think they do this to maximize the surface area for success. Investing in more companies but keeping the bar high, increases the likelihood of finding the AirBnBs and DropBoxs. After all, the cost of funding each company is miniscule in the grand scheme of things.

<comment><USER5> True, but the assertion was that nowadays very few companies are capable of reaching Airbnb-size valuations. YC is probably far more qualified to judge this than we are, and since their batches are getting bigger, the assertion seems false.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > That's what everyone says but how many 100x's are there really? I've been > doing this a long time and there just aren't that many.

> I don't have the same pressures of a fund in liquidity, timing or the need > for 100x returns. If I can consistently get 5x to 10x I'd take that all day > long.

How many investors, angels, VCs or otherwise, focus on the 5x-10x return deals?

And are 5x-10x deals safer, meaning that more of a sure thing, than the 100x deals in terms of return? I.e. are VCs being rational by focusing on the 100x deals since 5x-10x deals aren't safer, or are they forgoing safer and better returns of the 5x-10x for the chance to become movers and shakers of the largest players?

<comment><USER8> I've asked a VC this question before. They said that in theory going after 5-10x returns sounds great but in practice no successful VC firms use this strategy. They all make their money from the few who "return the fund".

<comment><USER9> Well, I tend to think of VC's as investors who target insane growth companies so that kind of makes sense.

One of my good friends works in private equity and their investment targets are 100% focused on small banks who return an average of 2-5x.

Not quite the 5-10x returns but they have much higher success rates.

<comment><USER10> A friend of mine who graduated with honors from an Ivy econ program moved to Palo Alto and went into PE. I asked him why he didn't go into VC in the heart of venture capital.

He replied that PE was as close as you could get to formulaically printing money while seed-stage (and even later) VC was more like splattering paint at a wall and seeing what sticks, and that the former suited his personality better.

An interesting comparison; food for thought.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've heard the phrase "keep me updated" before ;) Perhaps they don't want to give honest feedback in case they later turn out to be wrong and want in?

<comment><USER12> That phrase is VC talk for no.

<comment><USER13> To the point of the sibling comment, I think "no, at this time" is more accurate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> 10x means much lower probability of failure in order to get any ROI at all. Failure, sadly, is a lot harder to avoid than founders and VCs would like. 100x means the overwhelming majority of investments can fail and you still make out like a bandit.

</comment><comment><USER15> > I've been doing this long enough to know that the next big thing won't > happen as quickly as people expect. I am therefore willing to forgo those > 100x returns and get 10x on things that are more certain and nearer term.

If only more founders thought like this too.

<comment><USER16> Who considers 10x settling?

<comment><USER10> Institutions whose portfolio economics demand 1000x returns or bust.

And also some of the individuals (angels) investing alongside the above institutions.

<comment><USER17> That's some really dumb money if it needs 1000x returns somewhere to beat index funds.

<comment><USER10> Hey - when the median return of an investment in a VC portfolio is 0, that alpha has to come from somewhere.

And you know what? It's a valid strategy for those with the skill (or luck) to execute repeatedly. Sequoia earns their 3 and 30, or however much they charge.

All I'm saying is that when a company takes VC funding, the goal of the VCs can override the goals of earlier, individually less powerful investors (i.e. the angels). So while an early angel might be fine/thrilled with a 10x exit, the VC might not be because their risk/reward profile differs from the angel. Thus, when investing in companies intending to seek venture capital, one must be aware of the high payout, low odds bet into which they are entering.

Of course, there are ways to mitigate this like secondary market liquidity or institutional investors buying stock from earlier angels as part of a round. But the point still stands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Money is plentiful.

The core, unscalable challenge is finding smart and motivated investors whom can add value.

For example, take Raj Parekh:

\- nice guy

\- hustler's hustler

\- can act as anything from investor to sales to VP, without getting too bossy, just unblocks problems and moves forward

\- knows the enteprise space

That's the ideal investor:

competent, helpful, humane, relentlessly resourceful and generally willing to roll up sleeves as an equal part of the team.</comment>


Realistic Looking CSS3 Buttons - <AUTHOR> http://somadesign.ca/blog/design/2010/realistic-looking-css3-buttons/

<comment><USER2> These are pretty, but I don't see the realism. They look massively simplified and I struggle to imagine the light sources and geometry that these represent.

Maybe "very pretty" CSS3 buttons?</comment>


Show HN: DropZap World beta video with gameplay shown in an accelerating way - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8fI1LkDZxc <comment><AUTHOR> To beta test it on iOS and/or tvOS, please email firstname.lastname@example.com.

Any feedback would be appreciated.</comment>


Procedurally generating a narrative in Forest of Sleep - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/259455/Procedurally_generating_a_narrative_in_Forest_of_Sleep.php <comment><AUTHOR> OP here. I've been thinking a lot about procedural content, from maps, to level design, to assets. What seems to be missing are core mechanics around storytelling, narrative, tension/release, etc. Basically good storytelling.

Today, we do have frameworks for : the basic categories of movie plots, understanding game mechanics, understanding goal-seeking behavior (in terms of driving stories and plots forward), and recent developments in generative deep learning.

Seems like an area ripe for innovation. For example, while you can build a large proc gen game like No Man's Sky, it lacks a certain element of game play (which I distill down into: lack of compelling story and mechanics). As we get closer to metaverse-like worlds in VR, it is inevitable that we will need to innovate on compelling, procedurally-generated storylines. (Of course, these might shift based on modality... e.g. VR vs. 2d content)

Would love to hear any experience / research others have had in this area of procedurally-generated storytelling.</comment>