Create WordPress sites like a professional without code. - <AUTHOR> http://themeyourself.com/

<comment><USER2> You're in the business of making people money. Charge more. Anchor pricing against top-line premium themes ($70~$200+) or hiring a pro to skin one (thousands).

Also, just based on the position on the page of your product offering and some language you used, I think you desperately need someone to give you permission to make money in return for the value you have created. I struggled with this six years ago. So, karmic balance: it is _totally OK for you to make money_. You can put a prominent buy link near the top and write sales copy that doesn't sound like you think you are cheating people. It's OK! Folks buy stuff all the time! We like buying stuff! Also, many of the folks buying this will be business users. Even the least sophisticated businesses are systems which turn money into money by buying things, most of which will not make money into money nearly as nicely as your software will.

<comment><USER3> Agreed -- the free or $29 price made me think this software wasn't going to be good. If it actually does what you say it does, you definitely need to charge more and the free version (if there is one) should be much more limited.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I make Wordpress websites for a living and trust me, you cannot, I repeat, cannot make Wordpress websites without writing code. At least, professional websites for which you charge money.

Nice how this is added to the bottom of the home page:

"Do you need customization services? Ok, you can hire me!".

I.e. When code needs to be written...

<comment><USER2> There is a thriving industry of premium WordPress themes, many of which will be deployed without code edits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hi! congratulations for the wonderful work, it's really an awesome theme :)

about the premium version: i would try testing various prices to find the optimal point. Try doing some a/b testing on the price and find the best (this is the only price strategy that i would recommend anyway) and playing with the keywords in your adwords ads.

another thing to think about are multiple premium levels, i would add some "premium" feats like: _A/B testing_ Mailchimp integration _Kissmetrics integration_ Gamification features (badges,goals...) _Filesharing integration_ paypal backed e-commerce _shopping cart_ a special stategic dashboard (that for example tracks your klout score )

and ask more money for that (or ask on a per feat base or make segmented versions for different user needs).

I will add Enterprise level, you just throw in telephonic support or basic customization and charge 500$ (test for it!) for that and you can do this right NOW :)

One more thing: there exists this curious psychological effect by which most people will stick with the middle and more conservative choice, so if you have a basic/premium/full offer, most (paying)customers will buy the middle one. One strategy that won't hurt and is plain simple to adopt is just to add another, top of the line, version to drive attention up to the full offer.

my 2 cents. Diego

</comment><comment><USER6> Not bad, but I would definately include an above the fold premium vs free button for sales.</comment>


Religious Service Attendance and Deaths Related to Drugs, Alcohol, and Suicide - <AUTHOR> https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2765488 <comment><USER2> I don't think so

<comment><USER3> You don't think what? You don't think religious attendance, or non, is correlated with deaths of despair? Why not?</comment></comment>


Ghost: $411k Annual Revenue with a team of 6 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ghost.org/april-2015-update/ <comment><USER2> A lot of hate for ghost here but I'm a paying subscriber and love it. Building a custom theme is really easy (found it much more pleasant than WP) and they give you enough hooks in to the core engine to largely achieve whatever design you need.

The interface and post editor is a piece of cake to use. The only bit that I think still needs work is the separate account management interface - lots of room to improve the UX.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, they're sticking to their core strength, and I feel are executing their vision quite well. It's depressing to see snide comments about both the company and the amount of money they're making.

Some people have a completely unrealistic view of how much money is needed to run a company outside of SV/how much money is needed to live more or less worry free. Considering the revenue, and living outside of bubbly salary areas (John O'Nolan lives in Egypt for example), they're all living a comfortable life on their current paychecks, and as the revenue continues to grow, it's only going to get better. They aren't beholden to anyone, run a successful open source business and are growing nicely every month. If that's not a great story, I don't know what is.

As a reality check for SV folk, according to their report on how they spent their Kickstarter money ([http://blog.ghost.org/year-2/](http://blog.ghost.org/year-2/)), their gross starting salaries were 4500 $ per person (18k for 4 people). Warm word of advice, spend time in other cultures :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I will be honest. I use ghost as my blogging platform for about a year, and in comparison to wordpress... it just doesn't hold up. Everything from stuff as big as upgrading, mid range as plugins, and even simple things like spell check were overlooked (at least in the version I have). It kind of reminds me of the Pepsi Vs. Coke test. Went to it for that initial appeal of simplicity.. and now am very dissatisfied due to how much its lacking.

<comment><USER5> > Went to it for that initial appeal of simplicity.. and now am very > dissatisfied due to how much its lacking.

I am reminded of (but unable to find...) the Joel on Software essay that noted that it's always trivial to write simple, unbloated software, until people realise that they all have a different, lightly overlapping 10% of features that they need.

<comment><USER6> People only use 20% of the features of an app. The problem is that everyone uses a different 20%.

<comment><USER7> Sounds good but it's not true.

Most people use the same basic features -- let's say they use 18% of same stuff, and 2% of more unique to them features.

The rise of "lightweight" apps that tons of people use has proven that taking out the bloat is possible for most people (e.g. casual users can work with Pixelmator or Acorn just fine, don't need Photoshop).

<comment><USER8> Totally depends on the particular software and the market it serves. Mass market stuff I think lends well to simplified designs.

Vertical market software tends to have very specific requirements which are unfortunately not agreed upon by all of the big players in the industry. So you can simplify it, but if your software doesn't support X, Y and Z then you can't sign Corporation Foo. And you start getting feature requests (er, orders some might say) from your bigger clients who are paying for thousands of subscriptions/licenses. But Corporation Bar doesn't like that - so it has to go in as an option/preference. Repeat this process for about 5 years and you have what appears to be a bloated piece of software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is from April 2015. Latest figures are here:

[http://blog.ghost.org/august-2015-update/](http://blog.ghost.org/august-2015-update/)

<comment><USER10> Better yet, live stats are here: [https://ghost.baremetrics.com](https://ghost.baremetrics.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> That seems rather disappointing considering the amount of hype the project got with the kickstarter, and then launch, etc.

I've played around with an install and ran a blog on it for a bit, and was never too impressed. The functionality and features all seem simplistic (Which isn't a bad thing in itself), but made me wonder why I had to download what felt like hundreds of packages with npm when I installed it.

Even with all of the features they promised in the kickstarter that have now been cut, I never quite understood why they needed so much funding to create the project.

I hope they are able to do better in the future, if only to have a good alternative to WordPress, and to maybe deliver on things that they have shelved.

Edit: Looks like ghost has 38 direct dependencies in NPM, of which many have their own dependencies, etc.

<comment><USER12> Coincidentally , this week, I made a post on how to setup your Ghost on AWS , including all the gotchas.

[https://twitter.com/craftfortress/status/635555503905603585](https://twitter.com/craftfortress/status/635555503905603585)

Unlike you (with respect to your opinion), I found it to be absolutely perfect. I am surprised they don't make more revenue.

EDIT> Just to add more information regarding how Ghost stacks up against other free alternatives for Blogging Coders:

Jekyll

I tried Jekyll with skeleton. Very easy installation onto github, and the fact username.github.com automatically links to your blog is great. The downside is ofcourse you have to install a them for it to be usable, and perhaps for many , having your blog edits in your official github account, may not be perfect.

Medium

I also tried medium but I did not like:

1) The constant modals asking you to log in

2) The fact Medium posts are automatically negatively ranked by HN

<comment><USER13> Just an FYI, you don't have to use Jekyll with github. The integration seems convenient, but I run it on its own to build my static site (blog) on my own domain.

<comment><USER14> You can use your own domain with GitHub Pages [https://help.github.com/articles/setting-up-a-custom- domain-...](https://help.github.com/articles/setting-up-a-custom-domain-with- github-pages/).

<comment><USER13> Wasn't suggesting otherwise, just trying to be clear that you can (and I do) use Jekyll on its own to build a site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> $411K annual revenue with a team of 6? $68.5K per employee? And that's revenue, not income?

Don't quit your day job.

<comment><USER16> Holy entitlement batman! I'm sure there are plenty of people toiling away at startups making less than this!

<comment><USER17> Aren't those other startups _also_ not healthy businesses? Where does entitlement come into the picture?

<comment><USER18> It depends what your definition of "healthy" is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Regardless of whether you feel these numbers are "impressive" or not, this kind of financial transparency is amazing and exceedingly rare. Kudos to the team, I personally use Ghost for my blog and love it.

( Also the quoted number is from April here is the latest [https://ghost.baremetrics.com](https://ghost.baremetrics.com) )

</comment><comment> martin-adams Very interesting looking at their live stats: [https://ghost.baremetrics.com/](https://ghost.baremetrics.com/)

I noticed they had 654 failed charges, and over 4,133 customers, that's 15.8%. That's around $6,200 of revenue they failed to collect first time each month - basically, a whole person's salary.

<comment><USER20> Does anyone know how that compares to other services?

<comment><USER21> Yeah, so I run [http://churnbuster.io/](http://churnbuster.io/) where we help a lot of companies with this exact issue. As a rule of thumb we would typically expect about 10% of initial charge attempts to fail for a B2B business, and it wouldn't be abnormal to see 15-20% for a B2C business. It's a huge problem, and that's even on a best-of-breed payment processor that provides automatic card updating in the background.

For anyone interested in digging in deeper on some of the lessons we've learned, I posted a bunch of thoughts on Quora earlier this year: [http://qr.ae/RFWy23](http://qr.ae/RFWy23) . Otherwise, feel free to reach out to me directly at email@example.com .

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Ghost was one of the most disingenuous kickstarters I've ever seen: the features that got people excited got cut pretty much right away, showing that the team was never serious about it. The blog itself came to light with some heinous overlooked areas in the user management, stuff that nobody has any right to get wrong in this day and age.

My personal opinion after being a user for a while is that we need less of this kind of projects (a LOT less) and more quality software.

<comment><USER23> >the features that got people excited got cut pretty much right away //

Could you, or anyone else, expand on this point - what features particularly?

<comment><USER11> The dashboard was one of the biggest selling points.

[https://ksr-ugc.imgix.net/assets/000/511/606/53cb7cffa27c89a...](https://ksr- ugc.imgix.net/assets/000/511/606/53cb7cffa27c89a43bc91b40f604f7e2_original.jpg?v=1365807289&w=680&fit=max&auto=format&q=92&s=589b58b93da4ba8f96ddef9d9c1483b8)

>Ghost grabs all the important data about your blog and pulls it into one place, so you can see it all together. No more clicking through tens of browser tabs to view your traffic, social media subscriptions, content performance or news feeds. Drag and drop the widgets most important to you into your own custom dashboard, and stay on top of your blog's performance.

Considering how important social media is for blog growth, this was a really exciting prospect for people. Being able to see all of the details on how your content was doing there, growth figures, etc.

It got completely cut.

<comment><USER24> I run Ghost self-hosted, and have been pretty happy with it. If you watch the progress on the next big release ("Zelda") you can see that the dashboard is floating around in there, e.g. [https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=da...](https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=dashboard&type=Code)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> That is pretty awesome, if they can keep it lean and treble their subscriber base they could likely become operationally cash flow positive. I built a blog using their stuff, after getting to know Handlebars is was pretty straight forward, and I really like that in 'production' mode it is essentially a static page (so easy to serve lots of variable bandwidth with nginx). Haven't deployed it yet though because, well it got to be 90% done and then ... ooh shiny!

</comment><comment><USER26> This seems like a good case for keeping your team size small. Those sort of numbers split two ways instead of six would turn this into a huge win. Hopefully they'll keep ramping upwards and find ways to avoid adding any more headcount to dip into the pie.

This also seems like a great market to have jumped on, and I'm kicking myself for not having done so. Blogger used to offer essentially this same product: Easy editing tools with FTP export so you could host raw HTML cheaply instead of having to deal with keeping a LAMP box alive to run Wordpress. But they killed it off and left a huge hole in the market that sat vacant for years before these guys stepped in to fill it.

Nice work.

<comment><USER27> Huge win except each would be doing 3x the work or more. That's not sustainable, speaking from experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think it's fair to point out they are a Not for Profit Organization: [https://ghost.org/about/contact/](https://ghost.org/about/contact/)

</comment><comment><USER29> They don't seem to be making a lot, considering all the hype surrounding Ghost for the last year or more.

I am using Ghost (self hosted) for my blog and find it brilliant but I think the ecosystem needs more time to develop and sustain itself. So the jury is still out I guess...

</comment><comment><USER30> $411k isn't impressive and it isn't sad either. To me that sounds about right for a team of 6 just getting started. I'm sure that won't support the salaries those people could get in the valley.

<comment><USER31> Yes, but they have to make 50-100% more to live in the Valley vs. an average CoL area. I'm not sure they'd make more than $90-$120k in the Valley.

<comment><USER32> There are no experienced engineers in the SFBA working for $90k unless they're choosing alternate comp over base salary. Most internships pay more than that on an annualized basis nowadays.

But you may know something I don't about these roles, they may not all be engineers?

<comment><USER31> Given they can pick the location they live in, they could hit the equivalent of $120k if they wanted.

If they went with $90k, its because they had a higher cost of living area they preferred.

So I'd call that "alternative comp" myself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> For my use case -- a simple blog -- Ghost felt a better fit. Wordpress has _so much stuff_ visually in the beginning that I felt I didn't need. Ghost on the other hand hides that away, and then when I started tweaking I was beginning to realize there's a lot more it than meets the eye. I guess I need that initial simplicity.

I love the platform and always asked myself how they were making money, because it isn't me (I combined it with Jeckyll and upload it as HTML).

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm struggling to think of why a startup would want to do this? What's it achieve?

<comment><USER7> Maybe everyone doesn't act with great strategies and achieving things in mind? Maybe they just want to be transparent and share their journey?

<comment><USER34> How much money they are making is a pretty minor aspect of transparency which doesn't seem to serve much purpose except to satisfy peoples curiosity (and possibly act as a vanity metric which I feel Ghost's example reads a bit like).

Here in the UK all Ltd companies (and most startups are Ltd) have public accounts, customers in B2C businesses in my experience tend to not look up and read them because at the end of the day it's not important for them.

Publicising them so openly seems like it could backfire and create problems. Customers demanding more, putting a target on yourself for patent trolls, another thing to maintain which could go wrong/mislead etc etc.

Cynics might argue they are not doing this for customer transparency, but as an attempt to put themselves on the radar for potential investors/acquirers.

<comment><USER35> They raised money through Kickstarter, so they should answer and report to their stakeholders and have the obligation to update them with the progress/challenges they're facing/seeing in their venture.

<comment><USER36> Stakeholders? Did Kickstarter suddenly change its spots?

<comment><USER7> No, he obviously means the backers who have a stake in the thing they backed. Doesn't have to be a legal stake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> What was this blog platform which was html only ? I remember seeing one some time ago, but I don't remember which it was. It was a very clean, simplistic way of posting things online, I wonder if it's ghost after all.

</comment><comment><USER38> This post is from back in April (2015).

</comment><comment><USER39> has someone made a php clone yet?

<comment><USER40> There _will_ be one somewhere (even though there are already a great many PHP projects covering similar use cases) though PHP isn't exactly a show-off platform these days so you'll not see it advertised loudly as "GHOST IN PHP!". Same for "Ghuse in Ruby". Maybe we'll see "Ghost in Go" or "Ghost in Clojure" soon though.

<comment><USER41> Ghost in go already exists: [https://kabukky.github.io/journey/](https://kabukky.github.io/journey/)

and is my preferred blog platform.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Over promise and under deliver. Apparently that's the motto of the folks at Ghost.

I'm really disappointed at the progress of this project that I thought would take on WP in 1 or 2 years time since launch but we're heading to year no 3 and they still at 0.6 milestone with no stable and production-ready WP caliber version in sight.

Shame that it had to be like this. I was really looking forward to abandoning ugly and frustrating PHP to JS/Node and bringing new life to blogging platforms but shame.

<comment><USER42> Even if the project delivered absolutely everything promised, and more, it's highly unlikely that it could gain enough adoption to challenge WordPress in any meaningful way. This is primarily due to being built on Node. One of the primary reasons WordPress is as popular as it is, is that you can install it on every single hosting provider out there and many of them provide a one- click or automated installation option. Very few hosting providers, or at least the shared and 'cheap' hosting providers have the ability to install Node and even fewer come with it pre-installed. The simple fact is that your average person that wants a website or blog will not have the knowledge or want, to go through getting all of that set up when using something like WordPress is as simple as clicking a button. Providers like Digital Ocean, are simply not a feasible option, or would even be considered by most non- technical people looking to build a blog/site.

<comment><USER35> I don't see why it would be difficult for hosting providers to adopt Node on their servers. They're already doing this offering VPS and the likes.

Also, I don't see why there wouldn't be a viable Node blogging platform that could be as user-friendly and as easy as WP if not much more. This definitely is very doable and Ghost and Co promised to achieve to do that but they failed yet to make any meaningful impact on the market.

<comment><USER42> They probably could, but it's more likely that the demand isn't enough to justify building out the required infrastructure and services to make things work properly in a shared hosting environment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I couldn't give a rats ass about revenue. What's the profit?

<comment><USER44> From their about page, they are a non-profit, so there isn't any. "Ghost(Pro) is what funds the Non-Profit Organisation which organises and runs the Ghost Open Source project."

<comment><USER43> Profit tells you how much they can afford to expand in future, regardless of whether they are a for-profit or non-profit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Why would you blogged about your startup constantly increasing revenue? I see the only reason.</comment>


Homebrew 2.2 - <AUTHOR> https://brew.sh/2019/11/27/homebrew-2.2.0/ <comment><USER2> While Homebrew is perhaps technically crude and somewhat inflexible compared to other and older package managers, I think it deserves real credit for being so easy to add packages to. I contributed Homebrew packages after a few weeks of using macOS, while I didn't contribute a single package in the ten years I ran Debian.

I'm also impressed by the focus of the maintainers and their willingness (really, _enthusiasm_ ) for saying _no_ and cutting features. We need more of that in the programming field. Homebrew is unashamedly solely for running the standard configuration of the newest version of well-behaved programs, which covers at least 90% of my use cases. I use Nix when I want something complicated or nonstandard.

(Incidentally, I also contributed Nix derivations after only a few weeks of running NixOS, so Homebrew is not the only good package manager.)

<comment><USER3> What are some 'Nix derivations'? I hate to say it, but I haven't heard of any, let alone used any.

edit: I guess I know lots: snappy, dpkg, apk-tools, etc... I somehow think of brew as different from this list though. I find myself often wishing that brew worked on linux.

<comment><USER4> Here's a concrete example:

[https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/applicatio...](https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/applications/editors/elvis/default.nix)

Maybe the three most noteworthy things are:

1\. it's not hard to write your own nix expression

2\. you get a reproducible build

3\. there are very powerful hooks to allow you to easily customize derivations by various means (look at some more complex derivation, like php, which defines dozens of options and there are other mechanisms as well).

1\. Brew also has, but not 2 or 3 (it's definitely more customizable than say debian packages, but much less so than nix)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just ran an update and got this:

       ==> Homebrew has enabled anonymous aggregate formulae and cask analytics.
       Read the analytics documentation (and how to opt-out) here:
         https://docs.brew.sh/Analytics

Opt-out analytics capture? A bit of a shame it's not opt-in.

The fix is to run:

       brew analytics off

<comment><USER6> This is not new, it's been around since 2016: [https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/commit/1238c65ba14831bc571c...](https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/commit/1238c65ba14831bc571cf01aead8fd10b916c837#diff- bf4fb942b914c257d474cd2f921e734d)

<comment><USER7> So it is user-hostile because of data collection, and that the opt-out is not preserved :-)

<comment><USER8> It's opt-in because you don't have to use brew if you don't want to. It helps the devs do their jobs better ( _a job they do for free_ ), and it is a _free_ tool someone is under no obligation to use.

Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11566720](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11566720)

<comment><USER9> Please don't subvert the meaning of "opt-in" like this; also, mentioning "free" does not give you a pass to shut down any complaints about the software. To address your other points: I disagree that opt-in analytics necessarily help.

<comment><USER8> We can disagree on both points. I'm making the effort to defend people who do real work (brew devs) vs an entitled vocal minority. Time is the ultimate non- renewable resource, and it shouldn't be wasted by grandstanders.

User hostile patterns should be raised and addressed. This is not user hostile in my opinion (considering the very little data collected, and the efforts to anonymize), it is plainly obvious what data is collected, you can observe what data will be sent, you can opt out of data collection (which the devs find of value), and you can choose not to use the software.

It has clearly not had an impact on usage of the tool:

[https://formulae.brew.sh/analytics/os- version/365d/](https://formulae.brew.sh/analytics/os-version/365d/)

<comment><USER9> The Homebrew maintainers do real work, but I disagree with your characterization of this complaint as "entitled" and coming from time-wasting "grandstanders". I'd be happy to hear how you disagree but trivializing the issue doesn't really help :(

<comment><USER8> > "entitled"

I think we've reached an impasse. Fundamentally, it's brew's project, not the user's, and my opinion is that the brew project has met the burden of attempting to balance their needs (data collection) with those of their users (privacy). It is very easy to dictate a mandate when it's not your time. Compromise is necessary, inevitable even.

> "grandstanders"

If someone would like to donate your time, effort, and funds to standing up analytics infra solely for Brew's use (or perhaps in aggregate for a group of OSS projects) so that they could avoid communicating with Google infra, I fully support such efforts. Historically, I have not seen this occur when a group takes issues with activities of an open and/or free project and the project has offered to accept the necessary resources from those who desired to be stakeholders via their input.

<comment><USER9> I actually chose to stop using the project and contribute to another one because I felt that I could not align my values with Homebrew's and they did not seem to be willing to compromise on this and other concerns that had been brought up. (With this specific issue, the "opt-out" part is more important to me than the "Google" one, so a self-hosted analytics solution would only be somewhat effective in alleviating my concerns.)

<comment><USER8> I commend you for aligning your actions with your principles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Homebrew is built on the assumption that you should always be running the latest version of homebrew and the latest version of all the packages you've installed. If something doesn't work, you're forced to update everything to the latest versions and hope that fixes things.

In general I don't like this constant pressure to abandon old versions of things, it doesn't really benefit anyone. A fragmented world is a decentralized world.

<comment><USER11> I agree, but it reduces the scope of the project incredibly. Freeing up resources that can be spent elsewhere. Much like how Homebrew doesn't seem to support multiple users on the same box. It addresses 80-90% of people's need.

I feel like it is less necessary for a user-land package manger like Homebrew, but doesn't Arch Linux and Gentoo do the same thing with the whole OS? I've heard of issues, but in general people seem ok with it.

Personally, I've looked to Nix, but went back to Homebrew it after having trouble with the UI, lack of packages, and learning curve of contributing my own packages. I'm hoping to try again sometime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Man I've been using Brew on Catalina for awhile, didn't realize this wasnt supposed to work!

<comment><USER13> The only reason it _did_ work was because you did an upgrade. I was also on the betas. As an experiment, I backed up my Homebrew install and tried one from scratch. Failed badly. Very important things like gnu-readline would not compile. I couldn't even get as far as nvim.

Packaging work was already being done under 2.1 to fix what was broken, and Catalina bottles were already appearing.

By the time Catalina final came out, it was usable from scratch, but only if you had homebrew installed under /usr/local so you could rely on the aforementioned bottles.

I was using an alternative prefix of /opt/homebrew. (I have been for years). When I attempted to continue using that, a few packages for which there were Catalina bottles would not compile, and so could not be installed under /opt/homebrew. I finally gave up, and started from scratch under /usr/local.

I REALLY don't like how homebrew insists on /usr/local for stability. The whole "do yourself a favor" mentality speaks to something broken in their packaging methodology. Any package should be able to be compiled under any prefix. And for the most part they can be, except for the exceptions that the core team or package maintainer doesn't care about because "you were warned."

I wouldn't mind using /usr/local were it not for the fact that lots of other installers want to put stuff there, and it can cause conflicts. Keeping homebrew in an isolated prefix makes a lot more sense. /usr/local was and remains a poor choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I really wish more release documentation pointed you to how to perform that upgrade. This page, the front page, nor the installation pages show up to upgrade.

No, it isn't "hard" to figure out, and I personally know how to do it, but for newer users it puts up a barrier to entry.

<comment><USER15> Homebrew updates automatically when you use it. There's nothing that the user has to do or to figure out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> One of the better package managers out there -- thanks to all the contributors!

</comment><comment><USER17> TIL:

> brew cat sets bat as pager if HOMEBREW_BAT is set

And bat is really a nice alternative to cat.

<comment><USER18> Huh, neat. Though I wonder why they didn't just use $PAGER.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm just glad Mac OS X 10.13 High Sierra and above are still fully supported since I have a computer which is stuck on that release (incompatible with 10.14).

</comment><comment><USER20> Homebrew + Caskroom has made my zero touch deployments flawless. A little bash, some DEPNotify, a rock solid MDM, and Apple's DEP, I can ship a Mac to any employee in the world and have them boot the computer, create their local account, and all of the latest third party apps get installed automatically.

Ten years ago this would have taken a lot of engineering. Today it's just bash calling Homebrew to do the heavy lifting.

</comment><comment><USER21> The problem of Homebrew is the language it's written in. Porting it into something native and faster, maybe Go, maybe Rust - will make the user experience way better.

<comment><USER22> Ruby is not the problem at all. The vast majority of time with homebrew is spent doing git operations, downloading tarballs, running makefiles, and the like. You could rewrite the entire thing in Rust and not notice any difference.

The thing that might make a difference is to build some custom infrastructure, so that `brew update` didn't have to do a `git fetch` every time, but instead downloaded the updated formula registry in a more efficient manner. But that's a lot to ask of a project like this.

<comment><USER23> > The thing that might make a difference is to build some custom > infrastructure, so that `brew update` didn't have to do a `git fetch` every > time, but instead downloaded the updated formula registry in a more > efficient manner. But that's a lot to ask of a project like this.

How would this impact privacy? If I do brew search, does that impact privacy?

<comment><USER9> Homebrew stores a lot of information in the Git repository that it really doesn't need. A simple list of packages would work with the search feature and probably be faster to work with.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


"Puerile" teen FB posts not libelous - computer not "dangerous instrument" - <AUTHOR> http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202463878334&Adolescents_Facebook_Posts_Found_to_Be_Puerile_but_Not_Actionable

<comment><USER2> Six million strikes me as an insanely high amount to go after. Not at all a reasonable suit.

</comment><comment><USER3> So if I understand properly here, it isn't libel because the statements weren't believable? If they were somewhat believable, then it would have been libel?

<comment><USER4> IANAL, but the wikipedia page for defamation[1] seems instructive. In short, for something to be defamation, the defamatory statement must be "expressly stated or implied to be factual". Another possibility would be that this was "public disclosure of private facts"

So the first citation, this is not defamation, because it is not stated or implied the statement was true. It would probably be comparable to a fictional account. On the other hand, per the second citation, since it wasn't true, it wasn't unlawful "public disclosure of private facts".

This seems to mean that in fiction, everything is fair game, as long as it is clear it's fiction and you don't 'accidently' include facts.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation>

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the link. So if the person being trolled DID have HIV/AIDS, and they disclosed this fact publicly, then it might have been defamation right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Only six million ? Sudden outbreaks of common sense like this should be more common. Now for the judge to sanction the lawyer that brought this silly suit, that would be justice.

</comment><comment><USER6> A very reasonable ruling, glad to a ruling that recognizes the ubiquity of computers.</comment>


Hong Kong's 1st Apple store mobbed on opening day  - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jQ5V7pLB5WwqyFctIG4H1J6atpnA?docId=007a574043e94792a44519f5c48e25ef

<comment><USER2> I didn't realize Hong Kong had lacked an Apple Store.</comment>


Show HN: PiMAME arcade image for Raspberry Pi - <AUTHOR> http://pimame.org

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been working on this for a couple of months. I would love to have some more collaborators on the code.

It emulates Neo Geo, MAME, SNES, and Playstation systems.

Github: <https://github.com/ssilverm/pimame_installer>

</comment><comment><USER2> How does this compare to say Retropie? I tried using Retropie and got some pretty bad performance on SNES games (choppy, laggy, etc).

I have the Model B too =\

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm using PiSNES, which is based off SNES9 + DispMANX. makes it run really smoothly</comment></comment>


Why finding a partner is hard! - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Despite the fact that we're coders, we're not necessarily smart.

But at the same time, I think that what makes us capable of pursuing startups is our potential to learn quickly. That's one of the best traits to search for in a partner. Running a startup is difficult. Having somebody who can adapt quickly is more important than someone who's smart and static.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A major motivation to pursue your own startup is to be your own boss. This makes finding a partner really hard. What is the likelihood that you would have two very strong willed people who can work together and compromise?

<comment><USER3> thats not my motivation! thats a mistake if its your only motivation behind starting up...

and your argument reveals selfishness, something I would avoid when searching for a cofounder.

Mutual vision, trust and willing to work hard together, support and help each other is amongs the secrets when peeking cofounders. Other than that, its obvious you are searching for employees.

<comment><USER4> well said, volida!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My fortune cookie advice on the subject: _Never_ partner with someone who is not as technically literate as you (= not a programmer), even if they have the money. _Especially_ if they have the money.

<comment><USER6> I'd amend that to "Never partner with someone who is not technically literate as you, *if* they think they are as technically literate as you or believe that technical literacy is not important."

It can often be very productive to partner with someone with people skills, or business skills, or finance skills. Those things *are* important, and yet you won't have spare brain cycles for them if you're doing hardcore programming. That person just needs to realize that *you* call the shots when it comes to technical decisions.

Warren Buffett's advice applies, as always. "It's not how much you know that matters. It's how realistically you assess what you *don't* know."

<comment><USER5> I could live with that definition, but I've had 2 partnerships now in 2 different companies where I felt the person had qualified on those grounds and while they are still great friends etc., I was a bit disappointed. If it is a tech company, I really think they both have to have real tech expertise. It has little to do with just having someone else to do the programming- in both of those partnerships the partner was more than willing to defer to me on all technical matters that they perceived to be technical matters.

In a tech company, though, _everything_ is a technical matter- for example- marketing. Early adopters for 99% of tech products are geeks- if you are not one then you do not understand the market (hence all those MBA lead failures of the late 90's). Finance for a tech startup usually has to tie into the product / subscriptions, etc- and is thus a tech problem. PR is to fellow geeks, etc. etc. Then there's the fact that the bulk of the work to be done is technical- if you're going to be having allnighters for the next 3 months getting a product out- there is a _big_ difference between having a partner who is right there with you in the trenches coding across the room, and a partner who comes by every day and says "well, uh, how's it going?"- you spend the next hour trying to explain the latest hangup etc. and then they say "well, let me know if the schedule changes- I've got some great customers lined up..." or whatever.

Sometimes that situation is unavoidable, but I guarantee it is not optimal.

<comment><USER7> The only thing I disagree with is your idea that technically literate means being a programmer.

Jesse James Garret, the guy who coined the term AJAX and came up with the design philosophy around it, isn't a programmer. But if I were a great programmer then he'd certainly be someone I'd want to partner with. Literacy just means the understanding of a certain discourse. Once you've taken a couple college level programming courses then you can pretty much understand everything a programmer is doing, but that doesn't mean you always know enough to do it yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If one Steve is rare, two Steves are rarer. Maybe someone could do the math, but it's pretty obvious.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think one factor is ego. Another is how much to give up?

<comment><USER9> Ego can go, but confidence stays.

Compromise is a complicated matter. Don't compromise on your good ideas. There will undoubtedly be conflict among founders regarding vision and method, but the best relationships will work through those.

If you don't disagree with your team at some point, you're not contributing enough.</comment></comment>


Some disasters attributable to bad numerical computing - <AUTHOR> http://www.ima.umn.edu/~arnold/disasters/

<comment><USER2> One of the mars probes crashed due to an error converting from Imperial to Metric.

<http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric.02/>

<comment><USER3> Imperial should not fly to Mars. (And even Metric could be made a lot better. For example Boltzmann's constant should really be 1 instead of the value that we get because the unit of temperature has such a strange definition.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm sure there's more. E.g. <http://www.softwareqatest.com/qatfaq1.html#FAQ1_3></comment>


Are Indian Software Developers "Code Donkeys"?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.thoughtclusters.com/2009/02/are-indian-software-developers-code.html

<comment><USER2> Didn't hear the podcast but from what I gathered from the blog post it seems like they are talking about outsourcing in general. Most outsourced project aren't the most existing job you want to end up in.

As for not seeing any shrikwrapped software from India, the VC's in India are very different from here. You won't find a VC who would interested in funding something like Twitter in India that just doesn't happen. As for mediocre programmers that they have had to deal with I would say that is the case in most countries. India, US or China it is hard to find really good programmers.</comment>


Program Obesity: A Code Health Epidemic - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj_xgO2uKJM <comment><USER2> Bookmarked, anything with Aaron Hsu is usually well worth a watch. Thanks.</comment>


From zero to a million users in 8 days - Graffiti (the facebook app) tells us their story - <AUTHOR> http://us.intruders.tv/From-zero-to-a-million-users-in-8-days-Graffiti-the-facebook-app-tells-us-their-story_a183.html

<comment><USER2> Would much prefer a transcript to video. The audience can read the equivalent of your 23-minutes of video in a minute or two.

<comment><AUTHOR> I prefer video personally, but a transcript or notes might be useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice interview.

I just added a link to a whole bunch of videos of Facebook app developers telling their story complete with presentation slides (from the Community Next conference).

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=71986>

Disclaimer: they are hosted on my site :)

</comment><comment><USER4> Brilliant staging with the cereal box, Immad. It gives it that authentic bootstrapping entrepreneur touch.

</comment><comment><USER5> Great interview. I didn't mind the one mic, just get a longer handle. :)

</comment><comment><USER6> Three people sharing one microphone is awkward.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah first time I did that, I have a solution for it for next time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> great Interview, we don't give a sh.. about the mics of the cam, what is important is the content! keep going!</comment>


Better Promises in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://francisco.io/blog/better-promises/ <comment><USER2> This is already a feature in Vanilla.js [1] in the "Parentheses" module.

Example:

      const lines = (await fetch(myUrl)).text().split('\n');

[1] [http://vanilla-js.com/](http://vanilla-js.com/)

Edit: magic-promises promotes all accessed properties to magic-promises as well, and performs magic on functions, so it's not exactly the same, but I'm not sure if I'd want to add the proxy overhead to my code just to make my code more "fluent".

<comment><USER3> fetch's Response.text also returns a Promise, so you'd have to await twice:

      const lines = (await (await fetch(myUrl)).text()).split('\n');

<comment><USER4> I've always just added an overload:

        function fetchText(input?: string | Request, init?: RequestInit) {
          return fetch(input, init).then(x => x.text())
        }

        function fetchJson(input?: string | Request, init?: RequestInit) {
          return fetch(input, init).then(x => x.json())
        }

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love it when articles just put statements out like "This syntax would be much better, wouldn't it?" and then just assume the answer is obviously yes and don't find the need to provide any arguments for that.

I disagree. Explicit is better than implicit.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, explicit is better than implicit. But redundant is worse than non- redundant. This library just provides syntax sugar to make things cleaner. There are many times that arbitrary decisions have been taken. Why cannot you wait to an array of promises? Wouldn't that be explicit and clear?

<comment><USER6> Awaiting an array of promises looks neat, but it has a (small?) caveat: you can't do the same for the non-await version. You can't do `[...].then()`.

I'm less fan of the second proposition. Imagine someone seeing that snippet on internet and copying it: he would have no way of knowing that ".text()" is actually a promise and could potentially be making more I/O calls than he thought.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's lovely how node.js started with callback nesting hell, then to promise chaining, then to async/await, then to "magic" libraries like this.

How long since someone will figure out how to get rid of the (error-prone) await keyword, and go back full circle on plain old synchronous-style syntax?

<comment><USER8> This library has some very minor syntax sugar. Async/await is currently the most ergonomic abstraction for handling single-thread concurrency.

<comment><USER9> Also, the examples here aren't as "unergonomic" as the article suggests with async/await.

        const lines = await fetch(...).then(res => res.text()).then(res => res.split('\n'))

Any use of .then in async/await is a code smell.

The obvious single line refactor (as presented in other threads):

        const lines = (await (await fetch(url)).text()).split('\n')

But a clearer refactor is simply multiple lines to make each "step" clear as mud:

        const response = await fetch(url)
        const text = await response.text()
        const lines = text.split('\n')

Yes, it's a bit over-verbose than the one liner, but ergonomically it is step- by-step imperative programming just like Grandma C++ used to bake, and few would argue that it isn't readable old-fashioned ergonomics.

Promise.all is a tougher thing to get "ergonomics" from, but more often than not, a refactor to a "classic" for loop pattern is often clearer. The semantics change, unfortunately, yet more often than not the clearer "one- thing-at-a-time" of the simpler refactor is easier to debug, less harsh on called services, less pressure on client memory, and simpler to progress report.

Instead of:

const responses = await Promise.all(urls.map(url => fetch(url)) const texts = await Promise.all(responses.map(response => response.text()) for (let text of texts) { doSomething(text) }

Try:

        for (let url of urls) {
          const response = await fetch(url)
          const text = await response.text()

          doSomething(text)

        }

Again, the semantics change: instead of waiting for all of them to complete as massively parallel it operates a bit more "synchronously" one at a time. But the benefits again are that ergonomically it is much clearer what each individual step is, how much work has been done, roughly how much work is left to do. Additionally, you aren't creating a massive array of the text of every response before operating on each text, which can be a big deal for performance memory pressure. More often than not, I've seen cases where the simpler for (let of)/await pattern here is more performant than all the parallel calls simply because of the drop in this memory pressure.

For cases where you do need more of the parallelism, ESNext AsyncIterable is a better plan than Promise.all(), and affords the for-await pattern:

        for await (let response of responsePromiseIterator) {
          const text = await response.text()
          doSomething(text)
        }

Which again, is more ergonomic overall, often easier to get the performance right than Promise.all(), and easy enough to change to different parallel strategies because the code stays the same regardless of the scheduler used to build your async iterator.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very cool although I'm missing the explanation of how this is done. Are you using Proxies like here: [https://curiosity-driven.org/monads-in- javascript#chain](https://curiosity-driven.org/monads-in-javascript#chain) ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly! The whole source code is basically Proxy() functions: [https://github.com/franciscop/magic- promises/blob/master/mag...](https://github.com/franciscop/magic- promises/blob/master/magic.js#L81)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What Javascript really needs is monads and do-notation. Can I use Haskell on the web yet?

<comment><USER12> Yeah, it's called Purescript and it's quite lovely. Give it a look!

<comment><USER10> As much as I like PureScript (it's like a cleaned up Haskell!) it has some issues, e.g. with performance (as it uses instanceof a lot).

There is also this minor thing that that the compiler is not written in PureScript.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Exploring the reasons why I launched a library to improve async-heavy workflows which falls back to normal promises. It is very useful specially for tool authors, see the library I also published recently `fs-array` using `magic-promises`.

</comment><comment><USER13> Promises were a giant mistake. How many times have you had a programming error (TypeError, ReferenceError, etc.) suppressed by your operational error handling code?

</comment><comment><USER14> IIRC promises already have a `map` method which is synonymous to the `then` method.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not with native promises. You have the Promise.all([...]), which is explained in the article but no .map() AFAIK

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think RxJS already solves the problem.

[https://github.com/ReactiveX/rxjs](https://github.com/ReactiveX/rxjs)

<comment><USER8> Solves what problem? The article is about some very minor syntax sugar, while you are plugging a tangentially related library with a whole raft of its own abstractions. I'm struggling to understand the context here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Suggesting RxJS in this context IMO is like when someone suggests doing `const $ = sel => [...document.querySelectorAll(sel)];` as helpful syntax sugar for the 20-lines of JS project but they get shut down because it's no React.</comment></comment></comment>


Why Good People Leave Large Tech Companies - <AUTHOR> https://thinkgrowth.org/why-good-people-leave-large-tech-companies-af2b6fea4ee <comment><USER2> This post rings eerily true. Recently had a company all-hands where the CEO said basically the exact same lines. The whole "if you don't love working here, then you should leave" bit made me cringe. Easy for you to say when you've got a significant equity share in the company.

The saddest realization I've had working at companies is how power-hungry people are, how little respect the people in power often have for those "below" them, and how important politics is even in a field like engineering that you'd expect to be meritocratic. Sweeping decisions are often made in a small room of a few "higher-ups" without any input or regard for those "below" them. Providing counter-arguments that question the decisions of the executive caste is often seen as a threat (how dare you question your leader?). The shy and humble rockstar coder who kicks ass gets little recognition while the smooth-talking sycophant gets accolades and climbs the ladder.

Corporations are authoritarian tyrannies with strict hierarchies. America was founded on the principles of democracy, but we tolerate tyranny in our workplace. The only way to change this is to remove the asymmetric dependency of the employee on the employer (eg. UBI).

<comment><USER3> I'll take the unpopular position of supporting a small room of a few "higher ups" making decisions. This is exactly what you want: a small number of people with a lot of skin in the game making important decisions. Good leaders gather feedback and counter-arguments beforehand, but then make a firm decision, and it's diminishingly rare for that decision to please everyone. The people who are not pleased should still follow their lead, despite thinking the decision is wrong. Sometimes the decision is wrong and sometimes the people who think the decision is wrong are the ones who are wrong. There's no way of knowing a priori, and someone needs to be empowered to take the leap on doing what they think is best, and it makes sense for that person to be a "higher-up". Decision by committee or by democracy is too inefficient for a business.

<comment><USER4> It's the feedback and counter arguments that are often lacking, and being unwilling to admit the decision was wrong.

I've been in this situation a few times and it's very hard to push back on a decision that's been 'made' even if it's not appropriate for the team you're on.

<comment><USER2> Our CEO has flat out told us that it's incredibly hard for him to get honest feedback from anyone (except for maybe the board and investors), and another executive echoed this. Nobody wants to question the almighty CEO to his face.

Nothing against the CEO. He's an extremely friendly and approachable person. Most people just fear questioning authority and power, and the CEO in a modern day corporation is revered similar to a king in a monarchy. It's always been like that at every company I've worked for.

<comment><USER5> It's not possible to implement some type of anonymous feedback system?

My company sends out periodic anonymous surveys as an attempt to garner feedback from the employees.

The only problem I see is if employees, for whatever reason, don't believe such a system is truly anonymous and thus refuse to give honest feedback. I don't see that being a common trend though.

If so, it probably signals more serious problems between employees and the higher-ups ...

<comment><USER6> Too many companies have eroded employees trust by lying that something is anonymous when it is not.

I personally will never trust any such survey at work.

<comment><USER7> I live when we are emailed "anonymous" surveys with a query string. It's even better when they are engineering specific surveys because at that point you have to question if they even think you can do the job if they thought they could get blatant tracking like that past any engineer

<comment><USER8> I saw such everytime too. These tracking params are to guarantee that the survey is filled only once by a person. But tracking is possible if email and the survey match is stored somewhere. It is all up to trust.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is why its always possible to hire great developers - because some companies and hiring managers think that people should be not just great developers, but willing to jump through ridiculous hoops to work there.

If you want to hire people, drop the attitude of "we don't want people who aren't willing to prove how much they want to work here". Instead, give them every reason to want to work for you.

<comment><USER10> Fwiw, one "advantage" of "wanting to work there" is that counterproductive management practices can survive longer. If I'm your boss and am treating you like trash, and you complain, I can just say "oh it sounds like your commitment to this company isn't very high, shall we discuss your future?" That will work a multitude of times with a gaslit employee who really drank the company kool-aid.

<comment><USER9> Also, companies can use "level of enthusiasm for working here" as an excuse for their poor recruiting practices.

"OH, the candidate dropped out of our recruiting process? But he was only at interview four after 6 weeks.... well it doesn't matter because clearly he didn't want to work here enough - we want people who really want to work here and are willing to do what it takes to get a job with us."

Even worse: "But he'd only done our coding test after 5 weeks, there's still three interviews to go."

The recruiter usually gets a phone call at this point "Got anyone else, this time someone who actually wants to work here?"

<comment><USER10> Yes this too. Someone I know was interviewing at google (his first choice, he did a few rounds), and then later at some other places. Google took three months to get back to him and gave him a really good offer, but by that time he had already accepted somewhere else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "But the CEO never noticed that the payoff had ended for the other 95% of his company."

It seems a lot of C*Os forget this after a while. For a lot of rank and file employees the stock price makes no difference.

<comment><USER12> Those awkward moments at medium-sized growing companies when the CEO gets in front of the company for an all-hands and says "The company is doing so well! Our stock price, as you have noticed, is way up!" The response being a couple of "woooo"s from the long-timers and senior execs and the rest of the room shrugging their shoulders looking at each other.

<comment><USER13> This happened at demand media right before IPO. Everyone was stoked to finally be able to exercise their stocks. Great opening but we were all blocked from selling. Once any of the non execs could sell the price basically screwed everyone over. Unless you were an early employee you ended up losing money. Not a good position to be in. Moral wasn't very high when I left...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> >> "I was visiting with an ex-student who's now the CFO of a large public tech company."

>> "(By coincidence, the CEO was an intern at one of my startups more than two decades ago.)"

Admittedly, this isn't adding to the discussion at hand. Just one amateur writer picking apart another's writing style, but...

Is it just me, or do those lines serve no purpose except to boost the author's own ego and sense of self-importance?

I feel like they don't serve the reader in taking away the lesson in the least. They really strike me as an attempt to remind the reader of the writer's own value and importance.

Maybe I'm being too cynical...

<comment><USER15> Later on in the story it's become apparent that the line that the CEO is touting is the exact same one that the author told him 20 years ago, so I'd say that part is pretty relevant :)

<comment><USER16> I noticed that but I didn't understand what he was getting at. Was he saying that the CEO/former student was:

A) Repeating what Steve told him and Steve had changed his mind about that advice?

B) Repeating what Steve told him but in the wrong context?

<comment><USER7> To me it sounded like the author had truly believed that advice at the startup stage but now in a large company he saw how those words rang hollow as the employees were no longer benefiting from the companies growth. He seemed embarrassed that his words were being used to justify adding 45 ×70 minutes of commute time to a team that wasn't getting early employee equity

<comment><USER16> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Just another revolution of the wheel of the infamous "How Software Companies Die"[1] which has this balancing note: "The environment that nurtures creative programmers kills management and marketing types - and vice versa."

When a product innovation company turns to medium size, the process comes in with the executives and soon after innovation dies, but the product market value is realized and efficient. The problem comes if the leadership isn't repeating the cycle.

A company can thrive if they stay innovative and invest in new products always though, most of those companies are engineer led because it leads to happy development/value-creation: Amazon, Google, Microsoft (except for the Ballmer era), Valve/Epic in the gaming industry etc.

[1] [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~chuck/jokepg/joke_19970213_01.txt](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~chuck/jokepg/joke_19970213_01.txt)

<comment><USER18> Good management is fundamental to environment that nurtures creative programmers. Such environment does not appear out of nothing - it is result of a managers work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> When I worked for a large multinational energy services firm, one of the bosses I had (they changed every 2-3 years) was a huge bully. One of those "great coworker, bad manager" types. My wife had passed away, and as a result, my performance had dropped.

One of his lines (verbal in person, not on paper) was "If you don't want to work here, there are plenty of people that do."

He was the only boss I've ever had that made me consider leaving a job I'd had for 7+ years (at the time) simply because of who my manager was. Needless to say, about a year later when he called a meeting to announce that he was leaving for a competitor, my back popped as my shoulders un-tensed.

<comment><USER20> I had a boss like this. Talked with his bosses multiple times, no change. When I left a couple of weeks prior to my one year vest and another colleague did the same a couple of months later (both of us key/senior people), they noticed a little bit. Eventually said individuals behavior and reputation impacted his own goals when seeking funding. That said, upper management didn't do anything until after the fact.

<comment><USER10> Yeah I've noticed that usually you need at least 4 people to quit before anything happens to the boss. Even if they know he sucks they're gonna try and keep him on. No idea why, but it has the appearance of "he's part of the mgmt club and you aren't"

<comment><USER21> I've had a boss like that and his boss didn't want to remove him because he would have to admit that he made the wrong choice in promoting him.

<comment><USER10> Excellent point. I'm pretty sure this is a thing, I vaguely remember reading something about how getting promoted gives you some "invisible leverage" (my words) because now the company has decided you are valuable and special and they don't wanna look like they made a mistake. Thanks, this actually helped me understand an instance of where several not very good managers got further promoted and it made no sense to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My buddy told me a story of what he saw at his company. It was an interaction between a CFO and a new lead developer at a small tech/startup company that actually had been around quite a while.

It went something like this.

 _Dev: Can we get 2 21 " monitors for developers?

CFO: Why? Laptop LCD and that old 19" monitor seem to work together just fine.

Dev: Yeah, but we can be more productive if each dev can get 2 x 21 inch monitors.

CFO: Uhh, no. I get more year end bonus for every dollar I save for the company. So maybe we will revisit this later?_

</comment><comment><USER23> Ugh. So much this. Story time.

Doing work with a 3rd party firm on some simple dev work (integration into a few partner APIs). We're a big Azure customer, 3rd party knows this. Gives us ARM templates for resources needed to deploy.

Get on the phone with the IT folks internally, state we need these ARM templates deployed and monitored. Queue two week (plus) process, 100 questions, and department to department costs (all of it is outsourced) which are quite outrageous.

The costs are so high that they probably wash any revenue/profit from the partnership.

You know what? I have access to one of our Azure subscriptions. I'll just do it myself guys, to hell with the consequences.

Usually this results in noise later, but screw it, I made us money now versus incurring additional cost and made some money later.

<comment><USER24> This is probably the right thing to do but... Do you realize how many people you're going to piss off because with reduced work and costs they don't get their share of the cake? Some of them might be in the management above you. I wish you good luck.

<comment><USER23> Haven't been fired yet. :-)

Thankfully I work for someone who thinks making money is more important than self-imposed rules that in most cases just slow us down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This attitude of "you really have to want to work here or you ought to leave" justifies a lot of insanity. I've heard it from companies who make potential employees jump through ridiculous hoops to even get a chance at a job. Here's reality for people who suffer from this delusion: most people don't give a fuck and are just looking for a job. They're applying to dozens or hundreds of jobs (yes, even in software), and expecting them to know everything there is to know about your company just to apply (like providing a detailed cover letter) is downright insane. This is how companies with such an attitude problem attract "yes-people," suckups and other undesirables and miss out on real talent that isn't going to stand on its head just to get a chance at an interview. Likewise, as the article points out, this toxic attitude is just as bad at retaining employees as it is at getting them in the first place. What I'd like to see is the second part of this story. How these people then hired another 50 software engineers with actual talent in the bay area. Most companies I speak to have trouble finding one or two, let alone 50. And all because of an incredibly naive and stupid attitude of the company's execs. This is indeed a case where the founders should have been replaced with proper executives, though I'm not sure 'proper' executives would have made a better decision.

As an aside, one shortcut to weeding out shitty companies is to simply filter out companies that say shit like, "we are on a mission to change the world." That's a guaranteed bad time.

<comment><USER26> People are applying to dozens or hundreds of jobs at once? How is that possible? I'm generally only considering 1 new employer at a time, and the most I've ever done concurrently was applying to two companies in CA at the same time.

How could there even be dozens of companies that you'd want to work for at any given time?

<comment><USER7> Maybe it's different in SF but out on the east coast I've seen people be passed for the wrong version of jQuery on the resume, or literally "not enough eye contact". Applying to jobs out here is kind of a crap shoot where you shotgun out to a ton till you get past enough bullshit to be given in person interviews where you can actually demonstrate your skills

<comment><USER26> > I've seen people be passed for the wrong version of jQuery on the resume

Well, those people dodged a bullet, then...

<comment><USER27> If you're putting jQuery on your resume, you might have bigger problems than versioning.

<comment><USER28> I interviewed someone recently with FTP on their CV. Now, running a big FTP site, that's CV-worthy. Contributing to an open-source FTP client, that's CV- worthy. But no, this person literally listed being able to FTP a file as one of their "skills"...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> My first job after my training was at a really small company, about 10 employees plus the CEO/owner. And he was just like that CFO, too. The size of the company does not necessarily make a difference.

Still, having done my training at a slightly Dilbert-esque multinational corporation, I made a point of working for small-ish companies since.

Of course, small-ish companies bring their own share of problems, but all in all, I prefer that smaller companies tend to be less bureaucratic.

And I like the personal touch - at one company (~15 people), the CEO/co-owner walked up to each employee every morning and greeted them, shaking their hand. He was in some aspects a fairly difficult boss, but that little gesture made up for most of the difficulty.

The problem with a company treating employees like they were arbitrarily replaceable is that employees will treat the company the same way. If a company wants employees to identify with the company, to want to work at that specific company, it has to do better than that.

</comment><comment><USER30> The most important lesson for people in power in big tech companies: FORMAL PROCESS IS THE ENEMY. Don't let the accumulation of gatekeepers and approvers and other capital-P Process let things become 100x harder than they need to be.

Do not confuse difficulty with prudence. Your organization will become slow and ossified _by default_ unless you take specific steps to maintain flexibility. One of these steps is to install a culture of change. Things that are easily undone should not require approval to be done in the first place.

Do not allow long-timers in your organization use "caution" or "good engineering practice" as an excuse to slow everyone else down. Emphasize that the most important part of software development is moving fast. Let new people try new things. Minimize the number of people who can say "no".

Most of all, do not just _believe_ people who talk about best practices and software "quality" and stuff like that. Most of the time, they're just finding fancy-sounding ways of saying "nothing should change unless I say so".

<comment><USER31> I have a hunch that you've never worked at a growing mid-sized or large company that is clinging to its startup roots and is averse to any sort of process at all.

Being unwilling to adopt a necessary amount of structure and process is just as much of a hindrance once you hit a certain size.

That may be a newer or less common problem, but it's a very real one.

<comment><USER32> Agreed. I've often found that those who are resistant to any amount of (reasonable) formal process are those (usually long timers) who were most empowered by the implicit process and rules. In the end, they're also saying "nothing should change unless I say so".

<comment><USER33> This and the parent comment describe exactly what happened at the company I just left. I wonder if the newly hired TPM will ever have any real power there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The company I work for at the moment has two values/myths that have worked really well at preventing situations like this. Early on, just before I joined at around the 150 person stage, the employees self organized values. One of these was Daytime is Precious. Interestingly it was applied equally to the idea of don't waste time (meetings etc) and to the idea that everyone has a life outside of work. The second was the idea that teams are anonymous, and decide themselves what they work on.

In reality these are ignored at times when required. But they're so embedded in company culture that you need a pretty good reason to do so and more importantly most employees are comfortable challenging management when they do.

I'm not sure how to replicate this but letting employees set the company values once you get to a certain size is likely a good call.

<comment><USER35> > teams are anonymous, and decide themselves what they work on.

Could you please elaborate how that worked technicall? Does that affect git log authorship metadata? What about discussions on company chat/maillist about the issues being worked on, are they also anonymous? Does this make tracking real contributions of individuals impossible?

<comment><USER36> I believe they meant "autonomous" rather than "anonymous."

<comment><USER34> Yeah, this. Spelling fail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'm surprised that Steve is working for such a long time in the start-up industry and seemingly hasn't caught on that the in-company politics won't evolve, because the meta-company politics of the start-up world are already efficient.

If you don't consider jobs and companies as something that should live longer than you, it's totally fine as it is. Switching jobs is not a big deal, if you have lots of new options and get paid well. When small start-ups get the next innovation loop better than the current set of big companies it's fine, because people still make money, just a set of different people.

People who want to make money by working, still make money. People who want to make money by investing, still make money. New innovation really happens, no matter if the current people on top get it or not.

</comment><comment><USER38> Because companies grow not only horizontally but vertically.

Vertical structures create encapsulation of individuals and that leaves room to exploit information asymmetries.

e.g: stealing credit, favoritism, etc... rigging the game to their favor.

At the late stages of this game, people like this can get away with anything: hiring and promoting their friends, openly insulting people, just openly lie knowing nobody can do anything about it, etc.

</comment><comment><USER39> Anyone have a guess as to what company this was?

<comment><USER40> Tesla?

<comment><USER41> That seems to fit: 1.) move from Palo alto to east bay 2.) manufacturing company with software engineers 3.) lots of people leaving 4.) CEO changing the world.

However, I'm sure many companies meet that.

<comment><USER11> Wasn't there the story where Musk scolded someone who took off to be at the birth of his child?

<comment><USER42> This somehow seems relevant - [http://nypost.com/2017/05/21/coachs-viral- response-when-aske...](http://nypost.com/2017/05/21/coachs-viral-response- when-asked-why-star-missed-game-for-kids-birth/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> At my current company we have an inverted, but similar problem. Startup A got bought by Company B. Company B doubles down on technology from Startup A, which ultimately leads to a big acquisition by private equity for the combined A/B.

Private equity firm cuts out RSUs and focuses on eeking out high margins without raising salary compensation to offset changes. All the senior people from Startup A and a number of senior people from B all jump ship within 6 months.

</comment><comment><USER44> Despite the overall theme of this interaction, opening an office in the East Bay seems more employee friendly than keeping them in Palo Alto.

<comment><USER45> If the company is still succeeding, then it doesn't seem to be an unreasonable move. The company doesn't operate for the benefit of employees commutes. If they can still attract and retain talent and have a more practical work space, then great.

<comment><USER46> Any company/CEO who wastes 45 x 2 minutes of my life on a commute is bound to get a quit notice.

<comment><USER47> A company that isn't either all-remote or encouraging of significant WFH is going to satisfy some people and not others with respect to commuting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> It's good that big companies do dumb stuff like this. Otherwise the world would be even more dominated by oligopolies.

Hopefully they don't wise up.

</comment><comment><USER49> Siloes is a big reason good people leave; a somewhat corollary is people think that with experience at bigco and an alphabet soup of technologies they can take that to another co and impress.

Some do impress but others have limited lateral experience and so don't fit very well into any place but at prev bigco. But, but, I have five years of experience in X at bigco Y.

</comment><comment><USER50> I can't entirely follow the article. What I read is a CEO of a 10k+ employee company had to relocate to grow and sustain growth. A team of 70 people was affected. He made the (right|wrong, pick as you like) decision 70 people leaving now is better than 10k+ having to miss out on the future opportunities.

That is what I read from this article. Though all is speculation as there is no real information in there apart from a quote you can be for or against.

This is not "why good people leave large tech companies". It a sole example of a very small group in a very specific situation. Relocation loses people yes. But not amass and not as a hidden thing. The company is well aware of it. The quote itself was there for years and it is not why people left.

Large tech companies that loose good software people for instance often do so because they apply their hardware processes to software teams as well. In addition they don't want to spend money of software, software has to come for free right! The hardware is expensive but the software is a thing we had to add as cheap as possible. That means deny requests for fancy work setups; my hardware guys can work with one 19" monitor why do they need 2 24"?

Have no separate career ladder for the technical people, I.e. You can only grow into exec or fellow if you switch to the people's route and forget the technical (I.e. General managers, directors etc but no levels above lead software architect of a (smaller) department).

Now that loses people.

P.s. I work in a large tech company. 100k+. We recently resolved the last part but not yet entirely the former. Coincidence is that I'm being relocated in January 2018. It brings about 20 minutes additional travel time for me, but for most others it doesn't. Like the article. However, I'm not seeing how losing me (and some others) would outweigh the benefit of having the entire NL software group in a single location.

<comment><USER2> "Too bad, but we need the space. They're lucky they work here. If they leave at least they'll have 'name of our company' on their resume."

It's not merely about the decision to relocate, it's the indifference towards the engineers and viewing them as dispensable minions who are lucky to have the privilege of working for this company, often without the equity and earnings potential of early employees. Treating your workers as disposable pawns is a sure-fire way to generate disillusionment and cause valuable engineers to leave.

<comment><USER50> That has been there for years. Sure it is nice and people object when they hear it but I think in actual daily life people just ignore them as long as they don't manifest in daily work. The people left because of the relocation, not because of any other reason. The article doesn't explain the tradeoff the CEO had to make. So blaming the quotes is jumping to conclusions. So I say these quotes are overvalued in the article. Sure the popular thing is to fret about them and blame them for this it seams but in truth it had nothing to do with the people leaving in this article. They left because of travel times (most likely, I don't pretend I can look into their minds).

In a big company most people don't like all of their exec and HR statements yet they continue to work there because they know 90% of those statements is bullshit anyways and will not manifest. Very different from a small company mind you! Big companies change their bullshit slogans every 5-10 years. It's a pattern. Go through twice and you know the drill. So you smile when your department name changes and know the rest will stay the same no matter your objectives containing some new fancy words.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> After years of working at a big tech company, I left primarily because there was no interesting work left to do, and the place had become very political.

Another sign its time to leave: when the company starts doing "reorgs". Get out as soon as you can!

</comment><comment><USER52> Ah the tail wagging the dog again sounds like facilities and I suspect hr have got to much power.

I know that the CEO when facilities where pushing for people to move to some industrial estate near Heathrow with zero pubic transport links "word class Telco's don't have a head office in a F%^king shed at Heathrow"

</comment><comment><USER53> Omg this sounds exactly what happened at Uber.

</comment><comment><USER54> Good people leave their Bad managers;

</comment><comment><USER55> I left a large tech company for very similar reasons.

</comment><comment><USER56> Executives: "You should care about the mission, not the money!"

(as they keep all the money to themselves)

<comment><USER57> It's fascinating how in the recruitment process, hiring managers who expect potential hires to act logically and methodically all but demand the recruit to suspend his or her logic and mental methods when considering their personal financial interests.

The dichotomy would be humorous if it weren't so sad.

<comment><USER58> I care about the mission. In fact, I care about the mission so much that I know that it'll do the company a disservice to train me and lose me a year later to another company with a similar mission offering me more money. Therefore, it's in _the company 's interest_ to pay me a competitive salary!

<comment><USER57> The best startup CEOs I know overpay their key people BC they know that losing their best people hurts so much more than the same people helping whatever company they might join next

<comment><USER59> So it sounds like they're paying over market, but not overpaying—they recognize the cost of these people leaving and provide a salary that takes said cost into account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I'd like to remind people that large companies are the only ones capable of hiring junior engineers who might not be at full productivity at day 0. This is especially true of the C++ ecosystem.

<comment><USER61> Good junior engineers can be productive at day 0. They just can't do the stuff a senior engineer can do. They definitely can contribute though. A well balanced team is a good thing for small or large companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> you did not mention something in this article. check again and re-post.

<comment><USER63> Can you be more specific?

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Hmm. Really?! I worked for various large corporates, studied for a MBA after my IT career; found out about ethics and other ontologically speaking really valuable things in life hence left. But really, besides personal spectives and/or ego's.

:: Henry Mintzberg basically said it all in 2004 already: [https://books.google.nl/books?hl=nl&lr=&id=zsYAeVgwHDQC&oi=f...](https://books.google.nl/books?hl=nl&lr=&id=zsYAeVgwHDQC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=Mintzberg+managers+not+MBA%27s&ots=nG2VlR0jSj&sig=rjMofuNE8G8ldQWnM96O6phzAaA#v=onepage&q=Mintzberg%20managers%20not%20MBA's&f=false) ISBN-13: 978-1576753514, ISBN-10: 1576753514 " Managers Not MBAs: A Hard Look at the Soft Practice of Managing and Management Development"

<comment><USER65> Spam?

<comment><USER64> No, but i see that it looks like spam. Should have been more carefull. The link is nothing but freshman year one MBA material.</comment></comment></comment>


Cloud Services can cure common cold now (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://www.tonido.com/blog/index.php/2009/02/15/cloud-services-can-cure-common-cold-now/

<comment><USER2> [http://www.tonido.com/blog/index.php/2008/12/21/cloud- comput...](http://www.tonido.com/blog/index.php/2008/12/21/cloud-computing-qa)

[http://www.tonido.com/blog/index.php/2010/06/19/pioneering-p...](http://www.tonido.com/blog/index.php/2010/06/19/pioneering- personal-cloud-finally-the-user-owns-the-data)

The articles in this blog are few years old. But makes much more sense in current context.</comment>


Ask HN: Tweets you've saved related to starting startups? - <AUTHOR> Tweet discovery is hard unless you use twitter daily.<p>What are the tweets you've saved that you've found useful related to starting startups? <comment><USER2> How to Get Rich (without getting lucky) by @Naval [https://twitter.com/naval/status/1002103360646823936](https://twitter.com/naval/status/1002103360646823936)

<comment><USER3> That's good, but it's from a certain school of thought and I wouldn't follow that as some sort of tao. For example plenty of people got rich doing stuff that isn't so new, innovative or technology focused. Manufacturing obscure parts, import/export, affiliates, car dealership or whatever.

Also people can get rich without owning a business: CEOs, hell even coders at FAANG, who then invest. Crypto traders.

My definition of rich is $10m+ though. ($2m + PP if you on't intend to have a family) so that's a lot lower than a lot of people who would classify the rich threshold to be a lot higher. To me rich means financially independent.</comment></comment>


Ambar: Scan and Index Paper Documents - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/RD17/ambar <comment><USER2> Looks good, but it isn't actually Github :p I'm doing the same with [https://github.com/NicoJuicy/Tagly/](https://github.com/NicoJuicy/Tagly/) for an overview of my issues

But please don't post it here as opensource. Post a link to a demo instead and use Show HN:

Eg. Show HN: [http://tagly.azurewebsites.net/](http://tagly.azurewebsites.net/)

;)

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, will recreate my submission</comment></comment>


Chrome Canary Shows Off Material Design 2 – Now on macOS - <AUTHOR> Chrome's Canary build now has the new UI by default on macOS, and it seems to look much neater.<p>Earlier this year, it was reported that Canary users on Windows were able to access this UI by enabling the top-chrome-md flag (src: https://beebom.com/google-chrome-canary-revamped-material-design/). <comment><USER2> On a different topic. I feel material design makes website a clone of another website .

<comment><AUTHOR> I felt the same with Bootstrap as well as most users don't change the default styling.

I think it is the CSS frameworks that make websites look like clones and not necessarily the design systems on which the frameworks are based on.</comment></comment>


Viruses of the Mind - Richard Dawkins on Religion - <AUTHOR> http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Dawkins/viruses-of-the-mind.html

<comment><USER2> Please, god, no.

>"I have just discovered that without her father's consent this sweet, trusting, gullible six-year-old is being sent, for weekly instruction, to a Roman Catholic nun. What chance has she?"

"What chance has she?". God forbid she grow up to be a Catholic. The way Dawkins phrases it, she might as well be dead.

I loved "The Ancestor's Tale", though, Richard! One of the four best books I've ever read.

<comment><USER3> "What chance has she .. in understanding and possibly rejecting religious dogma when she can't do the same with obvious nonsense like tooth fairies"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This comment section is really going to end up with a lot of bickering and very little progress made...

I will note that Dawkins has certainly succeeded in producing his own "virus of the mind" cult of religion-fearing individuals primarily fed by his vitriolic and scathing intellectual attacks against religion.

For every few Bible-believing Christians you find an atheist pseudo- intellectual clutching his hardbound copy of "The God Delusion". So much for free thinking there.

<comment><USER5> In order to be a "good" atheist, is it necessary to be an expert in genetics and evolution? In order to be a "good" Christian, is it necessary to be a expert historian and biblical scholar? In order to be a a free mind, do you have to write your own book?

I don't think "The God Delusion" is going to convert anyone with strongly held beliefs, although it might move some fence-sitters. Like most apologetics, it's not written for the other side. If it were, it would need a less shocking title. But as an long-time Atheist in America(tm), it's nice to see books about atheism in the front shelf in bookstores, and discussion of the topic on television. Finally, it doesn't have to be "my secret shame!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a cult, Catholicism has done way more harm in its history than Scientology. I think it's very sad to see another generation grow up believing in that sort of sick madness.

<comment><USER2> By being the sole center of learning and scholarship in the European Dark Ages, by giving birth to the modern university, and by inventing musical notation?

Yes, I am aware of the bad things too. Reality has nuance.

Edit: Now that I think about it, you are certainly right that the Catholic church has done more _gross_ harm than Scientology, if only because it is much bigger and has been around for more than twenty times as long. However, I am not sure how the _net_ harm stacks up, due to its central role in the founding of Western civilization, and other mitigating facts.

<comment><USER5> I think "learning and scholarship" is stretching the truth - the primary caretaker in preserving ancient scholarship, yes. But what new research and learning was going on? The really hot stuff was going on in the Arabic world at that time. While the monks were carfully copying old books, Al-Khwārizmī was busy moving forward.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Job honeymoon is over, now what? - <AUTHOR> So I'm 3 year in my first job and I feel like the honeymoon is over and I don't know what to do.
The decline started a year ago when we started a new project and I was put in charge of its development, I got a promotion as well so I was very happy and all. Since then I started working more, adding more overtime every week pushing the project forward, fighting deadlines and managing another resource (and shielding him from management). All these added efforts were just "until we have an MVP", but now that the product is stable these conditions are now become the norm.
I feel depleted, I have now zero passion for what I'm currently doing and what bother me more is that I don't have any more energy to work on my own things (open source projects) and to improve my skills (online courses, training).
This is my first job, and I am/was very happy with it: interesting task, great team and mentors, and I still learn a ton.
So I'm a bit confused because I don't have other job experiences I can compare to. I would like to listen to some advice: is this what the end of a honeymoon looks like? Should I shake my career and find another job? Else?
I want my passion back, and my github wall green again. <comment><USER2> > Should I shake my career and find another job?

Yes, it's time to move on-- Passion is Bullshit.

I borrowed that from Scott Adams. Your job is not your job; your job is to find a better job.

Always be looking for the better deal. The better deal has its own schedule.

On this subject Adams offers some brilliant, unconventional career advice> [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17859574-how-to-fail- at-a...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17859574-how-to-fail-at-almost- everything-and-still-win-big)

</comment><comment><USER3> Two years - that's a long honeymoon! Three years in a permie job looks perfectly respectable on your CV/resume. You will not look like a job hopper by any measure. So I say it's time for a new role. I've hired a lot of second jobbers in my time, and your profile looks strong. When you've lined up that new role make sure you have a break between. Also make sure you get a healthy bump in your comp.

</comment><comment><USER4> It seems like the root cause is that you've been working too much now that you've been promoted. Start pushing towards working less. Manage expectations. Leave work at work (and leave on time). You said it yourself, it was just for the MVP. You need to change the norm back to the way it was.

</comment><comment><USER5> Have you discussed your workload issues with your boss? Is it possible to ask for more a bigger team or push back on the amount of work expected? That might easier and faster than finding a new job, especially since you like everything else about the company. Good luck either way!

</comment><comment><USER6> It sounds, to me, like the priority is to reduce the proportion of energy expended on the workplace. That doesn't necessarily require changing jobs [though depending on the specifics of a workplace it might]. Changing the proportion of your energy, may not even require reducing the time spent at work.

Assess the workplace culture. Is working on open source during work hours an option? Are training, conferences, etc. something that the company will pay for? Is reducing the time at work because of burnout something that would be supported?

Again, there's no generic answer across all workplaces. Keep in mind that switching jobs can just be a way of starting a new hero cycle to prove one's self to a new group of people. That's o.k. but it's better if a person is aware of it.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER7> That's why it's called "work".

<comment><USER8> Or even better _labour_ from Latin _labor_ , _laboris_ which also means _harm_ , _misfortune_ or _agony_.

<comment><USER9> Interesting, in lunfardo a dialect of the Argentinian and Uruguayan spanish with heavy influence of italian, laburar means to work... estoy laburando means i'm working.

Being the lunfardo origin, in the tango culture, with its sometimes gloomy view of life, it makes sense that it associates the work with agony and harm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Same here. Close to 3 years into my first full-time job.

Instead of seeking employment, did you consider creating employment? After being on the job for 3 years, one could identify some repeated problems/gaps. This could be potential startup business idea. I have been a database analyst for coming to 3 years, doing loads of data migration. I saw some gaps that is pretty potential in it too.

Or did you consider furthering your studies to enhance your skillset with e.g. M.Sc. Computer Science?

I am weighing my options.

</comment><comment><USER11> Learn to be a better manager. If you're a leader, you need to lead and make sure your person or people is actually doing what they need to be doing.

The key phrase for me is that you're "shielding" your person. Think about why you are doing that and what it would mean to stop.

</comment><comment><USER12> Be a tech grunt if you want to be a tech grunt. I've done it for years because it's much funner than management or architecture.

Give your company the first shot at making you happy by asking them to let you step down and back into your former group.</comment>


Measuring IQ in Autism with Adaptive Testing - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hrs-mat.com/measuring-iq-in-autism-with-adaptive-testing <comment><USER2> This is really important stuff! I know a lot of people with Autism, actually. And we need tests that are fast, reliable, and economical. Thanks for creating this!</comment>