Apple introduces a completely redesigned App Store - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/05/apple-introduces-a-completely-redesigned-app-store/ <comment><USER2> The one big question on my mind: have they fixed the "problem" of an app's rating (and reviews) only being that of the newest version?

I get that sometimes a version has severe bugs, and it's _good_ that the negative ratings/reviews don't drag down the app's newer versions that fix the bugs.

But it's horrible that I can't tell whether a newly-released app has a _history_ of being something more like a five-star app, or a one-star app—or whether it has no rating history at all. It incentivizes developers with shit apps to just constantly put out little tweak versions to suppress their rating.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can someone explain Apple's design approach? IMO, most of their apps are bland and blindingly white, and seem almost unfinished. Doesn't this distract from the content in a way? Not trying to be rude, I just don't have much UI/UX experience and I'm trying to understand it.

<comment><USER4> Guessing from the apps on my phone, minimalism; consistency; simplicity over features; standard white-on black over novel color schemes.

I like it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> My initial impression as an indie developer is that this new design has a way lower apps-per-screen density and seems to be even more heavily focused on promoting bigger developers.

Hopefully time will prove that it still works well for discovering indie apps.

</comment><comment><USER6> Does this mean that the "Zoom" menu item on the desktop App Store app will actually, um, zoom the content rather than just making the window fill the screen?

</comment><comment><USER7> Any way yet for me to filter for games or apps without any in-app purchases or ads?</comment>


Kim Jong-il's Willing Accomplices - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2254826/

<comment><USER2> " _North Korea is thought to have enough purely conventional weapons to destroy South Korea's capital, Seoul..._ "

No. Give it a good WWII strategic bombing level thwacking, certainly, but far from "destroy".</comment>


VLC Beta is now available for Android - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.videolan.vlc.betav7neon

<comment><USER2> Mhh why do a lot of Android apps need 'READ PHONE STATUS AND IDENTITY' permission? Seems unnecessary and makes me not want to use your app.

<comment><USER3> > _READ PHONE STATE AND IDENTITY_

> _Allows the app to access the phone features of the device. An app with this > permission can determine the phone number and serial number of this phone, > whether a call is active, the number that call is connected to and the > like._

?!! It also requires _READ SENSITIVE LOG DATA_.

<comment><USER3> On second thought: maybe Android's permissions are broken and too generic. An app has a legit reason to want to know _whether a call is active_ (to shut off playback), but the permission gives the app other abilities that they can abuse, like device serial number and phone number.

<comment><USER4> I have not developed for Android yet, but I would imagine they need said permissions in order to stop playing the audio/video when a phonecall is in progress.

I would imagine that it's a useful feature, and that many more people would complain if it was absent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "This item cannot be installed in your device's country." I'm in Canada.

<comment><USER6> Same, on all my devices. And I'm in the US.

<comment><AUTHOR> Irony. Available in India but not in US/Canada.

Confirmed on twitter <https://twitter.com/videolan/statuses/219753251598385154>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been using builds of this for months, so fair to say it should be pretty stable now.

<comment><AUTHOR> It worked good for me (HTC Desire S)

But this is what app says "it might kill your kitten, destroy your house and start the mayan apocalypse."

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nearly two years after the iOS version…

<comment><AUTHOR> nevertheless its a start</comment></comment>


Making Flux and REST Play Nicely Together - <AUTHOR> https://quizlet.com/blog/629

<comment><USER2> I am not sure if I get the point of the ServerModels. One would need to maintain the properties in both the ViewModel and the ServerModel, write logic for syncing them and so on. It also goes against the principle of "one-true- source" of data. I can see that you don`t want to mix up your view-specific properties with your rest-data, but I feel that one might find a better solution for this problem.

On the application I am currently working on we choose the following approach to the problem( were using reflux for Flux implementations, main difference is that actions dispatches them self).

View -> Trigger Action -> Action Creator -> Action creator calls Rest API -> Action sent to Store -> Store receives REST data and creates Immutable versions of it -> Store Triggers immutable version of it`s content to view

This keeps the stores as the "one-true-source" while the action creators does all the communications against the rest-api. Might be that this approach will be to simple when the application is starting to really expand, but I feel we found an easy to maintain, easy to understand and clean solution to the problem.

<comment><USER3> I think that's a valid approach as well. The server models are there as a way to resolve differences between the state of the models in the view and the state of the models in the server. It's nice if, for instance, the users loses internet connection and then comes back online we can intelligently figure out what's different between the client and server and sync those changes. Another situation is if we want to intentionally let the client state drift from the server state temporarily. For example, add, remove, and update models in the UI without having them be synced to the server immediately (ex. maybe they can make a bunch of changes and then press "SAVE" to fully persist or "CANCEL" to revert). It's particularly useful for apps where there's a lot of modification do data rather than just displaying data, but there's certainly other valid ways to approach the problem.

<comment><USER2> I do see a that one use-case might be your scenario where one user loses internet connection and comes back online. But this is just valid in cases where multiple users work on the same set of data and in those cases one suddenly got a more complex scenario(where one probably would need some kind of notification system, sockets, long-polling etc, to notify one user that another one has made a change).

In a case with lots of data modifications and a final step of "SAVE/CANCEL" whats your reason for not just keep the "current offline state" in the viewmodel-store and submit these when the user clicks SAVE?(If the user clicks CANCEL on can just reload the initial state from the REST service). This would perform the same task with lots of complexity removed.

But if you have discussed all the possible problems above, whats your strategy for keeping the server/view-models properties in sync? Seems like a lots of work just handling that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would really love to see some code snippets with the example mentioned (or ideally an open source project).

<comment><AUTHOR> The code for this is pretty tightly coupled to the Quizlet codebase right now unfortunately, but I'll work on extracting some sample code soon if there's time.

<comment><USER5> Isn't tight coupling one of the code smells?

<comment><USER6> Well, writing code that's too generic or overly abstracted is also a premature optimization...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why new user on HN starts with karma=1? - <AUTHOR>

Since Hackernews is for hackers, it's quite strange, from my opinion, to start counting from "1". For example, in almost all popular programming languages, the first element in the array is not actually the first. If you want to work with this element in the array, you typically need to call element with number 0 (a[0]). Are there any reason, why new user on HN have 1 karma after the registration? Is it a bonus for registration? <comment><USER2> Perhaps it is was written that way accidentally because it matches how comments and submissions start with a karma of 1. (Comments/submissions likely start with 1 karma because you are essentially giving an upvote to yourself when you provide content.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Things that keep up the first world at night :-P

Maybe because everyone deserves a baseline non-zero level of respect by virtue of being a person?

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. But when i write code everyday, it become so common to use counting from zero than from 1.</comment></comment>


Simbase: a A vector similarity database - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/guokr/simbase

<comment><AUTHOR> Simbase is a redis-like vector similarity database. You can add, get, delete vectors to/from it, and then retrieve the most similar vectors within one vector set or between two vector sets.</comment>


Ask HN: Pen-tested image/container/snapshot for cloud ssd server - <AUTHOR>

Does any cloud hosting service offer a one-click install of instances with required stack (i.e. LAMP) that is also pen-tested (i.e. has been setup with best-practice/common security guidelines). I am a dev but have no clue when it comes to infra security, so this one-click installs should already be secured for common threats, no? <comment><USER2> Ideally, such an install should include updated and patched versions of all apps in the stack. However, many security holes are introduced by the code being run on the stack - for example, writing a web app that is vulnerable to SQL injection or cross site scripting(XSS). Since this code is written or added post download, its not possible to pentest it pre-download. So it is still up to the dev to sanitize user input, use parameterized queries, not run the database as root, etc.

So for apps requiring a high degree of security, a pre-release pentest is a good idea.

Please see: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60174/how-can-i- prevent-...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60174/how-can-i-prevent-sql- injection-in-php) for more.</comment>


Hilbert's Third Problem (A Story of Threes) - <AUTHOR> http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/hilberts-third-problem-a-story-of-threes

<comment><AUTHOR> Submission statement: this is a remarkably accessible presentation (with hand- drawn diagrams!) on the concept of geometric invariants and their use in the proof of an early 20th century problem about equivalence between polyhedra.

</comment><comment><USER2> This is excellent mathematical writing! I found it very approachable and superbly well researched.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great writeup. Why is it on the MIT admissions website?

<comment><AUTHOR> The MIT Admissions website lets student bloggers write about essentially whatever they want - Lydia has written a number of excellent posts that are entirely unrelated to MIT admissions as well. In particular, this writeup is related to one of the MIT classes she's taking (a seminar in mathematics).</comment></comment>


Future of Corporations: Results-Only Work Environment--Focus on Output, not Hours or Face-Time - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_50/b4013001.htm

<comment><USER2> Maybe the next step after that would be to keep the results-only part but ditch the top-down corporate oversight, letting everyone work on whatever they wanted and keep nearly all the upside. Oh, wait...

<comment><USER3> This sort of thing should be an "industry standard" among programmers. We'd all be happier if we had the freedom to dice up our work and play time (and locations) anyway we wanted.

It looks like some people at Best Buy have been reading (or should be reading) Paul Graham's "What Business can learn from Open-Source" essay. It definitely makes the list of my favorite readings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _"... At most companies, going AWOL during daylight hours would be grounds for a pink slip. Not at Best Buy. The nation's leading electronics retailer has embarked on a radical--if risky--experiment to transform a culture once known for killer hours and herd-riding bosses. The endeavor, called ROWE, for "results-only work environment," seeks to demolish decades-old business dogma that equates physical presence with productivity. The goal at Best Buy is to judge performance on output instead of hours ..."_

When I read that I think someone is working out the cost per person per square meter and saying to themselves we pay for that floorspace and nobody is using at night or it can be done cheaper. Lets get rid of all but the core and let them work elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER5> There's a balancing act here -- trying to maximize your output today can cost you in your output tomorrow. Everyone knows you can overdo things physically; you can also burn out mentally.

 _If I stay up until 6 am chasing this one bug, either tomorrow I will be too tired to concentrate or I'll sleep in and mess up the rest of my schedule_... been there a lot.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> "Achen says he would never go back. Orders processed by people who are not working in the office are up 13% to 18% over those who are. ROWE'ers are posting higher metrics for quality, too. Achen says he believes that's due to the new office paradox: _Given the constant distractions, it sometimes feels impossible to get any work done at work._ "</comment>


Colorblind travelers can take in fall's true colors with special new lenses - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2020/08/28/colorblind-travelers-can-take-true-colors-fall-thanks-these-viewfinders/ <comment><USER2> I'm colorblind and have to call bullshit on all the people crying because they "saw red" for the first time. Try out "color vision" on your computer with a software-based screen filter that shifts the color intensities first before you buy these glasses. Now they've even tricked the government into it.

<comment><USER3> I believe they are not reacting to red, but by the ability to differentiate it from other colours.

I'm colour blind in one eye only. For that reason, I quite want to try them out to see what exactly the lenses do to change the appearance.

<comment><USER2> Mac and Windows have this functionality in the accessibility settings if you want to try it out.

<comment><USER3> I thought they had colour pallets that are appropriate for various blindnesses (ex: for yellow/blue blind folks, green, blue and cyan are all the same colour, so you wouldn't use more than one of that set of colours in any given pallet).

I don't need that since I see fairly normal colour in the other eye, and so I have an immediate "converter" to see what the visual difference is between yellow/blue blindness and normal vision. I literally don't even notice unless my right eye vision is blocked. I see a properly coloured world as long as both eyes (or my right eye alone) are seeing it.

I don't think the OS/X and Windows things are emulating what the glasses do. The glasses are filtering out overlapping colour frequencies (as seen by the eye's cones) so the R G and B are more distinct. That's completely different. This is limiting the noise, versus changing the whole colour pallet.

Interestingly images altered to look like yellow/blue blindness look the same to both my eyes, so I'd say they're pretty accurate. There are some small discrepancies, but very few in most that I've seen. I actually find that a little jarring because of course my right eye protests this invasion of missing colours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Since I'm yellow/blue blind in one eye, but not both, it would be really interesting to try these lenses since I would be able to describe the way things look from both colour blind and "normal" vision.

Also, I read that they haven't really tested these glasses with yellow/blue blind folks (red/green blindness is far more common) to know if it is all that useful for them.

<comment><USER4> I am very curious about this. Which color do you see when you look at yellow and which when you look at blue? And do the other colors look the same as with your other eye?

<comment><USER3> It depends on what kind of yellow. Dark yellow can look tan or even pinkish. Light yellow is white. I can't see yellow highlighter at all unless the light is making it glow - then it just looks shinier than the surroundings. Light blue is generally cyan, and otherwise it is pretty much black. I actually quite like "lego blue" or "versace blue" because they look so extremely different between each eye.

The colour that surprises people most is that blue and green both look the same, and by "same" I mean they both look like cyan - pretty much an entirely different colour. At night time, the blue light on the buses and the green traffic lights are exactly the same colour of cyan to my left eye. They're the normal blue and green to my right eye.

Only some colours "agree" between both eyes. For example, the HN logo is very close to the same colour. Only I can tell it is orange with the right eye. It looks simply darker (and therefore browner) with the left. And red looks like red. That one we can pretty much all agree on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Those do not work for everyone. I bought some glasses from this company for my father, both he and a colorblind colleague could not see any improvement apart from a slight contrast increase after a few hours of wearing them. One of them was slightly red-green colorblind, the other one had a much stronger red-green color blindness. The company seem to exaggerate a lot the effect of their lenses with carefully selected overenthusiastic testimonies. The good thing is that the glasses could be returned and refunded.

</comment><comment><USER6> Is there a more technical details of what the lens do? If he has some problem in the cones, no optical of digital processing can magically make it beautiful.

> " _It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. That red, it's > just gorgeous. It's incredible._ "

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://enchroma.com/pages/technology](https://enchroma.com/pages/technology)

<comment><USER6> This has more info: [https://enchroma.com/pages/how-enchroma-glasses- work](https://enchroma.com/pages/how-enchroma-glasses-work) It removes the light in some region between red and green. It _may_ be useful in some cases [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness#Classification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness#Classification)

Before buying one, I'd recommend to test it with red and green peppers/apples to see if they work as intended, but also with a lemon and an orange to see what happens with the intermediate colors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We have these in Tennessee at some state parks. As a colorblind person, I don't really know what I'm missing out on so I'm very much looking forward to trying them out when the leaves change this Fall!</comment>


Advanced Git tips (slides) - <AUTHOR> http://git-tips.heroku.com/

<comment><USER2> It is / can be surprising who on your team will have the most problems on a Git from SVN migration. Sometimes ol' CVS/SVN warhorses have too much to unlearn, sometimes simple devs who never bothered to progress beyond the minimal clicks with SVN/IDE to get code up and down discover the true Qi of source control management as they discover git's capabilities.

One nice thing about git vs. svn is when you reach enough mastery you can make that repo dance to your tune. At some point you and git are one and working together. SVN was always some kind of imposing, opposing force; one that I had to fool into doing my desire.

One clueless contractor could put your SVN repo into hell-and-gone. With git I told the team, "don't worry, go for it; unless you do something really strange, there's nothing you can do that I can't recover from."

</comment><comment><USER3> These slides are worthless without the talk. Instead go download his excellent book (or buy it) from <http://progit.org>

<comment><USER4> I agree that most of the slides would require further explanation but I still found a bunch of commands I've never heard of and actually could make use of, eg git bundle and git rerere.

So it's not totally worthless.

<comment><USER5> Although not totally worthless, it is nearly so. It is ~350 slides, most with a single word. To find those commands you've never heard of, you have to wade through a deluge of meaningless, when out-of-context, crap. Most readers, like me, probably said "not worth the time" after about 20 slides.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd love to learn a bit more about git, but this is pretty worthless as just the slides.

<comment><AUTHOR> These ones are advanced tips. I'll send you more beginner resources later on.

<comment><USER6> Advanced tips is what I was looking for. I can see it being some standalone material, perhaps I shouldn't just be browsing over it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> am i being an idiot? I can't see a way to change slides :s

<comment><USER8> Click inside the content, then use the keyboard arrow keys to move around.

<comment><USER9> For someone looking only at the tips, this is sadly very unfriendly. Basically, you need to click or press more than 300 times on your keyboard to go through. This cannot be used as a reference even so some stuff were interesting (I gave up at slide 84). I welcome a reformatting as a cheat sheet by a courageous reader :)

<comment><USER4> You can find some of the tips here: <http://mislav.uniqpath.com/2010/07/git- tips>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> We recently switched from SVN to Git and the transition has been painful - last week there has been at least one issue pr. day that has stopped work and that needed to be addressed. Personally, I have used Git before via github and it has worked well (tho' my usage was mostly doing small updates, no branches, no merges etc.)

My current impression of Git is that it's very powerful, but too low level and not that user friendly. I am currently evaluating Mercurial, since it seems to be easier to use and more user friendly.

Anybody have experiences working with both Git and Mercurial with a team of 5-10 people?

<comment><USER11> There is little technical reason to choose Git over Mercurial or vice versa. Their usage is extremely similar. Git exposes a few more internals, and lets you fix mistakes more easily. For sharing branches which are incomplete, git's `rebase -i` is also somewhat superior to mercurial queues.

Overall, I've found git to be marginally better than hg.

The real killer feature that git has is that git talks to github and svn. Mercurial only talks to bitbucket (sorry guys, network effects are important and github won).

<comment><USER12> The genius thing about git-svn is not that it only "talks" to svn: using git- svn (you could say subversively) converts your repo to git. One day, when somebody suggests dumping svn for git, you can skip the "but how do we preserve all that history if we switch" conversation, because it's already done.

<comment><USER13> Mercurial's hgsubversion works just like this as well: <http://mercurial.aragost.com/kick-start/hgsubversion.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'd just like to add that Scott was by far the best speaker I saw at RailsConf '09.

A lot of great hackers/founders are dry and boring presenters. They could learn a lot from watching him.

</comment><comment> adam-_- These types of presentations do not work on an iPhone :(</comment>


"the web is a bad tool for most of the things we use it for" - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@enkiv2/id-definitely-say-the-web-is-a-bad-tool-for-most-of-the-things-we-use-it-for-c4c86124a678#.2nu01t1vm <comment><USER2> > HTTP specs provide response codes that address some of the problems related > to addressing documents via their position on machines. (Doing this rather > than using CAN is a mistake in the first place, but TBL was working with a > slow network before ideas about CAN were very widespread.)

What's the expansion of "CAN"? He never defines that acronym.

<comment><USER3> content-adressed networking, I assume by contrast.</comment></comment>


Non-blocking JDBC with Mysql - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/async-mysql-connector/

<comment><AUTHOR> If you have been following the trend about event driven architectures for server applications then you know that blocking database operations still require a thread per connection. The asynchronous mysql connector implements an asynchronous callback model for database operations.</comment>


Why I Won't Hire You - <AUTHOR> https://www.golemtechnologies.com/blog/why-i-wont-hire-you-and-how-to-win-the-interview <comment><USER4> _I am expecting you to be one of the 99%+ people who I know I won't hire in the first 5 minutes._

If you can't narrow down resumes and phone interviews to candidates with better than a 1% chance of being accepted, then your interviewing pre- screening process is flawed. What other processes in our everyday work will also be flawed?

 _You send me a stupidly long resume_

90% of all written correspondence (from customers, users, collaborators, vendors, etc.) is too long. Do you think they're all stupid, too?

 _You have annoyed me._

You're a manager. Your job is to properly deal with issues that would annoy others. Why would anyone want to work for someone so easily annoyed?

 _...do I really want to look forward to your rambling emails every day?_

Do I really want to look forward to your sour attitude every day?

 _You can't tell me why you like your current job_

If I liked my current job, I wouldn't be here.

 _I don't hire awesome people who don't have the right skill mix._

Here's a clue: technologies change. By definition, anyone with the "right skill mix" won't have the "right skill mix" for long. Amesome people adapt. But how would you even know that if you don't hire them?

 _No career plans or vision_

I've been programming for 33 years and still have no idea what I want to do when I grow up. This is an interview for an open job, not Dr. Phil.

 _If you don't think well on your feet, spend some time reading through and practicing situational interview questions._

Are you serious? I'm a programmer, not an Americas Got Talent contestant. What you see is what you get.

 _If you are missing even one, I'm probably going to pass you up for someone who doesn't._

Wait a minute. You want to hire perfect people, but you also want them to have "career plans or vision"?

 _I have a super BS detector_

Obviously not, since so many of your questions can only be answered with BS.

 _The End_

That's just about the only thing you've said that I agree with.

You sound like you have a serious attitude problem. I can't imagine working for someone like you. But thanks for writing this. You've solved many problems in advance. I won't be applying. And I don't imagine many people like me will be either.

<comment><USER5> Thank you.

Interviews are a two way street. If I am applying for a job, my role during the interview is to convince you why I am a worthwhile hire, your role during the interview is to convince me that you are a worthwhile employer. If he was one of my clients I would disassociate myself from him very quickly.

As for his 5 points, I wonder if he realises that all 5 inversely apply to him just as much as they do to the candidate being interviewed.

1.Show me you can get things done. This means you can set realistic deadlines for projects and meet them consistently. You must be a good motivator.

2.Show me you are intelligent. I will ask you questions to discern how in touch you are with todays market. I don't care if you've interviewed a dozen people for this job, I want to know if you've actually read my resume.

3.Show me how I fit into your vision. Truthfully, we'll work best together if you sincerely think I am the best person for this job in the long run. I want to know how you can help me succeed in my career, Tell me.

4.Be highly skilled. If your job advert says that you need a highly skilled Developer then don't have me sitting in a corner refactoring shitty code for the first 6 months.

5.Be Passionate. If I feel like the interview process is boring you, I will end the interview prematurely but politely.

/rant

<comment><USER6> this is absolutely true. almost 100% of job ads are terrible. They are focused exclusively on what the company wants. Instead the ads should be marketing to attract the best. The ads should explain why someone great would want to work there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why I Won't Work For You:

Because you are a dick.

Now who are you? What are you going to give me in return? Why should I tell you that I love my job and my career. Why should I tell you about my vision and plans? What are you really looking for in that.

The hiring should be a lot simpler:

\- You have a problem. You need someone with the right skills, and hire him.

\- I have a problem (need money). I pick a job that I have the skills for.

Thinking the way you do, accepting your daily bull-shit and philosophy (worse, making myself sound like I enjoy and I belong to it) is only a sign for me that you are the wrong person to work for.

<comment><USER8> _Why should I tell you about my vision and plans? What are you really looking for in that._

These 'where do you see yourself in 5 years' questions sound like straight from a 'HR for dummies' book. I would really appreciate if an interviewer reading this post explained me what such cliches are trying to test, other than BS skills. Cliche question => cliche response.

<comment><USER9> _These 'where do you see yourself in 5 years' questions sound like straight from a 'HR for dummies' book._

Many of these open ended questions came about from large companies hiring physiologist to help build and identify a profile of an individual that the company would like the hire. Organizations such as the FBI use similar strategies as well. The problem is that many smaller organizations that did not want to spend the money or simply did not know to spend the money on professionals started to emulate the larger companies, but they did not posses the answer keys once they had the answers they just left it up to the interviewer to divine whether it was the right answer or not. Read that last sentence again and then read the definition of a Cargo Cult. you will laugh at the mental image I promise. You see, these interviewing practices are simply the same mentality that created Cargo Cults, somewhere along the way they lost the intelligence and are just emulating the process in ritual and then divining the results.

<comment><USER10> When asked the stock question "What is your biggest weakness?" I have actually answered it with "Answering standard interview questions."

And I still got the job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >If I have to spend more than 30 seconds finding out what you have accomplished, forget it.

Well then, Don't expect me to even bother writing a cover letter or tailor my resume. In fact, if your only going to be scanning over my resume in 30 seconds why, on earth, should I even spend any time filling out your form to send you my resume? When I send people my resume, I at the very least expect them to read through it. If my skill set matches what you are looking for and you are thinking of an interview, I expect you to at the very least Google my name, or check out my website/github which I conveniently include as a QR code.

>The worst answers? "Well I like the challenge" or some other BS.

Well, Enjoy working with the worst developers possible. Most of the best guys I know will take a job with worse pay, less benefits, and further commute if the work sounds interesting (read: challenging). "I enjoy the challenge" is probably one of the best answers to why you want to work somewhere. Unless, of course the work you do involves mundane repetitive tasks every single day then you probably don't want developers that enjoy challenge, because they will leave very quickly.

You take this stance of "I have the elixir of life and you will bend over backwards to get it because you are desperate". So the only people that do end up bending over are the ones who are really desperate.

<comment><USER12> > When I send people my resume, I at the very least expect them to read > through it.

Wait till you're on the employing side, like, even, your boss asks you to look over /100+ resumes/ that are 95% irrelevant.

<comment><USER13> You should read through a resume if you're going to interview them.

Signed,

A person that has viewed 1000s of resumes a week from time to time.

<comment><USER12> Obviously, but you barely skim in order to know whether to read.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is a very confrontational and adverserial style of interviewing and hiring.

I get the impression that author is looking for reasons to make the candidate a 'no hire' rather than using those silly questions such as 'tell me a time when....' as a starting to point to open a two way conversation.

My tip is to approach interviews with a positive mind WANTING the candidate to succeed and display their strengths rather than wanting them to fail. You should hire based on positives, not on lack of negatives!

This post really demonstrates how broken interviewing is. These are TERRIBLE and yet still WIDELY USED filters with a high chance of introducing false negatives in the hiring process.

Two examples:

1\. The multi year career plans he hints at in a number of places. I personally would be more interested in a candidate with a passion and genuine interest in the job on offer, rather than someone using it as a stepping stone on their ten year plan to get to something tangentially related. I personally don't know what I'll be doing in ten weeks let alone ten years, but a developer it'll probably an interesting and challenging variation of what I'm doing now rather than being somewhere in management.

2\. The long CV example is one example of a commonly used signal that tells you precisely nothing about the quality of the candidate. It is a completely arbitrary rule that is no way correlated with their skills or personality. After an initial filter, would it really be so bad spending 5 or so minutes considering and comparing the candidates on offer if that improved your outcomes by even a small percent?

Sigh....

<comment><USER15> Long CV definitely tells me something about the quality of the candidate.

If I am interviewing someone fresh out of school, I can forgive a rambling resume. However, for an experienced person, I am looking for some ability to present information concisely. It's like a design skill: can you present a focused view of the most relevant information? If you think that more than two pages of information is required to advertise yourself for a job, then you are quite likely lacking that skill.

I still think that a one-page limit is where it's at. Don't put down obvious bullet points. If you were a Windows system admin, don't waste a line on writing that you administered an active directory server. Of course you did that as a Windows sysadmin. No, tell me what you did that made you different than a run-of-the-mill person doing the same job.

<comment><USER16> One page resume might work for people with not so much experience but it is very hard to put 25+ years of work in one page except obvious "I solve your problems for money" :-). Just plain listing all places of work with dates can be 20+ lines How much insight can you get from 1995-1996 Company X , Senior Consultant , project Y ??

<comment><USER17> As someone who reads a lot of resumes, I regularly see two types of resumes:

1) Those that are roughly 1-2 pages per 10 years of experience with care taken to emphasize relevant and recent experience. Skills and knowledge that I actually care about are placed such that I cannot help but notice them on a first glance. Thought is clearly present in this resume.

2) Those that are roughly 13-21 pages (I have one on my desk that is 17 pages for work experience dating to an internship in 1996). Each job is discussed in mind numbing detail without ever giving me any of the details that I may actually care about. Each job includes an "environment" section that lists every tool that was in the building while that project was going on. Spelling and grammar issues are present. Any skills section will be overloaded with undefined in-house tools and frighteningly basic items (such as a senior developer/architect who lists 11 years of experience with FTP and EMAIL).

When you see an interviewer complaining about resumes that are too long and waste time, understand that they're complaining about the latter. I can easily accept minor issues. It is a huge warning sign when their resume makes me wonder if it is their judgement or motivation that is seriously lacking.

<comment><USER18> > When you see an interviewer complaining about resumes that are too long and > waste time...

No. I'd love to agree with you, but I've seen articles from people just like you (or so they claim) that complain about resumes longer than 1 page. Resumes that include/don't include a cover letter. Resumes that are too short. Resumes that don't cover experiences outside employments. Resumes that _do_ include those experienced.

You see, you mention #2. This guys clearly has a lot of experience. He probably didn't just create that resume _just_ for your job. He's probably been updating a single resume whenever he needs. This means, that resume has gotten him employed at every company on that list.

Think about that.

It's not a problem with people applying, it's with who does the hiring.

<comment><USER17> While every interviewer has different opinions on what should/should not be present, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm not cargo culting, I'm complaining about receiving garbage.

Extreme length is commonly a sign that the person is too lazy to ever prune or clean up things. And my complaint about excessive length is "if they cannot bother to revisit it, why should I?"

I'm aware that every resume is not created from scratch just for me. Still, I should be able to create a guess as to who the person is, what they're looking for, and (generally) why they might be a good fit. If not, why am I reading their resume at all? What am I possibly getting out of it?

While updating resumes usually means adding, that doesn't have to mean that a 1/2 page discussion on tweaking spreadsheets for a law office in 1992 will stand there until retirement. Do I really need to see that someone has experience with Visual Studio 2010, 2008, 2005, 2003, 2000? How about every version of every Office product that they have ever used?

How about a skills section that lists 4 versions of MS DOS? Sure, there's a possibility we have a legacy system to update, but really, if you want to include that stuff, separate the (likely to be) relevant information so that I can find it easily without wading through crap like your Code Warrior Certification in 1995.

I'm not your mother and I'm not going to do the equivalent of cleaning your room just to find out if you might be worth a phone call.

<comment><USER18> > I'm not your mother and I'm not going to do the equivalent of cleaning your > room just to find out if you might be worth a phone call.

And you shouldn't. But, what you say conflicts, in some way, with your stated goal:

> I should be able to create a guess as to who the person is, what they're > looking for, and (generally) why they might be a good fit.

And guess what? That 15-page resume is looking for a place where a 15-page resume will fit in.

My point was that every person who has ever talked about the hiring process and how to put together a resume with the "I read resumes every day" credential is giving you advice on how to get the interview with them: nothing more.

With that in mind, why should _I_ customize my resume for you? Rather, I should write a resume that represents _me_. If you don't like the resume, you won't interview with me. And that, hopefully, means I wouldn't fit in.

Listen, I've had interviews canceled on me because I play board games (at a company that promotes the fact that they have XBox 360s).

So, I'm not saying you are wrong. I'm just saying that your advice is, at least in my opinion, advice on what _you_ look for. You have no need to defend what your criteria is, I wasn't attacking it. I apologize if you think I was.

In some ways, you should thank the 15-page resumes coming in. They make your decision much easier (I'd assume). If that person adjusted their resume merely to get the interview, are they really the type of person you want to hire?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I disagree with most of this post, and I'm glad I didn't apply to any position with him as an interviewer. Specifically:

 _You can't tell me why you like your current job_ \- Maybe I hate my current job, and took it to pay the bills. Maybe I actually did take it because I like the challenge. Sure, I could and should give more details about it, but that's a valid response, which shouldn't be thrown out so quickly. While the interviewee should do his/her best to give good answers, it's the interviewer's job to ask intelligent follow-up questions; there's a give and take in an interview.

 _No career plans or vision_ \- My career plans for most of my life were "keep my options open". That served me very well. It sounds like this interviewer is only interested in people who have been completely focused on a single goal since kindergarten, ignoring everyone else. His loss, I guess.

<comment><USER20> How many people have you interviewed? I haven't done a lot, but when I was interviewing a lot of people for a couple positions it seemed like everyone said they were "creative" or "liked a challenge."

Claiming they were creative didn't really disqualify, but it didn't make anyone stand out unless they had a couple examples.

<comment><USER21> You ask general generic questions and you will get general standard answers. Try asking engaging questions that can get more specific answers. Like "can you give me an example where you devised a creative solution to a problem?"

<comment><USER20> Some employers might be better prepared to ask engaging questions, but the reality is that most interviewers are like the guy in that article. You can fight it all you want, but people who are serious about finding good jobs are better off if they can sell themselves rather than waiting for some HR guy to ask the right questions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Interesting.

-He expects he won't hire me in the first five minutes? If in the first five minutes I get that vibe I no longer wish to have the job.

-Tailor-made resume for his job? As if people are supposed to create new resumes for every job that they apply for? Get serious. Plus different companies expect different style of resumes since there is no standard and what amounts to close to standard changes every couple of years. What he wants is people to magically read his mind to craft a resume just for him to meet his expectations.

\- He won't hire if I can't say why I love my current job? If I love my current job then there's not much reason to leave it, now is there? Plus, he claims to have a BS detector but he seems to be asking for BS from the applicant.

\- No career plans or vision? For most people laying out five year plans is BS, which means he won't hire you. What good does such a question do for anyone anyway? Looking back over my career I've only had one job that I actually planned for. The rest are from changes in things I can't control with changes in what interests me.

\- I agree with the no skills part. As someone who's been on the hiring side of the table there's nothing more annoying when someone can't back up what's on their resume.

\- "Don't sit there and tell me what you would do in the future. I didn't ask what you would do, I asked what you did." Um, yes you did, it was two bullet points ago.

\- He apparently requires the perfect candidate. I wonder how many people he actually manages to hire and how many of them stay for their "career"?

\- He talks of bad advice out there discussing the topic of his post and he seems to assume his will not get lumped into that list. I would say it's the same as any other post on the topic, some good and some bad.

He sounds a lot like the kind of guy that has a high turnover rate of first- year hires who leave for more money and he can't figure out why.

</comment><comment><USER23> You know what I really hate? Being asked about my career plans or vision. Wanna know what my career plans are?

To create something cool and reach financial independence in X amount of years. But first I need to pay for food for the next couple of months until somebody better than Your Company starts begging for programmers and sending me emails. And to be honest, your project likely won't be able to hold my interest for more than a few months, it will become boring and routine, nothing like anything fun I'll be working on in my own time.

Most interviewers hate that answer. (which is why I freelance, it's perfect)

PS: I have yet to give the answer that directly, but I should try every time I go in to talk about a freelancing project and it turns into an interview.

</comment><comment><USER24> What a completely horrible way to interview and speak to people.

 _No career plans or vision_ Why would this matter to the interviewer? I just can't get over how ridiculous of an answer he provides. Why would he care what my career plans and vision (whatever that is) are? Who can honestly plot out the next 10 years of their life? Very few, and I'd be wary of anyone who claims they could.

I'm not surprised this person is not finding the right candidates for his company, but I think he has no clue why.

<comment><USER25> _I'm not surprised this person is not finding the right candidates for his company, but I think he has no clue why._

Where does he say that he is having trouble finding people?

While I agree that the example he provides is a rare case, it's not entirely a stupid question. (However, as I said elsewhere about other interview questions, it definitely could use a more original approach.) I think many interviewers are worried about hiring someone who is just going to use the company as a year-long hopping stone, and therefore won't be committed.

<comment><USER26> The guy is rejecting more than 99% of people who make it to an onsite interview. Clearly they aren't finding the right candidates. And they must be totally desperate if they're willing to still do interviews with that low a hit rate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Hey, lovelyLaney - I noticed that your HN account is probably tightly linked to Golem Technologies in some way (given that you've only submitted twice, both articles from this domain). There are over 100 comments on this article, and not a single one is from you. If you wrote this post, I think I speak for a large portion of HN when I say - we'd love to hear from you. Yes, seriously.

I know some people will probably downvote whatever you post without thinking, no matter what you say - because judging from the comments, you seem to have angered the mob. Indeed, I disagree with this article strongly myself - <USER2> would be happy to chat with you about why it doesn't resonate with my personal experience. However, if you have thoughtful answers to what people here have to say, the community only wants to help you, and see its own succeed.

If you want to stand behind your article, please do. If you want to recant or clarify parts of things you've said, you can do that too. You're a one person company - are you hiring right now, and what sorts of positions are you having trouble hiring for? We'd love to hear specifics - and to hear you engage in the community about something it obviously feels passionately about in a deliberate, measured way. Many may disagree with what you have to say, but no one here should fault you simply for your attempts to say it, for contributing to the discussion around your own ideas. Hope to hear from you.

</comment><comment><USER28> For someone who said he doesn't want to a long resume that rambles on forever he sure had a long blog post that rambled on with very little content.

Attacking each point:

 _You send me a stupidly long resume_

Some recruiters/HR desks look for resumes with specific keywords, and we need to tailor our resumes to get past those (admittedly retarded) filters. As an interviewee, I understand that and have made my resume longer to get past them to the people that actually look at it. As an interviewer, I've rarely looked at the resume until the interview, and only scanned over it to look for things that I can ask about, in addition to our normal quetions.

 _You can't tell me why you like your current job_

You don't have to like your current job. Especially in this economy, some people are glad to have jobs. Of course, it'd be nice if you like your job, but then again, that's why he's interviewing. Whether or not a person likes a previous job has nothing to say about whether or not he'll like his next job, unless, of course, you're looking for a spineless twit who will go with the flow regardless of how they treat him.

It's more important to recognize a cultural fit and find someone that will get along with the employees, but again, this can vary wildly. I worked at a startup and we interviewed a manager from a large corporate company to be our BA. We went into the interview thinking there's no way we'll like this guy, but it turned out he was awesome, and a great cultural fit too.

 _No career plans or vision_

Not everyone has a long-term. Not everyone knows what they'll be doing in five years, especially when they're younger. My first two jobs, I told them I'd be gone within a year and a half. I don't remember saying it, but when I quit a year a half later, they aid I told them that during the interview and they just didn't believe me. The better question is what will it take to keep me here for five years, and what is your firm going to do for it as well? Of course, people most likely can't answer this question until they've had a few jobs under their belt, so they realize what they like and don't like.

 _No skills_

There's really the primary thing that matters.

 _Answer my skills with conjecture_

I didn't read this far, but it sounds like 'Don't BS me'. I'll agree there as well.

I agree with csomar. I probably wouldn't work for you.

</comment><comment><USER29> I will go into every interview expecting that we are equals. You know what you or your company already is and what it wants. I know what I am and what I want. Then, we decide together. Interviewing/recruiting does not give you high-status.

The interview failures described in the article occur when _neither_ party understands this.

<comment><USER30> It blows my mind that so many people don't understand that as an interviewee they are just as responsible for deciding if this relationship is a good fit as the interviewer. Otherwise you may end up jumping through the correct hoops only to get hired by a guy like this.

I find many interviewers have no idea that it's a two way street as well. I guess it shortens the interview for me though. I don't want to work for someone who only wants answers, not a conversation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I find it amusing that he starts off with a rant about long resumes. Then half of what follows goes on to talk about all the extensive information you have to communicate on your CV just to get an interview.

I severely disagree with the attitude conveyed. People would do well to remember that a work arrangement is _mutually_ beneficial, always. You take a job because it is in your interest to do so. You are offered a job because it is in their interest to do so. No one employs someone while taking a loss on them, yet companies treat interviewees as if they would be lucky to land such a wonderful job.

If this attitude came out in my interview, I'd immediately walk out. If you're treating me in this way before I even work for you, odds are it's not ever going to get better, only worse.

</comment><comment><USER32> "If I have to spend more than 30 seconds finding out what you have accomplished, forget it."

Not to worry. I will only work for someone who can manage to conquer problems of scale such as skimming a resume and finding pertinent points. If you are unable or unwilling to do so, we'll eventually have a problem and I'll be better off elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER33> It seems somewhere along the line, every person who is aspiring to become someone great in the industry gets the wrong cue. They see some conceited individual writing blog posts about how great they are, and they assume mimicking this style of writing will make them equally as great. The truth is: most of us barely tolerate this attitude from those who are truly great because we don't have much choice. Until you are truly great (i.e. on the cover of time magazine, and solving the largest problems we all face with ease), you would do better to present yourself with humility.

That you thought it appropriate to write a blog post with simply the title of "Why I won't hire you," is the reason "Why I will never interview with you." (And, for many others as well, I'm sure.) It has little to do with the content (although in fact, the content only gets worse with conceit and self-inflating statements) and everything to do with your attitude.

Who wants to work for someone who already thinks they're better than the majority of humanity? I'd want to work for a manager who knows how to communicate effectively without being abrasive, and who has excellent skills in resolving conflict and helping their team grow to their maximum potential. Everything about your blog post suggest the opposite combined with such a level of hubris, that I could only imagine working for you would be the worst job I've ever had.

Good luck with that hiring thing.

</comment><comment><USER34> /No career plans or vision/

The best developers I've ever worked with tend to lack career plans. If you're sufficiently happy with your life that you don't need a change strategy, that's pretty cool.

<comment><USER35> Are you sure they didn't? Perhaps, like me, they have already finished their career plan and they are working their dream job.

That's the thing these interviews fail to take into account. They assume that everyone wants more, when that's not always the case. Happiness means knowing when you have what you want, and enjoying it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> tl;dr - He won't hire you because he has a hyper-focus on the process of the interview rather than the process of finding a suitable individual for the opening. His attitude can be summed up in this one line, "Most people looking for jobs don't deserve them."

<comment><USER29> Yes. But it could be true that most people looking for jobs don't deserve them, and yet it would still be important to remember that the interview is nothing but a process for finding a good match.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> If there were more engineers than jobs and we were all fiercely competing for scraps, I would say ok - it's a "buyers market" and we are forced to put up with attitudes like this.

The situation is very different however. In my experience, top talent either a) have their own company or b) are well-looked after by their current employer (at least one would hope so) so they need to actively lured away; how about you tell me why I SHOULD work for you rather than give all the reasons why I can't?

Oh yes - and the author is an arrogant dick.

</comment><comment><USER38> > _I have a super BS detector, and most other interviewers do too._

I have a good BS detector too. Lots of people do.

Here's the problem: Lots of people are full of BS. That includes interviewers.

Since people are very sensitive to BS either way, a BS impedance mismatch can completely ruin an interview. That means that the BS-appraisal process must complete efficiently and accurately within the first 30 seconds of the interview, which is quite a difficult demand.

Let's discretize the BS axis into two categories: full of BS / hates BS.

So we have 4 situations:

* Interviewer is full of BS, wants to hear BS. Interviewee is full of BS, provides BS. WIN

* Interviewer hates BS. Interviewee is full of BS, provides BS. FAIL.

* Interviewer is full of BS. Interviewee hates BS. FAIL.

* Interviewer and interviewee both hate BS. SUPER WIN.

The problem is that neither the interviewer nor the interviewee are aware of the BS-status of the other individual.

The interviewer, however, is generally in a power position, since we can assume the interviewee wants the job. Therefore it is really up to the interviewee to estimate the BS-status of the interviewer.

So, only two situations are really going to be fundamentally compatible, one of which has much of a chance of landing a good candidate. There is easily a 50% chance of something going wrong at this point just out of luck, or as a result of a misestimated BS status.

If there is a detected mismatch, the interviewee can make a choice: Fake personal BS status (BSer tries to be "real", anti-BSer gives up on personal integrity and provides some BS because that's what is expected by the BS interviewer); or, be true to himself, and either walk out of the interview (politely!), or get down to business and present himself as a serious individual (for the non-BS interviewer).

So, the BS estimate is critical. Moreover, since it's easy to get the impression that most people are full of BS, there may be bias present in the estimator that helps to get things off on the wrong foot.

Notice that _none_ of this has anything to do with whether the interviewee is actually the right candidate for the job. Right off the bat, the BS-status and accuracy and speed of the interviewee's BS estimator is a huge factor in job- getting ability, regardless of other skillsets.

And that is why interviewing sucks, for both parties.

<comment><USER38> I should mention that in reality things are, of course, more subtle, and this two-category quantization is not realistic. In the real situation you'll not only want to identify the BS-status of the interviewer, but give them _just the right amount_ of BS. Don't be _too honest_ , you have to sell yourself after all. Frankly, it's tricky, especially for people who aren't used to talking about themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> _Be highly skilled._

 _Be Passionate. If you are bored working in a similar job somewhere else, you'll be bored with me._

Does the job involve rockets or something like that? No?

Well good luck finding exactly someone who is both highly skilled AND not bored by your job.

</comment><comment><USER40> <http://www.crunchbase.com/company/golem-technologies>

Employees: 1

He's been doing this for almost a year and hasn't hired anyone. Sounds about right.

Also, the website is taking 20s to serve any page. Maybe he should spend less time blogging about how awesome he is and how everyone sucks, and instead build a website that can handle a surge of traffic.

</comment><comment><USER41> The thing about this interview process is that you'll lose those candidates who have potential and can thrive in correct environment but:

 _a)_ Currently work in a job that they don't really like and, hence, are looking to switch (because they cannot come up with a satisfactory answer for: "You can't tell me why you like your current job")

Also, since they don't know much about your company besides second-hand information, they cant answer: "why you think this job will give you the same passion". Interview is a conversation, you'll have to tell them what your company culture is and how it can benefit potential employees.

 _b)_ Candidates who are fresh out of college / don't have much experience.

 _c)_ Candidates who are probably good enough for your job but aren't good enough to pass the, very high bar, you've set up for them.

So it depends on the profile for which you're hiring and the prerequisites you are looking for. I personally won't mind if an interviewee can't answer most of these questions but can do the job I'm giving and has done something simiiar to it in the past with reasonable success and is a good cultural fit in my organisation based on what I can deduce during the interview.

</comment><comment><USER42> A startup is not a 5000 person corporation and shouldn't be run as such. I remember the author posting a Show HN last February introducing his company. At that point in time he was still in a full time job. Now, I don't know what's happened in the life of his company over the past 11 months, but I would venture to guess he has less than 10 employees. I'd even venture to guess it's somewhere less than 5. At this stage you're more looking for collaborators, not people to manage. And when you're looking for early stage employees you should really be looking for a true personality fit, in addition to the required technical prowess (which, incidentally, doesn't necessarily mean "knows ruby").

Yes, hiring is hard. Yes, as an early-stage startup it will take you a very long time to hire. But you have to remember those you're hiring today will make or break the company tomorrow. Their "5 yr plan" should have no bearing on whether or not they get a job at a very early startup, but by the end of the interview you should know not only that they're technically capable, but can roll with any changes you foresee the company making, and that they have the right personality to mesh with you and the rest of your team (you'll be spending a lot of time together - could you grab beers with them?). You should also know that they're so sold on the idea and vision of your company that their 5 year plan and your 5 year plan become one (or are at least related). Realistically, your startup probably won't even be alive in five years.

Of course I know a lot of people look at things differently, and I have complete respect for different opinions and methods (and love reading about them). We're still trying to figure out hiring ourselves, but I think the best engineers come with all sorts of non-corporate eccentricities. If we had followed the author's suggestions, we wouldn't have hired either of our two founders (including myself) or our first engineer. I'll leave it up to the reader to decide whether that would have been a mistake or not. :)

</comment><comment> code-dog As someone who has done the interviewing thing, I can see where this article is coming from. I don't really buy into all of it though. All this stuff about being a great communicator. That is cool but not always required. I have spent a lot of time working with amazing people who are crap communicators and crap people who are great communicators.

But - I am sure a lot of people interviewing use indicators like these so it it worth knowing about them.

Finally, on the CV thing. This is a hard issue because agents look for buzz words. If you've done a lot of stuff you need to write a lot to get all the buzz words in. That is the only way the agent will forward our CV. Then - <USER3> cannot tailor the CV to the job because you did not submit one for that job, you submitted one for buzz words.

<comment><USER43> Yeah, it tends to make me a bit irritable after the 500th time I've seen a resume touting the candidate's skills with DreamWeaver, so I sympathize. But while the article is a well-intentioned rant, it's still a rant.

In short, if you're looking for a job, try to put yourself in the position of the interviewer and adjust your approach accordingly. Don't go in cold, and don't assume the interviewer will make allowances for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Looks like he passed over all the guys with scaling experience.

</comment><comment><USER45> I don't get it. I zoned out after the

'I am going to drop 99% of all candidates because they fail the following' <USER2>
'You sent me a looooong resume'

In my world you're sending the resume before the interview. If that's such a big issue (is it?), then - don't invite those guys. Your 99% rate just dropped significantly and you're not wasting time on both sides.

</comment><comment><USER46> HN has been soundly trolled.

This guy -- who apparently rejects 99% of interviewees -- apparently runs a single-person company of dubious purpose. This absurdly trollish post is over the top because that's what ensured it a front-page showing.

Kudos on the pagerank earned by trolling the gullible folks on HN.

</comment><comment><USER47> Based on the comments in this thread I think I'm glad HN has taken his server down ;)

</comment><comment><USER40> Why I won't work for you:

1) You are a self-important douche who writes lengthy blog posts on all the reasons you deem people unworthy of working with you.

</comment><comment><USER48> Notably, going through his blog's archives, there's no post on the subject of "Why on Earth You'd Want to Work for Me."

</comment><comment><USER49> So if I'm skilled, get things done, am intelligent, project vision and am passionate you'll hire me? Unfortunately, that makes me a perfect candidate to start my own company, so I think I'll probably do that instead. But thanks for the interview tips.....

</comment><comment><USER50> Wow, I'm pretty surprised to see such a collectively sensitive reaction to this post.

Try to see things from this guy's perspective -- this comes across as a guy who's grown really tired of being bombarded by terrible resumes. Then, the few candidates whose resumes appeal to him result in terrible interviews because the candidate either doesn't give a shit about what he/she does, or misled (if not flat-out lied) about his/her skill set.

That would leave anyone a little ornery after a while.

Personally, I found the post rather unenlightening, only because I think it's common sense to be passionate about what you do -- otherwise, why do it? -- and to have the right skills, etc.

But a little tough love never hurt anybody. (And if you think _this_ guy is a dick, I want to work for your bosses, because I've worked with some real doozies.)

<comment><USER51> Ornery is fine, the trouble is that half the stuff he wants is crap. You want everybody to have a good answer ready for what their career plan is extending out a full decade? Well, that eliminates a whole lot of people, many of them perfectly qualified, for no good reason.

There's some good stuff in here, but that's outweighed by the large serving of nonsense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I don't think this guy's that unreasonable, there's a bit of attitude and maybe frustration but having interviewed a bunch of people lately I can relate.

I think the biggest issue with interviewing is that it can only be done well in a team. We usually have at least 5 or 6 people interviewing and some of them have to be from unrelated projects. We have the luxury of drawing from a large pool of engineers from different projects but for smaller companies it might be a good idea to pull in people from other companies as neutral observers, if that's possible.

I always find it interesting to discover my own biases during the debrief meeting.

+1 on the long resumes, though. Also, listing every programming language or CAD program in the skills list is very off-putting.

</comment><comment><USER53> must be nice to have such a large pool of people to interview to fit your needs perfectly, especially for technical people. The OP's points are valid and I feel the same way about _almost_ all of them. Even when I worked in the large corporate(s), I always hired people as if they were working for me in an intimate setting like a startup. Hiring capable, yet diverse, people always provided me with a winning team.

</comment><comment><USER54> I really don't understand the offence some people seem to be taking from this blog post. The author's listing, directly and to the point, what he wants to see from interviewees.

You might not like the tone of the author's writing, but having sat on the other side of the interview table, it _is_ thoroughly depressing when a candidate tells you "Yeah, I just want a job - money, isn't it?", when you _know_ that the role available is great, and someone who _wants_ to care about will really enjoy it.

<comment><USER16> It is all perspective , you like to think that role is great but maybe is not so much as you think. Maybe you just don't know better

<comment><USER54> _It is all perspective , you like to think that role is great but maybe is not so much as you think. Maybe you just don't know better_

Don't get me wrong; we all have to pay the rent. There there are indisputably times when, guess what, one just needs a damned job that'll pay the bills.

But for a lot of smaller companies with cool little projects? Yeah, I think it's totally reasonable for them to discriminate on that level.

<comment><USER55> Given that most people need a job to pay the bills, it seems that "I need the money" has to be one of the most truthful answers in a job interview (or "I want more money"). That's why it's a job and not just a fun thing to do. A lot of talented people probably wouldn't have a job if they didn't need it, but since they do they curtail their own desires to fit the needs of an employer in exchange for money. A lot of really great work gets done this way, but somehow it seems bad to say it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> What's your feeling on remote workers?

@Llambda - isn't the process of the interview also the process of finding a suitable candidate?

<comment><USER36> I think it can be tricky. We know the process doesn't always work. Some companies, e.g. Google, believe that it's better to adhere to a tough hiring process and reject most people even if a certain number of those people who are rejected may be brilliant engineers. But what I think is important to remember is that the goal is to hire the right person for the job. The hiring process you use may or may not be an effective and efficient means of finding that person. But certainly having a very narrow view, say by having a very strong focus on the process and little else, is a sure way to miss the right person at least some of the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> 99%+?!

This guy must spending every waking hour interviewing.

</comment><comment><USER58> If you are looking for a good communicator among nerds, you are definitely looking in the wrong place. You need a salesman.

<comment><USER17> There's a difference between "excellent at communicating" and "obviously does not care".

An excellent example of the latter is the presence of spelling errors that could have been fixed with spell-check, completely random font changes due to copy-and-paste, etc. These typically are just the superficial signs that no thought was put into the content.

It's like showing up for an interview in a dirty t-shirt and sneakers. I'm not looking for excellent fashion sense; I'm looking for a basic awareness of the world around them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> "I am expecting you to be one of the 99%+ people who I know I won't hire in the first 5 minutes. "

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

For a doubter wanting to succeed, I'm already turned off. Smart people don't have to prove they're smart. Give them a problem and they'll leave your head spinning about why you didn't see it like that before.

I like looking at possibilities. It probably wouldn't work out that you know how to recognize someone great.

"You send me a stupidly long resume"

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

I wouldn't send you a resume at all. I would send you a personal letter I wrote just for you outlining the things I've done and offer an actual, live, tour of everything I work on and the names and numbers of those clients.

You might not know how to process this calling of your bluff that you're in fact, ready to hire the perfect person.

"You can't tell me why you like your current job"

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

If I'm talking to you I'm open to possibilities of liking more than one thing. It's up to _you_ to tell me why and how what you're doing is so much different and not a glorified CRUD/Reporting app just like the other 40-50 apps I've built in the last 15 years.

How about I tell you that you're no different than any other company? You just want the answer to one question. Where is x at? That's all everyone wants with their own data.

"No career plans or vision"

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---

You must have been the first person ever to predict what exactly would happen in the technology world, exactly in the last 20 years so you could chart a perfect plan, or vision through it.

Why has no one given you a Nobel Peace Prize? I can nominate you.

My vision is to be a very curious person about everything I come across. I like knowing how everything works, and doesn't work. You know what that does? I'm not afraid of anything that comes across my plate whether others say it can be solved or not.

My career plan is to do interesting work helping people get more done with less effort so they can do what they do best -- interact with other people. Do you fit that? I do.

I don't need a plan or a vision when I can engage my passion from the second I wake up to the second I go to sleep, 7 days a week. I've seen more plans and visions not work out (much like girlfriends who have "plans" and "timelines" that never work out) to know better than to expect life to work on my watch. All I can pick is a direction and give every situation my all.

Sadly, you probably don't get this.

"NO SKILLS"

\</comment><comment>-----

Right. And you're qualified to measure them. If you did, you'd know there's no real thing as a skill. Just an aptitude with a technology that comes and goes to the latest tool.

Your brain might blue screen if I told you that .NET isn't a language, but 30+. Imagine how silly you must have sounded beating that .NET developer drum.

Most importantly, real developers can quickly learn anything they need to get anything done. That's all they do all the time to solve a problem under unreasonable circumstances, and a skill you can't seem to imagine.

"Answer my questions with conjecture"

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

I will call your bluff and tell you to hire me for 2 weeks unpaid. If I don't make you swoon like a fairytale it's probably not meant to be anyways.

That's the answer to all of those questions because I've done hiring for myself, and my customers with those same questions and they don't reveal as much about the person as you believe. I bet I could know more about you from how you load a dishwasher (telling each dish why you won't use it because it won't load itself into the dishwasher).

"How to Win the interview"

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

If you're having trouble finding people getting things done and that's a big deal for you to hire, I think you're still going to be collecting emotionally scarred baggage to put into future blog posts.

How are you the top player you're looking for others to be? We can only find and know deeply in others what we have and know deeply in ourselves. :)

</comment><comment><USER60> Of the 100 people who look at his website searching for employment 90 are disinterested due to his poor grammar, spelling, and punctuation skills. Another eight realize that a professional services site with HTTP 403 and 404 errors isn't that professional. One more reads the "official company blog" and concludes that the owner is a douche bag. The remaining 1% apply simply to keep their H1B status alive.

So in his own special way that guy is telling the 1% to f*ck off. Well played.

</comment><comment><USER61> My problem is that I have to give my future employers absolute bullshit when they ask me where I see myself in the next 5 years.

Why? I hate working for other people. I only want to work for myself. The only reason I even take a regular job is to fund my projects until they become successful. But, I can't ever tell them that.

</comment><comment><USER62> I wrote this in their comments, and got blocked by an auto filter. Wonder why?

"About halfway through the first bullet point I decided I wasn't interested in reading every juicy word of this boring essay. I thought about writing a rebuttal along the lines of "why I won't work for you", but it boils down to this -- you sound like a bad listener and a self-important jerk."

Response:

Your posting on Golem Technologies from __. __. __. __has been automatically flagged by our spam filters as being inappropriate for this website.

</comment><comment><USER63> He has every right to be bitter. Good candidates are avoiding him like the plague, and what is left over is terrible. It's a feedback loop.</comment>


Hyperloop One was just hit with an explosive lawsuit from its co-founder - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/12/12162422/hyperloop-one-lawsuit-bambrogan-pishevar-lloyd-noose <comment><USER2> This is unfortunate to read, but judging by the characters of those who resigned and filed suit (known through colleagues), and the security footage, their account is believable. I doubt this is a power grab, why would they quit working on groundbreaking technology out of spite?

Seems to be a group who tried to steer the company in the right direction and lost.

</comment><comment><USER3> Obviously shady scam company revealed to be run by shady scammy people. Shocking.

</comment><comment><USER4> I never thought HTI had achievable goals. Even their lack of engagement with the scientific community puts them in the same camp as climate change deniers.

Here's some good reading, though:

[http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha.pdf](http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER5> Theranos, Ubeam, Hyperloop One - where technology and magic meet investors money.

Monorail; monorail; monorail!

</comment><comment><USER6> A hangman's noose? This is stranger than fiction...

Even the accuser's name. BamBrogan? Quite unique.

<comment><USER7> [http://www.techinsider.io/how-hyperloop-founder-brogan- bambr...](http://www.techinsider.io/how-hyperloop-founder-brogan-bambrogan- got-the-greatest-name-ever-2016-5)</comment></comment>


Software Projects Fail: The Software Development Risk Landscape - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/risk-first/website/wiki/Risk-Landscape <comment><AUTHOR> This is a single page from Risk-First, introducing the idea that we can categorise the risks we face on software projects.

What do you think?

Does our discipline lend itself to this kind of rigor, or are all our projects unique software snowflakes?

<comment> em-bee i think there are definitely categories of risk, and knowing these categories is helpful. when can then analyse a software project in terms of which risks are relevant, which have a contingency and which can simply be ignored. then it's possible to focus on the risks that are actually serious and can be addressed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are there any others that you find useful that aren't suggested here?

<comment> em-bee i haven't read through each of the detailed pages, but just by looking at the categories one that popped into my mind is _legal or regulatory risks_

what happens if laws or regulations change? for example rules that caused uber to stop operating in certain cities. rules around health software, etc...

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a really good point, and I need to cover this in a bit more depth, probably as part of the Operational Risk page.

(After a bit of digging, it seems that Basel II puts Legal Risk in the Operational Risk bucket, which is something I tend to agree with... will open a ticket)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Is the financial crisis a good example here? A systemic failure of risk management caused by a bonus scheme that rewarded bad behaviour and led banks to over extend themselves. Seems like it was short-term rewards rather than any failure in understanding the risks per se. Lots of people called it</comment>


Ask HN: What are you using Rust for? - <AUTHOR> I had asked the same question some time earlier here about Golang and D. Got some interesting answers (might be findable via hn.algolia.com). Thought it would be interesting to ask the same about Rust. Thanks in advance to all who reply. <comment><USER2> I contributed to an open source project for a bot that plays Go (the game). It's fast and multi-threaded, without random crashes. Kind of the best case scenario.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, a bot that plays Go? Sounds interesting. Must not be very easy to create. By best case scenario, do you mean a good use case for Rust?

<comment><USER2> The rules for the game are quite simple, thankfully. It's a good use case for Rust since the faster it runs the stronger the bot. Any crashes of course ruin the rating as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, thanks.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is the web narrowing scientists' expertise? - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11745514

<comment><USER2> This is _crappy_ armchair sociology. The number and age of unique references in modern journal papers is a measurable number, and I'm sure these folks have done a great job of measuring it. But where's the evidence for the conclusion that changes in this number represent changes in the nature of scientific thought itself?

Have these people even _worked_ as scientists? Here are some reasons why papers get cited:

\- Many journal articles open with one or two Ancient Authorities -- articles from 1899, or a famous article written by the founder of your field in the 1950s. These are there as a kind of mission statement: If you cite Folkman _et al_ from the 1970s, you're saying "This paper is about antiangiogenesis".

In a world where computers can tell you "here's a list of all the papers published this year that cited Folkman _et al_ , 1971", putting an Ancient Authority citation on your paper is an awesome form of SEO, much _better_ than a keyword.

(It's not polite to point this out... but there's a good chance that most of a paper's readers, and even some of the authors, haven't even read the Ancient Authority paper. That's often not a problem, because the first paper in a field is usually an even mix of (a) things everybody knows by now and (b) things that turned out to be wrong, later.)

\- You cite work that directly anticipates yours. For this, you look for the most recently published relevant references that you can find, partly because it shows that you're paying attention and partly because _if the person reviewing your paper has published on the same topic, and you don't cite their most recent work, they will find a way to make you wish you had_.

\- You cite works as a shorthand for the ideas contained in them. This is like me citing PG essays here on news.yc, or like the great _Star Trek:TNG_ episode "Darmok" where the alien language is composed entirely of brief references to (alien) classical history. When you're doing this, it is once again important to cite the most recent works that you can -- it's like the difference between commenting on a recent blog post and commenting on a blog post from 2001, or the difference between referencing LOLcats (a stale cliche), referencing ALL YOUR BASE (a _painfully_ stale cliche) and referencing, um, ST:TNG (which makes me sound like I've been trapped in a box since 1990). And you want to name-drop _popular_ articles, because what's the sense in trying to reference things that nobody has read?

This factor alone probably accounts for the observed changes in citation frequency. The Web is good at spreading new memes quickly! And that works for science too! It used to take years for new fads to sweep the nation; now a guy can claim he's Familiar With All Internet Traditions on Tuesday and there'll be T-shirts on sale by Friday night.

Oh, and let me not forget:

\- People cite their own recent work to try and encourage others to read it (and to boost their own personal impact factor). I doubt that the rise of technology has changed _that_.

<comment><USER3> _People cite their own recent work to try and encourage others to read it (and to boost their own personal impact factor). I doubt that the rise of technology has changed that._

I don't think self-citations don't boost your impact factor.

There is another non-selfish reason self-citations are very common; many ideas are developed in a series of papers, so the work which directly anticipates your work is your previous work. Also, a large project often has interesting subprojects which are worth wirting about separately (think: web framework spins off templating library).

<comment><USER2> I agree, there are many legitimate reasons for citing your own work. But that doesn't mean it's wrong to tease people about it. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The original publication: <http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/321/5887/395></comment>