Engineers suck at finding the right jobs - <AUTHOR> http://matt.aimonetti.net/posts/2012/11/14/engineers-suck-at-finding-right-jobs/ <comment><USER2> It is an interesting screed. I was thinking when I wrote up the comment about how VP's might feel about leaving a position that there is an interesting dividing line which doesn't get talked about a lot, Matt touches on it but didn't really call it out, its this, "What are you trying to get done?"

Early in my career Steve Bourne gave me useful advice, he said the difference between junior engineers and senior engineers was that senior engineers had an agenda. More specifically they had an execution goal (like write a new file system, or create a product that solves problem 'X') and they worked toward it.

This is a both a hugely motivating and hugely scary thing, its motivating because you don't have to ask "what do I do now?" the direction just falls out of where you are vs where you are trying to go. It is scary because you can find you're goal isn't compatible with any of the company's goals. When you discover that what you want to do can't be done at the company you are working at, you either have to change goals or leave. But its not a 'feel bad about it' leaving it is 'hmm, this isn't going to work out here so lets go somewhere that it could'.

The alternative to having an agenda is "Goofing off and waiting for someone to give you a task." There are a lot of engineers who operate in that mode, do their assigned tasks at an acceptable quality level and without too much schedule slip. They are great to have around because people with agendas and use them to move the agenda forward, but they don't make for very good 'senior' people because they really don't care what they work on, its not their main focus.

It is important to note that you can't "fail" if you're just goofing off, as one of my kids put it, "It isn't procrastination if you don't have anything you need to do." You can however rationalize your low work output by the fact that your management really hasn't given you all that much to do, so whose fault is that? Whereas if you have an agenda, a goal, a destination, you can fail to make it to that destination. "You said you were going to build a game that could crush Farmville, you failed." Reading the blog post from Speck about Glitch shutting down, "we failed to develop an audience." They had a goal, they didn't get there.

Matt's advice that if you don't know what you want, you can't choose reasonably is solid. Start by deciding what you want to do, and pick something that will take a while as early goal achievement has its own problems.

<comment><USER3> The bimodal distribution of effort is really true, although people flip from one side to the other based on circumstances. Companies want people who (a) give a shit, but (b) are willing to subordinate their own career goals (including the long-term goal of becoming really good at engineering) to corporate objectives for a long (more than 3 months) period of time. The reality is that such people don't exist. People who give a shit won't let their skills atrophy just because a manager needs grunt work.

You have the goof-offs that you described who have (b) but not (a), and the self-executive types who have (a) but not (b). The people who seem to have (a) and (b) just have _different_ career agendas. They want to entrench themselves and gain social power. Often, they're psychopaths. They're a lot more ruinous to companies than the outspoken and self-executive types that dinosaurs call "prima donnas".

<comment><USER4> You don't think there are people who seem to have both (a) and (b) simply because they hunted around for a company whose goals were aligned with theirs and refused to accept jobs that weren't?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The issue of seniority always bugs me. If a 26 year old guy who writes "good enough" code can be a Senior, which I see very often, what's left?

Personally I wouldn't feel right with a title including "senior" until I've got at least 10y experience, generated millions in revenue and lead a team of >10\. And I'd still prefer not having a title. Unless the only way to increase a salary is by taking the title, which seems to be the problem.

<comment><USER6> _...what's left?_

Where do I begin?

\- Drilling down multiple levels for greater understanding. Being the "anti- poser" by knowing what's really going on under the hood. Sharing this insight with others. Amazing what a difference maker this often is.

\- Subject matter expertise. Can you stay two steps ahead of your customers by getting behind their eyes and seeing what they need before they do?

\- Continuous improvement. (I know, a B.S. term if there ever was one, but it's true...): "Good enough" is never good enough any more. Get better or someone will eventually eat your lunch.

\- Communication skills. We all suck at them so much that this is often a bigger speedbump than technical shortcomings. We have much to learn from ants.

\- Vision. Another nebulous term, but one that often makes a difference between arithmetric and geometric growth.

\- Determining priorities. (Are we really working on the best thing?)

I can go on and on, but you kinda get the idea.

<comment><USER7> I think he was referring to the "title-itis". Titles make absolutely no sense and they seem to be used as a currency by employers and as resume trophies by programmers themselves.

To many times have I seen mediocre programmers negotiating themselves into a BIG title simple because the employer didn't want to give that person a pay rise (titles are free you see). Once they get the title, they sit on sit for a few months and then they fuck off to work for another company. This way they keep their title AND get a pay rise and all while being mediocre.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So, it is a noble thing Matt is doing here, but my skepticism always kicks in when a post like that does not include a self evaluation.

I am sure you could fish up some great job opportunities for anyone who writes you a nice e-mail. But is your own job the job you want from your career?

I mean, being tech lead on a big company is nice and all. But the company is just a coupon distributor, I'm not saying that I work for the sexiest startup in the world, but I'm just saying that 'up' is not always the most satisfactory trajectory for a career.

I don't think I'd be happy for long at a company like LivingSocial, unless you guys are hiding something behind there that makes it a very nice place to work at?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, however it's a bit sensitive to talk about one's current position and provide insightful feedback without hurting feelings or divulging internal secrets. I left Sony PlayStation to join LivingSocial when LivingSocial just had acquired InfoEther and Chad Fowler became the VP of engineering. My motivation to join them was because I was interested in learning what it meant to design a product, what is needed to make something successful and finally to discover the gap between startup and entreprise since LivingSocial was becoming more than a startup. Working with people I trusted and I consider much better than me was also important. Is LivingSocial's product that exciting? No, not really, we sell advertising for local commerce. But my goal isn't to just work on a cool product (you don't do much cooler than video games), my goal is to learn and bring value to place I work. I'm still learning a lot, and a lot I didn't expect such as growth pains, challenges of growing an engineering team from 20 to 120, what it means to have strong engineers trying to work together, communication etc... To answer your question more directly, I feel I'm still currently on the right path and while the product might not be glamorous, I get to learn a lot and feel like I can still contribute to the company success.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Recruiter of software engineers here, and liked the article. I can't begin to estimate what percentage of job changes are attributed to the work of recruiters (recruiting firms, not internal company recruiters), but I think that one reason engineers sometimes make poor career decisions is that they are being coached by recruiters to make them.

The technology industry has created a vibrant technical recruiting industry that feeds off of it, and it is often an unhealthy relationship. The recruiter (especially contingency recruiter) has a huge financial reward if he/she can convince the engineer to take the job, regardless of whether it is a good career move - the recruiter generally is paid as long as you stay 90 days. The size of the reward in addition to the competitive nature of the business creates some incentives that lead to trust and ethic issues. It is this problem that inspired my article <http://jobtipsforgeeks.com/2012/09/17/disrupt/>

If you are dealing with a recruiter that talks about the job he/she is trying to fill before asking you about what YOU are looking for in a job, you are probably not talking to someone that is trying to help you make a good career move.

</comment><comment><USER10> > Now is an awesome time to be a software engineer (probably best time ever).

I don't agree with this statement at all, as it's getting harder and harder to find low-level work (e.g., C and *asm) and that's the __only__ kind of programming that I enjoy doing.

I'll start looking for another career when I have to consider putting words like ``full-stack'' or ``cloud'' on my resume in order to find work.

<comment><USER11> Then start looking at companies that primarily produce hardware. Trust me, it's getting harder and harder to find people who even know what a pointer is. To the point where we simply assume the people we hire won't and we'll just have to abstract it away for them.

<comment><USER10> > Then start looking at companies that primarily produce hardware.

I have in the past. The problem is that I have a BS in Computer Science and most hardware companies hire only Computer Engineers for low-level programming work (among other things).

<comment><USER12> Do you have the possibility of going back to school? I don't know how old you are, but maybe a masters degree in CE could help you.

<comment><USER10> > I don't know how old you are

25

> Do you have the possibility of going back to school?

Yes, I do, but I don't think I'd be able to handle it, especially with a wife and a full-time job. Read more here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4702350>

<comment><USER12> Well, it certainly sounds like you're more than capable of working really hard and achieving good grades. Having to struggle isn't a bad thing - the key is learning to enjoy the feeling (not easy, I'll admit).

At least where I went to school they had family student housing for grad students who were married. Going to grad school would likely involve you taking a student loan, but then you'd be able to make more money afterwards.

Keep in mind that while you're under 30 (and assuming you don't yet have kids and a mortgage) you have a lot more room and leeway to take risks than later in life. Don't lock yourself into misery too early in life. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Oh look another X sucks at blah. I always reverse these sentences to get interesting ideas. What if blah sucks at X - namely, what if jobs suck at finding the right engineers.

Now we're talking :D

This is a problem in HR not engineering - whose sole purpose is to find good engineers, pay them well enough so that they stay, make an environment good enough to keep them happy, and put them on the right projects to maximise value.

Guess how you fix this problem? You go Valve style. The problem isn't engineers, it's HR who can't get their act together.

<comment><USER14> What does Valve do?

<comment><USER15> Flat structure. Everyone just works on whatever they think is important. [http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/why-valve-or- what-d...](http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/why-valve-or-what-do-we- need-corporations-for-and-how-does-valves-management-structure-fit-into- todays-corporate-world/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There are fundamental issues here.

For a sales guy, you can say he brought in $X in revenue that led to $Y in profits, so the value he creates is visible. It's a lot more complex than that, but at least there is a theoretical basis to value his work.

I spent five years working on a non-profit web site that was used by more than 80k people a day. We estimated the site produced $250M a year in value for end users. We also had no real plan for capturing that value or funding it so there wasn't a pie I could claim a piece of at all, just what they said they could pay me.

I've worked at a number of places where the model was spend $X to develop something with Y developers over Z months and maybe we can sell it. These often are fun jobs. This includes a lot of Y Combinator kind of companies but also stodgy companies you'll find in midwestern towns.

I think the median project of this type either (i) doesn't ship a product in the end or (ii) gets revenue that is a small fraction of $X. Again, there's no pie to split.

This of course begs the question. Does working on a project like Colors make you a negative net productivity programmer whatever you do?

I guess in theory a place like this could pay you heavily in equity or bonuses, but with the odds of getting no payout that's really not fair if you have to develop your skills, be highly responsible in so many ways and maybe even support a family.

The companies where the revenue is more obvious are job shops, but these tend to be horrible places to work. Of 5 that I had some involvement with, 4 of them were outright failing businesses because the business plan made no sense or they spent 12 years building web sites with an obscure language that is now eol. The last one is profitable and growing but they had no benefits, low base pay, but they might pay a bonus into your 401k at the end of the year based on "the value of your contributions to the company." Well, the principles of the company never got tried of yakking about the high value of the sales work they do so you know who is #1 and #2 when bonus time comes around at the end of the year.

So in all my years as a pro programmer, I can say I only worked for three months at a place where my work had a clear connection to revenue it was creating and compensation wise it was the worst job I've ever had.

</comment><comment><USER17> Looking at this problem through the lens of engineering is obvious for most HN readers, but it's an issue everyone faces.

It's very hard to understand what opportunities exist for YOU specifically in the employment market. Seeking out potential jobs is laborious and you can't take the time to talk to every recruiter that calls.

What would be better is if you had a good way to safely broadcast what is interesting to you professionally and indicate the types of opportunities you'd like to hear more about. Safely is the key word here. The system breaks down if it puts your current gig at risk.

Check out <http://www.mightyspring.com>.

We're working on solving this exact problem. Our goal is to help people stay on top of the employment market and be made aware when a really special opportunity presents itself.

</comment><comment><USER18> If engineers suck at finding the right job, and companies can't find the right people, then this problem is screaming for better solutions. The challenge here I see is that every employer is looking for 'rockstars', even if the actual job responsibilities may not require one.

So, if I'm a 'rockstar', its a big hurdle to separate the reality from the marketing pitch of the magic job. What can be used as a signal for filtering good quality jobs from the less desired ones? It's surely not money, because plenty of big companies will pay you ample to make good power points.

I think a startup that can figure out the right mix of signals to indicate the _job quality_ , which may be a combination of challenging problems, team, work-environment will really hit it big.

<comment><USER19> >The challenge here I see is that every employer is looking for 'rockstars'

I think there should be a developer tier at 250kish (valley prices)

If you can justify that, we'll call you a rockstar.

Then we'll give you status to go with it in the company (as you're making more than your boss), sort of how external consultants often get that and get to recommend TONS more stuff than line engineers do.

If a position says rockstar, and doesn't pay a quarter mil, we pan you on the web as lying about needing a really highly paid, super highly skilled position.

<comment><USER18> I'm thinking about a way to call bullshit on such job descriptions. Not sure money is the answer though. What about interesting jobs / startups that can't pay that much?

It would be nice to get a crowd sourced mechanism that involves employees / ex-employees / vendors who could provide a well rounded view on what is the job really like, and not just some marketing spiel from hiring manager

<comment><USER19> So you think the "freedom and status" is the important part, not the compensation?

That works. Give them titles that go with that. "Chair of Computing", "Cross department head of ___" etc, "Technical Architect".

Don't ask for developers if you want people on the 4-5 sigma of ability. Ask for _high status positions_. Give them board seats. etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It really is an exciting time for software engineers. I'm a soon-to-graduate student and have gotten so many job offers that I had to pretty much stop talking about it with friends/family. Does anyone else feel awkward admitting how easy we have it in tech right now when there are so many people struggling to find jobs?

<comment><USER21> Yeah, I got a call from a recruiter when I was out to lunch with non- programmer friends. The fact that I was annoyed by it drew some death glares.

<comment><USER22> Maybe they should be taking some programming courses, or reading some programming books, rather than glaring.

<comment><USER21> Not everyone can or even should be a programmer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This whole thing seems like it is written by a recruiter having a hard time to get people to leave their current jobs for new ones.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hehe, I'm not a recruiter (I'm the OP) but probably like yourself, I get a lot of them contacting me on a regular basis. Knowing what to do next and or if our current job is worth it is a hard challenge. I just shared my own experience.

<comment><USER24> You may not specifically be the recruiter but it's no mystery that you guys have been aggressively hiring, and being over capacity is no doubt something somebody in your position would be acutely aware of.

So pardon me for agreeing with parent that the post sounds like it was written by somebody having a hard time finding good candidates.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a fair assessment, however LivingSocial has its own recruiters and they are doing a great job. So far I got a few companies reaching out to me to let me know that they have some open positions and I know of many others in my network. I'll do my best to try to match people.

<comment><USER25> Do some of your contacts offer green cards or is this a geographically restricted offer?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> >I remember a family friend telling me when I was a kid that computers are going to be the future and that there will be a lot of jobs in this field.

That's great. I had the opposite. For some reason my dad was convinced computer programming was on the decline and was 100% against me going into computer science. I did engineering instead of CS and later regretted it. Going back to get my MCS now.

</comment><comment><USER27> Also when you get to early 40s doing web dev or web apps, especially if you dont have a GooG or stanford degree, your competition for work is essentially early 30 somethings, and age discrimination really becomes apparent. I have no idea what to do next for challenge and m0ney.

</comment><comment><USER28> I thought the author sounded familiar. He's the person who gave this blatantly sexist and offensive presentation, _CouchDB: Perform Like A Pr0n Star_ , at the Golden Gate Ruby Conference in 2009: [http://ompldr.org/vZ2I1cA/gogaruco- couchdb-090418194027-phpa...](http://ompldr.org/vZ2I1cA/gogaruco- couchdb-090418194027-phpapp02.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> yes it was me and as you just discovered I'm not perfect and made many mistakes in my life ;) Note however, that I try really hard not to make the same mistake twice and this lessons I learned 3 years ago stuck with me. The question is how relevant is your point? Are you trying to help the discussion or attack me personally?

<comment><USER19> Glad you grew out of it. Moving from "hurtful" to "aware of how that bothered people, and willing to avoid that" is the halmark of personal growth and a sign struggle to be better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I appreciated this post, and it's good timing considering I've felt lost in my career for at least a year. I switched jobs 6 months ago, and am already considering changing again. I've had several interviews, and in spite of the fact that everyone I work with tell me what an asset I am and how talented I am, I can't seem to find a good fit.

I'm a .NET developer, and am considering changing to Rails, just to see if that opens up better/different opportunities. But that's a big time investment for me -- having a family leaves me with little time as it is -- and I'm not even sure that will leave me much better off than I am now.

I really could use some direction, but have not been able to nail down a way to find direction. Matt, I may take you up on your offer.

I would also welcome and general thoughts from the HN community.

<comment><USER30> Jader - don't want to spam this discussion, but many of our students at railstutors.com have the exact background as you. If you have 10-15hrs/week for a month, we can get you to a proficient level with Rails.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Don't look for the right job. Look for the right company, and evolve once you're in.

<comment><USER32> That's what I did in my last job search. It's paid off wonderfully. The first three months weren't especially exciting, but now I'm working on very interesting problems, and growing a ton.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> > We are good at solving technical problems in an objective way but when it > comes to us, to our jobs and future, we seem to have a bit of a hard time. > Why?

Obvious answer: A good technical problem can be fun, while such real life things are just tedious and stressful, so you avoid thinking about them.

</comment><comment><USER34> Good post, as it happens I'm also pondering the things you're talking about. I like that you to offer to talk things over with anyone who asks! I'd be curious to know what you learn from it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll try to do a follow up post, so far I've been really impressed with the emails I got. They raised a lot of great questions such as what it means to built a career when you aren't willing to relocate etc...

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> What would you say to a college student who's just starting out?

<comment><USER36> Work very hard and hang out with the right people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Like the author in his conversation, I found myself reading this article looking for the answer to the question of what I should career-wise myself. doh!

</comment><comment><USER38> _> "Money doesn't buy happiness" and it shouldn't be your primary reason to accept or leave a job._

Great phrase.

</comment><comment><USER39> Very valuable attitude.I think to be a indie developer is better for some developers.

</comment><comment><USER3> OP: what do you think of open allocation?

[http://www.quora.com/Software-Development- Methodologies/What...](http://www.quora.com/Software-Development- Methodologies/What-is-Open-Allocation)

Personally, I think it's the only long-term solution to this bilateral matching problem: engineers can't find good work, employers can't find good engineers. The problem is that most software engineers are indeed unskilled (and therefore few companies are willing to start interesting projects that might make use of skill) because high-quality work is so rare. It's a vicious cycle and open-allocation is the only way I can see of breaking it.

If they're intrinsically motivated, engineers are worth millions per year. If companies left them alone and were able to capture even 10% of their true potential, they'd do better than any closed-allocation shop.

There's an indirection that occurs whereby engineers apply to companies-- not specific projects or work sets-- and (until they've been at the company for a while and can change jobs without embarrassment) relinquish their right to choose what they work on. (A certain once-great search giant is notorious for abusing opacity.) They have no control over how they start in the company, and if they're not especially socially skilled, this will determine what kinds of projects and opportunities they get in the future. This indirection gives a lot of power to middle managers, who don't have the vision or inclination to design and allocate work in a way that would enable engineers to have real careers and improvement, and the result is an industry where stagnation, burnout, and middle-age obsolescence are the norm.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have mixed feelings about open allocation. I think it's very dependent on the context and the company's vision. @ChuckMcM wrote something very interesting explaining two types of engineers, some who are self driven and have an agenda and the ones who don't. I don't think that as engineers we are particularly good at understanding the business value we can bring to a company and how to improve a product. I think that some engineers work better with a lot of freedom, but most don't. I think that actually a good solid layer of "proper" management is way more useful. A good manager is someone who doesn't get in your way but help you realize your full potential while following the company's vision. Granted, that's not what most managers do, but I do think that most of us need some leadership, some directions to help us focus. To summarize, I think that we need strong leaders and some flexibility at the engineering level dependent on each individual temperament, the company culture and the team's objectives.

<comment><USER3> This is a good response, and I generally agree with your synopsis of what a good manager is.

One of the misconceptions about open allocation is that it's a "free-for-all". It's not. It's more like an _applied_ research environment where people are free agents to some degree, but still are expected to follow-- to contribute to something sanctioned-- if they aren't ready to lead yet. Open allocation companies still fire people, but it's very rare, because "intrinsic low performers" (as opposed to people who lose motivation due to dysfunctional environments) also turn out to be very rare.

Open allocation doesn't mean, "You show up and do whatever you want." It means, "We expect you to contribute to the business but it's your right to choose how you do so."

My problem with traditional management is that old-style managers aren't really the leaders that the workers themselves would select, but puppet leaders, chosen from above. Also, when companies give managers the right to unilaterally fire people, or to damage their transfer packets through a globally-visible performance review system, they allow managers to turn into extortionists who force people into subordinating to the manager's career goals rather than doing what's best for the employee or the company. Since middle managers also get a lot of pressure from above in these sorts of companies, that's usually exactly what they become, not because they want to be extortionists but because their feet are to the fire as well.

I think that "management" as a cultural institution is archaic. Leadership, communication, and mentorship skills will _always_ be in high demand, but that's not what a manager is. A _manager_ , from the term's roots, is someone hired by an owner of recourses (capital) to maximally exploit them. People often get angry with their bosses when the manager ignores their career goals, but they shouldn't, because that manager is just doing his job. He works for the company, not the employee.

Managed environments lead to localism, by which I mean the extreme trust (e.g. the right to unilaterally fire people) placed in managers allow an environment where the manager's stated goals (which are often neither aligned with the corporate objective or the employee's needs, but the manager's career objectives) take priority. You have lots of indirection and wasted effort and, usually, morale problems as a result.

Open allocation, on the other hand, trusts people to work directly for the company. There are still leaders and followers, but the employees are implicitly trusted in deciding whom to follow.</comment></comment></comment>


Definitive guide to peeling 11 of the trickiest foods - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/food/2019/jul/04/garlic-pineapple-pomegranates-the-definitive-guide-to-peeling-11-of-the-trickiest-foods <comment><USER2> The garlic peeling hack was horrific and involved pushing a blade into your hand.

[https://twitter.com/VPestilenZ/status/1140437217619390465](https://twitter.com/VPestilenZ/status/1140437217619390465)

I'm glad the article mentions the danger.

> But that didn't stop her from stubbornly trying – and failing – to peel a > bulb the way the woman in the garlic video did. In fact, it landed her in > the emergency room, getting five stitches in her middle finger. So, perhaps > Bachkarova-Lord's method isn't the right way?

Another example is "avocado hand": [https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2017/may/...](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2017/may/10/avocado- hand-why-the-fruit-has-become-a-health-hazard)

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/avocado-hand-injuries-on-the- ri...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/avocado-hand-injuries-on-the-rise/)

<comment> yoz-y Interesting, this also makes the garlic hack less useful if you need only 1 or 2 cloves.</comment></comment>


Big Tech's Hot New Talent Incubator: Community College - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/big-techs-hot-new-talent-incubator-community-college-1530277200 <comment><USER3> My state has a network of community and technical colleges. There is a program that allows one to get their Associates degree through community colleges, then transfer to a state school and continue paying community college tuition.

10 years ago, this allowed for earning an engineering degree for $2k a year, or $8-10k.

In my experience, community colleges were very much viewed as remedial. I'd guess that many of the classes were taken by students who had failed the equivalent class at university.

I took Physics at both the community college and university (I was afraid that the community college class would not prepare me for later classes). The differences were stark: At university, lecture was 3x a week by the professor (who did not speak English), recitation by a TA (who did not speak English), and lab by another TA. There were 3 sections with 400 students per section. The professor had one hour of office hours for all 400 students in my section. At community college, my professor lectured, ran the lab, ran recitation. He went to a top 5 school, was an American, and was a great teacher. The class had 2 sections of 30 students. He ran weekend reviews for tests, if needed, and had open office hours all day. His tests were very difficult and required mastery of the subject matter.

I dropped the university class after I realized it was of much lower quality than what I had already received, for 1/5th the price, no less.

<comment><USER4> This.

I took a course for fun at a local community college: physics. There was _nothing_ more fascinating learning physics from someone that did accident reconstructions for 30 years. It is a different feel than being lectured to by someone that hasn't finished their graduate program. Then for fun I tried again: Oracle. My teacher? A former executive at WellsFargo and Oracle. He was extremely wealthy, and taught for fun - he did not publish some book or beg for grants.

<comment><USER5> Yeah but how much did the community college teacher publish?

<comment><USER6> How is publishing relevant to teaching?

<comment><USER7> I think that was the point. University lecturers are judged on their publication rate, not their teaching, so their teaching is sometimes awful.

<comment><USER8> This hit a little too close to home. Interestingly enough, those professors at my alma mater who were abysmal at teaching and lecturing but pulling millions in grants listened to the course feedback cards. They took it to heart that we had been uninterested* in the way the course was presented, couldn't grasp the material from the lessons, etc. We could see how their teaching methods evolved as we had them for upper level courses and electives.

According to interns, those are some of the best professors that are currently on staff.

 _Irrelevant note: I originally used disinterested, but those words do not have the same meaning:

> _An uninterested person is bored, unconcerned, or indifferent; a > disinterested person is impartial, unbiased, or has no stake in the > outcome.*[0]

[0]: [https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/disinter...](https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/disinterested- versus-uninterested)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I attended community college for a few years before transferring to a 4-year university. During that time I took a variety of technical and non-technical courses that I really enjoyed and felt I got a lot of value from due to the small class sizes and ability to connect with professors outside of class fairly easily. I would have stopped after getting my Associate's degree as I felt like I had learned a lot and I had next to zero debt from my education, and it was around that time I really got into programming and software development which is what I now do for a living.

The only reason I went on to a bigger school was familial pressure and the idea that I'd be pretty much doomed without a Bachelor's degree or better. I left with a large amount of debt (my family fell into the space of too much for grants and not enough to pay out of pocket) and honestly didn't really like my 4-year experience nor do I feel like it added much to the value of my life, either in practical or intrinsic terms. I get that my experience is anecdotal but I wonder how many other people would have been in the same boat.

<comment><USER10> Community colleges really are underrated. In a world where increasingly a bachelor's degree does not guarantee a job, university education is super expensive, and especially in fields where a bachelor's degree is not necessary (I've never had an interview where they asked about my college education), vocational schools are the place to be.

Four-year universities put big emphasis on well-rounded educations, so you're taking humanities and physical education and biology and math classes in order to achieve a business degree. Community colleges cut away the "well rounded" part and often just tech the skills necessary to get a job at a local company. Oftentimes the instructors actually work at these local companies as their day job, so they know what to teach to.

If your goal is to get a job that leads into a career, go to a CC. If you need continuing education past that, many CCs have programs that let you transfer your credits into a local state university at extremely generous rates. My local CC has a 3+1 program where you can take 3 years at CC and one year at the state university and get a bachelor's degree from the university. The cost per credit hour at the CC is literally half the cost for the university, so you're paying $35k for your bachelor's compared to the $50k you'd be paying for four years at the state university. It's a no-brainer.

<comment><USER11> > (I've never had an interview where they asked about my college education.

They don't ask, but many places throw your resume without a bachelors into the trash at the first step in the hiring process. Ask me how I know.

<comment><USER12> > They don't ask, but many places throw your resume without a bachelors into > the trash at the first step in the hiring process. Ask me how I know.

I'm very understanding of this sentiment. I have suggested to people to get around this by simply lying about having a bachelors degree on their resume. If the employer verifies, you're out nothing. If they don't, you have a job you otherwise wouldn't have had. You have to be able to do the job though.

<comment><USER13> Don't do this. I have a client who did this, and he now wonders how many interviews he _missed out on_ over a 3-year period because the employer was interested but the college screening came up lie-positive.

Many, many employers public & private do verify. And some people will start rumors if you are in a small community, or if they know someone you know. And if the employer later finds out that you lied, the lie will cost you the job, not the lack of education.

IMO if you are low on experience like education, your best bets are things like formal networking events or informal events (parties, concerts with friends, etc.), or even informal walk-ins to companies where you want to work. For some, the biggest problem is that they won't talk about wanting a job around their friends, for fear of appearing incompetent.

<comment><USER12> What is your suggestion for OP where their resume is immediately discard because of no education? Networking and meetups won't get you passed HR filters and corporate requirements.

As I mentioned, even if you don't get the job or lose the job, you're still ahead of not trying. And you now have experience to put towards your next employer (and your old employer will only verify employment dates, as they don't want to be sued).

This is the unfortunate reality of an asymmetric labor market where employers can make demands with no cost to themselves. Fake it until you make it.

<comment><USER14> > _As I mentioned, even if you don't get the job or lose the job, you're still > ahead of not trying._

I fail to see how poisoning your own reputation comes out as "still ahead"; that is absolutely guaranteed to get your résumé silently discarded. The tech community isn't that big, even in the tech hubs, and word does eventually get around both among engineers and recruiters.

<comment><USER12> Rumors are a quick way to get sued. Are you ready to pay a settlement as an employer because someone's resume has an inaccuracy on it? Sometimes there are benefits of living in a litigious society when it works in your favor.

<comment><USER15> You won't have a case if you're fired for lying on your resume. Lying about your education is not merely an "inaccuracy".

<comment><USER12> I've seen lesser cases win. You'd be surprised. Your tight knit industry community isn't the general public.

<comment><USER14> > _I've seen lesser cases win. You'd be surprised. Your tight knit industry > community isn't the general public._

[citation needed]

Court cases are a matter of public record and, given your, ahem, open advocacy of falsehoods, it's unclear why we should believe your unsupported assertion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Community college was one of the smartest moves of my life.

The IGETC program ensured that my education was equivalent to what I would have gotten at a UC as a freshmen and sophomore.

My teachers were mostly Stanford and Berkeley PHDs. They were dedicated to teaching. Not trying to balance research and teaching. 30 people per class, maximum. Arguably, I got a better education than UC students.

And obviously, cost. My mom raised me and my brother. On paper, we were rather poor. The financial grants for students from low-income families essentially paid for all costs. If I had been really savvy with my money, I actually could have saved a few grand each year.

I transferred to UC Berkeley after 2 years, right on time.

<comment><USER17> I have the same story. Except, I'm attending Harvard instead of Berkeley in the fall. Guess what, the credits still transfer. It's pretty jaw-dropping that the credits that cost me about $2k a semester will be used as a replacement for credits that cost $38k a semester.

<comment><USER18> Would you mind sharing some insight on what elite schools are looking for in transfer students? I'll be starting community college this fall and it's hard to picture what the criteria are for these schools with 1-2% transfer rates.

<comment><USER17> To be honest, I'm a vet and got lucky on that. The best way to think about transfer to an elite school is that you can only disqualify yourself with academic work. You should have a compelling essay about what you bring to their community, and apply to at least 4-5 schools. If you took time between high school and now, what did you do? If nothing, do you have a compelling reason to be back in school? If so, can you support this with evidence. Keep in mind that these schools see lots of essays about dreams. They prefer to see evidence of you having already moved the needle in that direction. I got denied from 4 schools, wait listed at 2, and into 2.

TLDR; Academic performance is necessary but not sufficient. Figure out why you're unique, what you can bring to their student body that they might not have, and kill the essay.

<comment><USER17> I'm not the best person to talk to about this, but if you have more questions -- feel free to email me. Username at Gmail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Silicon Valley needs to get ahead of the curve: high school incubators!

Then some bright spark will come along and beat them to the punch: Jr High incubators!

We'll eventually have a system where you're born right into a desk, and a machine is hooked up to your head to suck all the originality, youth and zeal straight from the nape of your neck and provide it in pill form to people who have lost touch with reality, at the cost of your childhood, to those who can afford it.

We'll call it "authentic".

<comment><USER20> Isn't that kind of what they do in sports? I know that they do a softer version of that, hooking very young kids to the coffee clubs' training schools and facilities, in order to change guarantee a constant supply of raw talent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is an interesting reaction to the "bootcamp" trend (and subsequent implosion).

I think it has a better chance of succeeding: you might not need four years of university education to become an entry-level developer, but a few weeks of intensive "bootcamp" training isn't enough.

<comment><USER9> I think the other advantage is that at most community colleges you are required to branch out from technical topics and take at least a few humanities and liberal arts courses. You end up coming out slightly more well- rounded which can be hugely beneficial both career and life wise.

<comment><USER22> you're not required to do humanities/liberal arts at US universities?

<comment> barry-cotter Outside the USA and its cultural appendages, Canada, South Korea and the like, it is assumed that anyone who goes to university has studied the liberal arts at secondary/high school. Given the low quality of secondary education in the US in the formative period of its third level system this could not be assumed so what would in Europe be considered (grammar school) high school classes and subjects are taught at university.

<comment><USER23> The big differences in Universities between the US and Europe developed over a century ago and were the result of philosophical disagreements about what qualifies as a liberal education. It had nothing to do with poor quality secondary education.

Parts of the US have world class secondary education and parts don't--just like Europe. Even taken as a whole the US education system ranks higher than many countries in Europe.

>South Korea

The South Korean education system is nothing like the US education system. It's hard to think of a large country more different from the US in this regard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Perhaps this is a bit unrelated, but when I was in High School I participated in a program called A+ which provided HS graduates with free tuition for any community college in the state. The program was very easy to complete - <USER2> believe it was about 50 hours worth of tutoring sessions with kids at your school. When I graduated in 2003, I ended up getting 3 years of free Community College as long as my GPA was above 3.5. This was a fantastic way for me to save money. I even milked the 3rd year just to take up courses I found interesting, but had nothing to do with computer science. As far as I know this program is still offered in several states.

</comment><comment><USER25> Archive Link: [http://archive.is/nmoqk](http://archive.is/nmoqk)

To get around the paywalls.

</comment><comment><USER26> I took a circuitous route to a Yale PhD as a high school dropout entering a community college as a 'mature student' (Canadian term). In general the teaching at CC was much better with smaller classes. Many of the instructors really enjoyed teaching and were not burdened by research. Of course university has it's own magical appeal, but for me it was the perfect on ramp.

</comment><comment><USER27> Was inspired to take up programming by a community college teacher. I attended his lectures 8 years back. He kept insisting we learn how to program our TI calculators and said programming was a vital skill. I was scared of breaking my laptop if I downloaded software. Downloaded R as a result of the confidence I felt from the success with the TI. Went on to do a second masters focusing on data. From a math class for kicks to a career change! All thanks to the inspiration from a community college teacher.

</comment><comment><USER28> One of my biggest regrets in life is how dismissive I was of community college back when I was applying to schools as a teenager. If the school didn't have "university" as part of the title, then I wasn't interested.

I went to a university, paid a ton of money, dropped out, and then found work as an engineer. If I had done community college, I would have probably gotten the same quality of education, but not have to spend the first year and a half of my post-dropout years paying back loans.

</comment><comment><USER29> I find it very unfortunate that university is so expensive in the US. I grew up in a country where university education is mostly free and even students from low-income families get to go to best universities. I don't get how US cannot get university education cheaper.

</comment><comment><USER30> I think community colleges are great, but they also are used to reframe the issues away from the real problems and solutions:

First, employers are only interested in what you can do for them, immediately. They are not interested in you or the rest of your life either 'horizontally' (the very many other aspects of your life, from individual to parent to citizen to homeowner to intellectual to whatever) or vertically (the rest of your life after you work for them, after you retire, if you get sick, have kids, go to grad school, etc.). For example, many employers will repeat the trendy mantra that all you need is community college skills, but they won't hire you for management without an MBA.

Second, the distribution of education is not based on capability and need, but on the wealth of parents. Wealthy kids without academic talent or effort get 4 year degrees or more; poor kids who are smart and work hard get community college or less. It's just as good, the wealthy people say, but somehow not good enough for their kids or to hire or pay well.

Finally, the demand for 4 year college is overwhelming, which we can see based on the ability to raise tuition without impacting attendance. The demand in the labor market is overwhelming, based on salary differences. Let's meet the demand and stop finding second rate substitutions.

<comment><USER31> I don't understand your argument. You can get an MBA after community college. MBA programs are for people who already have work experience.

College tuition increases astronomically due to bad govt subsidies and poorly --financially-educated teenagers making purchasing decisions.

Community colleges aren't "second-rate" compared to the plethora of for-profit and low-quality private universities.

2-year Community colleges are a stepping stone to 4-year degrees.

Do poor kids deserve better K-12 education so they can succeed in the same 4-year programs that rich kids do? Sure, but _colleges_ can't fix that. It's crazy to _also_ deny college education to kids just because they already got screwed over in K-12.

<comment><USER30> > You can get an MBA after community college.

I wonder if you can get an MBA that's worth anything. I doubt any top tier program accepts many CC students.

> College tuition increases astronomically due to bad govt subsidies and > poorly--financially-educated teenagers making purchasing decisions.

They are due to making tuition more market-priced, and according to research I've read, due to a reduction in public funding. It's also due to colleges raising tuition rather than focusing on their mission of educating people; nobody is forcing them.

> It's crazy to also deny college education to kids just because they already > got screwed over in K-12.

Nobody suggested that. I said quality college education availability should be expanded.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Back in the mid-80's my local CCs were teaching COBOL, JCL and Fortran. Probably because of that mainframe they had chilling in the server room.

Personal computer courses were non-existent, except for one day "How To Use Your PC or Apple" class.

<comment><USER33> What are you trying to say? I lack context here.

That community colleges were behind the curve? Ahead of the curve? Or is there even a message?

<comment><USER31> Behind the curve; not up to date on the latest tech advancements. This is common criticism of the "lower-tier" schools generating "business process automation" coders for old industries like healthcare and manufacturing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> If this trend is real it will be really good for social mobility.

<comment><USER35> I don't think so. Having a degree from CC marks you as from the lower class. Upper level and prestigious positions tend to be filled with people just like those already there. There was a good study on this [http://www.asanet.org/journals/ASR/Dec12ASRFeature.pdf](http://www.asanet.org/journals/ASR/Dec12ASRFeature.pdf)

<comment><USER36> But doest it mean lower class is much higher than it'd have been otherwise? That's still a win.

<comment><USER37> If the last 50 years have taught us anything it's that the middle class will be pushed lower, the lower class will be pushed lower still and the upper class will take all the winnings.

The economy has been a zero sum game for the majority for a very long time, so zero sum game strategies is what they employ.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> As someone who's attended a community college both in my undergraduate career and again in preparation for grad school, this is something I think about quite a bit. Overall I'm pretty happy with my experiences studying at community college, and I'm of the mind that for most subjects, you can get a good education there. While I think it might be possible to get a decent education in preparation for a software development career at _some_ community colleges (like the technically-focused ones mentioned in the article), I suspect that's not the case generally. I think that has to do with two things:

One, part of the problem is that I've found "computer science" and "software development" get shoved under the umbrella of the "computer technology" departments of community colleges, rather than the math or engineering departments. Consequently there's a sense that software development is an extension of IT rather than an engineering practice. That might be true in a lot of settings (e.g. making VB widgets), but I'm not sure it's great for producing generalist developers. Frankly, I think it also lends to unqualified people leading departments, hiring instructors, and designing a curriculum. Anecdotally, one semester I took a discrete math class (through the math department) and a data structures class (through the CIS department); I ended up learning a lot more about data structures in the math class, and the programming project I did for the math class was much more instructive than any of the projects in the CIS class.

Two, across all institutions (boot camps, community colleges, universities) there doesn't seem to be a coherent curriculum on how to teach this stuff [1]. With math, english, economics, etc. the lower division classes are basically the same everywhere. Even if you think the way we teach subjects is kind of weird (as I do with math), everyone knows what "Calc II" means, or what's taught in an intro to microeconomics course. With software, there's no consensus on where to begin. Is it an infusion of theory and practice ala the SICP-based courses (MIT and Berkeley)? Intro to programming (Stanford)? A class where you learn how to use an office suite (a lot of community colleges)? Git and HTML/CSS (bootcamps)? [2] As a result, it's not surprising that individual classes don't line up. Maybe this is fine for the case where students will only ever study at one school, but for a lot of students indenting on transferring to a university (or anyone trying to evaluate a curriculum) it's quite cumbersome.

Not being an educator (and being mostly self-taught for software development), I'm not sure what the best approach is. Personally, I think a combination of theory/assignment based classes supplemented with longer-term project courses is probably the way to go. The former helps in presenting a general area or class or problems, and how to solve them, and the latter might help with exposure to the diversity of practical software development.

[1] I say "stuff" intentionally. Even the scope of "software development" is huge and hazy

[2] I could be wrong with the specifics on schools here :)

<comment><USER39> I wish I could upvote this a million times.

Your first point is 100% spot on.

Your second point deserves a caveat: CS _does_ mean something at colleges/universities. they almost all follow the ACM model curriculum:

\- CS I -> CS II -> Data Structures

\- Discrete Math and Calculus I

\- A smattering of available electives from a few fairly uniform buckets (SE,DB,OOP; OS,PL; ML/AI; theory,algorithms).

Contents of courses change (true in Math also! Biz Calc vs. Eng Calc vs. Honors/Advanced Calc). But overall shape stays the same. Can't guarantee outcomes, but can guarantee intent.

Unlike colleges/universities, at the national level, CCs have a serious cruft issue in CS/IT. It's totally impossible to tell what someone might know from the name of the degree program alone. Not even overall shape of curriculum is obvious.

IMO there's a simple solution: CCs nation-wide should pare down everything into a few specific named degrees:

1\. Associates in CS Foundations: basically ACM without electives. Designed for transfer to a BA/BS.

2\. Associates in Software Development: the non-math portion of ACM + some pragmatic courses (e.g., databases and web dev). Can have various version of this marketed as "AS in SD with Emphasis in ___" where ___ is chosen according to local/regional labor market. E.g., most bootcamps are somewhat like "AS in SD with an Emphasis in Web Development using <stack here>".

3\. Associates in Information Technologies: catch-all for the stuff that doesn't even fulfill the non-math, non-elective portion of the ACM model. So "VBA scripting", "Networking aka CISCO certs", "Database Administrator aka Oracle&MS certs", "Applications aka MS Office+Web publishing", etc. degrees currently offered by CCs. Again, various versions can be marketed as "AS in Information Technologies with Emphasis in ___"

These issues might not be recognizable to folks in states like California with _amazing_ CC systems, but in most of America, just figuring out which of the half dozen similar-sounding "IT/CS" associates degrees you want is a serious problem. And very often the answer is "none" because all gazillion of them fit into bucket #3 and you're really looking for bucket 1 or 2.

<comment><USER31> You don't really need an associates in CS foundations, since all the "CS" part of CS is upper level (except for the most advanced students who start elite Bachelors universities with 1-2 years of university coursework from high school). Just take some basic liberal arts math and intro programming during your AA, then you are ready to apply for CS Backelors program.

<comment><USER39> _> Just take some basic liberal arts math and intro programming during your AA, then you are ready to apply for CS Bachelors program. You don't really need an associates in CS foundations_

Well, you can say the same for pretty much every curriculum ever: "we don't need a named degree, just have students figure out what courses they need to take".

Concretely, here's what happens in practice. A student does not know what to take and tells their counselor they are interested in transferring into a four-year CS degree. So student then ends up in:

\- standard college prep courses (Algebra, Calc, and liberal artsy stuff), and

\- some totally random stuff for the CS part. Might be programming. Might be VBA (won't transfer) or Java (might transfer). Might be a CISCO prep course. Who knows! And unless the student knows and fights, they end up wasting time.

Making a separate track that's _explicitly_ "pre-college CS" avoids this confusion. And after all, part of the value add of a formal education is that someone who knows what you need to know organizes the curriculum for you.

So what you say is true, but there are still strong advantages for both the student and the institution to having a separate, explicit pre-college track.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> If you just want to reduce the bill for college, you can test out of a bunch of requirements for graduation for nominal fees. Even cheaper than community college. [https://clep.collegeboard.org/](https://clep.collegeboard.org/)

Also some people get married to get better financial aid...

</comment><comment><USER37> Sounds like regular college students are too expensive for the tech companies because they have a hard floor below which they will not work. Having a cursory look that is due to student loans being easier to service if you're unemployed than employed at a low -relative to the cost of living- wage.

So now they are looking for a pool of labor that will take even lower salaries.

Expect the vulture capitalist friends to pump up community college prices in the next decade.

</comment><comment><USER41> Given that coding academies can get someone a 6-figure job in 6-months

Community Colleges are institutions that can also focus on the subset of trades actually relevant the current private sector.

</comment><comment><USER42> The big issue I have had when I went from Community College to a four year college is that some of your credits don't transfer which means more time spent in College.

<comment><USER31> That's generally because (some of) the course work is too low-level /remedial. If you aren't ready for university at high school graduation, then you need to take the extra time. If you are ready, you need to challenge yourself at the rate that university students do if you want to keep up (which may need some good advising that is hard to find, point granted).

<comment><USER42> Forgot to mention that my advisors told me that my credits would transfer .</comment></comment></comment>


Time zone news - <AUTHOR> http://time.is/time_zone_news <comment><USER2> Is there still a valid reason to have timezones altering between states? is it just for agriculture?

While we're, talking about changing time monitoring systems, can't we have 13 months with 28 days each? (and an extra day every 4 years added on to december?) :(

Simple things, but that would allow us to follow the lunar cycle.

<comment><USER3> In Northern areas, there's a lot of practical value that gets overlooked. In Boston, the sun is rising close to 5:00 AM as it is at the height of summer. Without daylight savings time, it would be rising at 4:00 AM. I think most people would rather have extended daylight late in the day than have all that extra sunlight wasted when we're sleeping.

The counter to that is -- well, let's always stick with daylight savings time then. That has problems of its own. For example, sunset is a little after 4:00 PM in Boston in late December. If we stuck with daylight savings time, it'd be a little after 3:00. That would pose risks for school children walking home, etc.

Yes, I realize that people in Fairbanks Alaska have it much worse and daylight savings doesn't fix the problem for them, but there are a lot of people who live in the northern parts of the lower 48 that benefit from the time shift.

<comment><USER4> You're backwards. The problem with year-round daylight savings in Boston (which, personally, I'd prefer) is kids going to school in the dark in the winter. Boston's both relatively northernly and very far east in a timezone because eastern time wraps up the northeast-jutting coast of the US to avoid New England being in its own timezone. [Edit: It wouldn't be in its own timezone; it would be in Atlantic time, which is used in parts of Canada. But it would put Boston in a different timezone from NYC and other major east coast cities.]

<comment><USER5> > kids going to school in the dark in the winter

Daylight Savings Time can't fix that in most places either.

Where I live, right now (today), sun rises around 8am, and sets around 4pm.

Kids will go to school around 7:20, and come back home around 15h.

In mid december, it's even worse – most people never see the sun during that time.

<comment><USER4> DST's not really all that useful at either latitudes where the day length is relatively uniform throughout the year nor at latitudes that vary between more light than you know what to do with and dark in morning and evening no matter what.

It's really primarily useful when you have enough light for long summer evenings and winter days that are short but are still long enough that it makes sense to fine-tune sunrise and sunset relative to normal work and school times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For anyone interested in time zones, I had a terribly unproductive afternoon the day I started looking through both the time zone mailing list[1], and the raw zoneinfo files. I love the history that lies beneath all of the changes.

[1]: [http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/](http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/)

</comment><comment><USER7> The Turkish change affected me over the weekend. The local mobile carriers didn't update their settings and thus my phone automatically updated to EEST. Fortunately my flight was much later in the day and it was rectified by that point.

</comment><comment><USER8> Willing to move to Arizona to not deal with timezone changes.

<comment><USER9> Or Hawaii!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wish this site had an RSS feed. I'd subscribe right now.

<comment><USER11> We now have an RSS feed. Thanks for your requests! [http://time.is/rss/time_zone_news.rss](http://time.is/rss/time_zone_news.rss)

<comment><USER12> Thanks for you swift attention! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Situations like Turkey's DST extension reminds me why storing dates in UTC with no further information is not good enough.

<comment><USER14> Can you explain the complication you're thinking about? And what additional information you'd store?

<comment><USER15> Lots of events needs to be scheduled in local time. If your calendar app stores a given UTC timestamp for your meeting with a customer on friday at 5PM and the time zone rules database change inbetween, you're going to have an angry customer.

<comment><USER16> And what would meta-metadata about the datetime solve? What you're looking for is faster updates to timezone libraries. And for governments to stop being idiots — "I'm delaying DST because it inconveniences me", pah, what a load of garbage. It's a symptom of how much DST sucks. If anything, this couldve been a good occasion to repel DST in turkey.

<comment><USER15> If you stored it in the DB as "2015-10-30 17:00:00 SOMETIMEZONE" then it would be unambiguous when the event is going to happen. If you stored an UTC timestamp, well, then you'd get two different values depending on whether you had the updated tzdata or not when the value was entered and converted to a timestamp.

If you think this problem can be solved by declaring today's version of tzdata immutable and final, then I'm afraid you're not being realistic. Timezones, DST rules, country borders will change and always have.

<comment><USER17> Storing the timezone name does not work when the boundaries between timezones change. Best to store local time and location. [http://fanf.livejournal.com/104586.html](http://fanf.livejournal.com/104586.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I always joke that time zones and character encodings more or less guarantee programmers will always be able to find jobs.

<comment><USER19> Unicode hurts workers, families, & community! Shame on the Unicode Consortium!

If we got rid of DST and didn't change the rules too often, time zones wouldn't really be that big of a deal.

<comment><USER20> It'd still be an issue, because people lose their minds when thinking about time zones. Example: .net XML serialization. The PM wanted to "do the right thing" and thus would encode all dates in XML with an offset determined by looking at some local setting. Hence the exact same code would produce a different XML document depending on the selected time zone.

They 'fixed' it by using a couple bits of the date to note if it was UTC or 'local'. But for a version or two, there was no way around corrupting data. The PM lamented the fact, saying "if only machines all had GPS, then we'd know the right offset to use", further demonstrating the lack of understanding.

Some folks just can't resist thinking in local time, instead of letting the dev handle time zones additionally.

Even the great tzinfo database is weird. Instead of using the names of time zones, it uses a random city. Which means if a time zone does split up in the future, you might end up with an incorrect timezone. (Like if I select Denver, but Denver switches to New Mountain Time, but my city doesn't.)

<comment><USER19> I'm sure there's no problem that can't be created by a sufficiently bad PM.

I think you can treat the name of the city as the name of the timezone. Seems like you'd have the same problem either way. If you used "Mountain Time" and then your city switches to "New Mountain Time" you still have the incorrect timezone.

Instead of cities it could use polygons on the surface of the earth, but that's starting to get complicated at that point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've always joked that the more I work with i18n and l10n the more I become a fan of one world language, currency, and time zone. I know that would be rife with its own problems but hey, an exhausted developer can dream.

<comment><USER22> An exhausted developer can also pay the rent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is it me or does it look like some countries / states are moving towards abolishing daylight savings? I hate to revisit this topic but I would love to see this horribly archaic system abolished ad infinitum.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm reminded of this quote:

"I was in favour of space exploration until I realised what it'd mean for date time libraries"

[https://twitter.com/joe_jag/status/510048646482894848](https://twitter.com/joe_jag/status/510048646482894848)

<comment><USER25> All space time clocks may run at GMT+00 with no regional differences.

Actually we may remove time zones all together too. So the day time of 3pm will be different everywhere. For calendar months and seasons we already have it like that, in both hemispheres. The only issue is backward incompatibility with legacy movies, books who talk about breakfast at 8am. Similarly, a love song which talks about April/May being a sunny warm time sounds weird in southern hemipshere. Let's get rid of Roman legacy code in our civilization :)

<comment><USER26> Oh no, it's much worse than that. On Earth you can generally treat time as being the same speed everywhere. If you start a timer at T1 UTC and run it for a locally observed 60 seconds you can expect the current UTC time to be T1+60 seconds. In space relativistic effects stop being negligible and you might find that UTC time is T1+61 seconds.

<comment><USER19> We have clocks that are wrong all the time already, I'm not sure how that makes date time libraries worse. GPS satellites are in space, they have to deal with relativity effects, and mostly everything seems fine.

<comment><USER27> [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11279076/why-does-the- lea...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11279076/why-does-the-leap-second- cause-problems)

One second can be a big deal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> fork(2) me, Optima for display & body text. Say what you will, it looks beautiful.

<comment><USER28> Apparently, some time zone fans are opposed to the praise of beautiful fonts. Have it your way.</comment></comment>


Andreessen: Beware Non-Silicon Valley Investors Bearing High Valuations - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2014/04/08/andreessen-beware-non-silicon-valley-investors-bearing-high-valuations/ <comment><USER2> The problem Marc has is that he is in a position to better understand a VC issue, but then has less credibility if reporting on it comes from him.

This is true in many other situations as well, and indeed I personally have been in the same situation. Often the nuances of some business are best understood by those competing for that business. And let's be honest, for most of us the nuances of the VC world are poorly understood outside of actual VC companies. Sure, the basics are understood, but as with any business the specialists know more than the generalist.

So let's hypothesize that Marc understands this nuance, and wants to alert people to the issue. Clearly the warning benefits him at the same time as benefiting those being warned. Does he then speak out, or keep quiet?

To frame the question in a general sense, in situations where you have a credibility problem, do you go ahead anyway, or keep quiet and let others take the fall? What would you do? As far as i can tell it's a no-win situation.

I was in a similar position last year, and chose to write the warning anyway. I disclosed the conflict of interest - even though, like in this case the connection was obvious. To those being warned. Predictably I got a fair bit of negative response, but I like to think, if nothing else, it helped people at least take a bit more time to evaluate the situation.(I got some positive responses as well.)

So hats off to Marc. He'll get pilloried here, and elsewhere, but maybe one day if I go looking for VC funding, this is one more tidbit of knowledge that I'll have, which I probably wouldn't get anywhere else unless I learned it the hard way.

Full disclosure: I have no connection to Marc or any other VC. I don't know what his motive is, suffice to say that it could be either, and assuming the worst is not necessarily valid.

<comment><USER3> Well said. More generally, it is often difficult to disentangle someone's motives & beliefs (and therefore the things they say) from their occupation. After all, the more deeply you believe in something, the more likely it is you will try to make it happen, the limit of which is making it your primary career.

Suppose someone working at a travel website writes a post about the problems with the existing travel industry. A large percentage of commenters will then pipe in with, "of course she'd say that, she works at a rival firm!"

But is that the causation? Suppose an "independent" person writes the same blog post. The reactions to the blogpost would have been different in that case, even if that person later goes on to start a travel firm.

In other words, is the causation:

1\. start/work at travel firm -> try to encourage people to switch to them -> write blog post

2\. dissatisfaction with travel firms -> write blog post -> decide to start competitor

(And of course there are many other possible causation chains.)

Yet most commenters seem to assume that (1) is not only the most likely option, but often the _only_ possible explanation.

<comment><USER4> The problem is that the two possible causations can and very often are intertwined.

If you personally profit from something, then it becomes very hard not to fall victim to massive confirmation bias, where you _want_ something to be true, and any evidence that supports it is viewed favorably while anything to the contrary is held to impossible standards.

The easiest person for you to fool is yourself.

<comment><USER5> Let's be clear here. He's not saying "do this, it's in your benefit." That would be cause for skepticism because Mark is a VC in competition with other VCs. What he's saying here is that some firms engage in a particular type of unethical behavior. This is reporting on an industry trend. It's even a falsifiable claim despite the fact that we are tremendously unlikely to have access to the information that would confirm or refute his claims.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Overall, I have no problem with Marc's suggestions from a credibility/benefit POV, and I don't think he's making those comments to further any strategic position for himself.

"People in SV generally consider this unethical and abusive."

But this comment stood out to me. In my interpretation, this translates to Marc saying the civility and integrity of the benevolent overlords of Sili Valley are the true standard bearers of how to operate in the technology capital business. Further, anyone who doesn't follow that protocol is out of bounds.

Marc even calls out how the market will take care of this problem and that tech companies will need to do their own due diligence on investors. The implication: tech companies are obviously not smart enough to do that on their own, so I better let them know. Really...if any company taking on significant investment doesn't execute their own due diligence on their investors, well you get what you get.

<comment><USER7> Sure, but how do you do effective due diligence on the likes of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, et alia? They have so many deal makers, partners and deals going that it can be nigh on impossible to get a grapple on how that affects the term sheets that _you_ received. My gut tells me you should deal with companies that make most of their money from the finance market you are getting your capital from, are of a similar relative size in their market as you are to yours, and if possible have a similar head count (which is almost impossible as a start up); these are the rules I tend to make when hitching my horse to someone else's service wagon, be it finance, legal, comms etc. Obviously it is much harder to meet these goals as a small business.

<comment><USER6> > how do you do effective due diligence on the likes of Goldman Sachs, Morgan > Stanley...

Is this a suggestion that due diligence is a futile exercise?

If my company is taking hundreds of millions of dollars in investment, I will be damn sure proper due diligence is executed on all participants -- including Goldman, Stanley, etc. Because they are such high flyers, it should technically be _easier_ to execute said due diligence.

<comment><USER8> Maybe you can tell us a story about how you've applied your incredibly due diligence powers against an investor who negotiates more deals in a month than you'll do in a lifetime and come out on top?

Because otherwise this sounds like the sort of fault-finding, monday-morning- quarterback activity where the apparent goal is for the speaker to feel superior.

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

<comment><USER6> Hmm, sorry I cannot provide you any stories of my due diligence powers. I can only speak to the fact that I know my existing fiduciary duties don't make this an optional task.

I have a relative who works inside one of these large institutions and he has advised me multiple times: if we cannot verify what they're saying, you don't accept their investment -- it's as simple as that. The onus is on the investor to present themselves, and then the responsibility of accepting that investor in the group lies with management/ownership/board as designated by the corporation. Basically, you accept it or you don't.

A complex environment simply doesn't absolve me of my duties to my board.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Rule #1: Beware _any_ VC bearing advice on how to negotiate with VCs.

If his claim is true that non-Silicon-Valley investors are applying unethical leverage, why are the valuations still sky high?

This claim would make more sense if there were a bunch of companies taking non-SV investments at strangely low valuations. Or are there hidden unfavorable terms that Andreessen is hinting at? Is there any evidence of that? Exempt evidence I would assume the default position that this is advice calculated to reduce competition with Silicon Valley VCs.

<comment><USER10> > _"... why are the valuations still sky high?"_

It's a tactic to get the company into the 'no-shop' stage of a deal, where they've agreed (and probably signed legal paperwork) to say that they won't talk to other investors. Once in that stage, the investor is free to begin renegotiation of key terms. Valuation is rarely the only item on the table. Consider, board seats, liquidation prefs, change of control, etc. there are myriad ways that a company can end up (inadvertently) screwing itself.

<comment><USER9> Sure, but valuation is probably the biggest one. Why aren't we seeing lower valued companies then with non-SV investors?

The whole point of Andreessen's comment is that companies would have little choice. It doesn't follow that valuation, the biggest term, would be magically exempt from this renegotiation tactic.

<comment><USER10> > _" Sure, but valuation is probably the biggest one."_

No, it's really not. If someone offered me a sky-high valuation but demanded 15 board seats I would be pretty foolish to blindly accept. I'd have just given up control of the company. Or what about the specifics of any anti- dilution provisions?

> _" The whole point of Andreessen's comment is that companies would have > little choice. It doesn't follow that valuation, the biggest term, would be > magically exempt from this renegotiation tactic."_

If valuation is not the most important term to the investor, then it's it's not the one they have to play hardball with. It's possible that the companies are simply blinkered by the vanity around huge numbers and not paying attention to the other factors.

In any case, if I want to later on assume _more_ control of the company I can offer a ridiculous (and unsupportable) valuation and then exploit other mechanisms via a subsequent down-round to attain a larger share for myself. Some people might call this unethical, others might call it business-as-usual.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> 2024: a post-industrial dystopia where the global economy runs on a cryptocurrency called 'Bitcoin', people wear computers on their faces and the Wall Street Journal has been reduced to reprinting tweets as news.

<comment><USER3> _the Wall Street Journal has been reduced to reprinting tweets as news_

Why 2024? I've already seen this happening for the last few years, where the established press takes original content/reporting/etc. from online sources (blogs/etc.) with scant attribution.

<comment><USER12> I particularly "love" [1] articles where they take screenshots of a bunch of tweets, and present them with interspersed commentary, rather than actually writing a coherent narrative. Guess it makes it easier to recruit "journalists" when you don't need to worry about whether most of them finished high-school.

[1] for certain values of "love"

<comment><USER13> I often enjoy these kind of articles, especially when the interpolated comments give me information and ways to look at things I did not previously have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For those claiming that Marc is acting in his own self interest, well of course he is. You should also bear in mind that he's advising _his own portfolio_ to be highly skeptical of such deals.

What he's getting at in (imho) a rather roundabout way is that deals with these other firms are likely to be 'non-standard' as compared to those with 'SV' firms. You don't have to go very far back to see that people can get caught by surprise in such arrangements. Just look at the Skype options scandal of a few years ago, which was a Private Equity deal (they just have a different view of 'normal' regarding options). I've no idea what hedge funds are doing by investing in companies but I'd be wary of the terms.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/skype-scandal-silver- lake-201...](http://www.businessinsider.com/skype-scandal-silver-lake-2011-6)

</comment><comment><USER14> Translation: A16Z does not like competition doing to them what they've been doing to older VC firms

<comment><USER15> Really? I'm not seeing too many companies in A16Z's portfolio where they're the sole investor.

<comment><USER14> That's not the point, A16Z is the lead on their key deals.

The lead sets the price/terms and has significant control over who else gets access...

<comment><USER16> pmarca only highlighted a practice that he thinks is unethical.

Lure a startup into accepting a term sheet at a crazy high valuation and get them into a no-shop clause. Once they break off with other investors, renegotiate the terms on the term sheets to a lower valuation. Since you're in a no-shop clause, you have no leverage over the VC and you have 2 options: Accept the lower valuation because there are no competition or reject the term sheet and start over. I bet lot of companies go with option A.

In the valley this is unacceptable and I am sure if someone would do that thing, companies wouldn't deal with that VC.

a16z sets price on the key deals but they don't renegotiate the terms later on as a tactic. This is the _key_ difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It was all sound advice up until he said non silicon Valley. That positively dripped of prejudice. There are lots of terrible SV VC. Note I am a massive pmarca fan boy.

</comment><comment><USER18> Beware Silicon Valley investors who will invest in your company a lot of money initially, and then force your hand to sell to the companies where they are board members.

</comment><comment><USER19> Breaking news: big fish in smaller pool worried about arrival of bigger fish from larger pool. Details at 10.

</comment><comment><USER20> I have heard anecdotal stories of very bad post-investment behavior from non- traditional investors. My impression is that mainstream tech investors assume they will all see each other again. There are some challenges with this, but is solves the prisoner's dilemma. They won't overtly screw their investees, or word will get out. This isn't the case with some of the other sharks throwing money around. I have heard horror stories of shakedowns based on obscure clauses inserted into term sheets by PE investors. I have heard stories of these investors abusing the founders as they take full control of the companies, because it is in their legal right.

If the endgame is great company, or a high long term valuation, going with the wrong short term financing just to get a higher sounding valuation is foolish.

</comment><comment><USER21> disruption of SV VC. Heard from other sources about "old" out-of-state money frequent visits to SV lately. They have and talking scale, in all senses. Good. Would fuel next wave of the boom and gives a chance to SV to not become a final destination for squeaky clean Russian money.

</comment><comment><USER22> With general investment firms like T. Rowe Price, BlackRock, Morgan Stanley, doing SV venture deals, is that a sign of a bubble in tech valuations? Typically by the time "main street" investors get interested, the growth potential is all but tapped out. Or so I've heard.

</comment><comment><USER23> Are non Silicon Valley dollars less green?

</comment><comment><USER24> Are there any actual examples of this happening? The article gives examples of investments by PE firms but not predatory behavior.

</comment><comment><USER25> I thought reason to get investors is two way street and money is only one of the reasons to get funding from an investor. Getting funding might mean opening a door to new relationships and contacts that would otherwise be unavailable to a company. So yes getting lots of money from a first that mostly invests in some rather different area might just not lead to lucrative deals, life changing contacts one might get if the VC firm might have for the company otherwise.

my 2c

</comment><comment><USER26> This certainly won't win Marc any friends in the "non-SV" private equity shops and will certainly cause many to question his motives.

However, what has happened over the last several years to the credit of PG/YC [1], Naval/Nivi @AngelList/Venture Hacks et al is to create a much more transparent and founder friendly fundraising environment here in SV. With transparency comes accountability and reputations can quickly spread both for the good and bad.

The "culture" of fundraising in SV is one with more open communication of how investors behave. Word spreads quickly in the valley and kudos to Marc for raising the flag on what have most likely been firsthand experiences with such issues. Not many individual founders/companies are in positions to see broad market behavior over a broad data set like a16z portfolio companies.

So what's the downside of taking a "sky-high valuation" and then getting re- traded after you've told other, potentially better firms w/lower valuations, that you're going into exclusive negotiations? I see the options as follows: 1) non-SV investor holds their word, does confirmatory DD and company ends up executing a great deal at terms better than other firms or; 2) said investor comes back and re-trades any number of terms (valuation, control, preferences, board seats etc) and company feels stuck thereby having to take the now worse deal or; 3) investor re-trades and company walks. Result #1 is potentially great, #2 could be a pretty bad deal but in the end company has the capital, and #3 could be a killer - company is now damaged goods and has to come back to other firms, tail between the legs asking for another shot.

This happens all the time in the investment real estate world where I came from and I see a ton of parallels here. Oftentimes there is a full marketing process that ends in a best and final bidding process. A buyer is selected based on the terms/price/timing of their offer and they begin their DD process. Buyers that behave and honor the terms with only material changes coming due to material issues uncovered in DD earn great reputations and their offers are usually considered first from the seller's perspective. Buyers that go into contract and come back with ridiculous re-trades very quickly reach the bottom of the pack going forward on all future deals. So as a seller, you either take the now far inferior deal, or walk from the lesser deal and chance going back out to market as damaged goods. Not a good situation.

Again, sure there are some self-serving motives in Marc bringing this issue up, but as a founder of a company leading our fundraising, I certainly appreciate being aware of all the issues currently in the market. As fickle and at times irrational fundraising can be for startups, the more knowledge we can arm ourselves with the better.

[1] - [http://ycombinator.com/hdp.html](http://ycombinator.com/hdp.html)

</comment><comment><USER27> Andreessen is basically just a troll, I'm tired of him.</comment>


Man sues over Google's "Location History" fiasco, case could affect millions - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/08/did-google-violate-users-privacy-when-it-secretly-kept-location-data/ <comment><USER2> I didn't see the monetary amount that the plaintiff is seeking. The only reference to money was this which indicates it is over $5 million:

This Court has subject matter jurisdicti on over this action pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §§ 1332 and 1367 because this is a class action in which the matter or controversy exceeds the sum of $5,000,000, exclusive of intere st and costs, and in which some members of the proposed Class are citizens of a state different from defendant.</comment>


Split any song into its stems – vocals, instrumentals, bass, drums, piano - <AUTHOR> https://stems.app/ <comment><USER2> This is powered by Spleeter, an open source project from deezer, but repackaged with a UI: [https://github.com/deezer/spleeter](https://github.com/deezer/spleeter)

<comment><USER3> I haven't downloaded the app to see if they do this, but it would be a nice to see an in-app about page tip their hat to spleeter. Not strictly required for MIT license afaik, but nice to see.

EDIT: They give credit in the settings page and link to github - perfect.

<comment><USER4> I agree. I make it a point to give credit where credit is due when building products, and appreciate when others do, as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A demo would be nice on the website ... Sort like a before and after kinda of thing

<comment><USER6> I went ahead and uploaded a demo here: [https://www.meanelephant.com/spleeter/](https://www.meanelephant.com/spleeter/)

Don't judge my song choice, I didn't want any DMCA requests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Well this is kind of amazing. For what it's worth, it does work, but it doesn't accept m4a files like the UI claims. I had to transcode them to flac first to get them to work.

(Also it would be nice if the players kept the same playback position when you switched between them.)

</comment><comment><USER8> Very cool. Related, I've definitely spent a lot of time listening to and playing with the band Lawrence's stem player ([https://stems.lawrencetheband.com/](https://stems.lawrencetheband.com/)), which comes from their own recordings. Lots of detail that you might miss when it all comes together.

</comment><comment><USER9> On mobile it doesn't tell you what platforms it runs on and clicking download immediately starts fetching a .exe

So I guess it's Windows only?

<comment><USER3> On chrome iPhone it downloaded a dmg for me, so it seems to do its best to autodetect. Kinda cool for their minimalist vibe, but can cause confusion if it messes up. If the project owner sees this, it'd be nice if "try it" revealed the platform downloads and on mobile didn't attempt to download anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> [https://splitter.ai/](https://splitter.ai/) does the same thing without any downloads or charges

</comment><comment><USER11> Messing around I tried this with the rap album MBDTF and didn't get much luck (lots of stuff tossed in the "Other" category, vocals sound terrible.) Then I tried it on the indie album Bambi and got much better results. Seems much better trained on certain types of music.

The biggest miss here I think is piano, seems very very specific.

</comment><comment><USER12> There's websites using the underlying technology (Spleeter) that are free to use like ezstems.com or splitter.ai.

</comment><comment><USER13> Spotify URL's might be useful to add as a feature for input options...

</comment><comment><USER13> Doesn't the open source Audacity do this as well?

<comment><USER7> Not as far as I know, no.

<comment><USER14> It kind of sort of does. You can go to effects > "isolate vocals" for example and it usually does a decent enough job.

There are lots of open-source tools that can do this, some requiring more effort than others.

<comment><USER15> This effect operates on the very simple logic that vocals tend to be the only fully centre panned channel in the mix. The same approach won't work for anything else, and won't work on older stereo recordings where hard left/right panning of vocals was a lot more common than nowadays

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not perfect, but for $15.00 it's great.

<comment><USER17> $15 is a tad bit much for repackaged open-source imho.</comment></comment>


YC W17 Launch: Credy, Upcall, and Kangpe - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-w17-launch-credy-upcall-and-kangpe/ <comment><USER2> > This can be for debt refinancing, marriage, education or emergency needs. > Our customers are those who want fast, hassle-free loans on a recurring > basis.

Why do your customers need to borrow on a recurring basis for marriage/debt refinancing? The model sounds like payday loans, lend for something small with an extortionate markup so they're forced to borrow repeatedly to be able to pay you back. Are you different to that?

</comment><comment><USER3> Upcall seems like a good idea.

<comment><USER4> To be honest, this idea is really going betting against the current sales model (which is dangerous). Upcall team -- pay attention to this: almost every sales leader I know (in SaaS) wants their SDRs/BDRs to be phoning/emailing. It's absolutely crucial to becoming a great seller. Outsourcing this stuff is a horrendous idea bcs it robs sales reps of cold selling (which is immensely important to their growth).

I could go on and on about this, you've chose a rough path.

Disclosure: I've dealt with almost 250+ SaaS sales leaders in the past 24 months.

<comment><USER5> Upcall is actually supplementing existing sales team by qualifying leads and setting up appointment (sales enablement). Hiring and training a SDR/BDR takes a lot of time and money and that's why Upcall makes it easier for smaller companies to scale. With the API, companies can easily qualify interest before using internal team to close deals.

<comment><USER4> Let me ask you a question: Do you view Upcall as a stop-gap solution?

Bcs your answer above reads that way.

<comment><USER5> Upcall qualifies leads and generate interest. An internal sales team spends weeks to call 1000 leads and qualify them, and that's our sweat spot.

We are a stop-gap solution for large team, but work with over 350 customers (including many SaaS companies) who simply don't have time to qualify their leads that they purchase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What's different about Kangpe?

<comment><USER7> My first thought is the huge untapped market. Nigeria alone has over half the population of the US.

<comment><USER8> Yet Nigeria's GDP is smaller than Florida's according to google.

<comment><USER7> And when the GDP improves, their startup will be on the ground to take advantage of that. There's a reason why investment in African startups is on the rise.

<comment><USER8> That's true, although significant corruption might make GDP growth too slow such that the start ups will run out of money before they can benefit from it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am curious why you decided to launch on Sat late night. Is there some data backing what is a good time to launch.</comment>