instruction stringlengths 4 105 | output stringlengths 8 56.7k |
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Implementing referral codes for iPhone app. | gyardley: Clever. I'm a product guy at Flurry, so here's my thoughts:1) You could ask us for more granular access permissions - but that's probably not likely to happen soon, because the roadmap's pretty packed.2) You could just ask your affiliates to trust you and give them the numbers directly - that's actually how most affiliate networks work, with the affiliates are completely reliant on the network's reporting.3) You could use Pinch Media's analytics, which has an API that lets you access the number of unique users that completed an action, and then build a dashboard for your affiliates that calls the Pinch API. (Fine by us, since we merged with Pinch Media.) That said, two caveats: the Pinch product aggregates data slower than the Flurry product, and we're merging the Pinch product into Flurry product. Since Pinch and Flurry handle events differently, you might end up reimplementing the API calls post-merger.4) You could start by just sending out stats to your affiliates manually, and later build your own dashboard for them using Flurry's not-yet-built API. We're committed to releasing an API for Flurry, since Pinch already has an API and we're making sure the merged product has the superset of Pinch and Flurry features. I don't have timing for you yet, though. |
What's the best place to start? | moconnor: If you were my protege I'd tell you to learn Lisp.
If you were my friend, I'd recommend you learn Ruby on Rails. |
What's with the Spam recipes in Gmail´s spam folder? | frossie: Okay you need to be a bit more specific - since I, for one, do not have spam recipes in my Gmail spam folder (the spam musubi recipe definitely doesn't count as, err, spam). |
What's your problem? | knv: I need a web based wiki/concept-map hybrid. |
What's with the Spam recipes in Gmail´s spam folder? | tokenadult: I take it you are referring to the Google-style plain text ads for Spam (the meat product) recipes that appear if you look into your Gmail spam folder.I think Hormelhttp://www.hormel.com/simply has a sense of humor about Spam.http://www.spam.com/games/Museum/default.aspxI presume Hormel and Google have some kind of business arrangement (maybe just a conventional online advertisement contract) by which the ads appear on Gmail. I think it's amusing. |
How to compete with a large web company for a gig? | JacobAldridge: Consistency and Availability.If he chooses you he knows that he can 1) reach you more readily, and 2) you will always be on top of his project. Using a big company means tasks get passed around and between teams, so even the best project manager will often be slower in knowing where things are at and then communicating any client-instigated changes. |
Where are all the Python jobs? | evitelabs: We are hiring. If you are in LA/SoCal or willing to relocate apply at http://bit.ly/evitedev or email jobs@evite.com. |
HTML/JS Standards Question | jeff18: HTML is not necessarily case sensitive, you can use upper or lowercase tags in HTML 5, and perhaps others. With that in mind, the tags should be normalized when querying what an element is (hr == HR == hR == Hr). Uppercase was chosen:http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/..."These attributes must return element names converted to ASCII uppercase, regardless of the case with which they were created." |
HTML/JS Standards Question | Daniel_Newby: .tagName evaluates to the name of the HTML 4 element, and names are written all-caps in the HTML 4 and older specifications. All-caps is convenient because you can write about, for example, the A element by just typing its name. The standards committees renamed them to lowercase for XHTML and HTML 5, because writing about 'a' elements is ever so much more consistent. Morons.P.S. In HTML 4 and older, tags are case insensitive. And practical browsers will accept both cases for the foreseeable future. |
If you were to learn a programming language for your first time | kanak: Scheme via How To Design Programs (www.htdp.org) |
What killer feature(s) are social bookmarking sites missing? | mrduncan: I'd really like to hear joshu's (http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=joshu) take on this. |
What killer feature(s) are social bookmarking sites missing? | IsaacL: No.(Personally, I wouldn't try making yet another social bookmarking site. The only way I can see of competing with the existing players is to market it better so that you get users who've never heard of Digg/Reddit/SU/Delicious/etc. Hint: Facebook app, viral features. But I'm not sure how succesful at making money these sites are.) |
What killer feature(s) are social bookmarking sites missing? | chaosprophet: The only issue I find is that the popularity of such sites seems to be inversely proportional to the amount of interesting content in there. IMHO, Pinboard (pinboard.in) solves this problem quite nicely. |
What killer feature(s) are social bookmarking sites missing? | pvg: The field is still so new you are better off actually implementing some features you think are missing rather than taking surveys about them. Nobody really thought anything was missing when del.icio.us started, either. |
What killer feature(s) are social bookmarking sites missing? | arnorhs: comments on links
rss feeds of my links |
What's the deal with Common Lisp? | hga: (Note, I myself started with Lisp prior to Common Lisp by a few years, but I used it near its inception and have vaguely followed it since then (I soon switched to Scheme and now am playing with Clojure).)"Have I just hit a bad corner of the Lisp world?"Yes, you have; for the things you want to do you should try either a Scheme that has the libraries you need (I'm not sure if there are any (probably not, but maybe try one that e.g. already has IRC stuff?)) or Clojure, which by virtue of sitting on top of the JVM and having fast and clean interoperability handles the libraries problems.Dependencies are handled by existing parts of the Java ecosystem and/or the relatively new Leiningen system (the name is a play on ant, the first Java build system).Warning, in terms of functional programming, there's a continuum of CL < Scheme < Clojure. Unlike the others, Clojure is not multi-paradigm, you will use it functionally (well, unless you use it as syntactic gloss for programming in Java, which misses much of the point).Here's the most recent HN item on getting up to speed with Clojure: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1086562Note that getting SLIME up at this very moment might require a bit of trickery, a recent SLIME commit broke it for Clojure's use of it. Be sure to check out the Clojure Google group and feel free to ask any sorts of questions on it if you get stuck (the community is a lot better than CL's).(Historical notes: CL is bad for networking and concurrency because it was formalized before there were standards for those areas and it has been stuck in amber since then. Various implimentations have non-standardized libraries for them (there may be something of a standard for threads, I forget, but in many CL implementations threading support itself is iffy at best). And you already know the networking story (which CL are you trying?).Scheme standardization is very slow; it is progressing, there are optional SRFI (Scheme Requests for Implementation) standards for each of the above (I think, not sure about networking), but I can't recommend it for what you're trying. If you e.g. wanted to start from the bottom up by going through the SICP or another book, that would be fine, or if you wanted to research language stuff it's great, but it just doesn't yet have a general modern programming ecosystem and won't for some years if ever. In general, you match your needs with the implementation and its packaged libraries and go from there. If you want to try that route anyway, ask me for some pointers.) |
What killer feature(s) are social bookmarking sites missing? | kez: * Universal (cross-platform, cross-browser) synchronisation.* Tracking my most-searched-then-clicked-on links, and showing them in a "Personal Top 10" stack for quick viewing, which in turn would be its' own bookmark folder. |
What killer feature(s) are social bookmarking sites missing? | edd: I think the answer is in why so many people are enjoying Instapaper. My problem with delicious is that it's too hard to get links in to the damn thing. |
What's the deal with Common Lisp? | wendroid: I don't know mcuh about LISP. But what I know about OSes means I know the advantage of Everything is a File.On Plan9 if you can open / read / write / close / remove you can do almost anything : networking, graphics, serial, debugging, mouse control, the list extends by design.We have a few Schemes ported for those who had a personal itch. ALISP claimes a port but their site is down for me. |
What's the deal with Common Lisp? | anonjon: "Have I just hit a bad corner of the Lisp world?"Sort of.The real problem is that it is difficult to know what the current 'best' implementations of different libraries are, and what versions of common lisp they are intended to build under (and operating system!)This is compounded by the fact that the higher level libraries have more dependencies.As there are dozens of libraries and a smallish CL community, this leads to the problem where author of sub-library a makes change which breaks dependent library b, and no one realizes this for months and months. When someone such as yourself comes along (even if it is possible for the library to work quite well with minor changes), the build process fails is not so obvious about what is wrong. Your reaction is to say 'CL is totally fucked' and run screaming to the hills is only natural.That said, I have a few tips:1.) If you are going to use an open source lisp, linux is generally the easier operating system to run it on.2.) If you are going to download a library, don't use asdf-install.ASDF itself is great for actually structuring the project and laying out your directories in a coherent manner (managing dependencies), but asdf-install is a waste of time (in my opinion, anyway, I'm sure someone will disagree with me).Instead, go to the library's page/repo and download the latest version.Make sure that someone has been working on the library recently (I try for < 1 year since last update).
(Another good way to check if a library works is to search Github...
EX: http://github.com/search?type=Code&language=common-lisp&...
).Once you get a version that works, hang onto it somewhere in case the guy working on it breaks it with an update. If you can find a version that almost works, it is (a lot of the time) worth it to salvage it and push the updates.Just read the error messages very carefully and it should be fixable.asdf-install is great in theory, but there are too many synchronization issues, and not enough humans pushing fixes/updates to manage them.3.) Keep your lisp image up to date. The people developing libraries are generally using the latest build of clozure/sbcl/etc. You should too.Scheme implementations don't have these problems because there is no expectation of write once run anywhere with regard to libraries. Different implementations have their own package managers and BDFLs.Clojure doesn't have this problem because it hasn't been around long enough to have a lot of dead libraries.I'd like to point out that it is perfectly reasonable to program functionally in common lisp. I take a fairly functional style in most of my code.edit:punctuation, grammar... |
What killer feature(s) are social bookmarking sites missing? | zzzmarcus: Diigo has about everything I want except a great iPhone app and higher popularity. |
What killer feature(s) are social bookmarking sites missing? | kordless: I just installed Read It Later (http://readitlaterlist.com) so I can bookmark links which are interesting tweets to my followers. They have an API, which could be used to automate some of the work needed to prepare the tweets. |
What's the deal with Common Lisp? | gruseom: I'd appreciate hearing from other people who came in, were similarly disgusted, but have come to understand the whole thing better.Ok. The larger CL world is terribly fragmented. There's a smaller world inside the larger world which is really good. The trick for the beginner is distinguishing between the two, i.e. between what is detritus to be ignored ("massive twisty world of broken dependencies and half-finished libraries" describes that perfectly) and what is the real stuff (e.g. Edi Weitz's libraries like flexi-streams). Once you find your way to the smaller world, the fragmentation and dependency issues don't go away, but they become minor and occasional relative to the mind-blowing amazingness of what CL is good for.How do you find your way to the real stuff? Trial-and-error and asking questions. Is that an acceptable answer? No; many people unfortunately never get over the confused/disgusted stage and bail. Does it work? Yes, very well, if and when you get over those initial hurdles.I fully agree that the above situation is upsetting when you compare it to things that just work out of the box. There's so much half-baked and half-working stuff in the CL world that I can only compare it to spam. A lot of Lispers are unhappy about this, and many attempts have been made to fix it, but it isn't quite clear what a definitive fix would require.My personal hope is that the work being done by the Clozure-with-a-Z people (CCL) will blossom into a well-functioning, self-sufficient, obvious place for people to begin with Common Lisp. They do seem to be getting there. Importantly, they have the nucleus of something that CL has been lacking for a long time (since, I suppose, the implosion of comp.lang.lisp into various forms of nastiness): a nice, normal community. |
What killer feature(s) are social bookmarking sites missing? | Jlloyd: We have tried to take on the social bookmaking world with out site www.favilous.com - we will take on board all these comments. Some people have said they want to read links later; you can do this using our site. We also introducing a Yammer type service for networks of people to bookmark and share their bookmarks and documents with each other on their network. Thanks for the comments-really helps. |
Please review my weekend side-project. | abstractbill: This is essentially an online version of the unix 'file' utility that I hacked together quickly over the weekend (it
actually uses 'file' on the backend).There are many obvious directions I could potentially take this - for example improving recognition accuracy,
suggesting more programs and websites for working with each file type, providing in-page previews of files, etc, etc.But before I do any of that, I thought I'd just get version 0.1 up and ask for some feedback. Any questions or
comments are very welcome. By the way, you need Flash (at least version 10) to make it work. |
Please review my weekend side-project. | ShabbyDoo: Perhaps you could make money through affiliate marketing. Let's say someone asks what a svg file is. You could provide links to svg->pdf utilities. |
Please review my weekend side-project. | petervandijck: If it's gonna be aimed at techies, it'll have to be geekier, if it's gonna be aimed at regular humans, it's gonna have to be friendlier (ie. "It's a Visio Doc..." vs "It's a microsoft office OLE doc"). I guess that's the main choice to make as to direction right now. |
Experiencing delays and timeouts on HN responses? | brk: Yes, I think this has been a semi-frequent issue. I see it sporadically, other users claim to see it rather frequently.I think the table might need to be upgraded, or possibly the water glass needs to be optimized... It might also be related to the napkin holder ;) |
Please review my weekend side-project. | synnik: It needs to have a significant differentiator from just googling the file extension. |
Please review my weekend side-project. | aik: i'm not able to have it successfully recognize a file. i sent it a txt file and about 2 minutes later (finally) it returned with "Sorry, couldn't identify that file."
? |
Please review my weekend side-project. | jsm386: Have you considered adding a statement about privacy, ie what you do with the file once it has been uploaded? When/how it is discarded. |
Please review my weekend side-project. | jacktasia: I gave it a .js~ to see what would happen. And it said: "That file contains ASCII C++ program text"It should probably say it's a javascript file. Or maybe:"The extension of the file is javascript the content appears to have ASCII C-style syntax...so it probably is indeed javascript." Although worded better. Like someone else said a lot depends on the market you're trying to reach. |
Where are all the Python jobs? | frankwiles: Here are several places to check:www.djangogigs.comhttp://python.org/community/jobs/http://www.resumebucket.com/jobs/?x=0&y=0&keywords=p... |
Please review my weekend side-project. | awa: Was wondering: Why do you need to use flash for this? |
Please review my weekend side-project. | lmkg: If I give it an Office 2007 file, it identifies it as a zipped XML file. While this is technically correct, it's probably not the most useful answer. This can probably be corrected with just file extensions, but looking up XML namespaces would be an interesting idea. |
Please review my weekend side-project. | erikwiffin: I can't see a lot of use for this as a webapp.If I were going to use this, I'd want it where my unrecognized files are. If you could connect this to a right-click in my filesystem, or have it as a browser extension that intercepts downloaded files and tells me what they are (ie: built into firefox's download manager, or the download bar at the bottom of chrome). Or get it to interact with my email somehow. Next to attachments, have a link saying "what is this?".Not sure if any of those are actually possible, but that would upgrade your side-project from a "cool idea" to something that I would actually use. |
Please review my weekend side-project. | d0m: Maybe something useful could be "Fix this 'corrupted' file". |
Please review my weekend side-project. | faramarz: hehe I like the commentary. very friendly and responsive.Whats next on the agenda? |
Review my website, TalkFest | SlyShy: What's the advantage of this over email, other than that anyone can look in on your conversation? |
The "Expert/Master At (Language)" Point | DanielStraight: You are a master of a programming language when you consistently write idiomatic code in that language which exploits the power of the language to solve difficult problems in an easy-to-explain way.Or in detail:You must consistently write code in the language. Knowledge without experience cannot make you a master.You must write idiomatic code for the language. If you're just writing FORTRAN in another language, then you might be a FORTRAN master, but you aren't a master of the language you're using.You must exploit the power of the language. If you're writing "for" rather than "foreach" loops to iterate over a collection in C# or rolling your own LinkedList class, you aren't a master of C#.You must solve difficult problems. Writing Hello World will never make you a master.You must write code in an easy-to-explain way. If you are the only person who can read your code, you aren't a master of the language. |
What killer feature(s) are social bookmarking sites missing? | TrevorBurnham: Full-text search over the pages you've bookmarked. For me, the Firefox address bar (with its rapid search of your browser cache) has made sites like Delicious obsolete. The only webapp I'm aware of that lets you do this is Google Bookmarks (which is asocial).I'm still waiting for someone to bring the pleasure of the Firefox address bar to a social site. I created a webapp that does this last summer (Quocial.com; I can send you an invite if you like, but be warned that I'm no longer maintaining the site), but the technical difficulties of full-text search are such that it really only makes sense for someone like Google or Microsoft/Yahoo to do this. Or, Twitter could start crawling links and letting you run full-text search over either your links or those of the folks you're following (though I'd rather not make each and every one of my links public).In short, the social bookmarking game isn't over yet. I firmly believe that Delicious-style tagging will give way to full-text search. One of these days, someone's going to nail it. |
The "Expert/Master At (Language)" Point | mbrubeck: The people I've worked with who were true masters of their languages (or other tools) understood what happened under the hood. They knew the techniques required to implement the language themselves, or to debug or optimize existing implementations. They understood any differences or gaps between the language spec and their preferred implementation's actual behavior. |
The "Expert/Master At (Language)" Point | metamemetics: master: contributor to the development branch if open source or writing\maintaining actively used libraries.expert: biggish list of work\projects finished, know how to leverage the standard/popular libraries |
Comments or not (for a magazine website)? | jstraszheim: There is something self-referential about this post, but I can't quite figure out what. |
Comments or not (for a magazine website)? | steveklabnik: I personally took comments off of my blog. It seems like news aggregators are a better place for commenting. |
Comments or not (for a magazine website)? | anigbrowl: No, they are neither necessary nor worthwhile. I like Bloomberg's approach of including contact information for the editors/authors of a news piece, which provides readers with a channel for feedback without providing a platform for trolls or people who are too stupid to string a coherent sentence together.Elitist? yes, somewhat. But the 'comments with everything' approach which has become associated with Web 2.0 over the last few years has IMO demonstrated that there is a vast pool of stupid people out there, and a small but persistent group of troublemakers who enjoy baiting other readers. I don't know why so many companies - especially in the beleaguered media industry - have become so tolerant of the cesspool that most comment sections become. There is nothing more destructive to your brand than linking it to the ranting of ignorant know-nothings. Even on 'premium' news outlets such as economist.com, the quality of debate in the commentary section is execrable.Any time I feel slightly guilty about this elitist attitude of mine, I refer to this funny-because-it's-true story from the Onion: http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/study_38_percent...Sadly, I know of no serious research that has been undertaken on the signal-noise ratio of internet comments to content in different social media. So I can't send you back to your publisher armed with any statistical data to show that comment functionality will either help or hurt readership - I only have my own opinion to offer. Although I think 2 way interaction between publishers and consumers is valuable and can help to build persistent audiences, in my view the best way to do this is with a heavily moderated forum, in which some kind of threaded discussion structure makes it easier for readers and editors to prune unworthy contributions. Anyone running a large website with dynamic content needs to employ someone just to keep an eye on comments or reader feedback anyway, if only to be alert to the possibility of people deliberately taking a public crap in the comments; much better, then, filter and moderate visitor contributions proactively, rather than after they've polluted the brand and associated content. |
Please Review Our New Site | koenbok: Clickable links:http://www.madebysofa.com
http://www.madebysofa.com/blog/georgia-on-my-mind/ |
Comments or not (for a magazine website)? | GBKS: Completely depends on the content, audience and commenting system. Having conversation around your content is fantastic. If your audience prefers to discuss with their own social circles on Facebook, Twitter, etc then having a commenting system on your site may not do anything for you.On the other hand, if visitors are encouraged to share their own travel stories and contribute to the content, then having comments could be of great value. In this case, it's part of your strategy, which means you'll also need to dedicate time and energy to make it work.Having comments for comments sake is not worth it. I'd add some options to share content via other social sites/services instead. |
Please Review Our New Site | dmarques1: Not very SEO friendly by having all the content on one page like this |
Please Review Our New Site | angelbob: I can't successfully click anything on the front page.I'm using Google Chrome on Linux. |
Please Review Our New Site | anigbrowl: I like it very much, good job. The only criticism I have is that the large icons feel more suited to display on a phone than on my desktop screen. I feel like I have to lean back to look at it, and I am scrolling a bit too much for my taste. |
Please Review Our New Site | GBKS: I'm really like your site and product so I'm more than happy to give some feedback to this update. Must have been a rough ride to design for 8 months.First Impression of home page
- Clean, simple, to the point
- Too monochromatic, a few subtle hints of color could add some intrigue
- Empty sofas that are toppled over? Is the party over?
- Gut reaction: Not sure what to click on first? Maybe have a small promo for your coolest product. Maybe add a call-to-action below each section description. Call-to-action could be your best content in each category
- I was "confused" what happened when I clicked a section. I understand what's going on, but it didn't "feel right". Possibly display the new content first and then scroll, instead of doing both at the same time. Possibly try a easeInOut for the animation. Check out how rga.com pages fade in/out, found it a nice solution
- The orange/red highlights doesn't work for me, go either orange or redProduct Sections
- Tagline is a little hard to read since it's so light.
- Maybe make the illustration and the product name clickable, tooProduct Galleries
- Nice and clean
- Please add a description of what I'm looking at. All screenshots are beautiful, but some text info why it's awesome would add depth
- Add a "Close" button
- Increase hit area of small grey circles (didn't realize initially that you can click the image to go to the next one)Company Section
- Since the left and right columns are very tell, I have to first read the left one, then scroll up and read the right now while scrolling down again. The layout you have for products is nicer, since my reading behavior is top-down without any breaks
- The about section text is a bit confusing. Why are the awards in that position without an "Our Awards" title. Maybe just reorder.
- Awards don't list which product/design you got it for. It's a missed opportunity to promote your products. If anything stood out about the award, e.g. you beat 1000000 people, also put it there
- Like the pictures. Adding color on mouse over without being clickable doesn't add much. Maybe show a goofy picture of everybody on roll over instead, which might make we want to see everybody's goofy facesGeneral
- Add a footer navigation to all pages. Currently I'm stuck at the footers since you provide no exit points
- Your logo is not clickable on sub pagesOk, reply is getting way too long, I'll stop. It's a very beautiful site, I'd just add a little more color in some of the more monochromatic area and tweak each individual section to give users clearer paths to travel, which is the "evolution" part you wrote about.Great job, you clearly have put a ton of thought in the site with great results. |
The "Expert/Master At (Language)" Point | pmiller2: Some necessary but not sufficient criteria for our intrepid programmer to consider himself a master of his language:* He's written a non-toy compiler for the language.* He knows how to choose between more or less semantically equivalent ways of writing the same code because he understands the tradeoffs involved.* He's explored many or most of the dark and mysterious corners of the language and knows when and when not to invoke them in production code.* He is familiar with the contents of the standard library and uses it whenever appropriate.* Knuth is his homeboy.That's all I can think of for now. |
What's the deal with Common Lisp? | CyberFonic: I'm no expert in any of the Lisps, but find that the learning curve with CL is massive. Of course, the return on your investment in learning is huge as well.Depending on what your applications are, you might find something that really hangs together well, like newLISP a better fit. And it's very simple to intergrate libraries written in C. |
Please Review Our New Site | rodyancy: You have a Chrome problem on PC. I haven't checked on a Mac yet. Apparently, Chrome is up to 6% of browser share, so it is probably worth supporting.I opened it up in Safari and it looks amazing. Really, your work is fantastic.The navigation threw me off for a second. Considering your audience, and that you are trying to show that you can come up with newish UI, design, etc. I think the coolness of the effect is worth the potential confusion.After reading your blog post, I think it is an improvement over the last iteration, especially when it comes to the copy. The old copy looks a little daunting. Too much text, in too small of a font. The newest version seems to shorten things, and spreads out the copy. It is a lot more reader friendly.Everything looks great really. Nice rework. |
Comments or not (for a magazine website)? | Mz: One question I would ask: How closely can you monitor and moderate it so that trollish comments and other undesirable crap doesn't bring down the quality? If the answer is "Not very", then some other means to let users voice their opinions/interact with the site is probably better. Moderating is very time consuming and if it is done badly it alienates users, probably more than not having a comment system would. |
Experiencing delays and timeouts on HN responses? | Mz: It's nice to know that it isn't solely my crappy internet service. I always assume they are at fault any time I run into these issues. So thanks for bringing this up. |
Interesting Statistics Books | subud: http://www.amazon.com/All-Statistics-Statistical-Inference-S... |
The "Expert/Master At (Language)" Point | tom_b: I'm trying to approach it from a slightly different angle (although pmiller2 alludes to it):When you know that a language is absolutely the wrong choice for a problem, you are probably there.When you can hold a problem in your head, use two different programming languages to shape a solution, and intuitively understand - in a way you can clearly communicate at least to yourself - which one is best suited to the situation, then you can consider yourself an expert.Mastery is just a path. |
Looking for Upcoming Events Where I can meet Hackers | dzlobin: http://www.meetup.com/Hackers-and-Founders/
I haven't personally been but our NYC H&F meetups are always great. |
Propaganda for creative salary manipulation? | proexploit: I think as long as money isn't your #1 priority, it's great to push for a fair wage. For me personally, making more money is better than not making more money, but there's plenty of things that come before that; doing something I love, happiniess, time commitment, morals, etc. You should decide how much you want to make at a minimum before you negotiate salary for any job and stick to your guns.To answer your first questions, I don't think it's propaganda. I think the underlying idea is that money shouldn't be the #1 thing to you.#Sarcasm
I haven't had a lot of success whenever I've decided to yell, "fuck you, gimme a raise". Maybe a more creative approach is in order. |
Propaganda for creative salary manipulation? | dzlobin: Sorry, your friend at google feels under-paid? No offense to your friend or you, but It's hard for me to really understand that because of several reasons.
First of all, he/she likely makes at least what..80k? 90k? I understand it's not a million dollars a year but that's not a bad salary.
Second of all, there are people that would accept a lot less than that simply to work at google.
I used to cook professionally, and was at one point working for FREE at Corton, in NYC, solely so that I can say I worked and learned there. All the cooks who work in fine dining get paid horribly but work there to learn from the best. This should be the same for hackers. Of course your friends from these great companies wouldn't have a hard time finding a wall street job for a lot more pay, but you'd have to agree that they are learning a LOT more than they would there, and that has to be worth something. |
Propaganda for creative salary manipulation? | gaius: Absolutely. Remember, someone's getting paid for your work, for the value you create. If not you, then who? What're they creating? |
Propaganda for creative salary manipulation? | sanswork: I wouldn't say the only one but there are certainly a lot that aren't like that.I personally given the option between Job A and Job B where Job B pays less but has more interesting problems/more freedoms I will take Job B every time. I can say that with confidence because I've done it twice already and in one case where Job A was paying almost twice as much.Why? Well in any case Job B is going to still be paying me a lot compared to most people so its not as if I will be suffering by working for less. Secondly my time doing something I don't enjoy is a LOT more expensive than my time doing something I enjoy and lastly because at Job B I'll often get to improve myself and try new technologies/products/ideas that will better prepare me for the future that I never get to try at Job A. The cost to do those things in my free time would often add up to quite a bit making the difference in salary smaller with the other difference being made up by the lower end moving up with your new found skills. |
Propaganda for creative salary manipulation? | staunch: No one is choosing between company A offering $60k, B offering $100k, and C offering $350k for the same work, and then choosing A or B. Most people get 1-5 offers all within a relatively small range. The fact that people choose the company with the best environment/project should not be surprising. |
Propaganda for creative salary manipulation? | patio11: Am I the only engineer out here that wants to screamPerhaps a more constructive approach is to say "I'm glad your corporate culture is wonderful. I'm sure we can do business together if you can offer a salary competitive with my best options." |
Propaganda for creative salary manipulation? | DenisM: You're on the right path. Keep going. |
Looking for Upcoming Events Where I can meet Hackers | chrischen: http://www.techstars.org/2010/01/14/techstars-founder-dating...Not in California, but they are opening a chatroom during the event. |
Looking for Upcoming Events Where I can meet Hackers | cgherb911: Thanks for the leads. Star hackers are hard to find.
-Chris
chris(at)phonehalo.com |
Looking for Upcoming Events Where I can meet Hackers | paulbaumgart: You're welcome to join us for http://cses.ucsd.edu/wiki/index.php/San_Diego_Hacker_News_Me...I can't promise any turnout numbers or particular qualifications, though. |
Looking for Upcoming Events Where I can meet Hackers | andrewhyde: http://founderdating.com/ is trying to fit this niche. Also check out Startup Weekends (was started to address this problem). |
Propaganda for creative salary manipulation? | pg: The phenomenon isn't limited to engineers. People in all fields are willing to take less money for work they enjoy more. There are some kinds of work people like so much they'll do it for free: e.g. writing open source software. |
Propaganda for creative salary manipulation? | JoachimSchipper: As a data point, I'm currently trying for a PhD instead of a "regular" job. That does involve trading immediate and lifetime earnings for more interesting work.I'm by no means unique. |
Propaganda for creative salary manipulation? | fdenkens: Probably Maslow's hierarchy of needs is part of the explanation. Pay comes in pretty low, so when the base-needs are fullfilled, it becomes more personal as to what you consider important next. This might me more money, quality of life, growth within, etc. |
Propaganda for creative salary manipulation? | anigbrowl: No, you're not - and kudos for articulating that feeling of frustration so exactly. Without criticizing any particular company o industry, this sort of thing is rampant nowadays. It's just as bad, if not worse, in my business (independent film), to the point where I'm now surprised when someone makes me a good offer or accepts my price without significant haggling. As with coding, it's such a cool profession to be in - and intense pressure and challenge can make for such strong team bonds - that it's almost infra dig to say you also need to make a decent living, or that you might want to spend money on something quite unrelated.For a while I'd argue on the basis that being freelance is more expensive, equipment is expensive (substitute training courses or whatever), taxes and cost of living all force me to set a price X...but I realized that this kind of argument was putting me in an inferior position and giving the power to the buyer. So now I just say that I like really, really high quality hookers and blow, and that such luxuries don't come cheap. Although this is a joke, it serves two purposes: first, it reminds the recruiter/ producer/ publisher that you have concerns of their own, about which they know nothing and which they are not competent to evaluate; and second, it's aggressive enough to make the other person uncomfortable, by demonstrating your lack of shame about your own worth, which is a great negotiating tactic.It doesn't have to be hookers and blow of course, that's just a funny cliche in my business. It could be solid-gold golf clubs or putting juice in your Ferrari or whatever. The point is that you're a busy person and you are the sole arbiter of how your time should be valued, and that for some kinds of things, the price is what it is. If you can't pay, then you don't get to play. |
Propaganda for creative salary manipulation? | jey: Is money the only goal? I'd rather take an enjoyable job with 20% less salary over the higher salary mediocre job in a crappy location. There's a lot more to life satisfaction than money -- as long as you have enough money for your lifestyle and future plans, why compromise on the rest?Anyway, salary negotiations are by definition adversarial, and offers are negotiable. The best negotiating tool is a higher offer from someone else. |
Looking for Upcoming Events Where I can meet Hackers | amohr: http://thestartupdigest.com/
Lots of different types of events; delivered weekly; sorted by region. pretty cool. |
Propaganda for creative salary manipulation? | ntoshev: Propaganda for salary manipulation, really? I'd hate if HN started to upvote conspiracy theories. |
Propaganda for creative salary manipulation? | alanthonyc: The correct response is not to say "fuck you, pay me." It is "wow, that's awesome, pay me."Working at a good company, on a good team, on a cool project - those are true benefits, that's why people talk about them. But in this context, they're just a negotiation tactic. Therefore, don't feel like you have to take a wage below what you feel is justified. Decide what you think you're worth and ask for it.On the other hand, if you don't get what you want, then either you're not very good at negotiating or your market value doesn't match your perception.(On the other other hand, you could just apply to Netflix where they make it a policy[1] to pay you the highest salary in the range for your position. No negotiating needed.)* [1]http://www.netflix.com/Jobs?id=5366#reason4 |
Propaganda for creative salary manipulation? | nostrademons: "Am I the only engineer out here that wants to scream, "fuck you, pay me" whenever somebody rambels on and on about how wonderful it is to drink the kool-aid at flickr, google, twitter, or zynga? (and for the record, all of my friends at these 4 companies feel very under-paid)."I'm one of those engineers that drank the kool-aid. Yeah, I could probably make more elsewhere. However, I'm at the stage of my career where I'm optimizing for experience, not for earnings. I'd rather trade salary for skills now, so that those skills can bring more salary later. That's capitalism.Besides, I honestly don't see the point of going from $100K to $200K (made-up numbers, but presumably the ballpark we're talking about). I save half my take-home pay anyway; I can't really think of what else I'd like to buy with it. When I choose to optimize for earnings, I'd rather be in the tens of millions, i.e. found a company and grow it - which also happens to be quite satisfying, although lots of hard work. There's a material difference between "never has to work again" and "still a wage slave". There isn't one (to me) between "can afford a Beemer" and "can afford a Honda Civic." |
Propaganda for creative salary manipulation? | coffeemug: In the case of startups I think that there are two issues to be aware of. The first is that (in my experience) most early stage startups are severely underfunded. After the dot com bust (back then the startups were severely overfunded) the investors swung back to a different extreme. So don't jump to conclusions and blame the founders - I think most founders are trying to do the best they can with the resources at hand.The second issue is how the founder presents the situation to potential employees. I was once offered 10,000 options by what's considered to be a very successful startup. When I politely mentioned that this figure is meaningless and that I need to know the percentage of the company it represents in order to properly evaluate the offer, the founder said that "investors don't like giving away this information - I promise you that it's enough that you'll become a millionaire". If you're in a situation like that where the management has no respect for your time, I'd say run. But if they're honest about why the salary is lower than average, well, it's really up to you.I think in general the economics works out because it's easy for investors (and in turn, founders) to prey on young, gullible people who have a romanticized idea of the startup scene and potential returns. If you look at the statistics, the expected value is just bad, and young inexperienced people generally aren't able to properly evaluate it. So investors put in too little money because enough people are willing to work for pizza and beer, and in turn employees are underpaid because enough people are willing to work for less in exchange for the "startup experience". It's a crappy situation, but like with most things in the world, I'd say don't worry about fighting battles that aren't worth fighting. If you're clever enough to realize this, work for Wall Street or Microsoft - in my experience you'll find much smarter people there than in most startups anyway.Regarding Google underpaying engineers, in my opinion it doesn't jibe with their "don't be evil" mantra. They really should know better. |
Propaganda for creative salary manipulation? | rms: I don't think it is intentionally propaganda, though it may influence opinion because if you're forced to sell yourself into wage slavery it really does help to work on something fun for a company that has free catered meals.If money is so important to you, maybe you should start a startup. |
Propaganda for creative salary manipulation? | blubb: I would guess that a lot of engineers DO care about money. In fact, i would think that MOST do, because most become engineers in order to make a living, and nothing more.The problem is, I think that in engineering and other skilled work, the ones that are interested in their area of work regardless of whether they get paid well or not tend to be more skilled and do a better job. The same can be said for airline pilots (to put it simply, don't become an airline pilot if you want a safe job with a good salary, become an airline pilot if you LOVE flying).So for a company looking to hire people, if a candidate will accept more interesting work for a lower salary, that is a good indicator that they CARE about the work they do. Someone who is only more interested in the salary and less interested in what they do _might_ be the ones that are happy with doing the bare minimums.The other side of the problem is that most people think they are above average intelligent, and therefore most people will feel underpaid if they are not paid above average.If you really love your job and you can do it by running your own business, that's often the best option. As an employee you are only making other people rich in exchange for some economic stability. |
Propaganda for creative salary manipulation? | ovi256: Stockholm syndrome and the entitlement effect also play a role here. The authors (rationally) know they have sacrificed salary, so they try to rationalize by explaining to their readers and to themselves what they have won. |
Propaganda for creative salary manipulation? | motters: As an engineer I'm not particulartly concerned about money, provided that I get paid some "living wage" which allows me to not have to worry about paying bills, rent, etc. I'd rather spend my time working on interesting projects with some modest but liveable wage than do something boring (or of questionable ethical value) on a high wage. |
Propaganda for creative salary manipulation? | olalonde: Who cares? Start a company and profit. If it doesn't work, try again. I'd rather be poor and get a shot at the big bucks than have a nice & stable salary. |
Propaganda for creative salary manipulation? | gyardley: In my personal hiring experience, developers - especially junior developers - rarely negotiate salary. This is too bad, because the people doing the hiring expect you to negotiate, and therefore intentionally offer you something lower than the actual amount they're willing to pay. When you buy the spiel and accept the first offer, so much the better for the company. If later you feel compelled to write a blog post that justifies your decision to yourself, so much the better for the company.Every person out there should read 'Secrets of Power Negotiating' and 'Secrets of Power Salary Negotiating' by Roger Dawson. Yes, both the titles of the books and the contents inside absolutely scream 'sales toolbox', but I'd ask you to ignore this and power through it - the lessons you'll learn are indispensable. |
Propaganda for creative salary manipulation? | dabent: I guess I always imagined there was some sort of equity stake at the kind of companies offering lower salaries. If there isn't, I'm certainly not one to be sold on the propaganda. There are plenty of places that have great teams and better salaries out there. In fact, I don't believe the two are mutually exclusive. A place with a high salary could be a lot of fun to work at and a low salary gig could be at a total sweatshop. |
Propaganda for creative salary manipulation? | j_baker: I know I'm going to get downvoted for this, but I agree with Joel on this one:"They don’t care about money, actually, unless you’re screwing up on the other things. If you start to hear complaints about salaries where you never heard them before, that’s usually a sign that people aren’t really loving their job....That doesn’t mean you can underpay people, because they do care about justice, and they will get infuriated if they find out that different people are getting different salaries for the same work, or that everyone in your shop is making 20% less than an otherwise identical shop down the road, and suddenly money will be a big issue."An employer could really take advantage of me monetarily if they provided a work environment that was that cool. Aside from that, as long as I make enough to make a decent living, I don't care. When I'm considering working for a new company, money really is a secondary issue. |
Propaganda for creative salary manipulation? | Sukotto: Don't confuse the dollar amount of your salary with your total compensation. Salary is only one term in the overall equation.Consider, for example, a company that buys you lunch. Here in NY, lunch costs about $10 if you buy it yourself. If you're in the 25% tax bracket, that's worth $3,300+ in salary.Do they provide daycare? Transportation costs? Paying for conferences? 401k matching?Your friends that feel underpaid did a poor job of negotiating their total compensation. Next time they should sit down and do something along the following lines:- list out every possible benefit a company might offer- group the ones they personally care about (don't have kids? Then the daycare benefit is worthless)- for the ones they care about, think about how much each one is worth in $ to them.- think about what the minimum they would accept for that benefit, how much would make them happy, and how much would make the ecstatic.- for the ones they don't care about, thik about how much it costs the company to pay for eachWhen it comes time to negotiate your compensation, always think in sets. Always word things in terms of how moving any one piece requires movement on a different piece. Give up the things in the "don't care" set for the equivalent value of something in the "want" set.If they want to give you less money, you say you could agree to that, if they give you X number of vacation days. Or if they say they have free daycare, you say that you appreciate that, but since you don't have kids you would rather have "work at home Fridays" and a slightly larger 401k match.Consider the total You are much more likely to get a larger total if you don't focus only on the money.[edit: bad math] (salary equivalent) = (daily cost * 5 days/wk * 50 wks/yr)
------------------------------------
( 1 - tax rate )
25% tax bracket
$ 5 lunch = (5 * 5 * 50)/(75%) = $1,667 salary
$10 lunch = $3,333
So if the company gives you lunch each day, it's worth $333 in salary for every dollar you would have to spend to buy the same lunch. That ignores the fact that your income tax rate changes depending on your salary. |
What do you think about this movie distribution model? | Kliment: Sounds amazing. NIN tried this recently and got some pretty amazing mixes out of it. You could consider starting a remix/fan/discussion forum and a featured work youtube channel. |
What do you think about this movie distribution model? | romland: Interesting. This might be that added value that opponents of the current digital distribution model is looking for.Since you want this to be as widely spread as possible with the underlying concept attached to it, you might want to get in touch with PirateBay (and similar). They seem to like this kind of stuff and might give it front-page attention.It will inevitably become an illegal* torrent sooner rather than later, but you might appeal to the group that thinks the current model of making money off of media is far from optimal.* illegal: I might be a bit thick, but am I getting the rights to distribute (fileshare) this after I have bought the DVD-R, or can anyone do it? Filesharing today generally means torrent, which means that everyone downloading the torrent is also sharing it... I guess my question here is: I can share it, but can anyone legally download it from me?I find the concept intriguing and I'm really looking forward to what other people here will say. Will keep an eye on where you're going from here!PS. Not that I ever use PirateBay, of course. |
Would you work for this company? | vijaydev: well, you can give the hyperlink in the comment, for one!
http://mthruf.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/takeone.jpg?w=500&... |
Would you work for this company? | DanielStraight: My guess is that it's their version of FizzBuzz. |
Propaganda for creative salary manipulation? | c00p3r: There is always (emerging) market(s) with lots of smart people who want to work for much less salary because they enjoying of what they are doing. =) |
Propaganda for creative salary manipulation? | Maven911: Am I the only one suprised to hear about 150k-200k salaries as software developer ? Most people I know are in the 50-100k rangeThese only seem to be possible in Silicon Valley or NYC-Manhattan |
What do you think about this movie distribution model? | mos1: I'm mostly surprised that your 'bootleg edition' is cheaper than the regular edition.Sure, it doesn't have a box... but it has a lot of rights granted to it, and it has some cachet. |
Would you work for this company? | keefe: lol sure, if they paid me enough? I'm not exactly looking at numbers on scraps of papers for developer gigs though... |
What do you think about this movie distribution model? | romland: It's a shame this did not make it to the main page, I was hoping to read some input from the community.Did you have bad luck with the time you submitted the story, or so? During lunch hour? A lot of other submissions? I would genuinely have thought this would be of interest. |
Anyone hiring for non-technical positions? | sanj: You mean all that stuff that makes sites successful? |
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