skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
For every idealist trying to make a difference, you get some bureaucrat from <insert country here> who is only interested in having a title and bilking it for as much money as it's worth. Because said bureaucrat is from <insert third world post colonial country here>, firing them in favour of <idealist overqualified candidate from the G7> is impossible, and actually contrary to the mission of getting various nations to buy into the system.

I used to really believe in the United Nations. Did MUN in high school, got a degree in politics, studied how developing polities can form ideal governments, the whole nine yards. Now I write python for one of the beltway bandits. At least the problems the computer has can be solved by logic and hard work.
Of course, but the OP was specifically talking about the context of development.
The wavelength theory and the curse of the full stack dev
Yes, I think engineers tend to undervalue themselves when compared to many other professionals such as lawyers, traders and financiers.

Perhaps it is because our work puts us is a position where we aren't able to practice our people skills (and negotiation skills) and we don't have good instincts when it comes to how the free market works (we get boxed in and caught up in our work and forget about the financial realities of life).

When you think about the enormous value which engineers have created over the past 50 years and you compare that to who actually benefited the most from that value (in terms of wealth accumulation) - The people who benefited the most are business people, lawyers and financiers.

Every field of industry has been significantly enhanced by engineers... Heck, even medicine would still be voodoo pseudo-science if it wasn't for all the awesome tools created by engineers... Yet in spite of talent shortages, the education/intelligence barrier, the extreme amount of after-work hours required; we barely get paid more than an Australian construction worker.

It comes down to the fact that we don't stand up for ourselves - And we should.
Rimac Concept_S
It would be awesome to see such a thread for not only Germany but Europe. There is no way you can compare the salaries from the US with the salaries here.

I can speak for SIEMENS where they publish the pay for open positions internally. However it is very hard to get into SIEMENS currently, given their savings plan.. I heard that the salaries for the open positions are fixed. I have no idea if this is true. I will refer to the IG Metall Entgeldtabelle for Bavaria: http://www.igmetall-bayern.de/metall-elektro/

- Level: Entry level Software Developer, Bachelor or Master
- Location: Germany, Nuremberg
- Salary: EG9 ~49000€

- Level: Sysadmin, min 3 Years experience
- Location: Germany, Munich
- Salary: EG10 ~54600€

They cost of living in Munich are the highest in Germany. So in the end you will probably will have less money if you take the Sysadmin job in Munich.

They don't differentiate between bachelors and masters. I will find out in the near future if you are able to negotiate a higher EG level based on that..

It would be interesting to see some salaries from other companies in Europe. But i'm possibly to late in this thread.
Biggest Easter Sale 2016 Coming Soon
Maxis has been out of business for years now
Yeah, better to keep those dumb poors uneducated.
UB is not really exotic in the field of C correctness.
thanks god

forgets god did it to him in the first place
Thank you for the feedback. Yes we are for commenting. We will try to make that obvious with UI changes. You are right that we are using Bing, Twitter, Youtube etc. They frictionlessly provide good content to users. We are also building our own features. Hopefully they will be our usp
okay 10 atm then
The problem with this is that 1) YC is not a charity (though they do fund some nonprofits) 2) there's no generic, legal way to buy equity in people (https://www.quora.com/Can-you-buy-human-shares)
Thanks for the feedback, please refer to my answer above
Only slightly related but why is 401k chosen by the employer in the US? In Australia your Superannuation (basically the same thing) is chosen and controlled by you.

After moving to the US it seems to be that each employer you have will give you a 401k plan with a different company and any time you leave you should roll it over to either another 401k or an IRA or something.

Is it just me or does this make no sense?
1 year prior professional SWE experience at the time of hiring, CS undergrad degree from a state university

Female, mixed ethnicity, American/native English speaker

SWE II, L3, Mountain View

$110k base, ~$45k in stock, 15% target bonus ($172k total assuming stock price stays stable and I make said bonus)

Worth noting that I tried not to give my then-current pay to the recruiter during the hiring process and was (very politely) told that they'd cancel my application if I didn't give them a number. Also tried to negotiate this offer up (asked for $120k base) and again, got told to take it or leave it.
Does anyone have the link to the paper?
Or perhaps a small rocket.
Dividends or getting their stake bought out.

Pretty common for companies that never raised VC but did raise outside funding (and thus doesn't have a fund liquidation deadline).

A family friend's parents have held a significant stake in a privately held company, where they've been paid a dividend for 20+ years.
I'm not an Amazonian (for some reason I laugh when I hear someone refer to themselves as this).

I started out at about 64k which after 2 years on the job became roughly 90k, this year I'm on track to make a little under 100k. I think at the moment my role is the equivalent of an SE II or an SE III.

Because of the place I work at, I don't get stock or profit sharing, etc. I think that software engineers across the board don't receive the right compensation until it becomes shockingly apparent to the company and they risk losing us. Honestly, my org didn't bump my pay up until I started putting out feelers to move on.
Partly why I think we should call this place Startup News; often more business talk than true hacking ;)
Do you have a cite for that?
Even with the current compensation packages, if you add a clearly defined and always-exerciseable company buyback provision to the equity, it could be okay.

(obviously the terms need to be actually equitable rather that being designed to screw over the employee)
VCs need an exit to get a return. If not an IPO, then an acquisition. Unless of course the company becomes insanely profitable and can buy out their investors at a nice multiple.

Silicon Valley may be good at multiples, but not so good at profitability.

Acquisitions by private companies aren't as common as public companies, and the valuations aren't typically as high. So if everyone stays private, there aren't as many opportunities for 10x+ exits. Which means there's less cash to invest in high risk startups. VC's depend on the big winners to cover the countless losers.

If startups bootstrap, then they need to make money early. Which means you can't hire until you make money, but you can't make money unless you hire. So ambitions are seriously limited in the first couple of years. As are salaries. Not easy to attract great developers when you can't afford to pay them.

On the flip side, bootstrapping a company and focusing on building products that people not only love but are willing to pay for is insanely satisfying. There's also a lot of upside to working with a small team for many years before scaling.
The title is really underwhelming compared to how cool the demo is.
I am firmly on your side in regards ideas, but I think the problem is we are not all meaning the same thing by what is an idea. If your idea is crap (uber for x) then the only thing that matters is execution. If your idea is good then it is very valuable independent of execution.

My favourite pure good idea with enormous value has to be the Kelly criterion [1].

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion
Mountain View Googler here:

1 year prior professional SWE experience at the time of hiring, CS undergrad degree from a state university

Female, mixed ethnicity, American/native English speaker

SWE II, L3

$110k base, ~$45k in stock, 15% target bonus ($172k total assuming stock price stays stable and I make said bonus)

Worth noting that I tried not to give my then-current pay to the recruiter during the hiring process and was (very politely) told that they'd cancel my application if I didn't give them a number. Also tried to negotiate the base salary up (asked for $120k) and again, got very politely told to take it or leave it.
Hi,
we gave up with sending our application, because we weren't able to validate our idea with customers. Is it better to send application despite it or wait until autumn?
If you take VC money, your goal becomes the VC's goal.

VCs need a liquidity event to happen within the expiration of the fund that they wrote the check from. IPOs are theoretically unbounded in terms of availability.
Layoffs are extremely common at startups too. They just don't make the news.
My understanding was that the constitution was only relevant to government action. Since this is a civil lawsuit, the First Amendment should not be relevant, should it?

It's like how the 2nd amendment gives you the right to bear arms and the government can't take that away from you but a landlord can keep you from having a gun in your apartment.

If this was a criminal case the First Amendment would be relevant (by my understanding) but since it's civil, it's irrelevant.
>VCs need an exit to get a return. If not an IPO, then an acquisition. Unless of course the company becomes insanely profitable and can buy out their investors at a nice multiple.

In addition, the exit must occur within the maturity term of the VC's fund.
I've seen some outliers, but mostly in terms of promotion velocity. I assume you know about the "bench program"? (Microsoft Fight Club) That could potentially explain it.

I really want to empathize with your underpaid for level statement, I certainly have a pile of stories, I'm just hesitant to tell them because they're rather identifying to anyone who knows me, so you'll have to trust when I say "A good number of us have gotten the short end of one stick or another, often beurocratic or political"
This data seems pretty meaningless without being able to tie their sentiments to their funding situation.
I can't answer that but pg talking about what may have been Sendgrid was quite interesting along those lines https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMqgiXLjvRs&feature=youtu.be...
Sorry for the stupid question, but by 'friends' you are referring to a utility or just peer support? If its the former, could you post a link? Thanks.
I'd say the take-away message here is: yes, learn a little about the environment you are working with & my guess the take-away is rather going to be "Next time I'll void abstraction layer X".
> Russia is not at war with Ukraine. Russia is just running a covert action in Ukraine in an attempt to destabilize it's democratically elected government.

Which is different from US involvement in its sphere of influence how, exactly? Presence of boots on the ground?
I had a colleague who used the kind of ear protection that airport employees wear out on the tarmac. In order to get his attention, you'd literally have to tap him on the shoulder. I tried it myself and it was eerily quiet...you couldn't even sense when someone was standing behind you.

Have you tried these? Combined with a desk that faces a wall, I'd bet you'd find yourself in your own little world, oblivious to all that was going on behind you.
Doesn't hurt if it takes you less than a day to apply :)
Here's a link for you. Recruiter in the story works at a different company. https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/2bu1id/m...

Also if it's an electronic form then I put 1 dollar. It's fun.
I had a look at this a bit more thoroughly over the past day. It's certainly not as bad as it's made out to be.

I spoke to a couple of brit teachers and they say it lets them use their own teaching ideas & get more teachers (apparently no one wants to be a teacher).

So i'm guessing it can improve schools dramatically as well as make them worse. It can improve them, though.
SWE III, L4, NYC

150k base, 40k signing bonus, ~27k yearly bonus, ~130k yearly stock

8 years prior experience before Google
Same, but only ~3 years out of undergrad, 160k base, 15% bonus, 280k over 4 years (but this dropped by half with the latest LinkedIn stock plunge), and 40k signing. Expecting to get to staff (L4) in about a year based on feedback from my director, interested to see if it jumps or I get a stock refresher.
How many people are in your org?
There were some exercises in our high school physics textbook which required you to simplify a fraction by assuming pi^2 = g.
I love how Taleb makes people so angry that they rush to denigrate him. This in itself illustrates many of his points. Most of the links posted here are people with a personal axe to grind or a vested interest in silencing him.
Not to mention there seem to be several counter-examples in this thread
As someone who has lived in 4 different cities and as many countries in the past 8 years, I would definitely use a "just moved to X city" service/app that helps people who just moved somewhere make friends. It's a bit more narrow than what you are proposing but sometimes it's easier to start with a smaller niche and expand from there.
Wavelab is so good – it's a shame it's not more commonly used.
So, what next?
Exit traps for cleanup are a good idea in any case. Scripts can be killed by signals and whatnot as well.

I'm not sure what scenario you're imagining with your other concern. This does what you would expect:

set -o errexit
if [ -f somefile ]
then
echo "File exists."
else
echo "File does not exist."
fi
This is amazing. The idea of converting units of multiple types in a hurry when it matters with a slide or circular rule in imperial units is terrifying. Somehow doing that in metric seems less so, but the fact that the system got people to the moon relatively recently is still amazing.
What and what not to log while debugging
That one quip really embodies the entire case against Gawker I think. Daulerio was found personally liable as part of this verdict, and he had to know what the stakes were when he testified. By making himself look callous, unsympathic and irresponsible just to satisfy a fleeting desire to be sardonic he did himself zero favors with the jury.

It's not about scoring a zinger against the opposing counsel. It's about putting across your narrative with the jury. I highly doubt Daulerio's legal counsel thought that narrative should be that he's just a grade-A asshole. No surprise that someone who couldn't keep it together when it really mattered to him in a deeply personal way can't be trusted to maintain journalistic integrity during the day-to-day operations of a site.
Pi is far more than just the ratio of the diameter to the circumference, even as a constructivist: https://affinemess.quora.com/What-is-math-pi-math-and-while-...
Murdoch complaining about unfair competition
It would be interesting to see the analytics - I'm not disagreeing and the site is presumably funded by American taxes, but people like the site aren't all American.
France and Britain not really, that's only historic accident.
My understanding (anecdote from a YC founder I spoke with) is that they tried this one year, and generally the outcomes weren't favorable.

Startups are fucking hard. A lot harder than school projects. And they last way longer. There are millions of dollars on the line and people's livelihoods. The people who run them, by nature, have a level of intensity that acts as an amplifier for wins and losses.

When you meet somebody, it can take a few months before they let their guard down and begin falling back into their "normal" behavioral patterns. Best case scenario, they were a pretty honest and secure person and not much changes (but maybe they're bad at remembering to clean their dishes). Worst case scenario, they miss a deadline, blame everyone around them and punch holes in walls. Likely somewhere in between the two extremes.

"Emotional baggage" of past relationships is a good thing, because it equates to trust, as long as the people are willing to work together. You usually have baggage because you've seen somebody at their worst. If you're still willing to stick around, that's telling. It means you have a better chance of being able to get through the next thing, and the one after that... and so on.
Yep, and no need to mention the [race-to-the-bottom] site. Just check their website, contact info, maybe jobs/careers section, and contact anyway. And again, consider doubling/tripling your rate.

For short-term quick jobs - daily (better weekly) charging is preferable.

For long-term-like-regular-job - I prefer hourly billing, because I usually work part-time and with a hourly setup I have a freedom.
I wonder how much of your comment follows from past experiences with other compile-to-JS languages.

Scala.js solved all the problems you mention.

* Performance is on par with hand-written JavaScript.

* The compiler and optimizer are incremental so they compile your code in 1-2 seconds for significant codebases.

* Interoperability is as easy as in TypeScript: just use type definitions for external JS libraries and then transparently call them.

It's all explained from the big boxes on the page of https://www.scala-js.org/

Don't let your past experiences give you wrong impression of Scala.js.
Smallest Portable SSD with V-NAND Technology
And like GPS receivers, anyone who DIYs can get around those restrictions themselves: http://www.aholme.co.uk/GPS/Main.htm
The edit alone must have been worth a few up votes. Was that intentional?
It's odd, I have no doubt that you have had these issues, I was talking to a guy who worked for the same company as me, with the same client, just the other day. His entire team where just told they were being made redundant and the company who would be doing the work would be interviewing them all. The new company told everyone to send them either their current pay slip (with all benefits etc) OR their current pay rate (its just a different document with less detail) + the salary they would accept in the new company. So I know that this sort of thing happens and no one was that shocked.

But I've never encountered the issue, I would be interested to see an analysis of what sort of jobs people who deal with dodgy HR reps are applying for (or what route to entry they are taken) vs the jobs people with positive experiences of the hiring process are going for.

I feel like it can't only be luck, presumably there would be some trends (ie. people who respond to advertisements are offered X% against people who are recommended through word of mouth for the same job)
Yes, but for use in a CI it's a real drag
A simpler solution is to use the Plan 9 rc shell for scripting. It had more sensible syntax and doesn't rescan input so many of the issues raised in the article just don't occur.
IIRC other Googlers chimed in on HN and said that it was normal practice that managers wouldn't allow someone to get multiple peer bonuses for the same piece of work.
Universal Basic Income: Is It Feasible?
> I can't read that fast

I can't speak for the op, but I can read a great deal faster than most people speak.
Because BBC Worldwide is a commercial organisation and the BBC (the parent company) is a public service broadcaster. Even though BBC Worldwide is a subsidiary, if it started publishing content in the UK (where it has no commercial interest), it would give rise to a conflict of interest. You could argue that if BBC Worldwide were available in the UK without advertising, then it would in effect mean that the parent company was licensing content from a commercial partner.
I think refusing to hire salespeople is silly. It's useful to have humans who convince large companies to pull the trigger on a relatively new and novel SaaS.
What's that communism thing you talk about anyway? Doesn't sound like the Marx I read.

Also, please, define "disaster".

Since by my knowledge, Cuba is neither a disaster, nor a communist country...
Fair criticism of my comment. I'm still amazed that someone can maintain such positivity towards customers after having communicated with them directly.
Frustrating read. It wasn't in the form, she asked me over the phone after I passed the final interviewing step and they were going to extend an official offer. Good tip though, I've done that before and it's worked well.

I was at a disadvantage in that a) I didn't have any other job offers for a comparable company and wasn't likely to get them anytime soon (see: state university degree, just 1 year experience) and b) wasn't really willing to walk. My company at the time couldn't compete with Google. There was no better offer for me out there, career making opportunity, etc. So when I got told to take it or walk I took it.
Also from a week ago:

- (Same link) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11268130

- (Github) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11267450
That thing is kool and all, but if it costs me MY job then I'm gonna hack/steal/set-fire everyone I ever find outside.
There are a number of ways to think about this, but one of them comes from "design thinking", which advocates processes like brainstorming in order to generate and sort ideas before starting a project. This is in contrast to what I sometimes think of as the "natural" or "naive" approach to starting a project, where you might spend time searching for "an idea", and when you've found "the idea", you begin executing. Turns out, methods of ideating reveal that a single person or a group of people can easily come up with thousands of good ideas in a matter of hours. After participating in these sorts of activities, I find it impossible to assign much value to an idea. The actual value, or lack thereof, only reveals itself much later and involves many more factors than the initial concept.

Here's another one: what is an idea? Typically it is a sentence expressing a business proposition, or the essential functioning of a technology. But is it the same "idea" no matter who utters it? I think it's pretty clear that an idea is actually short-hand for a 'space of experience' held by the person saying it. In this sense, it's actually not possible to "steal" an idea, because ideas are linked to the people who have them, and because were someone to try, they would find that they can steal the sentence that refers to the actual idea, but lack the perspective to unlock the true meaning.

Either way, this is a meme in the startup industry, and very true in my experience. Do not fixate on ideas: nobody can steal them and/or they are not important in the first place.
> clearly no one will ever pay you for such a service such that you'll break even, much less make $100/year.

"revenue is hard to predict but I expect around $200k for the year"

Source: the one guy that runs Pinboard https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/653322650677153792
Slave trade helped make Bristol and Liverpool prosperous, so it doesn't kill all cities.
You do realize that in those other Western countries developers make far less than in the US? Even in the richer Western European countries like Germany, France, Netherlands, Sweden, etc, $50-$90k is pretty typical for 5yr+ experienced software engineers. Yes, that's total, not base, and before taxes which are higher than in the US.
Pi has other uses. The digits are real, but they just don't matter in practical engineering.

But lets assume that there really are 10 dimensions - in that case a volume of a 10 dimensional sphere will require (pi^5)*r^10.

If you want to measure the volume to 1 plank 10 dimensional cube, you will need more digits.
Twitter pre-dates smartphones, mobile apps and push notifications
Projbook, a way to resolve the documentation problem in C#
Most salaries don't even come close to the total comp package of a public company (after RSUs/options/etc). I'm talking maybe 1/2.