skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: What causes an amazing company culture flourish? What kills it?
What was it in your current or past workplaces caused an amazing company culture to flourish? Additionally, what caused such a culture to die?

(I recognize the term "amazing" is pretty ambiguous, but I'll leave you to interpret this term however you wish.)

Thanks for your thoughts, HN! :)
Legacy codebases make money. The engineer anxiety about them is myopic and ignorant of business realities.

If you can code something quickly and well enough that it doesn't immediately collapse under its own weight, you have succeeded. The fact that a codebase has existed long enough to become "legacy" means it did a good enough job to stay alive.
Good point. Turns out, the "prime" in "Amazon Prime" is a verb.
That's true if the "you" we are talking about is an individual. If the "you" is a corporation, they are taxed by the US when they bring that money back to the US, not when they earn it abroad. They can defer the tax arbitrarily by not bringing back the money.
Elderly discovered with superior memory and Alzheimer’s pathology
That's exactly in line with my statement. His mother was an American - it shouldn't matter where he happened to be born.
"View your emails messages and settings"; you must be insane to think I'd give you that kind of information.
If this becomes a viral thing that never dies, can we who are trying to do little business things which can't reach sustainability due to this sort of nonsense sucking all the air out of the room… be BURIED in this hole?

…we're gonna need a bigger hole. Keep going.
Sketch. Do not use.
If you break down Belgium to parts that are similar in size to U.S. states, you end up with one Belgium.

(However, breaking up Belgium brings to mind some controversies: the motto of the country is "Einigkeit macht stark" or "Unity makes Strength"; after the 2010 election (June 13, 2010) it took 541 days of negotiations to come up with a functional government (sworn in on December 6, 2011).
Opgeblazen gevoel voorkomen met deze natuurlijke voeding and Recepten
Abuse of arbitration is one of the several things that the Democrats (with one or two exceptions) have not made much of an issue over, and they wonder why they lose.
That and the 'feeling something' line really got me.
I was confused two times what the heck is he talking about now.
Most people that complain about shipping the imperfect solution are not aware how inefficient is striving for perfection in the software world. Personally, I have never seen rumination on every nook-and-corner of the product yielding something fruitful. In fact, it invariably results in the opposite — solving the wrong problems and then, solving the real problems that you never thought would've existed. Rinse. Repeat.

The author equates imperfection to sloppiness but I'd argue that the case is quite the opposite. I recall a comment made by Paul Buchheit on Hacker News about FriendFeed —

"Another interesting detail is that this is roughly the 4th iteration on the FriendFeed backend since we launched 17 months ago. If you look at the the graphs at the bottom of Bret's post, you can see that our previous system was about to die -- average pageview latency had increased from about 135ms to 260ms in less than a month! (not a good trend) This new design also accommodates some important upcoming features that would have been problematic in the old system.

This experience reinforces my belief that it's better to be quick than brilliant. If we had wasted a lot of time trying to build some really smart, super-scalable system right from the start, it would have inevitably been over-optimized for the wrong things, since the product and requirements have changed quite a bit since launch."
Look into the company's history, I'd be shocked if it was anything other than what they said it was.
Aleksandr Dugin is advising Putin on how to appeal to the sub-informed people that leans to conservative and right-wing. But is a sheep cloth on a wolf. There is a very interesting debate between Dugin and true conservative philosopher Olavo de Carvalho here: http://debateolavodugin.blogspot.com.br/
Then they'd be "drilling" a hole, not digging one.

(Educational tangent: the deepest hole in the ground is the Kola Superdeep Borehole - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole )
Did they take it back?

I got paid like $200 extra once in college. They took it back the next paycheck :(
Yeah, but it's not as impressive. With a drill, the only visual part is the machine at the top. With a conventional digger, you can have a youtube stream of the hole getting visibly larger every minute.
The reason those jobs haven't been automated is because automating a job is an expensive and difficult process, not out of charity for the people doing those jobs.

I've often thought about how meaningful my own work is, in the sense that: what if people just didn't buy my company's stupid product? Would anybody be worse off? Not really.

The only meaning I've found is the satisfaction of doing my job well, on its own terms - whether that's sweeping the floors at a burger joint, or making software builds.
I'll have to disagree. I used to be a carpenter and the objective is definitely not to be perfect. Building anything, houses or apps, the objective is to work within tolerances. The modern system of 2x4 framing and drywall allows those tolerances to be very loose without affecting the end product, but I digress. Would you prefer a half-finished house with perfectly cut studs (that you can't see inside the drywall), or a completed house that has looser tolerances but has passed inspection?

Even in those fields that people imagine involve a lot of perfection, like watercolors or fine Japanese carpentry, the perfection is not arrived at by agonizing over details and overworking the piece. The perfection comes from the muscle memory of someone who has done it many times. App development should be the same way.

This economy of effort is intrinsic to any craft and is part of being a good craftsperson. I used to have an attitude similar to the author, a mixture of derision and envy towards those who were able to ship. She needs to learn that if she does not abandon this counterproductive mental handicap, she will never be a good craftsperson, in software or anything else.
PayPal (and several US banks) seized all funds of a huge German drugstore chain and their online markets, and demanded they’d stop making business with Cuban cigars before returning it (as reported in the news: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Lassen-uns-nicht-erpr... [2011], also see the thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/ka26b/paypal_bl...)

The same happened with MasterCard and VISA, and is part of the reason why I think Germany should continue to keep its own payment system, and just ban MasterCard and VISA and PayPal within the EU.

Or that you can’t technically put apps on the iOS App Store or the Google Play Store if you trade with Cuba.

(As you technically need an export declaration, as described here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10835045 )
COMPUTERS Zone
I'd rather give a completely different explanation.

Building 90% of a software is easy, getting to 100% is insanely difficult.

Building 90% of a construction/hardware/car/... is hard, the final bits are easy.
The article author spends numerous paragraphs establishing her identify to the reader as a womain in tech before explaining that this isn't the issue she has with tech. The comment author has merely done the same?
"You just can't put a band-aid type solution on a problem created by a weird race condition"

Oh yes you can, and do, often, in payment processing code.
I've done it (with a simple sleep for x seconds I think), and I can assure you the higher ups couldn't have been happier.
I'd call it an "intelligent continuation" rather than shameless knock-off. Apples to Apples targets innuendo for a family setting, CAH is a very adult game.
"For nothing" has 2 meanings and I think you are thinking it meant "for us to do nothing with". I think it meant "give us money and you get nothing".
I could be wrong though.
If I build a quick MVP, I can easily incrementally improve it.

But you won't. Even if you want to, the client won't pay you to because all the client sees a working solution, so you never get the chance to.

That's the problem the author is highlighting.
Looks like this is from the same guy that did Codermanual. Wonder if he is actually going to be around to help for this course as he more or less abandoned the other one after a couple of months of it getting popular. I have a pretty bad taste in my mouth for this instructor still from that experience.
If you're thinking of donating, http://www.givewell.org/donate
AdBlockers Might Break Your Product
Depends on variables and goals. If you want to retire by 35, a lot. I'd you want to retire at 70, then perhaps 50k is on track.
Only if it's not more profitable to invent financial instruments.

So, 'too late' basically. That world is long gone now.
For intensive use I'd recommend against use of headsets.

We've found the Jabra Speak 410 (USB) and Jabra 510 (Bluetooth) speakerphones to be much more comfortable and microphone and noise cancelling are excellent.

IMO speakerphones are much more natural to use than headsets for a daily use.

Jabra 410: http://www.jabra.com/business/speakerphones/jabra-speak-seri...

Jabra 510: http://www.jabra.com/business/speakerphones/jabra-speak-seri...
Pokémon Go could get a huge December update with 100 new creatures
"Just ship it, we can iron out the bugs later" - later never comes because that cycle repeats ad nauseam.
The moment the money is spent on something seen as personal benefit then tax is owed.

During an audit, if you did something funny like repeatedly pay for dinners between you and your wife claiming it was a business meeting between corp x & y then I suspect the auditor will come down hard on that as an obvious abuse
Wanted to say the same.

Mic in earpods combined with Skype's background noise cancellation makes it so that you can be heard clearly by your peers even if you're in a noisy restaurant.

It's already in my reflexes to just shove earpods into a small pocket in my jeans/shorts whenever I put them on or stand up from my desk so that they're always with me.

As an added plus, they work like a charm with every windows/androind laptop or phone out there.
I wonder how large the pitch drop experiment would have to be before it produced continuous visible flow at room temperature.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_drop_experiment
If they feel inspired to work around the whole conservation of mass thing to avoid 'free work', then I'm not going to complain.
Based on iheartmemchache's post I read the paper too. I wasn't as excited about the project. There are similar things out there. One is Pyspread (which is referenced) that allows the functions to be written in Python (vs Basic). One of the engineers used this to do some pretty amazing analysis that would have well exceeded the capabilities.

The issue with the paper is it tries to shoehorn in functional programing into the spreadsheet paradigm. Being able to break out is pretty important to make the user experience worthwhile.

I also remember Improv, it was a great application and I used it a great deal. Borland did some extensions of their ideas in Quattro and I preferred their improved interface.

All of this is a long way too get around to iheartmemchache's point, there is a lot of history out there and doing some more indepth research may get you to a better solution.
> Sometimes he says wrong things, and then I have to explain why those things are wrong

>please sit tight while I take a moment to roll my eyes

>You failed fast and broke my heart.

>Maybe I will change

It's hard to learn if you never accept that you're wrong. Admitting defeat is not accepting you're wrong.
Venture Capitalists Chase Next Tech Wave After Smartphones
This is fascinating, thanks for posting this link. A quick question = why is Flensburg relevant in the this quote/lyric reference:

"The seminal electronic band Kraftwerk was well ahead of the curve musically, but even the lyrics to their 1981 song "Computerwelt" can seem uncannily prescient. "Interpol and Deutsche Bank, FBI and Scotland Yard, Flensburg and the BKA, they’ve got all our data squirreled away."

Flensburg is just a northern city no?
The ethics of work in the age of abundance has been covered rather well by Bertrand Russel in 1932 [1]. Not much has changed since then.

[1] http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html
Also, as someone in fluid dynamics, I find it interesting that this student project is featured in the NY Times. I mean, it's not trivial, but it's certainly less work and less interesting/innovative than e.g. what the average PhD student produces.

Would it have been in the NY Times if someone at a less prestigious university, led by a less well-connected advisor, had given this project? Somehow I doubt it.
if you want something that is language agnostic check out watchandcode.com

He is teaching in javascript but the language he is showing you is irrelevant and it's all about the process
https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/dns-over...
On the contrary. I've only used my 15" MBP for a few days now, but three things stand out: the keyboard, the display, and the speakers. They are great.
This post is horribly verbose. It constantly brings gender and race into it, then disavows it a couple paragraphs later.

This is a textbook definition of a first world problem. Don't like tech? Don't do it. Nobody has a gun to your head. The worst part is having a job, "hating" it, and spewing your hatred of it across your social circles. That does nobody any good. You're not a slave. Either you dislike not having money more than imperfect tech, or I guess you're going to be doing your job for the foreseeable future.

The worst thing is expecting the world to change according to your ideas of what the "right" thing to do i.
I am thinking that Perl is (probably) the computer language which uses the most operators, but not everyone believes this is a good thing.

I mean, it seems there is somewhere a sweet spot between lack of expressiveness and overcomplication.
I've always wondered exactly this. Corporations aren't people. Why are we taxing them?

I think it gets a little trickier then the interview goes, though.

What's to prevent say, Bank of America, from buying its execs (and employees for that matter) second homes and cars and vacations with un-taxed money instead of paying them money directly in salary or in dividends?
Perfection is the opposite extreme from minimum viable product.

There could be a "happy medium" where a ship schedule incorporates a reasonable level of quality in v1. Minimum viable is too often implemented as ship as fast as possible, and viable gets perverted into first post release patch.
Sounds more like she values all the startup culture over proper engineering values. "Lean methodology", “fail fast and break things,” Javascript would point in that direction. Pretty sure other areas of tech would value good engineering over those things.
I apologize if you assumed this was a story about a difference rooted in race and gender, because it is not. That’s not where we are going.

That's not an apology.

You deliberately manipulated your audience by playing on their fears of being deemed discriminatory, their anxiety over real ethnic tensions, and perhaps most egregiously, you intentionally encouraged gender stereotyping of women for your own purpose of obtaining attention.

If this story really wasn't about race or gender, why start your first paragraph with a, quite frankly, racially charged masculophobic non sequitur?

-----------

EDIT:
Watching this comment see-saw in karma has been very interesting. I seem to have successfully offended both the alt. Right and the alt. Left, so I must be doing something right.
im trying to understand this, and what you said appeals to me but i can't quite visualize what you mean. do you have an illustration?
Sure I will. Most products have continual work done on them.

Code "quality" (whatever bullshit metric you use for that) is not the only metric of improvement. In fact, it's probably the least important metric to optimize over time.
That comment about being a designer is <not> an obvious aggression -- notwithstanding whether aggression is net useful. However, saying that someone's speech is characterized by condescension and toxicity is <obviously> aggressive -- notwithstanding whether aggression is net useful.

Given that you do not possess the prerogative to control the costs of your potential mistakes, ought not calls of toxicity be restrained toward obvious cases? Also, how toxic are mistaken accusations of toxicity?
Maybe they are reburying the Atari 2600 E.T. cartridges using a deeper hole this time in an undisclosed location. Perhaps they were never meant to be uncovered.
Well, that's a part of the story. And the only part of the story that you have been able to encounter in the American media since the 1950's.

The story is much broader than that. Fidel was also the liberator of his country from a military dictatorship which had sold Cuban casinos to the Mafia [0] and swaths of Cuban agricultural land to the United Fruit Company. [1]

In that context, Castro was certainly not the tyrant.

History is nuanced. Look below the surface.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meyer_Lansky#Cuba

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company#Cuba
Gee. I had a prolific rise to prominence? I didn't notice. I'm certainly one of the less interesting and skilled people on this forum, so I'm frankly baffled.

Well, since you asked...

The most important thing that I've learned is that it's a good idea to put yourself out there: Say what you think, be honest, and be ready to defend your ideas (but also be ready to admit you were wrong if you find out that you are).

Also, don't worry about the possibility saying something stupid. Some of the best conversations I've had on HN happened because I said something stupid: If you say something stupid, that usually means that you aren't well educated in that area, and hold misconceptions. It's best to get those misconceptions out there, so that you'll know that they're wrong.

Remember to attack ideas, not people. Even when you really, really, want to attack people. It's not worth it.

Don't focus on your karma too much: just because you got downed doesn't mean it wasn't worth saying.
The engineer anxiety about them is myopic and ignorant of business realities.

I don't think that's fair to a large number of engineers. We know that code gets loaded with technical debt and we know that we can't spend time fixing it because of "business realities". That doesn't mean it isn't a problem for us though. Anyone whose had to maintain a codebase that's years old and riddled with undocumented and untested "features" suffers for it. Old code is a source of stress and anxiety. It might make money, but that isn't a reason to think it's not an issue.
> Cards Against Humanity is digging a tremendous hole in the earth.

"tremendous" is one of the words that Donald Trump is very known for using. So I think you're right.
It is also where the "Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt" is located and keeps track of driving offences. We have a system where for some driving offences (speeding, running over a red light, using a mobile phone while driving) you, in addition to a fine, get penalty points. Accumulating a certain amount of points within a 2 year period may cost you your driver's license. In German this is referred to as "Punkte in Flensburg" (lit. points in Flensburg).
Not everything has to be about programming.
This was way too long for me to read. I wish she would just get to the damn point instead of going into pointless details about her feelings, etc.
They claim it only runs locally. Not sure if true, just repeating what they claimed.
Yeah. I mean: one could even make the argument that Apple is the one that often insists on using "creative" terminology for marketing reasons, and there is no reason to be sympathetic to them; I also remember this device being called a "touch pad" a long time ago--the device which had "track" was the "trackpoint" from IBM--but I also remember the device had always been stalled different things by different people.

In the article for this device, which Wikipedia canonically calls a "touchpad", we see comments on its terminology and the only place in the history section where the device is called a "trackpad" is jarring and happens to be in a sentence about Apple (where I would argue it should be corrected).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touchpad

"""Apple Inc introduced touchpads to the modern laptop in the PowerBook series in 1994, using Cirque’s GlidePoint technology;[8] later PowerBooks and MacBooks would use Apple-developed trackpads."""

"""As touchpads began to be introduced in laptops in the 1990s, there was often confusion as to what the product should be called. No consistent term was used, and references varied, such as: glidepoint, touch sensitive input device, touchpad, trackpad, and pointing device.[9][10][11]"""

"""Apple's PowerBook 500 series was its first laptop to carry such a device,[citation needed] which Apple refers to as a "trackpad"."""
Lincoln had war powers in a civil war but he still remained subject to Congressional oversight, judicial review and he was re-elected. Not quite a dictator in the Roman sense.

FDR had war powers too; he placed Japanese Americans in internment camps. I'm a big FDR fan but that will always be a stain on his legacy.

You're more right with George Washington. He was a commanding general during a civil war and the Continental Congress granted him more powers as he went along. What he's justly famous for, besides winning (or really if you want to be accurate, not losing and outlasting the Brits), was refusing dictatorial powers after the Revolutionary War (like Cincinnatus).

In the sense that both Washington and Lincoln were still subject to the Congress, I can't quite agree they were dictators, certainly not in the ne res publica detrimenti capiat (the Republic suffer no harm) sense where the Congress capitulates to the dictator.

And while I prefer liberal democracies, yes, I agree that:

Dictatorship is not a concept that is synonymous with evil.
Around 6 or so I think? 386 running MS-DOS, dad taught me the commands needed to start up Prince of Persia. I had no idea what they did, just learned by heart.

C:
cd \
cd games
cd prince
prince