skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: How to make 250K+/yr. What are my career options?
Hi,
I'm in my late 20s. I'm a software engineer and work for one of the biggest software companies in bay area. I make about 115k/yr + maybe 10-20K bonus depending on the year. Its not a bad pay, but not great either.
I like coding and one of the things I enjoy. But, I'm not able to see any growth both in terms of career satisfaction and most importantly to me - money.
What are my career options to make more than 250K/yr in the next say 3-4 years? Why this arbitrary figure? There are no reasons really, but this is just a "target" figure and I know I want to be making more money.
While there are no reasons, I'm very much motivated by the fact of making money than to live a lifestyle which needs this kind of money. It maybe a wrong approach, but like I said, money is a great motivator for me. I don't have any commitments like mortgage and don't see anything coming up in the next few years.

Right now, my options seem to be either:

1) Do a MBA and get into investment banking. Probably finance is the only thing I might be interested in (hence Investment Banking). Not sure, how hard it is to get a 250K job these days given the lot of MBAs laid off last year. I've really not researched this option well, but it just seems
"Wall street" is a lucrative option. Don't know how hard it is land a lucrative job.

2) Try to do projects/web apps on the side which may bring additional income and/or try to do consulting on the side. However this is not
a sure thing, unlike MBA.

I've gone mostly along #2 so far - tried hacking projects on the side for couple of years, but I've not made any money. Either the projects failed to complete or the ones that I persisted, I wasn't able to achieve any traction.

ps: This is a throwaway account for obvious reasons of mentioning my salary etc.
it's interesting (from the article) that during the temperance period, alcohol too was sold from stores called 'dispensaries'

> At the beginning of the temperance movement in the United States, many states curtailed where and when alcohol could be sold. Before this time, most alcoholic beverages for off-premises consumption were often sold just like any other item in stores or in saloons/bars. Because of heavy lobbying by temperance groups in various states, most required off-premise beverages to be sold in dedicated stores (primarily called dispensaries)
Next time include a substantive argument when you make an off topic and inflammatory comment. (And BTW I happen to agree with you about the iPhone.)
Again you miss my point.
Consider Machine Learning. There is an amazing open source software called as WEKA. however contributing to WEKA isn't as much significant as say presenting a significant work in ICML or NIPS or writing a paper in JMLR.

Open Source is amazing for programmers, but for someone who wants to develop say a novel recommendation system or special Computer Vision algorithm. Open Source participation is secondary. Also in many case ML algorithms tend to be trivial in their implementation.

Also my time is limited, I could try getting involved in Weka and implement recently discovered algorithms in it Or I can read papers, explore different datasets and try to come up with new ideas. Second case makes more sense to me.

All I am saying is that it makes more sense for me to display my capabilities in developing better algorithms rather than ironing out their implementations.
A. "Or, should I consider another device from Verizon, etc. instead?"

B. An opinion was asked and an opinion was given. I didn't proffer anything beyond what was requested.

C. And you and the people who downvoted me come off as Android fanboys.
I fail to see how it's off topic ("Or, should I consider another device from Verizon, etc. instead?") or inflammatory (iPhone is a very good device).
Better Headlines thru... Cosmo and Twitter?

This is going to sound stupid, but if you really want to learn how to write for the internet, read Cosmo. Yes, the magazine with the quizzes and the sex tips. Their headlines are excellent, if somewhat insulting to intelligent people.

The other thing is that it's great for learning to connect headlines back to quantitative results, so you can see what works and what doesn't. For instance, tweet a link once a week w/ a different headline and a shortened link, and track the click-thru against the headline. This is a great way to learn to write headlines.

Also check out Neil Patel's blogging and copyblogger. Both of those should be read at both the content level (ie what is he actually saying) and at the meta-level (ie how does he use his headline? What sort of structure does he use?)
Hey, this isn't yours, is it? http://onetruefan.com/

If so, that was quick!
Apple's lost co-founder and the ultimate what-if story of Silicon Valley
Nick and Pat were sitting next to ea. other during the "after" session and collaborating :)

http://ed.fnal.gov/projects/scientists/pat.html

http://ed.fnal.gov/projects/scientists/nick.html
Why Intelligent People Fail
Several of them are over-designed. But the biggest issue, IMHO, is that the lack of closures (which is planned to come in the next version) made a proliferation of classes that would have been removed. Just pass a closure instead. Lock api's from the concurrency package are full of examples of this.

I don't know if this works on clojure, but Jruby and Groovy solved this partially, by making closures convert into such interfaces automatically. This however, does not solve the problem of the multiplication of classes.
Well, if his dream really is to work for McKinsey, he's right... they care more about grades then they do about open source contributions. However, given his preferred career path I don't know why he's studying computer science at all. He should be studying economics and finance.
One more: Over analyzing. :)
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And you can get 2 batteries w/ charger shipped from HK for like $12. There's really not much reason to worry about battery life now (except on the iPhone).
oh, and btw. sproutrobot is awesome.
Reading it now actually. Wow, great book...!
How did you get a plan w/o voice mins? Every carrier fears those like the plague.
The context to A implies a different Android device, not anything else. Also, it's pretty clear that the OP wanted reasons for going with one phone over another.
> The biggest documentation failure I typically have seen in Forth is a failure to document the word's parameters, i.e. the stack contents going into and returning from words.

This is one reason that the Forth-like Factor language makes documentation of a word's stack-effect a required part of the syntax of defining a word. I believe these days Factor checks for stack-overflow and -underflow at compile-time, based on the stack-effect declarations.
Thanks - nice to see my video on here! I am considering extending this to doing quick ~10 minute single-topic interviews with developers of all types. If anyone has any suggestions (especially whether just audio would be OK/preferable) or "no, don't do it....!"s, I'm all ears. (They would ideally be more technical than this.)
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Plagiarism is a very serious issue in the academic world. When you obtain free essay term paper, you should ensure that these term papers are free of plagiarism. There are several ways in which you can detect copied term papers. Having an understanding of these methods will help you greatly.
As someone older than you whose income well exceeds your target, here is the advice. Deliver value to the universe first. In at least an order of magnitude larger than your target. In other words, make people really really happy and they will vote for you with little green pieces of paper.

Job description is not so important, though I probBly would stay away from poetry. :-) Go find and listen to the Merlin Mann/John Gruber panel at SXSW where they talk about what made them successful. Obsession plus voice. This Concept works with my wife's clothing business. It works with my international tax lawyering. It works for Gruber. It will work for you.

Find an obsession. I backed into mine by a process of elimination - discarding things I did not like. Then give. Listen to that panel where they talk about how much they give away. Then reap the harvest.

When the harvest comes you will be a different man. Long ago I was whining to a wise old man about wanting a big black Benz. He said "When you can afford it you won't want it."

I drive a Honda.
Most human conversations center around GOOD vs BAD | TK's weblog
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OK so I've looked into this more. From what I understand the difference is:

- Appcelerator transforms HTML and JS (built around its own client library) into native apps with native components.

- Sencha builds HTML5 sites using CSS3 to mimic native components and behaviors. These sites can potentially be wrapped with Appcelerator (using a Web View), Phone Gap or similar to be submitted to the Apple App Store/Android Market.

Looks like the advantage of Appcelerator is the speed and UI consistency of using true native components - and perhaps a greater chance of Apple including it in the App Store since the output (I think) is entirely Objective C. Advantage of Sencha is getting a HTML5 mobile site "for free" (if your main aim is to build apps) and in some cases more flexibility since the Appcelerator libraries don't exposure all the native functionality.

In my case I want to build something around Maps. The Appcelerator Maps component is just too limited to fit my needs right now so I'll be going down the Sencha route.

Hope this is helpful to someone. Let me know if I've missed/misunderstood something along the way.
I don't know about other carriers, but T-mobile actually makes it pretty obvious. T-mobile seems a lot less consumer-hostile regarding these kinds of things than either AT&T or Verizon in my experience.

http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/plans/Cell-Phone-Plans.aspx?cat...

Though it looks like the $40/mo plan now has a 5GB cap; I got mine when it was unlimited.
If that's the case, maybe Google should "feature" apps based on more metrics than simply popularity, if they don't already. It would be neat to see some sort of app suggestion engine where Google shows you personalized app results based on your download history.

Maybe I'm optimistic, but I think we're going to see a lot of quality-of-life (and fragmentation) issues ironed out once Android hits a more stable release cycle where development is more focused on optimization and bugfixes than adding new features.
this is really not entirely correct.

when things started melting down in 2008, it was largely attributed to the fact that hedge funds basically all had the same strategies in their book. When one started liquidating, many started losing value and liquidating in a disastrous feedback loop.

There are plenty of strategies that are very robust, and in hedge-fund land, its not uncommon that many players are playing very similar hands.

In fact, there even exist strategies that get better as more people run them.
Become a dermatologist.
"Every few months, I find myself excited over the preliminary results of my increasingly sophisticated simulations, only to be disappointed a few short weeks later to find that I was simply wrong."

Isn't this why algorithmic traders "refit" their algorithms on a daily basis?
>I probBly would stay away from poetry ... I drive a Honda.

And, based on the structure of that typo (missed the 'a' key, hit uppercase key instead, followed by a now-capitalized 'B'), you almost certainly own an iPhone :-)
Not really. For algorithmic traders, the transaction costs will dwarf the dividends, so it's really a negative-sum game. Unless there's a very small volume of algo-traders, and a large volume of long-term traders who just happen to be re-adjusting their positions while the game is being played.
I have seen FORTH used successfully in a few embedded systems. It's also a great language for doing initial hardware bringup (really easy to write functions that frob register-level stuff).

In my experience it does not appear to scale very well to medium-sized projects (2-3 engineers for 3+ months).

The best FORTH programmers I knew were pretty pragmatic about the language, and were frank about its limitations. The worst FORTH programmers thought it was totally wonderful for absolutely everything, which is of course a recipe for disaster with any language.
I Almost Got a Job on 37Signals Job Board
> Why don't companies have offices in SF?

Some do. Perhaps you should ask your company why it doesn't. Or maybe you should work for one that does. Or even work for an SF-based company.

> I can't believe they think it's a good idea for employees to lose 2-3 hours every day in this way.

What fraction of your co-workers commute from SF?
Great! No link process install necessary at all! Doesn't get much more noob friendly than that.

And for first lines of code, you might try:

(map (fn [x] (+ 5 x)) [1 2 3])

which is equivalent to

(map #(+ 5 %1) [1 2 3])

Which oddly requires as much characters as Scala's:

List(1, 2, 3).map(_ +5)
We've only tried Facebook Ads so far and it hasn't shown good results. Maybe Adsense next?!
In the past, making Wordpress do other things than blogging has been painful at best. Maybe this is changing in 3.0, I haven't tried it out, but just because Wordpress can be used as a CMS, that doesn't mean it should be used as a CMS. I think it is a "right tool for the job" scenario, where Wordpress is great for simple blogs, but not competitive when stacked against other CMS platforms.

In addition, I think more people are familiar with the concept of a blog than with a CMS, so you're much more likely to get a "wordpress? oh, like blogs?" response.
Thats exactly my problem, I cant start studying economics and finance right away due to financial/immigration reasons. Additionally I do believe I have acquired some skills over last few years in specific areas within cs. I am trying to explore option which would allow me apply those skills for next few years after which I can join a good business school. Certain jobs [Including startup] tend to be favorable if one is planning for business school later in life. I am trying to find those options.
most importantly to me - money

I hope this post isn't serious. If money for money's sake is your primary motivation, you're setting yourself up for a big disappointment. With no commitments like a mortgage, and none coming up, what can you do with $250k that you can't do with $115k?

As for #1, an MBA to go work on Wall Street in this financial climate is a hard way to go, and you have clearly "not researched this option well" as you say. An MBA is most certainly not a sure thing.

As for #2, this is probably the better bet in the long run, but you are likely going to have to suffer through some long years of "not great" pay in the sub-$115k range before the moneybags come rolling in.
Nice little app. I've been thinking about something similar for a while but didn't have the time. I'll give it a try over the next few days and see how it goes.
Give away free educational/teaching/useful content that targets your customer - e.g. for our time tracking software, we have a fun paper printable time tracker for the "hipster PDA" and have several articles planned on freelance foibles / common time mistakes.

I'm pseudo-famous on the back of my Rails tutorials and cheat sheets.

This is way better than any kind of advertising you can simply plunk down money and buy, for obvious reasons -- it gets people to really like you, to spend the most time looking at what you make, etc.
+1 for nltk... its very very neat!
The median guy who tries to hack the financial markets on his own has the exact same outcome as the median startup, and he's getting that outcome.
If you live near Soma or Potrero Hill the commute to Mountain View is often faster than the commute to the other side of San Francisco.
Bingo! :-)

in my own defense I have not purchased the new one. Yet.
This seems to be a rant about the limitations of certain language tools, not the language itself.
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Also worth noting is that WordPress is used on more websites than all the other well know CMS systems combined.

http://wappalyzer.com/stats/cat/CMS
PHP and Memcached: The State of Things
"Programming collective intelligence" is a good book if you are willing to invest time in it. If your goal is just to get this task done, NLTK would work for you.
It is a zero-sum game as long as you define it as follows: a trader's score for each transaction is (price paid - closing price). If Alice sells GOOG at $100 to Bob, and GOOG closes at $99 that day, then we say that Alice won $1 and Bob lost $1. That's all.

Maybe 1 year later Bob will sell GOOG to Alice at $200, and the stock will close at $201. Again Alice won $1 and Bob lost $1.

Of course Bob made a lot of money in the process, so the zero-sum game definition might sound arbitrary. However, as far as trading is concerned, the definition as zero-sum game is useful. If Bob were a better trader (more skilled or luckier) perhaps he could have saved $2.

See The Winners and Losers of the Zero-Sum Game by Larry Harris.

http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~lharris/ABSTRACT/Zerosum.htm
Who eats warm cereal? is my question. Is this common where you grew up? If so, may I ask where that was?
Ask HN: Anyone managed to block Evony ads in AdSense?
I have a long list of URLs blocked in the AdSense competitive ad filter but the Evony ads still return.

Has anyone found a master list that will block them and keep them away?

In 2009, a Google employee responded on the AdSense forums: "Hi everyone -- thanks for your patience so far. We've received all of your feedback and have looked into your concerns. Any Evony ads should now point only to evonyonline.com, so having evonyonline.com on your filter list should now effectively block all Evony ads. If you still see ads after adding this URL to your filter (and it's been over 48 hours since you've added it), reply to this thread and we'll look into it."

I've had that URL blocked for months (and tried more since) but the ads keep finding a way through. Many others are having the same problem with no follow-up from Google in that thread.

Normal practice with blocking ad domains in AdSense's competitive ad filter involves first determining the domain - obviously, publishers are absolutely not permitted to click their ads to determine the domain and Flash ads don't reveal the destination on mouseover. Google's sole answer for Flash ads (that I can find) is the AdSense Preview Tool - provided only for Internet Explorer 6!

https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=10004

So, what's worked for you?
Looking at the original ad, did you really think that was going to end well?
I had to read that twice. Jeez. You dodged a bullet there. Just imagine if you actually TOOK that job.
Beating the market is a zero-sum game.
Also Beautiful Soup is no longer supported. Use html5lib.
Yeah, 2 years ago, when I first set this up, it was a hair pulling experience and took me a solid evening to get sorted. Now it's literally a 10 minute job
This is so opposite to the view that we were all taught in North America (namely that Kennedy's statement was a gaffe that made him a laughingstock) that I wonder how the misconception even arose. No one ignorant of German would have come up with the idea that JFK said he was a jelly doughnut, but from what you guys are saying, no one who knows German would have thought that either. Perhaps it was clever Soviet disinformatsia!
Thanks for the advice. I'll definitely listen to the Merlin Mann/John Gruber talk.
I agree that money doesn't come without producing value first. I guess I was just a confused engineer frustrated at the slow growth rate rather than thinking about the value I can produce.
Absolutely. Once he IM'ed me I was looking for a way to get out of there without seeming rude. I cringed when he agreed to the price I gave. I thought it was going to end the conversation there. I am still working on growing a pair and walking out of things as soon as I want out instead of trying to find a way to make things work. It is still a transition for my mind to get into "It's okay to say 'No.'"
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You can actually use VIM mode in KWrite/Kate ;) It's just basic editing features but works alright. And Kate does have all kind of neat stuff already. Like Ctrl+Shift+D for toggling comments? You have to install plugin to get that in VIM. Just know your tools and work with what you're comfortable with.
While I agree you dodged a bullet, I wouldn't use PayPayl either after the numerous stories I've heard about how they keep people's money for various undocumented reasons. That combined with the fact it's near impossible to actually get someone on the phone who can directly help you can give you significant risks by using them.

Look into wire transfers as they're a lot safer and the money goes directly into your account. Sure it might cost a bit of money but if you split the cost with your employer you don't have to go through a middle man then.
Calling trading a zero-sum game shows a fundamental lack of understanding of finance. We may have very negative views on the industry, but it exists because it serves many fundamental (and necessary) functions, including:

* Accuracy in pricing shares (and it is important to know the actual value of a company for many reasons)

* Enable market participation. In many illiquid OTC markets, it is all but impossible for anyone outside large institutional players to participate. More trading = lower transaction costs, more transparency, and ability for the little guy (me) to join the action

* Liquidity. And yes, this is very important. It is a common answer because it is a good one

* The same security can be worth different amounts to different people. By definition this precludes it from being zero sum (this statement is of course subject to what school of financial theory you subscribe to)

* Performance measurement. Stock options have gotten a lot of bad press, but compensating a CEO according to lets say, revenue, is much less unbiased and can lead to worse outcomes (e.g., grows business in unattractive segments or over-invests to boost top line)

* Others

The above are in no way MECE and overlap in many ways. Markets can definitely be better, but calling it a zero-sum game or completely value-less to society is a bit too far.
The HTC Desire is a better Nexus One becaus HTC fixed many issues. I have mine for a week now and I am very impressed by its usability. The only problem left I could find is the speaker that distort sound when too loud. Not so good for the ring tones. Reagrding battery lifetime, 3g and especially wifi or GPS must be turned off when not using them. Otherwise it is true that the device won't last more than a day. Wifi is the worst battery drain.
Always better to be prepared to walk away and find out the client is an asshole, than accept their terms and get screwed later. Congrats on not getting screwed over, but no doubt you spotted it due to past experience, like a lot of us.
> Er, every employer I've ever had has been very strict about the introduction of any new technology, library, language, etc.

Your experience differs from mine. For me, while I've often been told what language to write code in, I've never been told what features of the language I am or am not allowed to use. Regarding libraries, I've always used relevant open source ones, paying attention to licensing issues as appropriate.