skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
While ad hominem is usually bad, I don't see the problem with using it in response to anecdotal evidence. If your argument is "I, personally, can't run my business while paying employees an average wage!", then "your business was spiraling downwards while before the downturn and well before healthcare reform and wage bumps" seems to be a decent response.

Similarly, knowing someone's background is pretty crucial for an op-ed. If the piece is being sold as "I'm a typical businessman, and Obama's policies are keeping me from hiring people", then it's important to know if the businessman in question is typical, or if he's politically connected.

Edit: Typo'd "solid" for "sold".
I would be very surprised if managers in almost all companies didn't have the ability to offer off-period raises for purposes of retention. If the HR group is really buttoned down, there's probably even a procedure for it.
Andrew Orlowski is the worst of the trolls at the register, I stop reading the instant I see his name. You might find that insulting or arrogant, but it's a "don't feed them" policy which leads to a happier life. Judging by the comments here it looks like it's a good policy.
> Her name is Jenny - we're working our contact for Jenny's last name.

Wait, what? Why is that necessary?
Nobody ever says to someone watching Law & Order reruns that they have too much time on their hands.
Probably, Chrome's (dev version?) bug.
Are you sure that's Falls Church? I don't see a single Super Mutant.
The logic is that taxes and other fees are pushing the cost of hiring people over what he's willing to pay. To use your example imagine you only have $1 to your name and you can get by without the Apple. At which point you don't buy the Apple where as if it was $.50 you might buy the Apple because it wouldn't take all your money.

I'm not saying his logic is correct but it's not hard to understand
Jenny better really hope they don't find her last name and publish it. Otherwise she's going to have a hard time getting hired again.
The "new to the workforce" thing raises a flag for me. It can create a LOT of discontent to give a new guy a raise for performance reasons. At many companies, raises are due to length of tenure (sad, but true). Prepare to be told, "But you've only been here for a year. It'd be bad if we gave you a raise."

I don't think you should shop around, but you do need to understand market rate. Have a casual conversation (coffee?) with your boss (say that you'd like to talk about how your compensation will evolve as you continue to work for the company) and ask them a few questions.

1) Where does the company feel it should pay folks? Do they like to pay a little above market rate to encourage retention, at market rate to be competitive, or... (don't finish the sentence)
(almost everyone will say at market rate)

2) Does performance effect that? If an employee is top notch among his peers, should that effect his pay?

3) Where would you place me among my peers and could you give me some advice about how I could excel even further?

The big Q: Given that we agree that I'm in the top n%, do you feel like my compensation is appropriate? My research has indicated that an average salary for a person of my level is X (might be worth padding a touch for anchoring purposes).

NEVER give the indication that you're shopping. There are plenty of places to research salary without doing interviews. Most managers know that once people start interviewing, there's no point in trying too hard to keep the person. Stress that you really like your job and you see a long/bright future at the company.
The only times I've seen "rockstar" or "ninja" used to describe programmers is in job descriptions. People try to make an otherwise run-of-the-mill web dev job sound interesting by making it sound casual and fun.
How To Win When You Are An Underdog?
I'm lost here. I know neither Platon nor ontology. Your last sentence sound right, but I don't see how it connects to my previous posts.
Unless of course, you actually are a rockstar.
You just ask, but take the advice that others have posted and definitely do your due diligence on local market research before asking.

On a side note:

I've had 4 jobs in the past 3 years, and I've had significant pay increases everytime I started with a new employer (except for my current job).

Job 1 -> Job 2: +30%

Job 2 -> Job 3: +50%

Job 3 -> Job 4: -15%

I took a pay decrease for Job 4 as the job was still paying well over the median, was more interesting, and had a way better work environment.

Sometimes the best way to get a raise is to find another job.
Its analagous to taking pictures of people in public. Its in public . .. I know that laws may be different in these various countries - I'm saying that this _shouldn't_ be illegal if it is

Well, since you bring up the photography analogy ... average Koreans are a lot more sensitive than Americans to being randomly captured in others' photographs/videos, especially if those photos will later be published/broadcast in mass media. And Korean law backs them up on their desire for privacy, to certain extent (not as much as commonly believed, though).

One photographer's take on it, including translation of some of the relevant sections of Korean laws and various anecdotes of the troubles it's caused him in his work:
http://metropolitician.blogs.com/scribblings_of_the_metrop/2...
Michael Nielsen » Cameron Neylon on practical steps toward open science
that's what put me off Digg. But I fully understand that HN will have a bias towards more libertarian views. I really don't think a site dedicated to entrepreneurs and hackers will go the MotherJones/MSNBC way and Fox News hardly has any article with substance online.
Call me a cynic but this looks a lot like some viral marketing campaign.
Yeah I've read that. He's an interesting guy but still kind of the textbook definition of patent troll.
Loved it. I imagine a lot of people will gladly hire her.
Just a couple of notes for context:

1) On the first day/week/month, the employee is probably not going to contribute much, and in general you are taking a risk. The lower the sticker price on that risk, the more people are likely to take it.

2) If your business is making 250K and spending 240K on employing 4 employees @ 60K each and you want to stay net positive, you need to wait until you reach 300K before you hire the next person[1]. So there are these gaps in ramping up a business which can only be overcome with growth. When salaries are lower, these gaps are smaller. Looking at the broader labor market and assuming growth, lower taxes would mean smaller gaps and potentially less unemployment.

[1] Note that because of their opportunity costs, its harder to hire professionals for part-time.
I think the goal of taking a walk is similar to meditation -- empty out the consciousness for a while. Phones, dogs, friends talking, remembering a shopping list, etc don't do this well. The passing thing probably should not be considered as a hard rule, just as a loose guideline -- "if you are walking fast enough to pass someone walking with purpose, you are probably not really idling"
This is like saying if you fed everyone the EXACT same diet as Yao Ming, the world would be full of 7ft+ people. A central tenant of evolutionary theory is that there is intra-species variation (serving as the raw material for natural selection to act upon). The brain is also a physical trait subject to variation. Is it so hard to believe that variations in the brain's structure leads to variations in ability?
I'm sure it's cool but it's a topic I have no interest in.
HPOA. 10-4.
Idk, she's a HPOA. Those are always in demand.
4 possible problems with the proof:
http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2010/08/09/issues-in-the-proof...
I'd hire her!
It really does. You could read all of TechCrunch in 30 minutes.
Agree, felt too contrived and as a post more fitting for a side reddit.
While I agree his business is doing lousy and thats a huge reason why he cannot hire more, his point still rock solid.

The government takes way to much for each employee hired. 33%! The author would realize this is a HUGE problem for employers, but I forget he is only a political blogger.

Thus when you hire 3 and a tax rate of 33% + 33% + 33%, you are really paying for 4 people and getting 3. That makes it hard to hire more employees.

Then comes the health care, which drives this 33% even higher. As the wsj author states

"Every year, we negotiate a renewal to our health coverage. This year, our provider demanded a 28% increase in premiums—for a lesser plan. This is in part a tax increase that the federal government has co-opted insurance providers to collect. We had never faced an increase anywhere near this large; in each of the last two years, the increase was under 10%."

28% is a HUGE increase..

Don't turn this into a political "I must defend/attack obama/bush" article. He stated everything with facts to defend why. 33% per employee and rising quickly in just a years time is a huge reason not to hire someone new.
4 Issues In That Proof That P≠NP
I've actually never seen anyone on the internet calling themselves a 'rockstar' or 'ninja' in a software related context. They always call others 'rockstars' or 'ninja's'
For having raised $90mil, the source of UStream is pretty terrible
Honestly, everyone reading the WSJ knows how math works. The point of the article was not to explain math - it was to blame "government" - and Barack Obama - for the lack of private hiring. A political statement gets (and deserves) a political response.
It doesn't have to do anything with the taxes, though. Suppose he is willing to pay 40000$. If taxes are 30000$, he can pay 10000$ to a new hire. If nobody wants to work for that money, it is the fault of the new hires.

Of course it would be better if taxes were lower, but since they are a real cost, it makes no sense to say "I pay double". Maybe it costs 0.70$ to grow the apple, so it simply isn't possible to sell the apple for 0.50$. Taxes are the costs for growing employees. What good is it to complain that you would buy an apple if only it cost just 0.50$, if it already costs more than 0.70$ to grow the apple?
Inspired by Andrew McDonald perhaps? I love it.

http://www.andrewmcdonald.net.au/a-pictorial-guide-to-avoidi...
Works for me, with current Chrome dev (6.0.472.25). Which version do you have?
While unbelievably awesome, I don't see any need to get her full name.

This girl did some pretty badass stuff, and while I'm sure we'd all like to congratulate her ('cause she's hawts, amirite?), it probably would look bad for a potential employer. If you can get fired for stuff you say / do outside of work (Best Buy iPhone 4 animation), I'd say leaving well enough alone is good enough for this.
yes but if I only have 20$ I can get twice as many if they are $.50 instead of $1. Thus he could hire more people if the overhead per hire was lower.
I sneak into concerts dressed in all black, incapacitate the drummer with the hilt of my katana, and fill in during the solos using my nunchucks as drumsticks without anyone noticing the difference (except for the occasional "man, the drummer's more awesome than usual tonight" comment). May I still call myself a Ninja Rockstar?
Other than the usual ones mentioned here, in a rails specific environment, I use rsense[1], acp[2], rails.vim[3]. This works really well for me and I would recommend it to any rails developer.

[1] http://cx4a.org/software/rsense/

[2] http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1879

[3] http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1567
Does P Equal NP
Most of what you have to say here I find myself agreeing with with a smile and nod. But I wish you would just let this one go. He may not be the easiest person in the world to argue with, but his work and that book specifically are excellent. I also emailed him thanking him for sharing his work and got a prompt, sincere reply. I've been to your site and seen your thorough and organized postings on freelancing and I've read each one. And not having sent a thank you via email( my apologies), here's an honest one now;
Thank you for sharing your experience and knowledge in an articulate and interesting way. It helps the late bloomers among us find our path.
That being said I just want to scream when I log on and the first comment on this post is pure snark from someone who should seemingly be above that. C'mon man, for some who is so clearly motivated by empathy and understanding in the comments they leave here I would hope you could just let. shit. go.
Was the Enthusiast even attempting to produce something the Speaker could appreciate, or was it merely for their own amusement/edification? [...] What entitles you to make a pronouncement like that?

Interesting questions, especially because they don't have only one answer. Let's say I make a video of a "fringey" hobby I have; pick anything you would profoundly useless. Let's say I send that video to a group of my friends, saying "look what I did". If it somehow finds its way to a broader audience on the Internet, for which it was not intended, and some Joe Schmoe says "this guy has too much time on his hands", then you could say that he's being a Dick. You could also say my friends were Dicks for exposing me to Joe Schmoe's ridicule.

However, if I take that same video, post in on a public site, with no access controls (such as YouTube ), saying "look what I did", then I'm inviting people to give their opinions on it. I'm entitling a hypothetical Speaker to judge my work.

They're proclaiming that the Enthusiast's passion would be better spent elsewhere, which I suppose is a recognition of the mere existence of said passion, but it's hardly a gesture of respect, as you're implying.

I'm not implying it's a gesture of respect. I'm simply claiming that it's a recognition of that passion, because the Author's sentiment is that this passion is not recognized by people who use the phrase "too much time on his hands". Of course, we could quibble about the word "recognize". To forestall that, I'll explain that I'm using it in the sense of acknowledging something, not acclaiming something.

No, of course not, but neither is anyone entitled to actively _dis_ respect every flight of fancy they come across.

In other words: "Either offer a constructive criticism or shut up." That's okay, I agree with that completely. What I disagree with is reacting out of proportion to the disrespect. That kind of reaction usually comes from the false sense of entitlement, a feeling that not only people shouldn't disrespect your passions, but that they should keep quiet if they disagree.
When its government taxes that are causing it to be so expensive why would you blame someone else?

Also he is only blaming Obama for the health care price raise not the previous amount.
Linux Foundation tries making license compliance even easier
There's something to be said for misplaced egos, but spending half a breath indirectly reaffirming that titles are pointless in startups... is pointless.
Computer Aid says reusing PCs is better than recycling them
I am confused by the immediateness of this going to the top of HN, it seems to lack any real substance.

As others have said, people don't call themselves 'rock stars' and 'ninjas', people look for them. Beyond that, using the definition that refers to the traditional use of the words rather than the idiosyncratic ones to show you don't want a 'ninja' or 'rockstar' is so fucking cheap it hurts.
The point is they might keep you on for a month or two until they find your replacement (and the other job offer evaporates), then let you go. A lot of companies are shady enough to do this.
Wait for it.. someone is going to again point out that taxes in the US are slightly lower than some other developed countries, and therefore they will imply that since everyone's taxes are high, we should assume that high taxes are perfectly sane.
Ask HN: anybody working on a non-profit startup?
something like Kiva, for example.
That's a tough one to answer because it's so company-dependent. It's pretty hard, but far from impossible. It will depend greatly on a number of factors, including but not limited to your value to the company, how far you are from the pay you want, and how the politics of the situation work. Even if they turn you down, your boss certainly won't forget turning you down (next time, or when you leave).
Back in 2005/2006, Rails had a reputation of being easy to set up and dive into

Almost entirely based on DHH's 15-minute scaffolding/TextMate blog demo. It was a brilliant marketing move that arguably put Rails on the map, but the problem was that it gave the impression that Rails was somehow "easy" like PHP and suitable for casual web tinkerers.

The fact that things are more complex now tells a truer story: if you want to do any serious work with Rails you need to be prepared to dive deep into Ruby. When a meta-programming bug strikes you can't hide behind even the most elegant DSL.
Newport State of Mind forced off YouTube
I teach mathematics at a community college. I definitely don't teach like I'm the student. A large majority of my students don't like mathematics and don't want to be in the class. If I taught like I was the students only a few people would pass. Few of my students have the desire to know, to learn that I had as a student.

I think his advice best applies to a group of students who care about learning and want to learn. It doesn't apply to those who don't possess these qualities.
The thing is that the overhead isn't lower. Hires cost what they cost. Why does the hire need 10000$ in the bank? Because apples are 1$. If apples were only 0.50$, the hire could feed himself for only 5000$. So you could blame high apple prices just as much as taxes. It doesn't make sense to single out taxes.
BBC develops mobile data-stealing app - easy peasy?
"You cannot ask for a raise when the company is in trouble"

Isn't this the standard for most companies (especially IT) in today's economy?
Also it's worth noting that the core ruby language moves quite slowly. It's just Rails and the gem ecosystem that moves a maddening pace.
> My own merely personal anecdote: after eliminating all wheat and almost all other carbs from my diet, I lost ~35 points effortlessly.

How would you go about removing carbs from your diet if you DIDN'T want to lose weight (i.e. BMI is always south of the norm)?
You can often find the papers by searching on either CiteSeer (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/) or Google Scholar. On the latter, click "All X versions" - there are often copies on authors' faculty pages, for example, before the ACM took something free and locked it up.
a real ninja would never tell you he was a ninja.. so you're right, only if you actually are a rockstar.
Who else should pay the taxes in your opinion?
Ouster of HP CEO compared to when 'idiots' at Apple fired Steve Jobs
Call yourself whatever you want. Just back it up.
I don't see the inconsistency. (1) He wanted to negotiate his salary up from what he was currently on. (2) He wasn't interested in anything lower than the figure he'd given.

"Pay me $X or I quit" is negotiation, even if it's a rather bloodyminded sort of negotiation.
Which brings to mind the question: How many rock stars are programmers? There are quite a few coder-artist types, thanks mainly to Processing, but I've yet to hear about a coder rock star (let alone, of course, a coder ninja, but those are, you know, reclusive by nature).
"Suppose he is willing to pay 40000$. If taxes are 30000$, he can pay 10000$ to a new hire. If nobody wants to work for that money, it is the fault of the new hires." - Wow I hope I never work for you..

I cannot see how you say this is the "fault of the new hires" its not their fault, its the employers and government. Because the employer cannot afford to pay them more, they have 40,000 to pay them. Its the governments fault because they are taking 13200(assume 33% instead of 30k) this only allows the employer to offer a job if someone takes it for 26800.

Hes complaining because it does not need to cost this much. If the government is all about helping the country out of this "recession" shouldn't they be helping businesses hire new people?

It's hard for them to do this when it becomes more and more expensive to hire.
As others have said, know you value to the company. But, there are two parts to that. First (as already stated), know what a competitive salary is for your position and experience. Second, be able to back up your request. Have documentation of goals, successes, and anything else you've done to move the company towards its goals. The latter is worth a lot more than an article or job posting telling you what you're worth (and generates a bit less animosity than waving an offer letter in their face).
A search on Linked In for "ninja" suggests otherwise.
At many companies, raises are due to length of tenure (sad, but true). Prepare to be told, "But you've only been here for a year. It'd be bad if we gave you a raise."

If a company wants to buy tenure and you want to sell performance, it's a bad fit. Find someone wanting to buy what you are selling and do business with them.

If the language section of your resume lists Java, J2EE and Java 1.6, you should stick around. You'll never get a better deal elsewhere.
Am I the only one who actually does not apply to job descriptions asking for a rockstar/ninja?
That's the fault of the project for not specifying a Ruby version. In fact any project that is bringing new people on on a regular basis should have a standard environment setup documentation/wiki.

I admit it's pretty dicey with Windows, but between Linux/OS X things are usually pretty manageable.
Damn Chris -- I blogged this just yesterday. I understand that good authors borrow and great authors steal, but geesh. At least give it a few days.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1587909
Completely agreed - as a former software developer for banks, they really don't like working on their own stuff - they typically buy it off the shelf, and don't ever think to do a hardware overhaul.

But then again, while working in the industry, there seems to also be a HUGE disconnect between banks' perception of technology and the part it actually plays. Chase seems to be getting into a good position as a result of closing that gap (pictures of checks deposited to your acct via phone).
But there are no rockstar programmers, there are only rockstar astrophysicists, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Harold_May
Unnecessarily critical and not amusing. To bring up jruby and rubinius for someone starting out in ruby??? Why not also confuse him with Macruby ?

I develop more for fun .. i develop in ruby 1.9 and test to see it works in 1.8.7 also. No big deal!

I use "gem" for installing gems. Not bundler. No need to confuse someone new with RVM and ask him to play with all versions of ruby till he finds the one that suits him.

Its like asking a Java developer to try out all versions of Java starting with the 1.0 version, or asking a python developer to try jython and IronPython in addition to the 2 or 3 current versions.

What about perl. Should a new developer try out perl 4 and perl 6 too first ?
That means, if I'm a ninja I should tell you that I am, because, by the above rule, you'll now be 100% certain that I'm not.
Completely disagree, both from the perspective as an employee who has used it as a bargaining chip, and as part of evaluating my own assistants. I've not viewed my assistants in a different light, and the only difference I noticed from my own bargaining was an acknowledgement of my value to the enterprise. Most people understand that it is a free job market and good talent will ask for increased compensation as their value grows over time. I'd rather have someone under me ask for more pay than grumble about not getting what they believe they deserver (and having the bargaining chip of an offer from another company shows they truly are worth that much).
I just searched Monster.co.uk for "ninja". Two out of the three jobs returned were for marketing/finance jobs at Google, and in both the matching sentence was:

"You must be a spreadsheet ninja to apply."