skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm lucky that all of my clients have been startups or individuals. Looks like the OP needs to go for designers more accustomed to this, rather than high-end firms.

(My last salaried job: "Why is there so much space left empty? We can fit a ton more information above the fold if we fill it up." ...never, ever, working at a place like that again.)
You can make a good business at virtually any traffic level. I'd rather be hiring and expanding at a lower traffic level than laying off and shrinking at a high traffic level.
I can't empathize with anything in this article. Guess I must not be rich.
I have no conception of it, and after having read this article, even less. Not sure what that says about me.
My friend and I sat there while Shlomo (not his real name, but you get the drift)

WTF?

http://bostonreview.net/BR34.3/malhotra_margalit.php
EVERYONE.READ.THIS. Very simple illustration highlighting pretty much all the principles I've been reading about for so long. Printed and posted on my cork-board! Thank you.
Sure, if your timing is perfect. This isn't 1975 though. Who knows what's going to happen.
He left out that people will ask you for money all the time.
if the person being courted would likely get the position if they applied, your conclusion doesn't follow
I suspect that the cargo industry less sensitive to the quality of design of the app than many others. Chances are you need a good enough designer rather than a good one.

20 - 40 hours worth of billable work per page does make more sense if the contractors are planning on working with you testing different variants of the pages to see which ones convert the best over the course of a year. That's something that can provide a demonstrable financial return (increase in conversion and retention of customers)
"you will also encounter people who are not full of shit"

I'm particularly curious about how to maximize this. Is it a fixed percentage that you have to get out more to increase the number of not full of shit people you meet?

I've long felt "there's got to be a better way". Theoretically comments on HN could be part of how you meet these people but really I like talking to people face to face and on IM. Where's the social graph of people I would think are not full of shit but I don't know already?
I want to hire engineers, not developers.

Engineering is the negotiation of constraints. Developers write code. You need to be both.
A lot of them are of Paul Lamar's, without accreditation. Annoying. They're available on his original site, minus the spam: http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/cheat_table.aspx
During which weekend? For my new place of work that would be on Friday & Saturday..

(Just a quick note that some features are harder than it seems at first)
Ask HN - what tech skills are in demand, for freelancing?
I'm a semi regular here, posting under a different name, because I am also a full time employee.

I am thinking of freelancing because a) my day job is very boring (I can't leave for a few more months) and b) I could use some extra cash.

I'm primarily a PHP programmer (the usual - php, mysql, oracle) but I have worked with Java in the past.

Given my skillset, is it possible to get freelance work? If no, what tech skills should I pick up? I feel small when people put down PHP all the time. I am confident I can learn Rails and Android (have spent some time with both in the past) if PHP is not enough to get interesting, paying freelance work.

I'm good in communicating, understanding requirements, managing time etc. It is just that I am not so confident my tech skills are enough for freelancing.

Please advise.
Hank Warren's book, Hacker's Delight, ought to be on everyone's bookshelf. Also the venerable MIT TR, Hakmem.
It would be better to specify the target audience. (People looking to start a startup). Because lot of HN readers are students, workers, freelancers...
My feelings of safety and immortality quickly gave way to scarcity. After all, I thought, if I could make 10 million dollars then it must be too easy. In fact, I honestly thought, everyone else had probably already made 11 million dollars. So then I felt poor again. I now needed 100 million dollars to be happy. I drove in a car with a friend of mine and his wife. I said, “everyone has 10 million dollars now.” She quickly said, “not everyone”.

If you need to pay someone to explain this shit to you, well... words fail me. Jesus.

This is why it's important to leave the ivory tower occasionally guys. Or in some cases, at all.

EDIT: In retrospect this is unnecessarily vitriolic. I obviously wish you the best, and I recognise that unhappiness is relative. Those were just my honest first thoughts on reading the article.
Ask HN: DreamIT Ventures?
Does anyone have any experience with DreamIT Ventures or has anyone been through the program? I've applied and got a personal recommendation from some grads I know, and have heard my chances of getting in are pretty good. Obviously I've spoken with the previous attendees I know, but wanted to gather as much info as I can.
I think it's important to define exactly what you want from the designer. If you're looking for a graphic artist to come in and provide a slick look and overall template for the site, my guess is you could get by with just a few templates to build out from. 20 to 40 hours per page for that kind of work strikes me as excessive.

However, if you're looking for a user interface designer who will put some real consideration into what goes inside the template shell ("epicenter design" as coined by 37signals), then assume more hours. Ideally this person would want to be there to adjust or tweak elements or flows as you analyze your traffic and success rates.

I have a client who usually knows exactly what he wants from a content/layout/interface standpoint, so my work becomes more graphic production. This generally takes under 3 hours per page. But, we've built up a visual vocabulary for the site over a number of months.

Other projects that are starting from scratch may take your aforementioned 20-40 hours up front to arrive at an agreeable overall design direction. But it usually shouldn't take that much time per page.
The worst thing is, this guy (compwhizii) is sort of important online, he is the system administrator for facepunch.com, a very large forum. I guess he'll be losing that job.
Clickable: http://dreamitventures.com/
I do a lot of work with record labels. VCs are incredibly different than labels, labels do not support innovation...they support packaged hits/artists and are on the way out. But I disagree with the comment, "Imagine record labels staffed with nothing but the people from successful bands, using their money to give other artists a faster way to the top." - Not all VCs are staffed with successful entrepreneurs (some not even entrepreneurs) - I mean what even defines a successful band? By your logic - that would be hits and money - which is no longer an appropriate way to judge.
Vesting means that you get your shares over time. there's several things that can be happening in your deal:

1) you get your shares right away but they are restricted until you put in your 1000 hrs (this might be best because it starts the long-term cap gains clock ticking)

2) you get your shares in 1000 hrs (i dont like this. what if he raises money at a 20mm valuation. you might have a serious tax implication). This is a form of vesting.

3) the 1000 hours happen and then you get your shares over time (vesting) after that

4) all of the above, but you get options instead of shares. Not sure if I like this either but depends.

But all the other things I mention (anti-dilution rights, non-competes, change of control, change of responsibilities, etc) are all very important. you can't do a deal without everything spelled out.
I'm no longer running DupDetector - I just remembered seeing your submission, and hence recognised this as a Dup. I found yours via SearchYC.

DupDetector never did use SearchYC, it was independent, but when I remember seeing something I check there first. If it's not there, but I'm sure I've seen it, then I check the snapshots I have to see if it turns up there. That's much harder, though.
YC Is Not a School for Startups; It's Marine Corps Boot Camp for Founders
Behind the Staggering Return of the $1B Venture Fund
Interesting. Can you suggest anything we can do to try to redress the balance? Does it need to be "fixed"?
I found a great designer on Dribbble and hired him to produce the front page for my app, just the mockup in AI for about $500. I then sliced/coded this up and used all the custom design elements to make more pages. There's a post on my blog if your interested.
PayPal, Causes, LivingSocial & Starbucks Support Japan. Who'm I missing?
The boom had an effect, although the number of IT professionals grew (slowly) after the boom (see page 4 of the link), and I'm fairly sure it doesn't solely explain the collapse in Computing degree applicants.

Also, when looking at average salary consider the continuing growth in the number of people going to university. Also simultaneous collapse in the number of CS grads is likely to help maintain the higher average.
Sometimes referred to as a "wedge" for a PS/2 keyboard port. USB models can "emulate" a keyboard.
So that was why I received that weird e-mail today. I opened it, but promptly sent it away, so I hope nothing's happened.

Thanks for the heads-up.
If it is an exciting startup and you don't have much marketing dollars, start a blog, apply to be a HuffPost blogger for the tech section, create a wiki/crunch base page, and brand the business online, and then begin reaching out to your favorite tech writers for mentions in their pieces that has to do with the industry your startup is in.
Yes you are right. One sample is not representative.

I should have added that I also noticed - of the 35 people (that I knew very well) that I checked in LInkedin, all 35 had misrepresented themselves in Linkedin to some degree.

As a statistical analyst, I realize that a sample size of 30 or greater is actually pretty good. So... I stand with my conclusion to be weary of Linkedin profiles since they are in the end what all resumes are: marketing collateral.

I guess the issue is this marketing does not accurately represent the product or service. And in a sense this has nothing to do with Linkedin specifically. Only that they display the marketing pieces and I somehow misunderstood that what I would find there would be more realistic/truthful and match my empirical info.

Edit: My editing and typing skills suck
This is strictly business. I would get / create a full contract that immediately clarifies how and when you get your percentage. Also what type of stock is this? I second jaltucher's response.
I'd start by not worrying about what it might say about you. You've already lost if you're worrying about validation from Joe Random Internet User.
Our engineering economics professor taught this formula - 72/x (where x = interest rate) gives you the time (years) it takes to double your investment. Remember it even after 10 yrs.
I have a lot of friends who have BBs because they love BBM and it is a huge phone in Latin America - the go to phone for business and status.
869 Sanriku earthquake
Haha. The love quote at the end is tongue-in-cheek.

Well, it's not so much a fetish for PG as it is a fetish for his writings.

And I'll have you know that it only gets harder from here on out. :)
YC leading to

http://ycombinator.com/

is one of the top two Google results, at least as Google customizes its results for me. Any time I see a puzzling abbreviation or acronym or new vocabulary word or foreign word or phrase online, I just Google it.
Or cultural, as in Tiger Moms break down the immediate gratification tendencies.

I think its worth exploring the rate of change in software development affording the time for mastery except in extreme specialization (yes you can spend a whole life on high transaction and OS development where things remain more stable).
I'll give you 6% for my "startup" for 950 hours of work.

<B>Jokes aside, the MBA way of thinking is as follows:</B>
1) What has he already provided for the other 95% (customers, revenue etc)?
2) What is the chance that this startup will be successful and yield a big enough return on your investment?

Here is the math:

Amount of cash the 5% will yield on exit needs to exceed the Salary for $1000 hours of work multiplied by (1/(probability of success).

If the two above make sense, then you need to consider the opportunity cost of spending the 1000 hours on his project over another one.

<b> Other way of looking at it:</B>
Do you really like working with the guy? Is he brilliant, a good team and your not sure where it will end up? If so, maybe it is worth negotiating either some up front cash or a bigger percentage if the math doesn't work and just go for it. Worst case scenario you loose some opportunity to work at another startup and you get some business experience and programming experience you wouldn't have otherwise.
Note that some corporate firewalls block dropbox for security reasons. This means your site is blocked too... Caught me out once!
Dynamic languages are static languages
There's still quite a few hours left and I have an exam tomorrow morning!
1000 hours sounds like a lot of hours for a contract to work with a startup. Does this mean that he's considering bringing you on as a cofounder, or would this be more of an advisory role?

Even if I plan to potentially come on full time and take a significant equity stake, I've learned (the hard) way to always charge for my work. Equity is essentially meaningless before a certain point in the startup's lifecycle. While this potentially allows you to get in early on in the startup, a number like 5% means that the guy doesn't really value the equity all that highly yet. Considering that a lot of founders don't give their first employee 5% (and that vests over 4 years), he either thinks that you are awesome, or doesn't really know what he's doing. I have seen new startups bring an advisor on at 5%, but that implied A LOT of work, vested over several years, and it always seemed like they were being too generous.

If the company is structured as an LLC, it probably isn't going to be a standard startup. If you want real investors, you have to form a C Corp (since there are too many restrictions on transfer of shares in an LLC).

In summary, I would take cash, and setup a contract for 100 hours at most. Feel free to take a significant hit on your normal consulting rate, but charge him something. Also structure the contract so that there are well-defined milestones, and you get compensated as you hit the milestones.
So, a million years ago, I was the first programmer hired in the NYC offices of Montgomery Securities (long since acquired.) to build trading systems or some such.

I was sitting up with the analysts in the cherrywood cube farms late one evening when one day I heard, "Biff, the rule of 72 doesn't really work?" "what do you mean, Chet?" "well, if you get 72 percent return, you don't double your money in one year!"

Then they poked at it with an excel model for like 30 minutes. I eventually had to tell them that you can't precisely model compound interest (an exponential equation) with a linear model. "whoa... Why are you in IT?!?"

Ah, those were the days.
Same with my experience in 3 different countries. As an introvert and loner by choice, that's hardly a problem; rather the opposite I'd day.
What might also work is this, from NYU when I was looking for a designer:

Thank you for contacting the Computer Science Department of the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University.
In order to have the position posted, please follow the instructions below…

1. Visit the Wasserman Center website at:
www.nyu.edu/careerdevelopment/employers/emp_list_your.php <http://www.nyu.edu/careerdevelopment/employers/emp_list_your...; and post the job at the Wasserman Center for Career Development.
Be sure to include the following:
Job Description, Skills Sought, Minimum GPA (if required), Major (if required), Hours, Pay/Compensation & Duration of Position

This free, quick, and easy process will generate a reference number.

2. Once you have your reference number, e-mail me at kumar@cs.nyu.edu and be sure to include the following:
a. The Wasserman Center reference number for the position
b. The Job Description or information about the job
c. Contact information for the position

3. After you e-mail me the above information , the Computer Science Department will send an e-mail to all CS Majors & Minors.

---
That is the standard process for NYU. I would suggest checking out the colleges first - most often there are great designers who are still in school and need references.
New entrepreneurs. Instead it was more about Kevin's posse or something.
Of course, in theory it's only 1000 hours, which is quite different from what a technical cofounder for a startup might have to put in before seeing any money[1]

Until 1000 hours have elapsed, there's more work to do and they're seeing signs of promise but still don't have the budget to pay you (or someone else). When your chances of seeing any return on the work you've already done depend on their startup being successful it's going to be very tempting to do more unpaid work to try to make that measly 5% stake worth something.

If you were the first paid hire at a startup you'd probably also get a low single digit equity stake. And six months salary for six months work.

[1]The other way it's quite different from being a technical cofounder is that presumably you don't have any influence over any strategic decisions they make.
And they feel entitled to it. My friend usually tells me if I ever earn millions I would morally owe him 7 digits because, well, he has been my friend for years. The guy is dead serious too.
Could you explain how this affects your view of the reflections in the article?

I found the article held some bittersweet sentiments on what it was like to have (a good deal of) money. To the point of the title he spoke of a false sense of security and casual arrogance. Both of which I find reasonable, but not universally applicable.

I don't see how the positions you list alter this interpretation, but I'd be very interested in hearing how they altered yours.
I think you forgot the most important thing: How much this startup makes? Did it raise any money?

And since he is looking for free work, so the startup did raise no money and did make no money, too.

P.S. HN users, I have got a startup and I just need 500 hours of work for 20% stake.
It depends on when a startup stops being a startup.
Seriously, AirBNB should post this comment on the front page of their "List Your Space" page. This is a great value statement.
I've seen contractors come and go working at a fortune 500 and just recently I've learned of those practices...
My 9 Year Old Daughter Now Understands Database Concepts
It adds value because it weeds out the people who talk the talk but don't walk the walk.

"The entrepreneurs are trying to do something"

Actually most of the time they just talk without doing anything. People who actually try are the minority.

"the author of the article only waits for them to trip and fall."

I want them to succeed, but I also want them to be humble and realistic, so if they declare "I'm gonna make the next Facebook!" then yeah, I'll enjoy watching them fall.

The point of this hobby is to cut down on the level of bullshit in our industry. If many people adopt this hobby, then entrepreneurs will be more likely to think twice before they declare "We're gonna be the next Facebook!" And so when someone does make a bold declaration, there will be a bigger chance that he will actually make good on it. I think that this would result in more honesty in our industry.
Big Data Needs To Think Bigger
Valuing a developer's one week of work at $20K is a bit much (~$1M per year?). Also, I'd question the judgement of developer who thinks a $20K pimped-out setup, a Mac Pro and three 30" displays at both home and office, in addition to a laptop, is necessary.
I think he's saying that the Android developers in question don't have a proper understanding of the GPL, and rather than trying to circumvent it, they were trying to circumvent the LGPL.

Which as he said, is pointless, because you can write a proprietary or BSD-licensed application and interface with the LGPL without any problems. The only reason to do what they did is if they wanted to distribute a full kernel that works like Linux, but is BSD-licensed. Obviously they did no such thing, nor did they even attempt to do so.
Thanks for the info, I just checked my gmail account, and good news Gmail seems to have put it in the spam folder automatically !
"Marine Corp," eh?
In that amount of time you can learn HTML/CSS on your own and get a design you really want out of it, while saving $1k+. I know doing a startup full-time means you're probably also bootstrapping. If you think you can put backend dev on hold for a week to build up the front end yourself, here's a great link that helped me: http://htmldog.com/

And as a side note, you may want to be finding a cofounder anyway (single-manned companies are hard pressed to succeed), and a frontend dev would be a great balance to your backend work.
Can you provide a bit more info on the tax implications of #1 versus #2?
Functional Programming Exchange wrapup: scala, haskell, F#
Great post that hopefully makes some people feel less need to get into YC. A great founder can be helped by YC, but would be successful with or without it. If you think you need to get into YC to succeed, you're not who they are looking for.
And as others have mentioned very fake, there is no incentive for honest reviews, everyone is too nice about everyone for fear of breaking or narrowing their network.

LinkedIn isn't a place to find negative reviews. Honestly, that network doesn't exist (at least not in a major way). It's about professional connections.
Is there something wrong with questioning scientific theories? Except that it's not PC.
Pick up a skill that makes money rather than another tech stack. If you're capable of selling, planning, and implementing SEO strategies like, e.g., scalable content generation, you can charge triple what the "technical" skill involved would merit.
Put the same question on Quora.com. See what you get from there too.
Evey programming problem, in 4 dimensions
Kapi: A keyframing API for the HTML 5 canvas
Ruby on Rails. Get the Head first Rails book then the Agile programmer book, see amazon. There 2 excellent Ruby books:Beginning Ruby and Pragmatic Ruby but you can do those later.

Then practice like hell. meaning do each project in each book 10 times until you understand how to do it without look at the book.
Then do some screencasts.
Put all your projects even the ones from books and screencasts online.
In the meantime, make something, anything. Take a project from one the books and modify it.
Then make another thing.
Then make something that someone else already made with rails.

Now you have 3 sites in your portfolio. A month has passed.

Send the links to your projects and a brief email to the companies that do rails regardless if they have opens or not.

Also list the 3 things unique about you. Why should they hire you versus another person who also knows some RoR?

With this you should be able to a choice from several junior rails positions.
10 Fun, Surprising Groupon Statistics.
No, it's not a bad thing at all - I've only heard people say it that way as a joke.
Yeah and everyone wants Facebook traffic, but you deal with the situation you have a try to make back everyones money.
I like how it claims hashable is useless because it is useful to insecure people. As if that were a small market, or something people don't care deeply about.
Yes, including after pay + benefits for 2 FT founders (+ ~4 contractors). Started FT without profit or product 5 years ago. Bootstrapped. 1st hit profitability ~2 years after starting. Advertising biz model. Biggest hurdle was cold-starting growth with limited marketing budget.

I think that hits most of the questions I've seen in the thread.