Never take a salary cut to work at a startup. Are you an angel investor? No.
There probably are better jobs. But unless you live in a major city, it will probably be hard to find one. And even still, it's not exactly easy to get a job at a good place to work. Everyone wants that job!
I love when one engineer thinks he's smarter than ALL of the second largest Internet company's engineers put together--when he doesn't even have the context of working there to understand their reasoning. Clearly Facebook is evil and pays their employees solely to make us learn new technologies purely out of spite, not to improve their product better (which they get paid very well to do).
In fairness, he makes a lot of points that GitHub is particularly awful at, specifically things that aren't very relevant to enterprises (who pay their bills) and therefore aren't priorities for GitHub.
You're totally right about software being more about people than about code. That being said, I think maybe you're underestimating just how many issues ESLint receives and how willing people are to volunteer time to the project. They've received almost 2500 issues and have essentially 5 active developers.
Yes, you're one hundred percent correct that issues are the problem here. That's a lot of issues for five people. Period. You're being a little lenient on GitHub's behalf by not weighting how poorly it does issue tracking which expounds their problem a great deal.
They're not "typical dumb engineers". They mention nowhere that they'll somehow end up with less bugs if they leave GitHub. But they believe they'll be able to more accurately assess issues and turn them around faster by using a different platform--which if you're familiar with the alternatives, it isn't the completely facetious assumption you cut it out to be.
Sorry if that comes off aggressive. Not intended. You make great points. Just wanted to reiterate that GitHub has some blame here...
I've always wondered why pharmacists still exist, yet TONS of articles say that there's almost no chance of that job being automated in the foreseeable future. I don't get it. It seems like a problem that's virtually impossible for a human to do, and not too tough to solve programmatically. Doesn't make sense to me. Would love to learn exactly why it will or will not be automated.
Conveniently, when you're ultra wealthy and pay interest-only, real estate is essentially a tax-shelter to transfer your wealth from income (taxed at 45%) to capital gains (taxed at 15%). Am I missing something?
Care to mention these questions? Most companies are suffering HARD from false positives. I'm sure a lot of people would love to know what's working for you.
Although they obviously spend a lot [2], at some point discretionary income gets pretty blurry. I'd hope any reasonable society would consider they have a lot more than $60k at their discretion, though. I make about a third of that, putting me just barely in the top 10%, and have more than $60k at my discretion.
Wealth inequality is pretty insane in this country.
Looks beautiful, dude. I love your typography. Very similar design in terms of simplicity to something I'm working on. So maybe I'm just patting myself on the back, but I dig it. Great job!
In Los Angeles, right now, assuming you're qualified to work in the U.S. and speak fluent English, you could easily make $100k at the right company--maybe $130k, which goes a pretty long way. SF, maybe add as much as $20k. In either market, if you're remotely competent, you'd be able to get a job extremely easily.
Can confirm. I interview candidates on a regular basis. Company policy that we never invest time in checking a candidate's GitHub. But I do anyway.
Because of the startling amount of people unable to explain the code in their repositories, I've found code quality / problem complexity / stack similarity alone to be a worthless metric. On the other hand, I've found it to be invaluable to get candidates to explain their code and why they made the decision that they did. It's exactly how a practice assignment works, except candidates are much more passionate about the choices and have invested more time in the project overall.
So this "transports" you from inside a moving vehicle to a conference anywhere in the world, assuming the conference is happening with participants wearing Hololens.
It's crazy impressive, but it seems really far ahead of time for now. Crazy exciting, but does anyone know when things like this will be more practical, realistically?
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?
Ha, I'm in Hollywood, and my complex has been sending out emails offering promotions to recommend friends on a bi-weekly basis for a few months now. Vacancy has got to be around 20%. Meanwhile, there's 6 new luxury complexes with over 1500 units opening or that have opened this year--JUST ON MY BLOCK ALONE [2,3,4,5] (for reference, the entire population of Hollywood is roughly 22k [1]). The new complexes are practically ghost towns, Eastown in particular was offering a free month for ages before finally dropping rents 10%. Sunset Gordon Tower is literally kicking everyone out that moved in, which was only 17% occupied anyway [5].
Meanwhile, my lease is set to expire, and the renewal offer comes with a 10% bump in my rent (as it has for the last two years).
The sad part is, I feel like it's working from an economic standpoint. Vacancy was close to zero when I moved in (literally got the only apartment available). Even though it's now got to be around 20%, the rent has risen by over 30%. Pretty sure that means they're making 4% more over the course of 3 years, which given the dismal global economic growth, that yield isn't too shabby.
With all the vacancy, you'd think development would be slowing, but it's actually picking up even more. There's 7 new hotels planned for the block [6]. And there's several other residential towers planned for the block [7], 750 new units by 2018 just in one, the Palladium Towers [8].
Keep in mind that this is just one block. Roughly the same thing is happening a mile up Hollywood Blvd at Highland. And to a lesser degree a mile down the street at Western.
All of this is great. We desperately need the new units. The mixed-use walkability will be an example to the entire city for how great Los Angeles can be.
But where are this many luxury renters suddenly going to appear from? Wishful thinking?
Are you working for start ups? Just from what you're saying, it seems like working at say Google or Amazon or Microsoft of Apple would really make you happy.
Don't mean to sound condescending or anything. It's just I know a lot of people that LOVED start ups post-college and are now feeling the exact same way as you, and kind of forget that there's super cushy jobs out there without a lot of the startup stupidity.
I always wonder how, with all the automation and efficiency gains in construction, with how much cheaper (inflation adjusted) materials are now, that the cost to build Skyscrapers per square foot (irrespective of land) has more than double inflation since the 1930s.
Maybe this is it?
And speaking of, is there any way software could automate this regulation? Seems like it could save a ton of money if so.
I think the problem is less how cities were designed and more how Americans wanted (and maybe still want) to live. Los Angeles is probably the epitome of the American city designed for the car, now suffering from some of the worst traffic on the planet. And, yet, because people are finally starting to demand walkability, it's becoming walkable at an awesomely fast pace. In just the last 4 years, the West Side seems to have gone 180. It's projected to be the 11th most walkable city in the U.S. in the near future [1]--keep in mind the sheer insane size of LA. And, that's despite having been clearly planned NOT to be walkable.
I've always wondered about that oft cited savings rate. How is it even calculated? I worked at a startup trying to generate credit scores for a significant portion of Chinese citizens. Unless our company was completely incompetent, it was pretty ingrained in us that the majority of people in China either don't have access to banking or choose not to bank. Also, it seemed like the vast majority of Chinese citizens lived paycheque to paycheque. So how does one calculate this savings rate figure? Is it just the difference between earnings and expenditures of the entire country?
If China reverse-sanctioned the US, a significant portion of the Chinese population would fall into extreme poverty and starve. The Yuan would likely plummet, China would almost certainly face a national default, and it would risk a revolt against the current regime.
Meanwhile, within months, the US would have all its cheap shit imported from Thailand, Vietnam, Mexico--even Japan and Korea. We have enough retail reserves that aside from slight price increases on some inessential goods for a few months, likely nothing else would happen.
Wouldn't it be smarter to just make use of his U.S. citizenship, contract for a Silicon Valley startup, make like $100k, and just travel in and out of the Eurozone whenever necessary to still be considered a tourist? Seems like he'd probably net around $2k a month after taxes doing that.
You're correct. The affect of exercise is vastly overrated on weight loss [1]. The more you exercise, the hungrier you get, the more you eat. That being said, you're healthier if you're overweight and exercise than if you're overweight and don't exercise. BUT, if you're going form COMPLETELY sedentary to walking to and from train stations, up and down stairs, and standing on the train -- that's likely to have a dramatic effect. Completely sedentary lifestyles and depression and obesity tend to go hand and hand because of hormonal / neurotransmitter issues.
In any case, changing your diet is likely much more effective for losing weight.
AI will eliminate a lot of jobs, sure. So have many other advances in the past. It seems like the decline of organized labor unions would be a bigger threat to the Middle Class than technology.
I swear to pizza, in my hometown they are removing TWO ENTIRE MOUNTAINS because rocks keep slipping on to ONE of the South-bound lanes. Last I heard, the estimated cost is over $50M. Only 50k people live in the entire metro area. Population is halving about every generation on top of that. Best part is, this route runs alongside a river. On the other side of that river is an identical route. They could literally just shut down the road and not even need to build any new bridges...
I'm 3 for 3 with companies I've propositioned. So I think if I had the connections to reach dozens of software companies, it's not unreasonable that I might have a dozen or so companies willing to sign up. I don't have those contacts, though. So I'm not there yet. I'm a 3.
I still don't know what this means. Should I be thinking about an accelerator? Should I be thinking about raising a lot of money? Should I be thinking about hiring? Or am I still really early? Should my focus still be on talking to software companies and figuring out the distribution?
Yeah, the last thing I want is a bad co-founder or a half-hearted one. I've really been prioritizing getting my first customer. But I wasn't really ready for that until this week. My hope is to have one (or all 3) signed up by the end of September.
Interesting. I'd love to learn more about your company and the journey! It sounds like you've already been where I am now [=
Also, I'm unfamiliar with the term addressable market, but after Googling, it sounds like the TAM is closer to $500M annually (maybe). This is a new product in a new market. So I don't know if the TAM would be whatever I capture. But, given how fast somewhat similar products have grown, it seems like I would be able to capture around 10-15% of the total market by 2022. The total market being the number of software companies in the world, a somewhat easily estimatable number, multiplied by the price of my service. I don't know if that's how to calculate the TAM or not.
Looks like the author is being intentionally deceptive. Uber lost $1.27bn globally (mostly in China AFAIK), but only $100m in the US. The author spent all his time talking about the US, and then tried to group the global loss onto the price of all rides. Not all rides are equal. Not all loses come from driver wages. Big overhead and marketing costs trying out the Chinese market.
Uber booked well over 100M US rides. I think 400M, but I can't find a reliable source ATM. You do the math. Uber rides don't cost an average of $2 in the US. Uber isn't paying 50% of our bill in the US.
Yeah, I used to be really afraid of sharing my ideas until I finally started my own company.
Ideas are cheap. Building a company is hard work. It takes a good idea and a passionate team to create something great. Sure you run a chance of someone taking your idea. But are they more dedicated and passionate about it than you? If so, you're in the wrong business. Better to find out sooner, tbh.
Agreed. I'm being serious, I can't understand why corporations are taxed at all. The money going to US citizens already gets taxed as income (although at capital gains rates). Even if the money funnels through a few corporations before it gets to the individual.
Money that would go to foreign shareholders (or foreign corporations) should be taxed at the same rate.
If we didn't tax businesses, they'd be more incentivized to stay in the US or even move here.
What would we lose from not taxing corporations (and adjusting capital gains tax to make up for that)?
When you're designing an iPhone, the French market is an afterthought. The US and Chinese markets are not. In a decade or two, the Chinese and Indian markets could get so huge that the US market becomes an afterthought. Although unlikely, it's a definite possibility.
Um, isn't the average cost of a house in any major Chinese city MORE expensive than in the US?
A typical two bedroom in Shanghai is $870k [1]. Homes in Chongqing China are more expensive than in Columbus Ohio [2] -- yet wages are about 1/5th ($9k/yr in Chongqing vs $46k/yr in Columbus) [3]
Hey Julian, I have a startup that attempts to address this in a developer friendly way. I'd love to get your feedback if you'd like to see it. Reach out to me at yahn007 @ Gmail dot com. Hope to chat soon!
Hey Hacker News, I like to read short stories on my phone during my commute, but it's kind of an awful experience on Gutenberg or Feedbooks, so I made something with a nicer interface -- if any of you guys are readers.
I have some more features in mind, if anybody else actually finds this useful [=
I hope to help some companies achieve a more stable environment this year.
Bugs and "tech debt" unfortunately take up the majority of development time where I work. So I wrote something to make it easy to identify problematic functions, giving developers the context they need to make intelligent decisions about when and how to change certain lines of code.
Hey dotmanish, in short, there's some research I want to do and people I want to consult before making that public. If you're interested, you can email at yahn007 at gmail dot com and we can chat.
To give some context: GigaDiff started as an improvement on "diff" -- almost a diff++ -- in that it would show users which lines changing are associated with bugs in JIRA and occur in stack traces, have been marked as technical debt, or violate linting issues.
But the reason I got all that data together was to use it as signals for ML to detect bugs.
A rebrand in the future is possible. I'm not even sure where I'm going with this project just yet.
This is among the several problems that I'm trying to solve. As a developer, when you're calling an existing function -- you don't really have any data at your disposal WRT the quality of that function. Likewise for modifying individual lines. To me, it seems obvious to want this information.
But I'm trying to test that hypothesis and see if other developers feel the same way.
There probably are better jobs. But unless you live in a major city, it will probably be hard to find one. And even still, it's not exactly easy to get a job at a good place to work. Everyone wants that job!