Hacker News Reader

imackon This is why (college) old media is failing

My other favorite is looking for a technical person for whom they will "split the profits". Your local CraigsList "computer gigs" section will be filled with these.

My favorite recent: "We are a couple of mompreneurs who are launching a business geared to moms. We are looking for someone, preferably a mom so you will already have knowledge of the target market, to help us with website design, online promotion etc. etc." http://vancouver.en.craigslist.ca/rds/cpg/1621222670.html

imackon Why passion is not what you need in a programmer

I actually believe the two concepts are tied, and I get that sense from the article as well. A lot of people look for "passion" because it's something the believe they can detect and think it translates into more code and more hours worked. I think the idea of a super-productive introvert who never shows emotion doesn't fit well with the idea of what a productive employee looks like to a non-programming employer.

Of course, employment situations like this can be "hacked" by doing little Dilbert-esque things like closing ticket tasks at night rather than during the day to make it look like you're working later since the system sends emails to the management. That turned out to be one of my most productive career moves, which meant it was time for me to find a new job.

imackon Why passion is not what you need in a programmer

I've worked at a place where "passion" meant "ignore everything and only care about coding". It also meant "work more hours, just because".

It was a software startup run by someone with a management consulting background (won't make that mistake again), and since the founder/CEO didn't know how to filter good programmers, he just sought "passion" and "fire in the belly" thinking that would make great developers.

imackon It Must Be A Marketing Problem

That was the part that really stuck with me too. The previous startup I worked for sold energy-use reduction software and had initial success selling to local governments who wanted to look "green" and help a local startup (outside the valley). Once that limited market was sold to they started having trouble selling to the wider commercial market and didn't make sales targets. Government wasn't really buying to make a successful return on investment so perhaps the CD was also "hollow" as with friends and family.

imackon What Email Looked Like in 2009 in Numbers

It actually sounds about right. It will include maillist messages as well as automated emails. Throw in the fact that mail will likely follow a power law distribution with a small number of users receiving the bulk of email and it seems plausible.

imackon Lawdiscuss.com - Stack Exchange site for legal advice

To say nothing of the fact that laws are radically different in each jurisdiction. A correct answer for Palo Alto would say nothing about a legal situation in Toronto.

While the site's term of use cover the "duty of care" stuff, I see a lot of potential pitfalls for lawyers using this site and not many benefits.

imackon The median US house is now 4.9x median income, vs 3.5x in 1975

While the fact that more people want to live in Vancouver than there are houses in Vancouver contributes to the cost, the city does place a premium on views of the north short mountains and it being a livable city to the detriment of increasing supply:

http://bit.ly/cEBUTG (CBC NEWS article, "Vancouver rejects downtown high-rise proposals")

While the 10x median stats has many causes, one cannot discount the zoning element as being trivial. I imagine one can find similar practices in most major north american cities.

imackon Vancouver uses 2010 Winter Games to promote itself as a Digital Media Hub

I chose Vancouver over moving back to the Valley. While I concede that it's no Silicon Valley, I enjoy my life outside of work so much more here than I did in Palo Alto. I'm also a Canadian citizen, so coming from Waterloo it was a lot easier to come to BC given no Visa and same banking system. It may have a rainy winter, but it's preferable to anyplace else in Canada, and the summers are to die for.

I think it's easy to convince people to move here, but the tech scene really isn't as developed as TO aside from the video game industry. Other local successes include Crystal Decisions (which was bought by business objects, and then SAP), Metrolyrics, and Plenty of Fish(take that one in what sense thou wilt).

imackon SSH Tunneling through web filters

Has anyone on HN actually worked for a company that filters internet traffic? Would anyone on HN work at a company that filters http? I've always thought that if a company could effectively block internet traffic with a filter on a proxy then the problem wasn't that employees were wasting time surfing; the problem was that they were hiring employees incapable of getting around it.

imackon Hiring and The Sixth Sense of Experience

I think half the people meeting with him giving him a "no-hire" should have been a big flag. One of the takeaways should be that if half you team doesn't want to hire someone, you should have the guts to tell the person they didn't get the job.

I've seen many programmer interview processes where only half the interviewers want to hire, but everyone found the person "likable", so there was trouble getting to the necessary "no-hire". I'm not sure of this case's specifics are like that, but one of the first things I learned to do in interviewing is how to say "no-hire" to cool, interesting, nice, marginally-competent people.

imackon Know any Canadians working in Silicon Valley?

I thought the same until I was doing my time in silicon valley. I got made fun of pretty mercilessly at lunch meetings when I said "about". I figure Americans tend to say "Abowt".

The only the that bothered me was that the British guy got a pass for pronouncing "Java" with an "R".

imackon Depressed woman loses benefits over Facebook photos

There are still private insurance companies that will cover things not normally covered by the provincial plans. Drugs would be another good example of something not universally covered (depending on drug). Drugs are, however, price controlled in many cases. My sister has asthma, and has to pay a lot for inhalers; thus, working somewhere with health coverage is still a big concern for her.

Quebec always tends to do things a little differently, but I'm surprised at this because in general they cover more things publicly, not less. I'm betting that the province would only cover "long term" disability.

imackon VentureHacks: How to Pick a Co-founder

I vaguely remember in Malcolm Gladwell's most recent book that one of the best predictors of success in a business role on grads coming out of big name schools going to Wall Street was whether they were an athlete or not. That seems to jive decently with the "frat boy" suggestion.

Makes sense really, pick team players with a drive to win.

imackon Ask HN: What tool makes you most productitive?

A locally running version instance of issue tracking software. Use whatever you're comfortable with, but I go with JIRA; It costs $10 for a license for up to 10 people.

It helps me keep track of side projects. For a long time I had trouble remembering where to pick up a project and would get distracted by unimportant parts. JIRA helps keep that to a minimum and makes me feel more serious about them.

I even keep one project setup in it for personal stuff (renew passport, etc) just to keep all the TODOs in one spot, but whenever you tell people that they always make some wise-ass crack about using it to file a bug report about you personally...

imackon Django vs Rails

"It approaches the problem of building a web framework in a unique way and doesn't even attempt to share terminology with Rails for things as basic as model-view-controller (Django uses the terms model-template-view instead). "

I can't really agree with this being a good thing. The MVC pattern has been around much longer than Django or Rails, thus Rails is using an existing nomenclature where Django is not.

imackon Replacing the Office Chair with an Exercise Ball

I'm 27 and used one at home for a long time. I really loved it and the only reason I stopped was that I got a hole in it. In general, it's not as comfortable as an Aeron, but it has a pretty high comfort to cost ratio.

That being said, since it was at home I was never on it as long as I would have been at work.

imackon IPhone App Store Developers Aren't Getting Rich

I was tossing around iPhone app ideas with some non-techie friends a while back. Everyone had a hyper-specific need for an app, but then I mentioned the Daily Show bit about the fart apps that was on a while ago and it seemed to have the most traction amoung the diverse group. I guess it comes down to people being willing to pay a buck for a cheap laugh, thus, there is a market.

I have this hypothesis that there might be a market for apps that cater to a more female market. Most developers being guys, I figure anything a male would be interested in has been created, whereas female-oriented apps might still have a market. Anyway, just a thought.

imackon Ask HN: What are your (non-hn-related) hobbies?

Union. To my knowledge it's all there is in the Vancouver area.

imackon Ask HN: What are your (non-hn-related) hobbies?

Rugby. Any adversity you encounter in day-to-day startup operations doesn't seem as bad as when it's compared with getting pummeled by Aussie and UK ex-pats.

imackon City of Vancouver Opens Up City Data

One could make a similar argument that open source operating systems are inherently less secure as malicious hackers would know all the weaknesses.

imackon Only humans allowed

I'm not sure that would actually help. Assume a person guesses a 1-10 number, and there would realistically have to be a fudge factor to account for personal tastes, a bot could guess "7" and be correct enough of the time. A fairly large solution space would be needed for an effective captcha.

imackon Signs not to Work for a Software Company or Startup

Perhaps having Mac is more a sign that a company is willing to shell out for decent tools moreso than Macs being some super development platfrm. A developer area full of high-end macs tells me that a company is willing to pay good money for developer tools in a way that a room full of generic Ubuntu boxes does not (independent of their respective merits).

imackon “Blink” and the Art of Hiring the Best

The only concern I have with giving programming puzzles for hiring is that it can be quite the burden on candidates. This is fine if your company is a top player and candidates REALLY REALLY want to work for you, but if you aren't that established (like as a startup), the candidates might not like the amount of effort needed to apply. We tried this for some interns a while ago and about half balked at the idea and it wasn't necessarily the "bad" half.

Top talent are going to have options. If you ask too much too early, they may just wonder if it's worth 10 hours of coding up front to get the honour of applying to your company. One should always look for code before hiring, but it shouldn't be done in a way where you are filtering out the non-desperate as well as the incompetent.

imackon Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University

To be fair to the time, in 1999, there was the dot-com bubble going on and a lot of students were going into CS for the wrong reasons so there could have been more at play than government objectives. I suspect there were a lot of CS students who did not enjoy programming in such programs, thus accounting for seniors who couldn't do projects. I know CS and programming are not the same, but I liken it to studying Shakespeare and not enjoying reading or writing.

Our school (UWaterloo) noticed a huge drop in CS enrollment soon after that, between 2002 and 2004 (roughly). At which point business programs saw a spike in enrollment. I wonder if this professor had stuck around whether he would have noticed an improvement once the stories of 24 year old billionaires were removed from the headlines.

imackon A new way to recruit for (and find) startup jobs

When I was job searching right out of university, one of the reasons I stopped looking at big job boards is that they tended to be filled with jobs from recruiting agencies that wouldn't name the client and would instead show themselves as the employer. I hated that because the type of company was so important to me and what recruiting agency wasn't going to say their client had a position at a "dynamic successful company" where you'd work on "cutting edge technology". They say potential employers spend 30 seconds looking at resumes; I always joked that potential employees spend even less time looking at job postings. If I couldn't figure out what kind of company it was, why would I waste time writing a cover letter?

Although, now that I'm on the other side, I can see why I don't like traditional job listings either. If I post a developer job (at this startup) on something too public I get spammed with mediocre applicants. It takes a long time to sort through them all, and that's time I could be programming.

I do believe this is a problem in need of a decent solution, but I agree that it spreading virally doesn't really differentiate it from traditional means.

imackon Ask HN: What website project are you working on?

http://www.whichishotter.com

Simple site for me to learn Rails. Took the "solve a problem" idea to "which of these two [X] look better?" (for outfits, haircuts...whatever). Get a crowd to vote to get more opinions. The initial people are uploading some unexpected things though.

imackon Two wheels good

....four wheels better?

Joking aside, biking is actually a good option here in Vancouver. I actually see it as a form of multi-tasking; Commuting and exercising at the same time.