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pathy

953 karma · joined December 5, 2012

Stockholm Native.

Twitter: @Chronoo

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pathy··on The Shock of Sweden's Housing Market Is Hitting the Country's Currency
Local municipalities have veto rights to block development. There are also a bunch of rules, often overlapping, than may stop planning. All planning decisions can also be (and are) appealed for years.

There is also a lack of cheap housing, most houses built today are unaffordable to most low/medium earners. This has become an even more acute problem with the recent influx of refugees. This has lead to overcrowding in poorer suburbs.

pathy··on The Shock of Sweden's Housing Market Is Hitting the Country's Currency
The interest rate deduction has been around longer than that. In 1990/1991 it was reduced to 30% from 50%.

Low interest rates, the deduction, no wealth tax and a massively reduced property tax all contributed to this bubble though.

pathy··on U.S. launches cruise missile strike on Syria after chemical weapons attack
You are joking right?

Syria used sarin gas on civilians. There are few things as terrifying and atrocious as chemical weapons. It is absolute insanity to use nerve gas, never mind the other war crimes committed by the Assad regime.

pathy··on Coming in 2018 – New AWS Region in Sweden
They aren't actually located in Stockholm, but close enough to use resources from the Stockholm Area. Supposedly the DCs will be located in Västerås, Eskilstuna and Katrineholm[0].

[0] http://digital.di.se/artikel/amazon-oppnar-tre-datacenter-i-...

pathy··on Snap Tumbles Below IPO Opening Price as Analysts Say Sell
IKEA actually publishes a yearly report[1] that is close to what a public company would publish. But they don't have to.

Regardless, the 500 shareholder thing specifically applies to American companies as far as I know. [2]

[1] http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_US/pdf/yearly_summary/IKEA_Group_Y...

[2] http://www.investopedia.com/terms/5/500-shareholder-threshol...

pathy··on Estimated losses would make Snapchat the most unprofitable social media IPO
Snapchat is already big in Europe so it has appeal outside of the US.

This is of course not true for all markets and age segments but SC is extremely popular.

pathy··on Renewing Medium’s focus
Automattic has over 500 employees, yet they are also "Just a blog platform"

Though I believe they are actually profitable.

pathy··on Nasty Gal is expected to file for bankruptcy
>They bought way too much stock, and never worked with size curves, just flat ranges.

Oh dear... I can get bringing in too much stock, It is understandable as a new young company that you overestimate sales of some items but not working with size curves is just plain unprofessional.

pathy··on How I Became HackerRank 1 in Two Hours
That sounds like an utter waste of time for everyone involved.
pathy··on Ask HN: How long is your daily commute?
There are a lot of people who bike all year. Though less than in spring-autumn.

You probably need/want winter tires for your bike and it may be cold but sure, it is possible. The bike lanes are usually cleared quickly when it snows.

For me the biking distance would be 14km or so. A bit further than I personally want to bike but not an uncommon biking route.

pathy··on Ask HN: How long is your daily commute?
About 35 minutes.

5 min walk to the bus, one bus stop then hopping on the subway for 20 min, luckily I don't have to change so I can just relax for those 20 min. Then a 10 minute walk to the office.

Not too bad at all for living in a nice suburb of Stockholm.

pathy··on Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?
Cannot edit the original post anymore.

I have added new statistics at the bottom, including 10th and 90th percentile.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yPjcXoKuwq8SBngQ2-G9...

pathy··on Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?
Yep all very true.

I believe the salary listed here is pre-tax so the take home pay (for someone living in Stockholm) would be 30 330 Kr/m or $42.5k/yr.

This number excludes social costs; the total cost per month for the employer is just over 55 000 SEK/m.

pathy··on Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?
Here is a quick Google Sheets with most "Developer employee codes" that are reported to the tax authority/Statistics Sweden.

Salaries listed per Quartile, in SEK. The categories are quite broad. There is a listing per decile but I could not find it right now.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yPjcXoKuwq8SBngQ2-G9...

http://SCB.se is the source.

pathy··on Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff
ISDS aren't exactly new.

I believe current trade deals already include them so CETA would not materially change that.

ISDS is a red herring

pathy··on Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff
What makes you think that?

Tax breaks on repairs would not adversely and unfairly impact companies possibility to sell in Sweden.

pathy··on Ask HN: Any programmers here suffering or suffered from hyperhidrosis?
Botox is very efficient and generally lasts about 3-6 months. In my experience there are no complications and it really does work.

I have not tried it on my hands but according to my sister it is quite uncomfortable, they give local anesthesia for the hands but not for say armpits. Lots of needle pricks is not that fun and I believe you can get some bruises that go away quickly.

The treatment is very quick, about 10-15 minutes. In Sweden it costs about €150 for the injections and €150 for the actual Botox (the Botox cost counts towards insurance scheme to cap medicine costs) if done privately.

pathy··on Technology was meant to herald a new way of working, but that’s not the case
When I worked in manual labour (warehouses etc) that was certainly the case but in a white-collar job it is much less structured in my experience, we may have a formal fika once a week or just informal coffee breaks every now and then.

Fika IS important to productivity though! Morale boosting if nothing else.

pathy··on Technology was meant to herald a new way of working, but that’s not the case
I have a question regarding the 9-5 working day. Do Americans really work 9-5 and regard this as an 8 hour working day? Or is this a legacy of the old days with paid lunch or such?

I officially work 8.25 hours per day or 8-17 with 45 minutes of lunch, this is roughly the standard working day in Sweden.

pathy··on Ask HN: Is Microsoft sabotaging older versions of Windows?
As someone who makes a living off Windows software, surely you have paid for your license? Else you got absolutely no right to complain about anything breaking.
pathy··on Sam Altman, the Bilderberger
Peter Thiel and Richard Levin (Coursera CEO) are also attending.

Them and Altman attending make sense when you consider some of the topics that will be discussed (from the site):

US political landscape, economy: growth, debt, reform

Cyber security

Precariat and middle class

Technological innovation

Clearly all three have opinions on these topics and suitable experience.

pathy··on How Far Is Europe Swinging to the Right?
The Russian Economy suffers because they INVADED another country, and shot down a civilian passenger jet among other things

The Maidan movement may be suspect but pale in the comparison to Russia's actions.

pathy··on How Far Is Europe Swinging to the Right?
>Why not be friendly with Russia, show them the benefits of our society without enforcing our ethics? Why the war mongering? The EU also sneakily, under suspect circumstances put a pro EU person in Power in the Ukraine

Wait now... You are calling EU war mongering? Remind me again who invaded Ukraine when the Ukrainian people wanted to turn towards the west. In direct violation of the Budapest Memorandum.

Putin is no weakling being manipulated by the oligarchs. He may not show off his wealth but make no mistake, he tightly controls the Russian state and oligarchs - not the other way around.

pathy··on Ask HN: Is there any significant reason to stay on LinkedIn?
My Girlfriend is an IT Recruiter in Stockholm, Sweden and Linkedin is by far the most common way for her and her recruiter colleagues to find candidates. Linkedin's search feature is one of their strong selling points.

Github + Linkedin and a visible email adress goes a long way to finding a job if you got a desirable skill set. List skills, list jobs and, if allowed, projects on Linkedin. Treat it as an SEO'ing your own personal brand.

pathy··on The Trouble with CloudFlare
I think you underestimate how much of the traffic from Tor that is malicious.

I have barely ever seen any legitimate Tor traffic, it has all been spam bots or other kinds of traffic I would rather avoid.

pathy··on Spotify raises $1B in debt with devilish terms to fight Apple Music
That is likely more to do with them being Swedish I suspect.

Stock compensation is a lot less competitive here due to it being taxed as normal income for the most part. Not to mention salaries being a lot lower in general than USA or some other parts of Europe.

pathy··on Why not just a simple spreadsheet of salaries?
For sure, I actually pulled salary statistics from Swedish Statistics yesterday. From 2014, the latest available figure. Estimate an average of 2-3% salary growth per year since.

For the category 2512, "Software- and Systemsdeveloper etc.", which is VERY broad but includes most developers and Application Experts (which is the role I currently have), the 90th percentile salary is $81-82k. The 10th percentile is $40k.

Median salary for men is $60k, and every so slightly lower for women.

pathy··on After Cash: All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses a Bank Account
I open up my Swish App (owned/operated by big Swedish banks), enter my friends phone number (either manually or via my contacts) and then enter the amount and a message, totally free and significantly more convenient than cash, which I basically never carry.

I can even pay the kids selling strawberries by the roadside via Swish.

Then again, Sweden is in the forefront of the cashless society at the moment, for better or worse.

pathy··on What time does your company get to work?
Our company policy is quite standard for BigCorps in Sweden:

8-17, with 45 minutes of lunch. Flextime +-1 hour (i.e 7-16, 9-18).

We trade 15 min of lunch (60->45) during the year for only working 7 hrs during the summer, so 8-16 between June and August. Practically everyone is off in July so it is a good deal for the company strictly speaking but that one hour does make a bigger difference than I thought it would.

In my current project most get in between 7 and 8 but in other parts of the IT organization most get in closer to 9. Varies a bit and many have kids so they tend to arrive late or leave early.

pathy··on [dead]
English version of the announcement can be found at the bottom of the page.
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