zeemonkee

When I started work I produced little output, because I was a newbie and knew nothing. I was paid just a little over minimum wage - but I still produced, even if it was crappy code and routine tasks nobody else wanted to do.

Companies used to do this all the time - you start at the bottom, fresh out of school, and you have to learn.

But you are still f*ing paid.

The serf system in Russia IIRC started with free peasants who sold themselves into slavery to the landowner when they fell into debt - unlike African slaves in the US, who were essentially kidnapped into servitude.

In the same vein people are taking up voluntary servitude in order to get a paid job - sometimes even paying for the privilege.

Moreover - a point not raised in the article - in expensive cities the only way a fresh graduate can survive without salary is if their parents subsidize them. Who can afford to do so ? Rich families. So it's a form of discrimination.

A company has no excuse for not paying at least minimum wage. If you can't afford the employees you need you shouldn't be in business, period. Any company that uses unpaid internships is morally bankrupt and should be boycotted.

That said, some things I don't like so much:

- "inception" style development. Callbacks within callbacks, especially if you are doing db queries for example. Gets cumbersome and annoying very quickly.

- lack of ecosystem. Though improving, nowhere near Ruby, PHP or Python (or Java/JVM for that matter).

- lack of use cases. Hard to say where it would be a valid replacement for existing webapps. Chatbots and games, sure, but most client work I do is boring old CRUD. Rails and Django provided huge productivity gains here, nodejs, not so much.

- hype. I get the feeling a lot of this is driven by front end developers who suddenly feel they've been given the keys to the server-side kingdom without having to learn another language. Much of what node.js offers exists elsewhere and better, for example Haskell or Erlang (though not as accessible to mere mortals, perhaps).

https://www.google.com/intl/en-GB/+/learnmore/notifyme.html

A bit strange to see a rookie mistake like that from Google, given the fanfare over this thing.

I have a bad feeling this is going to be like Wave - those people who do get invites have nobody to talk to so by the time everyone else gets invited the interest has peaked.

I really hope not, though. Facebook seriously need competition.

There's more to it than recreational cycle paths though.

In order to change people's lifestyle - i.e. to be a practical alternative to the car in cities - the paths have to go somewhere useful. In other words, you need cycle paths connecting offices, schools and shops. Even in Edinburgh I see that as a long way off - and the city council seem fit to sink money instead into the neverending tram fiasco.

I never, ever cycle in the UK.

Reason ? In Finland towns have cycle paths everywhere. It's safe. People take their little kids cycling. Lots of people cycle.

In the UK it's appallingly bad in comparison. Some places may have a few cycle lanes here and there for appearance's sake but in the main it's nothing. When you go cycling in the UK you're taking your life in your hands. You're a completely unprotected second-class citizen. A guy I knew died that way, hit and run by a taxi. I certainly wouldn't allow my kids to cycle here.

Seems that despite all the advances in computer modelling etc we're going backwards.

Django and Rails have long since outgrown their original, in-house roots.

http://blog.checkadvantage.com/2011/02/09/baby-boomers-job-m...

The point isn't whether "the free market" or the "will of the proletariat" will solve all the world's problems through innovation. The universe does not care for our beliefs. Either the current environmental and energy crises are solvable through human ingenuity (by "solvable" I mean that we can continue world economic growth and rise in living standards indefinitely) or they are not; if they are not it really doesn't make any difference whether you follow Ayn Rand or Karl Marx.

Innovation isn't guaranteed to happen "on demand". Some things may not be physically possible, or even if they are, may prove economically or environmentally unfeasable. "Everything will be OK in a free market" is just that - an article of faith.

Seriously, what's wrong with these people ? Are they so mentally stunted ?

Ethically...I think as long as you are above board and honest with all parties, explain the situation and what needs to happen, then you're probably OK. Running a business involves making hard decisions such as firing employees and dumping cofounders. If you can't face doing these things then you're not cut out for running a business (I've had to do it, and hated it). However it's important that even when you have to do these things that you are honest and as decent as possible at all times.

There's no way anyone can make that choice but yourself. Many people will say "don't give up" but there is little to be gained if the business is going under and you start throwing more money - or other people's money - down the drain.

On the other hand the business shows promise but needs more time and funds, none of which you have right now.

There is another option - suspend business operations, if possible, and rebuild your funds through a "normal" job or consulting. If the business is viable you should be able to relaunch at a later date in a stronger position, perhaps with better partners. If it isn't, you can try again with a new idea.

Knowing when you stand and fight and when to retreat to fight again another day is essential.

Sure, the real estate seller may not know about apps, but they do know what works and what doesn't work in the real estate market, what the potential legal issues may be, and where the pain points are. I've never worked in real estate, so I don't.

I suspect that's why so many pure-developer run startups are either things that only interest other developers (project management tools and the like) or things that "everybody" knows about, e.g. yet another Twitter client or social networking thingamajig. There's a ton of cash in vertical markets we don't touch because we don't know the right people in those industries to partner with.

The successful businesses I've worked in(startups that went on to achieve success, or already successful small to medium sized businesses) have all been in vertical markets - from forestry to tourism to retail marketing. You couldn't have built these on developer savvy alone. That may go against the HN philosophy that software developers are the be all and end all of startups, but the reality is that most successful businesses need teams of people of different backgrounds.

Most of whom, depressingly, would become our managers.

My brother is in his 30s and still has to flatshare, despite getting a good developer salary in London. What's the point of working there again ?

I'm not a student any more dammit: I want my own place to come home to after a hard day's work.

Excellent article, giving balance to current "best practice" thinking.

For example, from 1902 - 1960 we went from the Kitty Hawk to the jet passenger plane. From 1960 we went from the jet plane to .... ? We're still flying around in planes developed in the late 1960s/early 1970s. Sure, maybe they have better navigation systems, they might be safer and so on, but these are refinements rather than revolutionary changes.

I'm sure the Jacobins had a totally cool Facebook page.

> Now you could say that even if we ever managed to get to a utopia state more greedy people will just show up but I would counter argue that e.g. Alexander the great wouldn't have gotten off the ground if people could have just sent a twitter to warn everyone else what he was up to.

That has to be the funniest thing I've read all day. If only poor King Darius III had a Twitter account.