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Ask HN: What Hacker News comments have you bookmarked?

740 points| _lo3k | 7 years ago | reply

Frequently while browsing this site I see a comment that is profoundly insightful about culture, mindset, career, relationships, coffee grinders, etc.

I realized today that I’ve always considered them in the moment and let them go. Perhaps I should have been bookmarking them and revisiting with a different perspective.

184 comments

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[+] AWebOfBrown|7 years ago|reply
A quote about salary, that I bookmarked as I could see myself making the same mistake:

"Salaries never stay secrets forever. Hiding them only delays the inevitable. Last year we were having a discussion at lunch. Coworker was building a new house, and when it came to the numbers it was let loose that it was going to cost about $700K. This didn't seem like much, except to a young guy that joined the previous year and had done nothing but kick ass and take names..." (edited for brevity).

"...The conversation ended up in numbers. Coworker building the house pulled about $140K base (median for a programmer was probably $125K), and his bonus nearly matched the new guy's salary, which was an insulting $60K -- and got cut out of the bonus and raise in January for not being there a full year, only 11 months.

Turns out he was a doormat in negotiating, though his salary history was cringeworthy. It pained everyone to hear it, considering how nice of a guy he was. In all honestly, $60K was a big step up for him. Worst of all, this wasn't a cheap market (Boston). The guy probably shortchanged himself well over a half-million dollars in the past decade. This was someone who voluntarily put in long hours and went out of his way to teach others, and did everything he could to help other departments like operations and other teams. On top, he was beyond frugal. Supposedly he saved something around 40% of his take home pay, despite living alone in Boston. He grew up in a trailer park.

He spent the next day in non-stop meetings with HR, his manager and the CTO. That Friday he simply handed in his badge without a word, walked out and never came back.

Until 3 months later. As a consultant. At $175/hour."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2439478

[+] stakhanov|7 years ago|reply
Salary-porn seems to be a category that generally gets a lot of attention on HN. Personally, I feel a bit ambivalent about it. Obviously it's useful to be able to compare & benchmark, because one should go into any decision-making process being well armed with information. But on the other hand: The information exchanged is never enough to truly contextualize the numbers appropriately, and it's a potential source of huge amounts of cognitive dissonance. You have to be pretty good at being a stoic to try to break the information down to something objective and not let it get to you.

For example: The $175/hour number you just mentioned, and the fact that you seemed to imply that you're taking it for granted that it represents a successful outcome would be clearly a source of cognitive dissonance for most people. -- If he manages to do 2000 hours at $175 every year, that would be $350k which would be impressive. But then it may be nothing: if it is a highly specialized thing where you don't manage to get a fulltime workload out of a year, where you might spend the majority of your time with non-billable hours for project acquision, where you maybe have to cover costs of travel or time & money for certifications, where you have to carry high risk, etc. etc. ...it is usually impossible to properly resolve such questions to the point where it's useful for benchmarking and for extracting conclusions that are actionable to yourself. But the cognitive dissonance remains.

[+] johnchristopher|7 years ago|reply
Just an anecdote: I sometime drop to friends and acquaintances that salary is one of the last taboo in our modern western society but it's a really strong one. Either it ends there with a joke comment or it sparks a conversation about an individual's worth in society and among friends.
[+] grecy|7 years ago|reply
Keeping salaries secret is exactly the same as giving candy to a child and saying "Don't tell anyone about this".

In both cases, the person giving the pay/candy has something to gain if it stays secret and the person on receiving end is being manipulated.

[+] agumonkey|7 years ago|reply
I have a similar mindset, I hate money games.. it voids my soul. Money at best buys you peace of mind and I don't understand how societies ended up creating noise to justify this.
[+] siruncledrew|7 years ago|reply
Not to say this isn't true... it sounds like there is more to the story with this guy's salary history. If $125k is the ballpark median for a programmer in Boston, then how did the guy not notice he was getting <50% salary for the same role?

Some people aren't good at negotiating; that's understandable. But not knowing he was settling for such a pay-cut is almost appalling. That company must have enjoyed him being there knowing they pulled a fast one on him. Maybe there is some shady backstory here or something else influencing the situation..?

[+] ksec|7 years ago|reply
Being a nice guy to today's society often meant being that person in your story.

I am also one of them. And after all these years is still no good at salary negotiation. And unless you are exceptionally good and could afford to do consultation, ( which isn't really a thing in my country ) you still have to suck it up.

I know I am late. But I am starting to think may be claiming the ladder is a different set of skills.

[+] RickS|7 years ago|reply
Sometimes I feel that it can be a lucrative trap to become invested in a single person, and then accumulate expectations that far outweigh the responsible obligations of any friendship. As I have gotten older, a pattern that is working much better for me is the campfire model - I just try to keep a metaphorical campfire going, for people traveling through this life to stop and warm themselves upon while I tend it. I cannot know which direction people are traveling from, or to, or how long their journey has been or will be. But all people need to warm their calloused hands and feet, and I can keep this fire with a bed of rosy coals.

Sometimes someone will stop at my fire and warm themselves without my ever having paid attention, but to them it may have meant all the difference in the world. By keeping this obligation in mind, to simply expect people to need a place to sit a spell, I can at least believe I am helping.

The campfire is a nice way for me to remember we're all suffering, that not a one of us is unique to loneliness. Because sometimes that person who sits down at your fire is the person you have been waiting for, and only by making a seat for them were you able to ever meet.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18536601

[+] zemvpferreira|7 years ago|reply
Thank you, I really enjoyed the original discussion.

I’ve often been thinking of time distribution and personal CRMs lately. It’s very easy to fall in the trap of spending all your time with a significant other - and find out years after that all your relationships are ghosts of their former selves. I see that in my parents: at 70 they might have 10 people between them that they care about and see more than twice a year. How sad is that in a marriage that hasn’t gone well for two decades?

But the campfire analogy is so bleak, so distant from other people. I don’t have a neat visual for it but what I would like is to spend quality time with a core group of 10-20 people per week, good times with another 20 every month, and see another 100-200 every year at least (mostly family). Is anyone managing a schedule like that?

[+] memco|7 years ago|reply
This is the only comment I have bookmarked in my years of lurking: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18964418

> The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Junior (in whose honor I had a day off of work today) never once called for 'tolerance', the boycotts and sit-ins were not a demand for tolerance - they were a demand for integration. To tolerate is to "otherise" - you are _allowed_ to continue being as your are, but on the outside. To integrate, you do not require permission, but you do not continue as you are - both "sides" are transformed by the process.

[+] weinzierl|7 years ago|reply
You can favourite comments on HN and the lists are public so you can browse others favourites. This is a little known feature but I like it. For an example here are my favourite comments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=weinzierl&comments...

I didn't put a lot of thought in it, I just favourite stuff I might want to reconsider later. One example I still like is:

>You can hide from your your boss, your wife, or even your mother, but you can’t hide from Facebook.

Browsing others pages can be quite insightful for what they find notable. Not everyone uses this feature, so not everyone has favourites and it takes a little digging to find good ones. For example here are Thomas Ptaceks:

https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=tptacek&comments=t

[+] wodenokoto|7 years ago|reply
Just to expand on favourites:

Favouriting a comment is a public bookmark, without boost

Liking / upvoting a comment is a private bookmark with boost.

[+] elamje|7 years ago|reply
I cannot find the comment favorite button for the life of me. Is it unlocked at x karma, or am I missing something?
[+] Pepperdots|7 years ago|reply
This is amazing. I am always finding nuggets of wisdom and didn't know of a good way to store them. I made an account just for this.
[+] Austin_Conlon|7 years ago|reply
This impersonation of The Economist writing style is hilarious:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11050299

>Mocks Populi

There is a an apocryphal story in which your anonymous correspondent was on a small business jet somewhere between Davos and Dubai, when he asked a former Thatcher minister what shade of pink the Financial Times newspaper was. "Parlour," the minister replied. It is in the spirit of this self-referential anecdote that an auspicious news peg has provided an opportunity to sound off on a pet saw and perhaps let on that I went to Cambridge.

Broadly, this newspaper is neither here nor there on a given issue, other than to say that it is different from what you expect - and for reasons that may surprise you. The prediction will be driven by the available data, include a smirk at the newcomer, and give a sop to the status quo. All things equal, it will predict outcomes that are some function of the sum of elements by the number of elements, and provide a view that is "radically centerist," if perhaps a bit smug. A reversion to the mean, indeed.

-- Every Economist Article Ever

[+] hencq|7 years ago|reply
Haha this is incredible. I love the Economist and have had a subscription for years, but this is spot on.
[+] debaserab2|7 years ago|reply
"The separation of design and construction into phases is a hangover from civil engineering. It has the baked in assumption that the design phase is relatively cheap, short and somewhat unpredictable the construction phase is expensive, long and predictable. The root problem is the assumption that specifications can be validated for correctness, like a blueprint for a bridge can. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is a persistent myth in software development." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12080968

"OOP is just a mental model. Deep down everything is made of bits. The church of OOP has failed but if something looks like a duck, walks like a duck and talks like a duck it probably is useful to make a duck class. We're now down to fighting for nuances. You can do most things with OOP or without OOP but each path has some upsides and downsides and most of the time it's good to use some things it provides where it makes sense and not get too religious about it. The great architect has the foresight on how the code will be used in five years and design it accordingly." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18250466

[+] factsaresacred|7 years ago|reply
On 'simple to recreate' Evernote making $800,000 per Month:

> This is the biggest mistake most of the people make. If it worked that way, every weekend app released here would be making tons of money...But this is NOT app v/s app game. This is business v/s app. And you can't take down a business with an app. You need to create a business. Sure you can build a better 'app' than Evernote or make a better burger than McD's but you can't make a better business, the day you do - you are in game.

On building one-person startups (both from jasonkester):

> Your $10k MRR niche won't be "app that lets people hail taxis, and network of contract drivers." It'll be "reception table plan designer for wedding coordinators". Google is not now, nor will they ever be, having a meeting where they decide to allocate a few hundred engineers and marketers to crush that space.

There are tens of thousands of niches like this that will pay for teams of 1-3 people to live on the beach after a few years of work.

and

> Personally, I prefer to listen to the person who has tried a thing and declared it possible, rather than the person who has never tried that thing and declared it impossible.

On the risk of choosing Firebase (and similar PAAS providers):

> Way to risky not to use for startups, IMO. What would you prefer, spending half your time doing backend development to get a system that might be 80% as reliable as Firebase on the off chance that your startup will survive long enough for your custom engineered solution to bare fruit, or spending all your time actually building your product and launching quickly so you can determine whether or not your startup is even viable?

[+] wallflower|7 years ago|reply
This is a very wise comment from jlcfly in what a senior developer should aspire to do, especially if they feel they are approaching or have reached their personal asymptotic limits for technical skill.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8649415

"Teach them to be better than you. That may seem counterproductive. I have a type A personality, and I have decent coding skills. I've been in your situation a number of times. I also know there's these mythical expert developers out there that I can't seem to find (or afford). So, what to do? A few years ago I realized that if I continue down this path, I'll end up with some serious health issues due to the stresses that come along with having a reputation for being a really good developer. So, I decided that instead of searching for developers better than me, I would teach developers I work with how to BE better. It's taken a lot of patience. And it's taken me quite a bit to LET GO of my way of doing things. I had to take my ego out of the picture. (VERY hard to do.) Nowadays, I realize that developers don't have to BE better than me. I simply have to ALLOW them to do what they do without being so obsessive about it. Turns out, even junior developers really CAN do good work. They just need a little guidance that only comes with experience, and then they need me to get out of their way."

[+] sevensor|7 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19294191 : A meta-circular evaluator in Prolog. (User triska's comment history is full of gems.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17020655 : A question I had asked about interfacing Excel, which provoked some useful responses. I now use this as my authoritative list of ways to extend Excel's functionality.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18314265 : Fascinating comment about, well, all kinds of stuff, but mainly PostScript. (DonHopkins. Another user whose comment history is a seam of gold.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16014573 : Great post about the history of terminals and terminal emulators. (JdeBP)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15027372 : Introduction to the market for produce by the produce buyer for a small grocery. (LightRailTycoon)

[+] YjSe2GMQ|7 years ago|reply
"The Single Greatest Predictor of Future Stock Market Returns": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14948078

And here's the live (well, lagging a few months, but this is a very slow signal anyhow) version: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14950203

[+] opportune|7 years ago|reply
This is super interesting. I read another post on that blog about pension funds' total allocations to equities growing considerably over the last few decades. I wonder if the baby boomers retiring will trigger a noticeable aggregate divestment from stocks to cash
[+] purplerabbit|7 years ago|reply
This is the only stock forecasting article I've read out of hundreds with actual value.
[+] acheron|7 years ago|reply
"Javascript Delenda Est", by zeveb, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11447851 :

> Can we please try to stop talking about this specific language ecosystem as an awful deplorable hell hole or whatever?

Back in the second century BC, Cato the Elder ended his speeches with the phrase 'Carthago delenda est,' which is to say, 'Carthage must be destroyed.' It didn't matter what the ostensible topic of the speech was: above all, Carthage must be destroyed.

My opinion towards JavaScript is much like Cato's towards Carthage: it must be rooted out, eliminated and destroyed entirely. I don't know if I'd go quite so far as to say that the fundamental challenge of mass computing is the final destruction of JavaScript — but I want to say it, even though it's false.

JavaScript is a pox, a disaster, a shame. It is the most embarrassingly bad thing to become popular in computing since Windows 3.1. Its one virtue (that it's on every client device) is outshone by its plethora of flaws in much the same way that a matchstick is outshone by the sun, the stars and the primordial energy of the Big Bang added together.

JavaScript is the XML, the Yugo, the Therac-25 of programming languages. The sheer amount of human effort which has been expended working around its fundamental flaws instead of advancing the development of mankind is astounding. The fact that people would take this paragon of wasted opportunity and use it on the server side, where there are so many better alternatives (to a first approximation, every other programming language ever used), is utterly appalling.

JavaScript delenda est.

[+] norswap|7 years ago|reply
How incredibly sad that this is the top comment at the time of writing.
[+] dundercoder|7 years ago|reply
I feel nearly the same about the English language. It's my first language, and after learning French and Spanish, it's so clear that there's a better way.
[+] JohnJamesRambo|7 years ago|reply
Why did Cato hate Carthage so much?
[+] om3n|7 years ago|reply
Regarding dealing with difficult problems:

"Like almost all problems in life you have only 4 options: #1 Change you (accept what you are unable to change)

#2 Change the other (convince them to follow your vision)

#3 Fly (divorce, quit)

#4 Stay and suffer (include drinking, doing drugs, whining)

It is amazing how many people chose number 4."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16126082

[+] bagacrap|7 years ago|reply
I'd file "doing drugs" under #1, at least if you choose the right ones.
[+] zachwill|7 years ago|reply 

    Very frequently, the right answer for a MVP is something
    like an e-mail newsletter, or a Salesforce extension, 
    or a CSV file, or an IDE plug-in, or throwing a pizza 
    party for your target market and performing the service 
    for them yourself.

    I’ve seen startups charge $10K+/month to dump a CSV file 
    on a client’s FTP server. Go where the user can most 
    conveniently make use of your product; for a lot of 
    businesses, that is neither app nor website.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18826554
[+] pmlnr|7 years ago|reply
"Napster is the future of the internet. It will come back. But the world has to evolve on a social level before this can happen.

We saw the same with the printing press: the Powers That Be first banned it, then tried to control it, and eventually had to relent. It will happen with data sharing too, eventually. It might take a century, but it will happen."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19034200

[+] dekervin|7 years ago|reply
I bookmarked a comment, making a point on the life cycle of platforms: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19612180

"This is basically a repeat of SEO. At first, you have the early adopters. Things grow organically and it doesn't feel like a zero-sum game because there aren't many players.

Next comes the growth phase, where more people get involved, and start competing for attention/clicks/votes/whatever points system.

Next comes the exploiters, who discover weaknesses in the system and take advantage of them. They tend to make a lot of money because there's not much competition in this niche.

Next comes the crossover, where the exploit knowledge becomes public, and everyone now must do it because everyone else is.

Next comes the shutout, where the company running things starts actively punishing bad actors, but by this time, being a bad actor is essential to survival, so people do it anyway. It becomes a game of cat-and-mouse, new exploits, new mitigations.

Eventually, the company manages to fix their algorithms enough that the exploits don't offer decent marginal returns anymore, and it returns to what the company originally intended: 1% of people are successful, 99% of people make next to nothing, and the company makes shitloads.

And then the new big thing comes out. The old system goes into decline and the new system starts to take over. Rinse and repeat. "

I map comments I like into coherent arguments using this [0] (An example here [1] ). I would love to share maps with others even if it is not ready for public use ( you only live once ! )

[0] http://clean-ico.appspot.com/

[1] http://clean-ico.appspot.com/static/site/Symbol/index_argume...

[+] rainhacker|7 years ago|reply
On asking for a raise[0]:

> What if you went to your manager, or whoever you feel is the right person, asked if you could speak one on one, and said... "I really love working at this company. The work is interesting, I love the people, the culture, <one more legitimate pro goes here>. But I also know I could be making X if I went elsewhere. I love the work I'm doing, and I want to keep doing it here, but I also don't want to be leaving money on the table. What can we do?"

This phrasing, pretty much verbatim, has worked really well for me in the past.

On multithreading in Redis [1]:

> The problem with clustering still becomes lower queries per GB as instances can’t share data. Redis itself runs in RAM so storage is at a premium. One of my main reasons for doing multithreading, and FLASH in the first place was to make Redis work well for much larger value sizes.

I really think we have different use cases in mind.

A book recommendation [2]:

> "Basic Economics" by Thomas Sowell. Not an easy read, but it deeply changed the way I think about incentive structures and the law of unintended consequences. It's a tough pill to swallow for people (like myself) who cling to utopian ideas, but the older I get the more I realize we must live in the world as it exists, with human nature as it really is. Dreaming of a better world is counter-productive if one does not engage with reality. We can build a better world, but only by being honest about the current state of things.

Links to parent comments: [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19539485 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19370712 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19087418

[+] dmitryminkovsky|7 years ago|reply
This one from December: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18777949

>> But he was tenacious; he would never give up on anything.

> To be fair, in my mind this is the one most common trait I find in successful entrepreneurs and leaders. I've seen leaders who I didn't think were particularly bright, or extroverted, or empathic, but man, did they not get stressed out by obstacles that came in their way. They either sidestepped them or overcame them, but they did not dwell on them and let those obstacles lead to self doubt.

Also really appreciated this articulation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19350161

> Leadership is basically just people-engineering and business-engineering. Engineers use tools to build products, and so do leaders.

> The immediate assumption is that people are tools/resources to build the product. That's talking like an engineer.

> Don't use your team to work on a project/product. Use the project to work on your team. They're not there to build the product. They're there to gain some personal fulfillment. Use the development of the product to grow them.

[+] e12e|7 years ago|reply
I have quite a few. The most recent favorite is this one, which actually features verbatim quotes - and highlites the level of editorialisation in the (us) news:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19405173

" js2 37 days ago | parent | un-favorite | on: Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hac...

Fox News: "Young Beto O'Rourke wrote 'murder fantasy' about running over children, was part of famed hacking group: report"

CNET: "Beto O'Rourke has serious hacker credentials. The presidential candidate was a member of hacker group Cult of the Dead Cow"

WaPo: "'Psychedelic Warlord': Beto O'Rourke's past life as a teenage hacker" and "Beto O’Rourke’s hacking universe, explained."

Sources: (... See original comment...)"

[+] testcase_delta|7 years ago|reply
I would love a website that contrasted editorializing of the day's news and rated them. Is this something machine learning could accomplish? Sentiment analysis, perhaps?
[+] hadrien01|7 years ago|reply
This comment from nightcracker about GDPR privacy consent:

You enter a coffee shop. Before you can do anything, the owner takes a photo of you, and grabs your hand to take your finger print. He quickly writes down the date, time and what clothes you are wearing.

He gives you a smile as he starts his speech. "Before we continue, we at Coffee City want you to know we deeply value your privacy. We need your permission to store your information, improve your coffee experience, personalize your coffee suggestions and share it with our partners. Do you consent?"

You don't fucking value my privacy. I get some serious doublespeak vibes. If you valued my privacy you'd leave me the fuck alone and stop saving information about me.

[+] comvidyarthi|7 years ago|reply
This is a very interesting take. The only problem in using this analogy for social media companies is that in a coffee shop you pay for the coffee. In case of social media you don’t pay for anything. So there is no incentive to maintain your privacy:
[+] closeparen|7 years ago|reply
Pretty sure my coffee shop has a security camera, and most customers pay by card.