6 ms·

Stack Overflow lays off 20% of staff

129 points by SQL2219 9y ago

greenyoda 9y ago
Extensive discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15613101 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15613101
dilemma 9y ago
This is why we still need communism
- abtinf 9y ago
  > This is why we still need communism It is evil to make this comment, whether in earnest or as a joke, for many of the same reasons as if you had said “this is why we still need nazism.” Communism is an ideology responsible for the death of over one hundred million people in the 20th century.
  - s_kilk 9y ago
    Ok, thought experiment, what is the death-toll of Capitalism in the last century?
    - golergka 9y ago
      I'd say it's in negative billions from all the innovation and economic growth.
      - brbrodude 9y ago
        If so, then we shall deduct from USSR & China a calculated ammount that came from decades and decades of economic growth they had then, no? It's funny how when praising the status quo some people don't see how they get to ideological mumbling REALLY VERY FAST, yet are the same ones who want to accuse others of 'ideology'(as in "I don't have that, my point of view is objective"). I don't judge tho, getting to understand these matters take a lot of time, 'boring knowledge' like history, investigation and reflecting, I think people should spend more time honestly looking into and trying to understand what this is all about, I bet if you did you'd surprise yourself many times over and see how deep this stuff goes. Facebook-facts based stuff just doesn't do it.
    - abtinf 9y ago
      Zero. Capitalism is the system of protecting the rights of the individual to engage in the free exchange of goods and services. The extent of human flourishing is the extent to which human societies adopt capitalism. Even when it is adopted in small degrees, the result is a dramatic uplifting of billions of people out of poverty. Capitalism is good and we would all be better off if we had more of it. All of the mass death and destruction of the world is caused by collectivism, from the killing fields of Cambodia to the mixed economy of the United States. Collectivism is the ideology that’s holds that your moral sanction for living comes from the group; only the leaders of that group, whether through a connection to god or the tribe, have access to the true nature of the world, and so are justified in any brutality they see fit.
      - mjburgess 9y ago
        I can't work out if you're trollling or not. You realise, that "100 million" figure is just taken from the deaths that occurred under Communist regimes, not as a deliberate consequence of their actions. Also, you're equivocating on Capitalism and Communism with the idea in the former case, and one particular implementation in the latter. By "Communism" you mean "regimes that called themselves communist". If, more honestly by capitalism you meant, "regimes that called themselves capitalist" then we would start including Vietnam, Iraq, etc. etc. etc. And you're equivocating on "collectivism" by which you mean the both, say, Mao's agricultural policies and there being groups that have leaders. Businesses are collectives. Capitalism, as trade between businesses, is a mostly collectivised system. Humans goals are foundationally composed of all those which follow from their identity: as they conceive themselves as being part of a group, and as they conceive of their identity free of any membership. This gives rise to nations, businesses, universities, football teams, etc. AND to personal projects, individual enterprise, and so on. The difference between communism-in-practice and capitalism-in-practice has nothing to do with the existence of groups, but rather the political power structures which surround those groups: all communist regimes were dictatorships. The difference between capitalism-in-theory and communism-in-theory has, again, nothing to do with the existence of groups -- but what (economic) rights you take to be fundamental.
      - ivanbakel 9y ago
        >All of the mass death and destruction of the world is caused by collectivism,... the mixed economy of the United States. The mixed economy is currently the main system preventing mass starvation due to poverty in the US. Capitalism, from the start of the Dustbowl and the Great Depression until the intervention of the government with the New Deal, failed to prevent death and displacement for hundreds of thousands of people despite a severe overproduction of basically every kind of foodstuff, because it simply didn't make anyone any money to do so. The free exchange of goods produced under holdover ownership from mercantile and colonial times, including the ability to withhold that exchange of necessities, is a moral evil. It is inadmissible to let people starve because it is not profitable to give them food, but that is what capitalist thought mandates.
    - amag 9y ago
      This surely is comparing apples and oranges. When communist death tolls are discussed the meaning are those who are killed when communism is implemented or re-enforced (e.g. The Great Leap). When capitalism is implemented there is no need to shoot communists. Death tolls from capitalism are due to other factors which may also exist in one form or another in a communist regime (e.g. war).
  - zaro 9y ago
    I don't see how you'd equate communism and nazism. But whether they are the same or not how did you come with 100 million deaths for which the communism is responsible? It sounds plain ridiculous.
    - gaius 9y ago
      Here's 55m to get you started https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward You can research the rest yourself... won't take long
      - zaro 9y ago
        Or maybe 18 million to get me started according to the the same article. Which one? Let's take something in between. 37 million. Now I have to find 63 million instead of 45. But that's only part of the problem. The other part is how exactly do you know all of these deaths are result of communism directly. Because you see, no matter communism or capitalism people are generally violent creatures. They like killing other people so maybe if the capitalism prevailed after the WW2 maybe there would have been 46 million deaths. There is correlation between communism and increased number of deaths in a state. There is also correlation between capitalism and increased number of deaths in foreign states (especially if population is brown). But as we all know correlation is not causality.
        gaius 9y ago
        The other part is how exactly do you know all of these deaths are result of communism directly Because they were directly attributed to the Great Leap Forward. Same as the millions killed by the Khmer Rouge in Year Zero.
    - abtinf 9y ago
      65 million in China. Another 30 million in the Soviet Union. A number of other areas with a couple million each.
      - 9y ago
  - dilemma 9y ago
    Ok, but the people demanded this comment. It is by far my most popular on HN.
    - brbrodude 9y ago
      The market has spoken!
  - GVIrish 9y ago
    You're conflating communism and authoritarianism. Nothing about Communism as a concept requires massacring people. It's just that in the 20th century those who were murderous autocrats used Communism to convince their (often poor) countrymen to give them power and they killed people in service of that power. Communist and Socialist governments were a popular vehicle for getting poor people to join an uprising in the 20th century and despots took advantage of that. Maybe that's a distinction without a difference given that we've never really seen a non-authoritarian communist government. But communism has only been around for a century, so it's not out of the realm of reason that there'll be a Communist government that isn't brutal at some point. We certainly have somewhat Socialist governments that treat their people well right now.
    - varjag 9y ago
      > Nothing about Communism as a concept requires massacring people. Elimination of exploiting classes and abolition of family are two things that certainly require massacring people. If you see any other realistic means of achieving these two points of Communist Manifesto, am all ears.
      - ewzimm 9y ago
        From the Communist Manifesto: >The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties. They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement. If one were dead-set on following he original principles of communism, which I don’t necessarily recommend, as the world has changed a bit since they were published and new ideas have sprung up since then, I think the best method would be as follows: 1. Support workers’ rights without settting up separate political entities or telling people what to do. 2. Make and support great free software so that the most valuable things in the world are free from private control.
        varjag 9y ago
        But that's not communism. Socialism is about workers rights, sure. Communism is about abolition of property, the proprietor class and abolition of family (since it's a wealth accumulation instrument). > The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties. Notice how it is very specific about "working-class". It's not coincidental.
- cbernini 9y ago
  I'd say it's Utopia (even though I see what happened in 1917 with good eyes), it would mean the obliteration of a system already too stablished to let it happen (Capitalism), both cannot coexist (or whoever tries it would be casted out just like Cuba was with its socialism). What we need is having companies aim for more than profit by the end of their fiscal year. As already pointed out here on HN many times, whenever you get VC money, where your business leads is where the money set you to. Product oriented initiatives instead of project oriented ones were a good start, having people own part of it gives them a sense or purpose and let them mature it while maturing themselves. What I really hate about Capitalism is the fact about BigCo or BigVC acquiring SmallCO or pushing it out of business being the standard.
- iovrthoughtthis 9y ago
  This isn't constructive and simply served to derail the toptic at hand into a bikeshedding session where the shed is the economic system.
  - dilemma 9y ago
    It was just a meme, bro
- sctb 9y ago
  We've banned this account for repeatedly violating the guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
thekaleb 9y ago
> “I don’t see HackerNews or GitHub as competing against us directly for the same dollars or even the same attention,” CEO and co-founder Joel Spolsky said at the time. Does Hacker News make "dollars"?
- DKnoll 9y ago
  It promotes YCombinator startups, which in turn makes them money.
dingo_bat 9y ago
This entire thread has devolved into capitalism vs communism!
- draw_down 9y ago
  Cool!
9erdelta 9y ago
I actually think GitHub is a competitor. More and more often I find myself getting answers by reviewing discussion about issues on GH. Also, places like Discord I've ended up in commmunities where I can get answers to my programming questions. It's anecdotal, but it has caused my usage of SO to drop over the last year and a half or so.

129 points by SQL2219 9y ago

greenyoda 9y ago

Extensive discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15613101 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15613101

dilemma 9y ago

This is why we still need communism

abtinf 9y ago
> This is why we still need communism It is evil to make this comment, whether in earnest or as a joke, for many of the same reasons as if you had said “this is why we still need nazism.” Communism is an ideology responsible for the death of over one hundred million people in the 20th century.
- s_kilk 9y ago
  Ok, thought experiment, what is the death-toll of Capitalism in the last century?
  - golergka 9y ago
    I'd say it's in negative billions from all the innovation and economic growth.
    - brbrodude 9y ago
      If so, then we shall deduct from USSR & China a calculated ammount that came from decades and decades of economic growth they had then, no? It's funny how when praising the status quo some people don't see how they get to ideological mumbling REALLY VERY FAST, yet are the same ones who want to accuse others of 'ideology'(as in "I don't have that, my point of view is objective"). I don't judge tho, getting to understand these matters take a lot of time, 'boring knowledge' like history, investigation and reflecting, I think people should spend more time honestly looking into and trying to understand what this is all about, I bet if you did you'd surprise yourself many times over and see how deep this stuff goes. Facebook-facts based stuff just doesn't do it.
  - abtinf 9y ago
    Zero. Capitalism is the system of protecting the rights of the individual to engage in the free exchange of goods and services. The extent of human flourishing is the extent to which human societies adopt capitalism. Even when it is adopted in small degrees, the result is a dramatic uplifting of billions of people out of poverty. Capitalism is good and we would all be better off if we had more of it. All of the mass death and destruction of the world is caused by collectivism, from the killing fields of Cambodia to the mixed economy of the United States. Collectivism is the ideology that’s holds that your moral sanction for living comes from the group; only the leaders of that group, whether through a connection to god or the tribe, have access to the true nature of the world, and so are justified in any brutality they see fit.
    - mjburgess 9y ago
      I can't work out if you're trollling or not. You realise, that "100 million" figure is just taken from the deaths that occurred under Communist regimes, not as a deliberate consequence of their actions. Also, you're equivocating on Capitalism and Communism with the idea in the former case, and one particular implementation in the latter. By "Communism" you mean "regimes that called themselves communist". If, more honestly by capitalism you meant, "regimes that called themselves capitalist" then we would start including Vietnam, Iraq, etc. etc. etc. And you're equivocating on "collectivism" by which you mean the both, say, Mao's agricultural policies and there being groups that have leaders. Businesses are collectives. Capitalism, as trade between businesses, is a mostly collectivised system. Humans goals are foundationally composed of all those which follow from their identity: as they conceive themselves as being part of a group, and as they conceive of their identity free of any membership. This gives rise to nations, businesses, universities, football teams, etc. AND to personal projects, individual enterprise, and so on. The difference between communism-in-practice and capitalism-in-practice has nothing to do with the existence of groups, but rather the political power structures which surround those groups: all communist regimes were dictatorships. The difference between capitalism-in-theory and communism-in-theory has, again, nothing to do with the existence of groups -- but what (economic) rights you take to be fundamental.
    - ivanbakel 9y ago
      >All of the mass death and destruction of the world is caused by collectivism,... the mixed economy of the United States. The mixed economy is currently the main system preventing mass starvation due to poverty in the US. Capitalism, from the start of the Dustbowl and the Great Depression until the intervention of the government with the New Deal, failed to prevent death and displacement for hundreds of thousands of people despite a severe overproduction of basically every kind of foodstuff, because it simply didn't make anyone any money to do so. The free exchange of goods produced under holdover ownership from mercantile and colonial times, including the ability to withhold that exchange of necessities, is a moral evil. It is inadmissible to let people starve because it is not profitable to give them food, but that is what capitalist thought mandates.
  - amag 9y ago
    This surely is comparing apples and oranges. When communist death tolls are discussed the meaning are those who are killed when communism is implemented or re-enforced (e.g. The Great Leap). When capitalism is implemented there is no need to shoot communists. Death tolls from capitalism are due to other factors which may also exist in one form or another in a communist regime (e.g. war).
- zaro 9y ago
  I don't see how you'd equate communism and nazism. But whether they are the same or not how did you come with 100 million deaths for which the communism is responsible? It sounds plain ridiculous.
  - gaius 9y ago
    Here's 55m to get you started https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward You can research the rest yourself... won't take long
    - zaro 9y ago
      Or maybe 18 million to get me started according to the the same article. Which one? Let's take something in between. 37 million. Now I have to find 63 million instead of 45. But that's only part of the problem. The other part is how exactly do you know all of these deaths are result of communism directly. Because you see, no matter communism or capitalism people are generally violent creatures. They like killing other people so maybe if the capitalism prevailed after the WW2 maybe there would have been 46 million deaths. There is correlation between communism and increased number of deaths in a state. There is also correlation between capitalism and increased number of deaths in foreign states (especially if population is brown). But as we all know correlation is not causality.
      - gaius 9y ago
        The other part is how exactly do you know all of these deaths are result of communism directly Because they were directly attributed to the Great Leap Forward. Same as the millions killed by the Khmer Rouge in Year Zero.
  - abtinf 9y ago
    65 million in China. Another 30 million in the Soviet Union. A number of other areas with a couple million each.
    - 9y ago
- dilemma 9y ago
  Ok, but the people demanded this comment. It is by far my most popular on HN.
  - brbrodude 9y ago
    The market has spoken!
- GVIrish 9y ago
  You're conflating communism and authoritarianism. Nothing about Communism as a concept requires massacring people. It's just that in the 20th century those who were murderous autocrats used Communism to convince their (often poor) countrymen to give them power and they killed people in service of that power. Communist and Socialist governments were a popular vehicle for getting poor people to join an uprising in the 20th century and despots took advantage of that. Maybe that's a distinction without a difference given that we've never really seen a non-authoritarian communist government. But communism has only been around for a century, so it's not out of the realm of reason that there'll be a Communist government that isn't brutal at some point. We certainly have somewhat Socialist governments that treat their people well right now.
  - varjag 9y ago
    > Nothing about Communism as a concept requires massacring people. Elimination of exploiting classes and abolition of family are two things that certainly require massacring people. If you see any other realistic means of achieving these two points of Communist Manifesto, am all ears.
    - ewzimm 9y ago
      From the Communist Manifesto: >The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties. They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement. If one were dead-set on following he original principles of communism, which I don’t necessarily recommend, as the world has changed a bit since they were published and new ideas have sprung up since then, I think the best method would be as follows: 1. Support workers’ rights without settting up separate political entities or telling people what to do. 2. Make and support great free software so that the most valuable things in the world are free from private control.
      - varjag 9y ago
        But that's not communism. Socialism is about workers rights, sure. Communism is about abolition of property, the proprietor class and abolition of family (since it's a wealth accumulation instrument). > The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties. Notice how it is very specific about "working-class". It's not coincidental.
cbernini 9y ago
I'd say it's Utopia (even though I see what happened in 1917 with good eyes), it would mean the obliteration of a system already too stablished to let it happen (Capitalism), both cannot coexist (or whoever tries it would be casted out just like Cuba was with its socialism). What we need is having companies aim for more than profit by the end of their fiscal year. As already pointed out here on HN many times, whenever you get VC money, where your business leads is where the money set you to. Product oriented initiatives instead of project oriented ones were a good start, having people own part of it gives them a sense or purpose and let them mature it while maturing themselves. What I really hate about Capitalism is the fact about BigCo or BigVC acquiring SmallCO or pushing it out of business being the standard.
iovrthoughtthis 9y ago
This isn't constructive and simply served to derail the toptic at hand into a bikeshedding session where the shed is the economic system.
- dilemma 9y ago
  It was just a meme, bro
sctb 9y ago
We've banned this account for repeatedly violating the guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

thekaleb 9y ago

> “I don’t see HackerNews or GitHub as competing against us directly for the same dollars or even the same attention,” CEO and co-founder Joel Spolsky said at the time. Does Hacker News make "dollars"?

DKnoll 9y ago
It promotes YCombinator startups, which in turn makes them money.

dingo_bat 9y ago

This entire thread has devolved into capitalism vs communism!

draw_down 9y ago
Cool!

9erdelta 9y ago

I actually think GitHub is a competitor. More and more often I find myself getting answers by reviewing discussion about issues on GH. Also, places like Discord I've ended up in commmunities where I can get answers to my programming questions. It's anecdotal, but it has caused my usage of SO to drop over the last year and a half or so.