eldavido

55 ms·

421.
by eldavido 9y ago
We don't need more janitors. We need to get serious about fare enforcement. Fence in all the fare-paid areas so people don't blatantly jump over them, and get rid of the swinging doors that people walk through with zero consequenc
422.
by eldavido 9y ago
Look, obviously you and I have pretty different ideology, I get that. But I think you should consider why union membership is declining in the US. It's not some giant right-wing conspiracy. It's because the structure of industry i
423.
by eldavido 9y ago
Just because it's promised doesn't mean it'll happen. Look at Illinois.
424.
by eldavido 9y ago
This is how it starts. City booms, everyone whines about cost of living going up, unionized public sector employees extract massive concessions from politicians whose campaigns they fund. I'm not saying this in an ideological way; it&#
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by eldavido 9y ago
So this is a gripe I have with the American view of "news". OF COURSE they push an agenda. EVERYONE pushes an agenda. But I do think there's a brightline between "pushing an agenda" and "publishing things that
426.
by eldavido 9y ago
HN is too narrow. My personal gripe with some of the beliefs here: - Belief that product/engineering/tech always trumps distribution. Sometimes it does. Often it doesn't. - Way too focused on software as "tech" to t
427.
by eldavido 9y ago
I see it a little differently. I think the world has just gotten too big to comprehend. In a small town, you could conceivably have firsthand knowledge of every restaurant and person you see each day. As we trade and communicate over longer
428.
by eldavido 9y ago
I agree that this is a foundational "liberal arts" skill, nevertheless, it's one many are never taught. If you look at the last electoral cycle, I think we had the most democratic (not Democratic) election in US history. The
429.
by eldavido 9y ago
I think this is all too true. I think a lot of what's going on in the world right now is explainable through the death of ubiquitous, reliably-sourced information. Growing up in suburban Illinois, we had a local paper. It was nothing s
430.
by eldavido 9y ago
I live in SV but grew up in Chicago. It's one of the best things going for that city.
431.
by eldavido 9y ago
Yes, it's called a MFN clause ("most favored nation") and is a standard deal term the channels negotiate with the hotels. They accept it because they have no choice. Hotels play all sorts of games with this, including throwin
432.
by eldavido 9y ago
No it isn't. The big chains are fighting to stay relevant against the channels (Expedia, Priceline, Airbnb). Franchisees don't want to pay 6-8% of revenue to a chain and then another 10-15% to a channel. They're going to pick
433.
by eldavido 9y ago
I've spent the last three years building a hotel property management system. I hate OTAs. They are gross middlemen who charge criminally high commissions to hotel operators. And as much as I philosophically support what you're doi
434.
by eldavido 9y ago
You're right and I'd like to add, from firsthand accounts of friends who workthere, facebook seems like an incredibly well-managed company. They have good process, measure what matters, focus on impact, and seem to keep their empl
435.
by eldavido 9y ago
There's another facet to this story that's not getting discussed: that of path dependence. The OP is Silicon Valley royalty. This matters. His site is pretty humble, but this guy was like, employee #10 at facebook and is probably
436.
by eldavido 9y ago
I know this was half in jest but it speaks to a larger point, that of the "implementation ghetto". I'm going to get a lot of pushback for saying this, but there are basically three roles in any company: (a) people who do the
437.
by eldavido 9y ago
This reminds me of Peter Lynch's comment about the stock market: "a voting machine in the short term, but a weighing machine in the long term". In the short-term, languages with good developer outreach and other factors win.
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by eldavido 9y ago
I think the only way you get this is having someone very, very experienced leading the project. MS had Anders Hejlsberg, who hasn't done much in life, except leading the Turbo Pascal and Delphi efforts, two of the most successful rapid
439.
by eldavido 9y ago
This is a broader theme in how technology develops. When I look at technologies like bitcoin, it's just proof of work/puzzles (a well-understood defense to sybil attacks) + basic crypto primitives like signatures + some of the p2p
440.
by eldavido 9y ago
On the way out (daily user here). I started a project about 4yrs ago, it was EF vs NH. Went with NH because EF was still pretty immature. The momentum is pretty clearly toward EF IMO. NH is missing a lot, including proper migration tooling
441.
by eldavido 9y ago
This is a false tradeoff. Early retirement is almost always an option for middle-class or better Americans. It's just a question of how much pain you want to put up with in terms of housing, lifestyle, where you want to live, whether y
442.
by eldavido 9y ago
I thing I wonder is what role lifestyle factors play. If you're making 200k on your own terms vs 250 at Google, I wonder who's better off. At that level of income, things like how stressful your work is, how interested in it you a
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by eldavido 9y ago
I completely agree. My point is opportunity cost. Unless you have a very clear idea of what you want to do/build--which many people do--you're better off with a day job. I see a lot of people essentially rage-quitting (let's
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by eldavido 9y ago
To author: you lost the political game. I busted my ass at a startup for years and also lost the political game. So I'm speaking from experience here. You can either get all mad and worked up and pissed off about it, and waste years of
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by eldavido 9y ago
The problem is that nobody is thinking long-term. Think about how startups work today. Rather than leasing a commercial office at half the price, they pay exorbitant premiums for WeWork. Nobody does proper capacity planning on AWS (let alon
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by eldavido 9y ago
Going through a period of personal reflection right now. Have read the OP essay easily a dozen times over the last 5-6 years. Somehow I read it again yesterday and by chance, here it is today, HN front page. I'm a traditionally educate
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Developer pay: an economics perspective(blog.shortbar.com)
2 points by eldavido 9y ago|0 comments
448.
The cup and saucer model of software development: balancing the short-/long-term(blog.shortbar.com)
1 points by eldavido 9y ago|0 comments
449.
by eldavido 9y ago
You're getting downvoted for tone but I share your sentiment. This guy is writing like he's the president of the united states. "We think that a company should survive to see the next century, not just the next quarter."
450.
by eldavido 9y ago
This is a really insightful comment. I came here to say I'm the counter-example to the article, in that I left a pretty good manager at a company that was clearly failing. This article feels like one of these things where someone'

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