Hacker News Reader

ashwinajon Chinese Workers Abandon Silicon Valley for Riches Back Home

There is no denying the fact that it's hard to get permanent residency in the US. But immigration should be a two way street, if people decide to stay in the US they should try to assimilate. Is there a "bamboo celing", yes there is; so is a "curry ceiling" and what have you "ceiling". But if you do not push yourself to better your communication skills and other relevant skills required to be successful, you can't expect to shatter this ceiling. This was true for other immigrants too (18th/19th century Irish, Italian etc.)

It's hard not to overlook the fact that a lot of would be immigrants make no effort to assimilate and cluster themselves off from mainstream society; especially in a immigrant welcoming area like Silicon Valley. I bet if you were to go to China/India etc., no one's going to go out of their way to accept you.

(BTW, I'm an Indian citizen on H1B and I'm saying this, you can downvote my post but it doesn't change ground realities)

ashwinajon Jack in the Box CEO reconsiders automation, kiosks

Well put!

If they were free to do anything else, they would've already considered not working in a minimum wage job. It's impractical to expect low skilled workers to suddenly pick up skilled work with no training and effort.

ashwinajon Effective Engineer – Notes

Hi Edmond, your book was great and I enjoyed reading it!

I do have a question on your topic on high leverage work; as a startup how would you know what is high leverage work? You have talked about various tooling projects at Quora which turned out to be duds, but how would you know that beforehand without trying? I guess the same applies to your book...

ashwinajon Effective Engineer – Notes

So you're okay with the fact that they are kinda-sorta exploiting you (by not including you as a co-patent holder) but have reservations on employees utilizing company resources to further their career?

That seems like a really raw deal to me. You might argue that you are "paid" to do this; not really, you can just coast on 9-5 and draw the same (or in the same ballpark) paycheck as someone who is busting his behind to invent something. Also when there is downsizing you might think that contributions is the only thing that matters, but it is demonstrably not (I'm speaking about regular companies not a small startup).

ashwinajon Effective Engineer – Notes

You're forgetting the fact that the company is also building it's "career" off your's too.

Don't believe me? Any invention that you have created at your workplace (patents etc.) is always held by your company, not you.

ashwinajon Men Resist Green Behavior as Un-Manly

Yes.

I really am puzzled by articles denigrating men. If I were an alien from another planet I would wonder why men even exist if I were to read all such articles (Yes I know men are only good for reproduction).

Sure there are a lot of bad/evil/despicable men out there as there are a lot of women (you can downvote me, but it doesn't change reality). Let's take a recent example, it is a known fact that Trump doesn't respect women that much; yet the reason he won the presidency is perpetuated by the media as, he won because of the disenchanted 'white men'. Excuse me? 42% of women voted for him, this isn't a trivial percentage like a statistical error. Why isn't there any spotlight on this?

This whole men vs women debate is just utter ridiculous (in most respects); call a spade a spade and don't resort to dog whistle tactics.

ashwinajon Silicon Valley homes now out of reach even for big spenders

As someone who was present in the so called "Silicon hills" (Austin, TX) and "Telecom corridor" (Dallas, TX) it was hard to find a tech job during the 2008 recession.

These places look great from the outside (cheap, plenty of space, infrastructure etc.), but the job prospects during a downturn are radically different as compared to the Bay Area (I'm only talking about 2008, not the dotcom bubble).

ashwinajon The worst is yet to come for American shopping malls

Just a thought, malls in America all look the same (with some exceptions). I do realize this was a concious effort based on data that consistency in mall design reduces "friction" and provides "familiarity" to consumers.

This isn't the case in a lot of other countries/cities; Dubai for example has multiple malls which look entirely different with it's own unique theme (or themes). They have an overlap of brand name stores, yet the business is brisk. Can American mall owners learn something from this?

ashwinajon Google’s Pixel Buds won’t change the world

Silicon valley arrogance?

If you don't like it, rightly criticize it (with the caveat that it's your opinion or state facts) and don't use it. I don't understand the silicon valley bashing; if you are so smart why don't you build something better?

ashwinajon As Silicon Valley Gets ‘Crazy,’ Midwest Beckons Tech Investors

Totally agree. Just because someone acknowledges you, doesn't mean anything.

The phrase that gets to my nerves is "bless his/her heart", which I translate to "I <insert long string of expletives> you, but I'm going to pretend to be nice because I have to keep up this stupid facade that society has created"

ashwinajon Places in America that pay people to move there

Genuine question: If your job is in programming (or heavily uses tech, such as an office worker etc.) why does internet speed in 2017 matter? Most places in my opinion have adequate bandwidth.

Here's what I'd imagine a remote worker's workflow:

1. Connect to your company's VPN

    Then for a programmer:  
  
    a. NFS/Samba mount a drive which has your code
    b. Log in to a remote VM with your development environment
    c. IM client for textual communication

    For a office worker:

    a. Remote Desktop: Either full remote desktop or dumb terminal/thin clients
    b. Google office suite/Office 365 etc.
    c. Sharepoint or some such (this maybe slow IIRC)
    d. A softphone for calls (this shouldn't be an issue with the bandwidths listed)

So the bottleneck can be your VPN, remote mounts or remote VMs, that's not something your internet speed can control.

ashwinajon Silicon Valley Is Not Your Friend

> I wonder how "Wall Street is not your friend" would play in the NY Times.

That's exactly what I had in mind when I was reading the article! Businesses are in existence to make money, it's up to us (which includes govt. regulations) to reign them in when necessary. This shouldn't be a surprise that businesses are exploiting the masses.

ashwinajon Zucktown, USA

This is such a ridiculous impasse. Why don't the authorities do what most sensible countries do i.e. build multi-storied apartments with decent public transportation? Yes I know in the US that equates to the ghetto/projects/low income housing (which is a mindset that needs to change).

As far as the bay area goes this is possible since most residents are foreigners or 1st and 2nd generation Americans who are probably more open to the idea of living in a skyscraper.

ashwinajon IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S

The discussion seems to be diverted to outsourcing; whether it is good or bad. If I were an IBM shareholder, I want to know who is holding the IBM execs accountable? For years they have underperformed, whatever metric you care to use to reach that conclusion; they seem to be unaffected by outsourcing and have golden parachutes.

To hide their technical/execution incompetency they outsource jobs and cook the books. It is moot to discuss outsourcing, the real problems are: 1. The widening wage gap between a regular employee and an executive

2. Complete lack of accountability of executives

3. Despite their pathetic performance are getting richer and richer

ashwinajon IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S

True, and it's true for other nationalities (Asian specifically) too. It's a shame that we talk about merit and behind the scenes it's all a sham with with cutbacks and shady hiring practices (and I'm saying this as an Indian citizen in the US).

ashwinajon Why Should I Start a Startup?

> I cannot promise that doing a tech startup will make you rich (in fact the odds are against you becoming rich), but I can promise that it is one of the most challenging things you can choose to do. It will push you past your limits, force you to learn faster, and maybe show you that once in a while the impossible is possible.

Couldn't have said it better! Bookmarked, thanks for explaining it in simple terms. I find myself fumbling to explain this to my non-startup friends.

ashwinajon Kill Your Ego to Achieve Software Success

Thanks for the write up! I know a bunch of people who need to read this :)

ashwinajon Mastering Programming (2016)

Just because I say beautiful code is a myth, doesn't mean I and other people write crap code. If you have to make an argument, don't start off with extremes. I'm sure you've heard much worse things than some random stranger saying beautiful code is a myth. Dial down the hyperbole...

> write code like poetry

When a code base reaches a certain size it's hard to write "beautiful code". Please don't pretend that it is just as easy when you have multiple complexities/priorities. If you write so called beautiful code in complex projects, good for you.

ashwinajon Mastering Programming (2016)

I'll take your assessment at face value (although a quick look at github repos, it seems that junit is way larger).

My point wasn't to ship crap, it was about obsessing on quality over actually shipping (and cutting some corners). This is something I learned at my first job, we obsessed over quality and never shipped. Guess what happened? :)

ashwinajon Mastering Programming (2016)

> completely dejected by the quality of the code there

Please list a project of equal complexity that has been written beautifully from start to finish in your opinion. This myth of beautiful coding needs to stop! Code is not a masterpiece from Van Gogh, it needs to ship. This determines quality, not the usage of some obscure/mainstream/unreadable/oh-look-how-cool-I-am idiosyncracy of the language. If you ain't shipping, it's completely useless.

ashwinajon Even moderate drinking could harm the brain

I concur. Small to moderate amount of drinking isn't as bad. Sugary drinks are the worst!

ashwinajon Aadhaar isn’t progress – it’s dystopian and dangerous

> By symmetry if you expand the remit to include every ounce of stupidity committed by people in the west, we in India will crush them outright.

Yeah right. You have a very rosy picture of how people are in the West. I've lived in 3 countries, there are stupid people everywhere. It's not an exclusive domain of India.

> value privacy because of the historical context they came out of.

What historical context?

I got no issues with the Aadhar card, so I'm staying put. Why don't you stop trolling, drop your smartphone/computer and instead go out there to make a difference.

ashwinajon Aadhaar isn’t progress – it’s dystopian and dangerous

We agree to disagree.

> Do you think all these people in the west don't see this? See this math on privacy vs efficiency? They do. And they've seen what it does, and it's been bad enough that it's been burnt into them through generations.

I won't be using the people in the "West" as a benchmark to determine what is right or wrong. There are equally dumb, superstitious people in the West as they are in India. Source: [0][1][2][3][4][5] and many many more...

[0] https://today.yougov.com/news/2016/12/27/belief-conspiracies... [1] http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2011/PPP_Release_Nati... [2] http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/18710759/kyrie-irving-cle... [3] https://www.adl.org/education/resources/backgrounders/militi... [4] http://www.newsweek.com/what-does-alt-right-movement-want-52... [5] http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/senate-dems-block-sanctuar...

ashwinajon Aadhaar isn’t progress – it’s dystopian and dangerous

> demonstrably don't care about sanitation, and are easily sidelined by superstition.

Exactly, thanks for making my point. There are such fundamental problems in India that privacy laws are the least of the layman's problems.

Do you seriously think someone who doesn't have basic ameneties (that we take for granted) cares about this? Get real, they don't.

ashwinajon Aadhaar isn’t progress – it’s dystopian and dangerous

I recently made a trip to India; just a week earlier me and a few friends were talking about driver less cars, automation, AI etc.(you know the usual SV talking points) When I landed there all this futuristic talk flew out of my head; it is a very different world out there.

I am reminded of this feeling, because this author sits in his/her nice comfy office in Mountain View mouthing off on something with no understanding of ground realities; to me this is absurd. When I say reality, I mean actually living there. Taj Mahal selfies and elephant rides are not counted :)

Does anyone care about privacy in India as much as they do in the US? I seriously doubt it. Let's be real, most of us (Indians in the US) did not even know what privacy meant and we don't really care about it. If we did, we wouldn't be posting on FB, Twitter, Instagram etc. or signing up for a time share presentation just to get a 3 day hotel stay ;)

ashwinajon On Campuses Far From China, Still Under Beijing’s Watchful Eye

At some point, someone with gravitas has to come out and say "Money is not everything!".

In Flint, MI city officials say, "We're not spending money to upgrade water pipes"

For healthcare, "I don't want to pay for somebody else's healthcare"

For housing "I don't want a low income neighborhood next to mine reducing my property value"

For race relations "The criminal justice system is just fine"

....And now "Don't offend the Chinese"

This has to stop, money is not everything. At some point we need to do what's right (and show empathy) before money.

There are lots of things that people don't like, the world doesn't revolve around them. If the US claims to be a free society and wants to uphold it's true values, man the eff up and stop catering to almighty dollar. It'll hurt in the short term, but will bear dividends later.

ashwinajon Facebook: greater than 15% of employees are H1Bs

> and I don't think that is sufficient to make the point.

This maybe a small sample size but none the less shows that there are jobs that Americans won't do. This is despite the decent pay and benefits.

> from growers who have an interest in maintaining the supply of foreign laborers, and I don't think that is sufficient to make the point.

Sure, any one who owns a business would want to lower costs. If there is no option, that would have to raise salaries. And yet, no Americans are taking these jobs.

So your off the cuff comment "You can get people to literally haul garbage for a living if you give them a good salary, health care, and decent job security." falls flat on it's face.

ashwinajon Facebook: greater than 15% of employees are H1Bs

http://latinosreadytovote.com/wages-rise-california-farms-am...

> Some farmers are even giving laborers benefits normally reserved for white-collar professionals, like 401(k) plans, health insurance, subsidized housing and profit-sharing bonuses. Full-timers at Silverado Farming, for example, get most of those sweeteners, plus 10 paid vacation days, eight paid holidays, and can earn their hourly rate to take English classe

Care to explain?

ashwinajon Countries that are reducing numbers of immigrant workers

Maybe I'm cynical, but I don't see how India can move from a services/back office economy to product development until expats with such experience move back. Our education quality is pathetically dismal, infrastructure within cities needs improvement, red tape needs to go etc. We don't have enough risk takers and many of us are risk averse.

I think the key is convincing expats to come back, which is hard.

ashwinajon People in India are angry at Snapchat but they are boycotting a wrong app

This is true for most countries and not isolated to India. The whole thing gets exemplified because of the population.