nathantotten

Not my scope of expertise, but I believe corporations are prohibited from donating money directly to a candidate based on federal campaign laws. They could of course give money to an action committee, but there are lots of restrictions on coordination between the two. So I guess Facebook could fund his campaign via a PAC as long as Zuckerburg himself had nothing to do with the strategy. That would be an odd campaign.

More likely Zuckerberg could fund the campaign himself via gifts or loans - this is what Trump did (not fully of course, but he did gift/loan some money).

I’m not totally convinced that absolves the system/UX. It seems more like an excuse/justification.

The obvious comparison for the HN crowd is the gitlab database outage last year. Fascinating to see how they responded compared to the government of Hawaii. https://about.gitlab.com/2017/02/10/postmortem-of-database-o...

Valid point, but the article doesn't mention anything like that. :)

It is worth noting though that some of these costs are simply tax credits for revenue that wouldn't be collected if the factory isn't build. So they are comparing the "cost" to a basis that assumes the factory gets built and pays normal taxes. Items in that group are:

* State tax credits, $2.85 billion * Local government incentives, $764 million[1] * State sales tax exemption, $139 million

When you add back the revenue that would be generated from 13,000 jobs the state will come out well ahead.

Note, I am not in favor of the government picking corporate winners, but I think it is fair to clarify that the state of WI is not paying FoxConn or pulling money from other places (at least in a large portion of the line items).

[1] I don't know what this actually is, but I would assume it means tax credits based on various metrics (i.e. jobs created).

I think that's being a little extreme. I would guess that a CSO is typically somebody who has the experience, but has worked their way up. It is natural that as you progress in leadership in a company you become less knowledgeable about the details. A good executive is somebody who can hire the right people and listen to them. Somebody who has to know everything themselves is actually dangerous in my opinion - they are ignorant of what they don't know, could be unwilling to take advice, and may be inflexible about new ideas.

To clarify, I am not talking about a CSO at a 100 person startup. I am talking about somebody like the CSO of equifax or Boeing which should have hundreds of people reporting to them. They cannot possible know the specifics of everything they secure.

Yeah, that makes sense. You’re right there needs to be a reward for achieving some measure of security.

IMO, the specifics of how to secure are less important than ensuring proper cost of not securing your systems. I think having rigid rules like PCI would be significant burden and not allow flexibility as technology and business changes.

On the other hand, simply ensuring that the financial penalties are in line with the damage done should be enough to solve the issue. You said yourself that boards won’t agree to spend money. If they saw a huge financial downside risk they would be more likely to invest in security.

I would assume that a CSO at a F500 company is mostly responsible for things like budgeting, hiring, and high level strategy. I would think not knowing these specifics is reasonable. What isn’t excusable though is these companies ignoring advice from internal and external sources. Companies clearly make deliberate budget choices by weighing risk/reward and a CSO at a big company often rationally doesn’t make the right security choice because the risk is small. IMO, bills like this are needed in order to force companies to properly value the risk of bad security.

TLDR: @realDonaldTrump can post whatever he wants and we won't do anything about it. Also, we claim that he doesn't impact our growth.

Yes. Thanks. :)

Auth0 is probably pretty close. I spent 3 years there (recently left, but not because of anything negative with the company). They hire remote, they are super flexible with work hours, etc. Culture is that of basically be responsible and get your work done. Really high bar on hiring though so it can be tough to get in, but if you do get in it’s an awesome place to work. Retention is super high - I was one of the few people who have ever left the company voluntarily. ;)

I know they are hiring for lots of positions as well. auth0.com/jobs

I’m all for activism, but it’s pretty clear that Pai doesn’t care what “the people” think. He isn’t an elected official, he doesn’t need to raise money, he is guaranteed a few board seats or consulting positions after his term that will pay millions. I fear there is no stopping this one. We need to spend our efforts on the long term - state laws, 2018/20/22+ elections - rather than burning energy on a lost cause. The battle is lost, but the war can be won.

I know this is off topic from this thread, but I’m honestly curious as to why you think this. What evidence exists to support your statement?

Normally, I would just assume this type of comment is simply trolling, but I looked at your profile and it seems you are a real person with generally intelligent comments so now I’m curious.

Well, in this case "Amazon" is actually a team of people.

I recently moved and took everything with me. This included replacing z-wave light switches and outlets with normal ones. I swapped everything out before we listed the house. The reality is that most people will just be confused by this sort of stuff and you aren’t going to get any extra money when you sell your house. It’s a pain, but assuming you don’t move very often it’s worth it. Now I have all the things in my new house and it’s setup just the way I like.

Yeah, they had a post form that had a field for username that was available only to the founders. So they could post content and then invent a username to make it appear that there were lots of unique users. They discuss it in this podcast. http://one.npr.org/?sharedMediaId=545635014:547386946

You have to consider this in the context at the time. Yes it would have been expensive, but Microsoft was investing BILLIONS into Windows Phone. Microsoft and partners spent something like $700 million dollars just on marketing for the launch of Windows Phone 7[1,2].

To spend that kind of money on marketing and then not dedicate resources to the actual product seems foolish. And I am not saying they should have done this for only one app. I am saying they should have done this for many apps. If they had created quality versions of, say, the top 25 apps for mobile at the time they would have been in a much better position. I believe they could have made significant traction with business users. Remember, at the time Office wasn't available on other platforms and was (is) a huge draw for many people.

If they had been successful with the strategy and gained market share the partners would have wanted to take over their own apps anyway to enable monetization. But they needed users for that and to get users they needed apps. You have to jump start it somehow.

Now, would it have made any difference? Who knows. But IMO, you either need to not do it or you need to do all parts of it right. You can't go half way on the ecosystem and expect to succeed in an already challenging market.

1: https://techcrunch.com/2010/08/26/microsoft-half-billion-dol... 2: https://techcrunch.com/2012/01/04/microsoft-oems-pledging-20...

This is a stretch IMO. I was working there too at the time and the focus on apps was never as strong as it should have been. Yes, they paid out lots of money to get devs to build apps, but they never really dedicated the resources to building quality apps. The prime example was Facebook. This was an app built by Microsoft with FBs blessing, but it was always far behind in terms of features and quality. Developement of that app and other flagship apps was not a core focus. Work was outsourced and not given enough resources. Had Microsoft put quality dev teams on building high quality third-party apps I think the chances of success would have greatly improved. From my prospective the focus was on filling the store with apps regardless of quality. This convinced the first generation of Microsoft loyalists to buy Windows Phones, but turned off many of those people. Most would not go on to buy a second WP or recommend them to friends and family. This includes many (dare I say most) Microsoft employees who where enthusiastic about the product at first, but when it came time to buy a second or third device moved on to Android or iPhone.

At least for European customers. This won’t help everyone.

Bed bath and beyond too. We ordered some cleaning product on Amazon that was delivered by BBB recently so I checked the price. We paid 3x on Amazon.

Where I work, engineers hire engineers. You are right on some level that it is hard to know exactly what a company does, but for many jobs in software that isn't entirely true. Read the companies blog, look at their open source projects, use the product, and most importantly read the job posting. I really don't think you'll have to make something up if you really are a good fit for the role.

Good point. And I would seriously consider an applicant that wrote such an application, but better than putting it in his resume would be to write a quick note. "Hey, I've been looking for a new role. As part of my process I wrote this app. See it here and let me know what you think." That would get somebody noticed.

We do for the most part. We might hire a number of people from the same position, but we typically write a post for each type of position or team.

Even at Microsoft this was often the case - of course there was a generic template, but you would put specifics to the role.

I'm really not talking about something lengthy. But I get 100s of applications for every job post I publish. Most people who apply are frankly not qualified. If you are qualified, write a few sentences. "Hey, I saw your post for [...]. I thought this looked great for me because I have worked on [...] and I am super excited to learn more about [....]".

I am not asking for paragraphs, but show me you are interested. I honestly spend hours writing and reviewing the jobs I post and it takes probably 100+ hours total from a team to hire a person. We want to hire you, but you've got to help us. :)

If someone can't be bothered to spend 10 minutes writing a cover letter for a job they want then I would consider them unqualified. I don't want to work with somebody who refuses to put in a bit of effort to get what they want.

I spend at least a few hours writing job posts. Why shouldn't I expect the same?

I pretty much disregard every application that doesn't have at least a basic note explaining why you want this particular job. Maybe getting a job is a numbers game, but I don't agree that getting a good job is.

Another option, why not find a startup that you can join remotely while traveling? Unless you really want to not work for 6 months, working during the week and exploring on the weekend while living anywhere might be a nice balance. You'll get experience that will help when you find what you want to do on your own. From a life standpoint traveling for some time is a great experience. From a career standpoint, having a 6 month gap in your resume at such a young age could be an issue. I hire a lot of engineers and to be honest if I saw somebody that worked at google for 2 years and then took 6 months off to travel I would really worry about their commitment. 2 years is about the absolute minimum you should stay at one company. Moving any more often tells me, as a hiring manager, that I risk taking a bet on you, training you, and then having you leave right when you actually start adding value. Obviously, this assumes you need to get another job if your startup doesn't work, but that is unfortunately the most likely outcome.

Interesting podcast with Instacart's founder where he talks about an investor who turned him down because the same investor lost money on webvan. https://www.npr.org/player/embed/523003162/523047374

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