onemorepassword

One foundation of the entire argument seems to be that support for the Democratic party makes SV progressive. However, in a global context only the minority left wing of the Democratic party could be called progressive.

Also, a simpler explanation for the large support for the Democrats would be that SV consists of intelligent, highly educated and well-informed people that wouldn't dream of supporting the extremist, anti-intellectual and downright insane collection of circus freaks the Republican party has become.

Just based on the purely anecdotal evidence of online and personal encounters with SV-dwellers, I would consider most of them to be "open minded conservatives".

The other foundation is the way companies in SV are organized and equity dived compared to traditional companies. This could simply be explained as "pragmatic", which is how most companies view it themselves.

It seems to me the author is trying to project his own ideas on SV.

There has been a recurring pattern of quite vitriolic ad hominem attacks on certain people on HN in a way that I can only describe as "celebrity-bashing" for quite while now. Other favorite targets are for instance RMS and Gruber.

This isn't just the odd troll. There's a lot of cheerleading going on in the form of upvotes, even though the attacks don't contribute anything, and would normally be downvoted into light grey.

The title should be "the margins on bottomfeeding are shrinking".

I consider this a good thing. Now if only these companies could stop calling themselves "developers" altogether, and maybe we wouldn't have to explain so often to potential clients why our software development is so much more expensive than their so-called "web development".

I fail to understand why the US even has quota on desirable migrant workers with a solid job offer.

One the one hand the US still does this "we're an immigrant nation" dog and pony show with shit like the green card lottery, on the other hand, if you're educated, qualified and have the guarantee of a full-time well paid job, it's harder to get into the US than most European countries.

The utter lack of control on the part of the customer, having neither an approval step nor the ability to switch the card off seems to me to be a fundamental flaw in this payment method.

This system was pretty much designed to be abused.

Transifex looks nice, thanks for the tip, but it seems like you have to add a lot of glue to connect your own version control to their proprietary version control via their API.

What I would really like is something like Weblate (http://weblate.org), that you can hook in directly to your code repo. Is there anything like that out there?

I used to, HN was one of the few public places I felt comfortable doing that. And I know my team and people I know are on HN too, so I better behave.

But then I still got slow-banned on that account without any given reason or recourse. That felt uncomfortably asymmetrical, to put my real identity out there and to then be secretly "punished" by an anonymous mod.

Since then I consider any account on HN to be a throwaway. I'm still open to being personally accountable, but only if it works both ways.

"it’s an identity system that follows you everywhere"

Yeah, that really sounds like a good thing...

Yes, and Europe is full of white people only dancing around hand in hand in love and peace.

US melting pot my ass. My black European father married my white European mother when the US still had segregation.

Seriously, I fucking hate this uninformed American crap, like Europe is some mythical white people planet?

"Racial homogeneity" my ass, Scandinavia or the rest of Europa isn't living in the middle ages anymore. It's insulting and borderline racist nonsense.

Sweden, England and most Western countries have only become safer over time.

This is just racist bullshit.

It's not "perception". Recent studies have shown that about half the Romanians in the Netherlands are here illegally, and most of those are criminals. And those that are here legally don't always work under legal conditions.

This royally sucks for Romanian developers that want to work here, because despite being EU members they still need a work permit. The government basically assumes that the odds of Romanians coming here with good intentions are pretty low.

It's the disconnect between what Google is (the 800 pound gorilla that can roll out a new product like an appliance manufacturer can roll out a new toaster), and how Google sees itself (the brave disruptive startup launching something cool in private beta).

It's the same disconnect that we know from Microsoft, that couldn't see itself as the monopolist they were, because their self-image was still that of the little startup that took on the mighty IBM.

Of course it could all just be marketing, like every word out of Google these days is just marketing without substance.

Either way, Google doesn't listen to user feedback and is perfectly capable of rolling out a new product on a global scale. "Request an invite" is BS.

I don't give a shit about sexist and homophobic neanderthals who need to put down, intimidate and bully other people to make themselves feel better.

And no, I truthfully don't hang out with such scum.

You seem to have a very twisted idea of what normal, civilized male behavior is.

Sidenote: afaik, "Van Vlack" is not a "Dutch" name.

Inappropriately adding the "Van" (which in Dutch is written with a lowercase v) is typically something Americans of Dutch origin did to make their name sound more interesting to Americans.

But for those looking to process Dutch names (or other cultures with similar construct), those names are sorted by the part behind the "van", i.e., "Jan van den Brink" (yes, it gets more complicated) will expect to find his name under "B".

"Request an invite".

Dear god, Google still thinking it's a cute little startup. It really is the Microsoft story all over again.

Bull. Startups can't pay more because there's no investment capital.

Established and successful companies that pay well still can't get people. The shortage is real.

You would be surprised to learn that immigration for qualified tech and science people is a lot easier in many European countries than it is in the US.

An American with a job offer can easily get a work permit in the Netherlands, no quota and nice tax rebate to boot.

The shortage is the same for the same simple reason: qualified people simply aren't there. We can hire from the US, Canada and all of the EU, that still doesn't solve our problem.

Romanians are an issue, but for completely other reasons. Quite frustrating, but nothing to do with labor laws or visa in general.

But other than that I've never had or heard of any such issues here in Amsterdam. Locals are getting outnumbered in the tech-scene. The majority of my team is now non-Dutch, and not because it's cheap, because we pay well.

And it's stupid too, because they pretty much get what they pay for. Peanuts, monkeys and such.

So small companies that could afford decent salaries have 3 underpaid devs and some interns doing the work one good developer can do for half the money. And do a better job too.

I have no idea, but given they effort they put into bringing people in from outside NL I doubt they skimp on salary. The don't have a rep for being cheapskates in general.

Booking.com is the reason why the rest of us have such a hard time finding people...

OTOH, they're very generous in their relocation support and most expats get tired of the job before they get tired of Amsterdam, so they do help to fill the pool for the rest of us.

There's a reason why the vast majority of "jobs" on this site are either for interns or co-founders (with the "co" part being actually making stuff).

There's no money in Dutch startups, very little investment.

So with some very rare exceptions, most startups pay way less than traditional IT, and you can shout all you want about only wanting young an hungry talent willing to work for equity (also quite relative, very few Dutch startups flip or go IPO), this is seriously hampering their potential for attracting talent.

Especially in a country that may be less risk-averse than most European countries, but still way more than the US.

These guys are disrespectful, insulting and pathetic, but at least she got the job and none of the anecdotes suggest they assumed she was incapable of doing that job.

That's already two steps up from Mad Men territory.

And beside the crudeness, which is more a social class difference than anything else, I don't see how this differs from the reports of sexism in tech. At least she's got the (albeit clumsy and inadequate) support of her employer. They weren't advertising job posts for "brogrammers".

Being less crude than construction workers is not exactly a high standard for tech.

> Just replace all the sexist jokes with gay jokes or sissy jokes or just about any other type of jokes men direct at one another to establish pecking orders within groups.

You may want to consider hanging out with a different crowd...

Also, this is not "hanging out", this is the workplace. Different standards should apply. Bullying and intimidation in the workplace is unacceptable for any reason, and in this case it's both bullying and sexism.

Yes, I know this is how certain groups of men behave. It also happens to be the same men who's jobs are in danger of permanently disappearing, and this is exactly one of the main reasons nobody gives a shit.

I would say all developers want more than just a technical challenge.

They just don't all look for that "more" in their job.

With the exception of a very small sub group of people with serious mental issues, it's not a hard problem.

Most of it has been solved already. It's just a matter of having the will to do it. That will is absent.

Most developers in SF laugh at the amount of money their European counterparts get paid after taxes. The don't consider not having to step over homeless people a "benefit". That attitude is your problem right there.

We're very well aware of the extent of the situation in the US. It's been a long time since Europeans lined up to emigrate to America.

Also, ironically enough, most Northern Europeans would already consider the circumstances of the underprivileged in Scotland unacceptable... The bad parts of Glasgow are considered the most horrible places in Western Europe. And the people there have housing, healthcare and access to education.

There is no Europe. I can only speak for my country, the Netherlands, and there is no such thing as people not having the personal funds to buy or rent housing. That's why we have minimum wages, social security, rent subsidies and regulated rent.

The homeless here are people mostly people with mental health issues that reject or don't respond to treatment.

It's by far not a perfect utopian system, but to have people being homeless just because they can't afford it would be considered an unacceptable failure of a civilized society. Decent housing, like healthcare, is considered a human right, not something people have to be able to "afford".

People who defend this under the heading of "it's their service, don't use it if you don't like it", or "they're doing this for your convenience" completely miss the point.

There is a reason why we had strict regulations (a dirty word on HN, I know) for "old fashioned" mail and telephone. To eavesdrop on people's private communication was considered a disgusting practice that belonged in totalitarian regimes, and an unacceptable violation of people's rights.

Modern online services have circumvented such regulations, but that doesn't make what Microsoft, or Facebook, or Google are doing any more ethical or socially desirable.

All of this casual disregard for basic ethics can't continue without a serious backlash. And such a backlash won't just hit Microsoft e.a., but our entire industry.

It's time we stopped considering ourselves to be untouchable just because the law hasn't caught up yet, or because the majority of the people haven't figured out what the fuck we're doing.

Some changes through technology are unstoppable. This however, isn't one of them. It's a choice.