HN user
Thanks for the question – this is Ben (subject of OP).
I listed some causes I think are valuable in the interview, but in general I think GiveWell and ACE are good evaluators:
* http://www.givewell.org/ * http://www.animalcharityevaluators.org/
For each charity they recommend, they have estimates of number of lives saved per dollar.
Thanks for the question – this is Ben (subject of the article).
I think living on minimum wage is a nice thing for journalists to put as a headline, but I tend to shy away from it as actual advice. If you are able to donate $100,000 per year as an engineer and then your car breaks down, making you unable to get to your job, what then? Are you really going to not fix your car and therefore quit your job, just so you can save $500 on the repair and meet some arbitrary spending target? That would be pretty stupid.
The [giving what we can](https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/get-involved/join/) pledge is that you will donate 10% of your income, and I encourage people to take that since 10% is a reasonable amount to donate (particularly for the sort of person who is reading hacker news).
Health eFilings | REMOTE | Senior Backend Engineer | http://healthefilings.com/
Health eFilings software enables physicians who provide better care to get paid more money.
We are looking for innovative, self-starting software developers to create additional and manage existing back end integrations with Electronic Heath Record (EHR) systems as well as working with the team to continuously develop and improve our current and future software products.
We believe in working smarter not harder: much of our backend code is “meta-“ code that parses government specifications and then generates our actual code from that.
This position has large amounts of autonomy, and you are held accountable for results, not process. You will have the opportunity to grow into management or tech leadership. This position reports to the CTO.
See http://healthefilings.com/careers/ for more information.
Health eFilings, software developer, REMOTE (US only)
Venture backed startup; our software enables physicians who provide better care to get paid more.
We have five team members, tons of paying customers, and are looking for another two awesome backend developers to help us scale.
* Working software in the hands of customers is the best measure of progress * We like functional design patterns and meta-programming * We use Rails, Backbone+Handlebars and Mongo, but believe in using the right tool for the job.
Health eFilings, software developer, REMOTE
Venture backed startup which is the premier provider of software solutions that enable health care providers to comply with Medicare reporting regulations while saving them time and money, enabling them to focus on delivering quality care.
We recently closed our seed round, have four employees, tons of paying customers, and are looking for an awesome backend developer to help us scale.
* Working software in the hands of customers is the best measure of progress * We like functional design patterns and meta-programming * We use Rails, Backbone+Handlebars and Mongo, but believe in using the right tool for the job.
Entrepreneurs are, in general, not motivated by money. This may be what you are saying - in which case I agree! What I object to is this statement:
Or may you just don't have the risk tolerance for entrepreneurship.
Risk tolerance is at best weakly related to the likelihood that you will become an entrepreneur, and risk-tolerant entrepreneurs [perform worse](http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/85/66/06/PDF/PEER_st...) than average.
Generally researchers identify industries by using a code system like [NAICS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Industry_Classif...). My guess is that the Google founders would not have been in a similar industry code, but I'm not familiar enough with Stanford to say for sure.
I would disagree with the causality. The sort of person who can get an influential job in a top-tier startup is probably also the sort of person who can start a good company.
Most entrepreneurs arise out of an idea.
And how did you get that idea? How did you get the experience to see that there was an unfilled need in the marketplace?
People who have experience in a field perceive their risks as lower (correctly!) and are therefore more likely to start a company. It is a perfectly rational decision and is unrelated to risk tolerance.
I think this is in interesting point (modulo the remark made elsewhere about "assuring" success), but I don't have the evidence to know how it should affect your decisions.
The research I cited found that first time and failed entrepreneurs have a 20% chance of success, whereas "skilled" entrepreneurs have a 30% chance of success. So if you can become "skilled" in one stint of employment, then you would expect to succeed sooner by being employed first than if you were doing startups that whole time.
But it's entirely possible that it takes multiple stints of direct employment to obtain whatever knowledge makes you skilled, in which case your argument is valid. I just don't know of any evidence about this though.
I'm just pointing out something fairly obivous - that not participating in a market is not a very effective way of changing how that market produces things.
Everyone participates in the market for buying food. There's probably someone out there who has the very narrow goal of changing how meat (and only meat) is produced, but for everyone else this is a strawman argument.
We want to change food production, and overpaying for similar products is obviously going to be less of a signal than larger dietary changes.
I don't know of anything else for FF, but it's [open source](https://github.com/Xodarap/Paranoid-Browsing) and in Javascript, so I assume a port wouldn't be too hard for anyone who knows the FF add-on model.
Pardon my naivete, but why isn't this obvious?
Of course two systems can only be consistent if they can communicate, so you have to either sacrifice availability until the partition is resolved, or give up on consistency.
If you invite me over to your house and I happen to see a dead body on the floor, the first amendment doesn't prevent me from reporting you to the police.
It's remarkable to me that hackers are against every form of alternative medicine, except regarding nutrition.
If I told you that the American Cancer Society said wearing pendants to protect from electromagnetic radiation was hokum, it would be case closed. But when the ADA says [low carb diets are nonsense](http://www.eatright.org/Public/content.aspx?id=10645#.UCemyU...) it's contentious.
I wonder why?
Given that every single Olympic athlete is advised by doctors I would say, "pretty damn strong".
You should see US News' annual survey of dieticians.[1] They agree with you, it's just an odd publication bias that gives these "alternative" diets traction.
US News & World report does an annual survey of dieticians: http://health.usnews.com/best-diet
Unsurprisingly, those dieticians overwhelmingly say that meat-heavy diets like paleo (ranked 25th out of 25) are horrific. The idea that there is some controversy about this is mostly due to people on HN without much formal education.
Your story is shockingly similar to mine.
I did eventually go back to school, and my salary tripled as a result, but if you are fine making $25k then why worry about it?
If the reason you would care about money is to make yourself happy, then there's no reason to go to school if you'd be happier without a degree. If you want money to donate to charities etc., then it's a harder question.
I have to say, I'm not smart enough to understand this "rocket science." Laws exist because they accomplish the goals that we as a society want to accomplish.
There's nothing intrinsically valuable about writing your name on a certain piece of the envelope - it just helps us accomplish our goals of privacy, etc. If changing technology means that we need new laws to accomplish our goals then there's nothing wrong with that.
For those interested, peta will give you a free starter kit to help you eat more vegs (http://bit.ly/hpGK0b).
(Although of course they approach it from an ethical perspective. But it makes you just as healthy.)
There are very strong reasons for thinking that vertebrates feel pain in a way very similar to humans (see e.g. http://philosophyforprogrammers.blogspot.com/2010/11/who-fee...).
There is absolutely no evidence that plants feel anything.
Well, statistically speaking, vegans live longer, right? That does not necessarily imply that all the benefits come from the diet, and it certainly does not say that going vegan is guaranteed to make you live longer, but it does mean that if you choose a random vegan they will be healthier than a random omnivore.
So I think if you have to choose between the statements "vegans are healthy" or "vegans are unhealthy," there's not a lot of evidence to argue for the latter.
It's very hard to find humanely slaughtered meat. To quote Foer, who in turn was citing a review of some audits of slaughterhouses (emphasis in the original):
>[Grandin's report found] deliberate acts of cruelty occuring on a regular basis at 32 percent of the plants [slaughterhouses] she surveyed during announced visits in the United States. It's such a shocking statistic I had to read it three times. Deliberate acts, occurring on a regular basis, witnessed by an auditor - witnessed during announced audits that gave the slaughterhouse time to clean up the worst problems. What about cruelties that weren't witnessed? And what about accidents, which must have been far more common?
We can make some guesses. See e.g. http://philosophyforprogrammers.blogspot.com/2010/11/who-fee...
This is really not a valid objection. It is fairly well studied, and it's known as an "appeal to nature." You can see some info on it at these places:
* http://www.fallacyfiles.org/adnature.html * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature
It's largely ignored in philosophical discussions because of the issues mentioned in these pages (and more!).
Statement one: "It's impossible to be a perfect programmer, so it's stupid to even try."
Statement two: "It's impossible to never harm someone, so it's stupid to even try."
Surely you don't agree with statement one? So why does the argument hold for statement two?
What animal products are used in the growing of vegetables? You mean fertilizer? Almost all fertilizer is synthetic; there are a few places that use manure, but they are the exception.
Grass-fed meat is often worse for the environment. See e.g. http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/2010/04/08/grass-fed-be...
In any case, consider an analogy: suppose you wanted to end human slavery. Would supporting "sustainable" slavery end it more quickly, or not supporting any slavery at all?
I realize that slavery is not the moral equivalent of eating meat, but in terms of the effectiveness of boycotts, they are pretty similar. I can't really imagine a way in which the boycott to buy only "sustainably" slave-made goods would hasten the end of slavery more quickly.
It would be better to compare direct substitutes, like tvp vs. ground beef.
The first google results find $3.50/lb for tvp and $6.50/lb ground beef (http://www.nutsonline.com/cookingbaking/beans/soybeans/prote... and http://www.amazon.com/Omaha-Steaks-pkgs-Premium-Ground/dp/B0... respectively).
So the conclusion might be true, despite an invalid argument.