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Nice, will be good to share this as a link to summarize the set of issues.

What do you think of your CEO now :)?

Greate going! Wish you all the virtual support I/we can.

Seems so - https://github.com/yue/yue/tree/master/docs/paid_plans

:-) - Strangely, I am looking forward to this. I think it just comes down to the fact that I am very comfortable with JS and node ecosystem and prefer that over all other mobile platforms atm. I also think maintaining one (almost ~80%) codebase for both platforms is a significant advantage.

To clarify - Expo as a framework, and not XDE. I think they have made Expo eject a bit cumbersome but works with some wrangling. I like the the Expokit framework in general but don't want to be tied to the Expo's release chain.

On the other hand - I find its the other way.

Xcode is the most "diff" IDE from other IDEs. I like Swift but just dont like Objective-C. The build tools and ecosystem is too tightly tied (I like to switch between development machines without having to always be on a mac).

Java is definitely painful, but I suppose the bias I have here is that I have developed on it for several years.

The breath of fresh air so far has been React-native and i wish more things get ported over to JS (or like Expo kit).

Congratulations! A welcome change in healthcare.

Are you building a relationship with the hospitals and clinics so that we wont't have to talk to them, but just use your api to get and push our patient's data?

Personally, my experience in the valley (being hired as well hiring people) has been not been guided by age. My experience has been with the startup since it was at 50 member to well over 100 now.

I am in early 30s, which means I am mostly interviewing for senior engineering position. I have been part of teams where we have made offers to several folks older than I am for similar or higher position. This is the only time when age does come up for discussion (is he really qualified to be a senior or not?)

However, some patterns I do notice from time to time are:

- Younger folks are more eager at times to do more.

- Their enthusiasm also comes with quality of work that needs some additional care. But, it is critical we mentor them during these times.

- Older folks are generally more clear on what they want to work and how they want to solve a problem. Experience most likely.

- The really bad situation to be in is when some of the older (senior) folks don't drive and take initiatives and just wade through. With someone senior you want them to be there to mentor, help, guide, keep an eye out on many things, but we have seen a few senior folks who don't make that effort - This is probably the #1 problem I have seen in teams. A sense of agility is almost vital.

- I have seen the same lack of "drive" amongst some younger devs as well.

- End of the day, its not age, its almost the subject scale of how passionate they are about their work that has worked for us. Old/young is really irrelevant.

As somebody who has written a lot of Java code before (read imperative) and now have had the opportunity to write more JS (which makes it a bit easier to write Functional) and also Scala, I think the process to "think" functionally takes time.

Sure, its easier to apply it to the mathematics domain and harder to something that many of us might think in OO. I guess it comes with taking small steps (as someone already said in a comment). Also, making conscious effort to keep questioning how functional our code is helps.

I saw this talk on functionatalks.org by Paul Chiusano (author of Functional programming in Scala) http://functionaltalks.org/2013/06/20/paul-chiusano-how-to-w...

If you see he repeatedly asks how can we make it more functional. I think that is kind of thinking we need to practice. Its hard after too much of imperative thinking I guess. One more thing I have heard is read SICP and forget OO for a bit :).

Communication is a primary requirement in a team sport and especially football.

His own example, forget the manager, the players themselves have to be on the same page in so many levels during practice. Don't you think Messi, Neymar, and Alexis (all 3 different countries playing for Barca) would have to practice and know precisely about their timing.

I think the key thing here is the who really needs whom. Most entrepreneurs need YC/VCs and so might have to suck up what they expect.

I don't think I disagree with what you have mentioned and pg has concluded. My point was, it is possible to find a dataset where the audience actually doesn't need to stop the speaker because they can tune in to the way english is spoken.

I see this happen all the time here at startups in Bangalore. Of course if the audience is YC and the investors, it goes without saying what the language requirement is.

Indira Nooyi (Pepsico, CEO and one amongst that cnn list) articulates it perfectly in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8PC5U55AUU

According to this article, 14% of the top 500 CEOs are non-native to the company's homeland.

http://money.cnn.com/gallery/leadership/2013/07/08/global-50...

Even empirically your dataset consists of startups that target USA markets mostly and hence this conclusion. I am guessing CEOs are good and can come from anywhere, its perhaps "sales" that really needs the idiomatic speak.

How are these emails being leaked? Part of the ebook case they had? Otherwise I would imagine companies would take their email seriously...

Perhaps a good practice for companies to completely delete emails after a few days? (Its impractical, but maybe there is a need?)

One thing going against them is how h1b gets consumed. The 2013 cap (last year, not thing year) distribution indicates more than 40k out of 65k worker cap was filled by outsourcing company. (source: http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2013-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx). I am sure the number is similar even this year just as it has been the last so many years.

Even the other often abused visa L1 is primarily filled by outsourcers (I am trying to find some numbers on this but hard to find).

The outsourcing companies have been filing h1 for less than 1k lawyer fee (outsourced too!). 5K seems too high for someone to take note . The best law firms themselves charge about that here in USA.

I think this company can help out the startups in the bay area that are clueless how to sponsor a H1 (all the legalities of it) and makes it simple to them perhaps doing everything online from get go. That won't be more than 15/20k per year. So even the best case they are probably seeing a $1million dollar run rate per year (Which might be great for a 4/5 member startup?).

They should diversify into other areas - tax (for immigrants)/corporate (hiring/transfers) - which will have more incidences to charge.

You are right. Having not gone through what Sails was, I have mis-represented it a bit. Its more RoR than Sinatra (Express) as others have expressed here.

Express isn't really much of a client side MVC framework. It is still a very clean and simple framework.

If you want to drink the cool aid of single page apps, 'rich' client side etc, you have to invest into some MVVC/MVC frameworks like Angular, Ember or now Sails, which works well with Node.js apparently.

Really well done.

I think I was one of the few (perhaps?) who did not like the new redesign of github. I did not like the content above that red/color bar at all. It is that much real estate taken away from me to see the code/commits/documentation of the page. I often use last commit and all commits to compare and see what is going on. I also quickly switch branches on the UI to compare stuff. The current github just feels its a always one extra click or I am searching for something. Somehow it doesn't feel minimalistic at all.

Ian's redesign makes it elegantly simple and minimalistic.

Take this with a grain of salt. There is no right way or the only way.

- Learn complete web development. Use something like CodeAcademy/Udacity to learn the complementary skills you need. My guess is since you know Html/css and Java, you are better off learning Javascript as well. Nodejs / advanced Java might be a good fit.

- Learn some of the theoretical fundamentals. This might not be of immediate need for freelancing, but you should almost always be honing your fundamentals. Take up the core computer science courses on Coursera - Algorithms (1,2), Programming Languages, Basic Math (linear algebra, graph theory etc) are some must haves. This can be a longer term goal and plan it beyond 6 months.

- Sharpen your skills with coding exercises. Do some of the stuff on InterviewStreet and other such sites. Being able to solve small problems effectively and time bound, is very important skills. You should practice hard for the first 6 months I think.

- Know your domain. Being a web freelancer means you might have to be full stack. Being able to write the client and server side with ease. You might want to be good at some specific domains - like building sites for X, Y, Z (you can build your own reusable code). Then expand. Looking at stuff at elance is an easy start.

Its doable in 6 months. IMO don't stop learning.

+1 times 100 at least.

The time and effort that goes into making something simple and easy is enormous. Very nice product!

My takeaway from this is that stay as far away as possible from Booking.com.

You might certainly say they are not a good fit for everyone, but I think when someone in HN community is looking for a job change, I am sure they are also looking at the other "intangible"/not-so-obvious aspects. Like: does the company treat every employee respectfully? Do they provide the right environment where even the underdog can excel? They can be business minded, but do they understand their core cannot be culturally immoral?

On all counts Booking has fell short to me (just from your justification).

Sad but true.

The problem with this approach, while great for you, the developer it is a nightmare for the future team.

I am now working at a startup where the early devs have left. They did precisely what was needed at that point - build quickly, ensure it works for the 3/4 customers we had back then and document it as well. Fast forward a year later, that same code is no longer extensible for many clients. Its rigid and tightly coupled and rewriting some parts means, we have to pretty much rewrite a whole lot more than we bargained for. We will have to burn through a lot of cash to just build a whole new product based on some of the scalability and maintenance learning we now have from a year of learning and growing to client# 100.

The point is, there is always going to be "this is the right thing right now, its what our customers want" and then something else for the future.

I have seen that people who have worked for a while and in many startups do the smart thing (as expected) and while follow "build for now" they also do the sensible thing of investing for the future (from experience).

In the purist sense of a "scientist" I have to agree there is not much observation -> Feedback -> progress happening. But what about some of the research in the universities?

It is worth mentioning what Richard Feynman thought about "Computer Science" - He said it was never a science but an aspect of engineering:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL4wg6ZAFIM

Actually more like: 65,000/104,000 = 62.5%, assuming someone is not in Masters quota.

Out of the 124k, 20k will be for masters. The remaining masters join the pool of lottery for 65k. So there are 65k spots available for 124k - 20k(=104k)

eliben is right. Last year the visas were available until June. The year before that it was sometime in November, and the year before that it was sometime in December. But, based on last year's pattern all attorneys predicted it would be reached on April 1st this year.

IIRC, it was in 2007/2008 when the cap was reached on day1.

Sigh, this lottery reminds of those grim years of 2007/08 when the lottery was in effect. The demand then was largely due to the "bodyshopping" companies filing H1s even when they did not have a valid client. USCIS cracked down on them in the following years. Now it appears the general demand for IT has gone up.

Here is the distribution of H1-bs amongst companies last year (the cap was filled on June-11th I think).

http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2013-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx

Look at the number of offshoring companies in that list! And look at the average salaries they pay (still higher than the stipulated 60k I think). I am also aware of some of these offshoring companies who file for h1 and then don't bring the person to US in the year (they reserve it for future).

There should be some way to weed out these Indian offshorers who file for h1 and never use it.

Good luck to all who are hoping to get a H1! (that includes me)

Reading through some of the comments over on the facebook it appears there is a polarized view about this (as echoed generally over this episode).

It is so hard to draw the line as to what is right vs wrong, but I guess the take away is, there has to be a better way to deal with reporting such instances.

I am sure the horror stories that come out of def con, are mostly true, but a process for appropriate reporting is needed and should be mandatory for every conference to have in place.

A very interesting dilemma as a consumer/customer.

I am sure out of the many fired some are legit firings - drivers not respectful or just not good enough. And similarly some who have been short changed by customers giving bad reviews.

So here is my dilemma, wearing the customer hat - if this move by Uber guarantees me that every time I hail a Uber cab, I am guaranteed to get a 4.7 star experience in the minimum (ya sometimes not, but on an average yes). So why wouldn't I want that as a customer?

Now if I wear the hat of a sympathetic human, I can probably see some injustice if I sift through all the firings. So how can we hold Uber accountable?

Being a realist, sometimes one has to understand that many systems don't have equality and maybe in this case the injustice/inequality benefits the Uber customers.

Thank you, that is a helpful description.

So for a Clojure noob (like me) it might be better to start with Clojure in Action and then read Joy of Clojure.

Anyone knows how this series compares to the also-recently-announced Clojure in Action - http://www.manning.com/rathore2/

I mean compare the two clojure books wrt v1.