Yeah, it is different.

It would be society's fault if you ignore the fact that Ravi had intentions to embarrass and humiliate Tyler... and if you don't think he didn't, you're naive. Of course, Tyler was a little lacking in the psych department, because people who are humiliated don't always kill themselves.

However, that's also like saying people who wear nice watches and sneakers in bad neighborhoods totally deserve to get beaten and robbed. After all, you lacked the proper judgement skills not to be flashy in a bad neighborhood and, arguably, it's society's fault that the criminal element exists... right?

Sorry - my comment should read "will find" not "will found", e.g. this would be an example of VCs finding a way to get of getting cheap *and entrepreneurial" talent without having to worry about work visas/sponsorship/et al.

So yes: I do understand VCs. So yes: they aren't interested in "offshore talent" in the manner of "hiring a code monkey to write classes", but they ARE interested in "offshore talent" like "these folks from [another country] who have what we think is a high-growth (your words) idea", and the idea is WAAAAY more compelling if you can bypass the whole pesky US/immigration/work bits.

Oh, and yes: VCs do practically enslave their staff. Especially the founders, and anyone else who has the possibility of a big payout dangled in front of them, that future, unstable, gamble-of-a-possibility pretty much chains someone to the startup. Yes, I'm being a big metaphorical, and not literal. You're right - someone can leave. There aren't real shackles. But anyone who has worked for a funded startup that has failed (and even some that have succeeded) can tell a tale that harkens to enslavement.

Blueseed might not be started by VC, but they (you) sure do seem to have some on their advisory board; again, sorry if my semantics are a touch off, but the flavor (doused with metaphor) remains correct.

Am I the only one who read this as "VCs will found a way to get cheap offshore talent under their collective wings by purchasing a cruise ship on which to enslave, err, house their startup 'incubators'"?

How ironically appropriate that the comments section of the unscientific poll lead to so many anecdotal accounts of why what someone is doing is So Incredibly Healthy and Lead To Amazing Life Changes.

Seriously: it astonishes me that people will take something like "I drink foo for breakfast, and now my workout routine is AWESOME" or "I used to drink bar but then when I quit my miscellaneous-probably-false health problem cleared up" etc. I mean, supposedly ./ is filled with geeks who love logic and science, but then I read stuff like this and realize we're no different than the other animals around us, just perhaps more computer/geek savvy.

If you're unclear, I'll give you a hint: odds are overwhelming you're experiencing a placebo. Even if you don't believe it's placebo because of [insert reason here], I'll give you another hint: it is.

Sad, really.

Someone posted that same criticism in the article. Here is someone's reply (again, from the comments). I'm not a chemist or physicist, but what they say sounds reasonable:

I love my city, but I swear... sometimes the odd mix and mashup of conspiracy theorists, psychics, faeries, burners, whacked hippy environmentalists really gets to me.

They're all good for amusement until the end up in local government, and we end up with policies like "we like Austin RIGHT NOW HOW IT IS. Adding, expanding, or improving roads/infrastructure will mean... more people will move here. So let's not do it." or "let's really invest in non-local sources of solar and wind power... and by invest, I mean rely heavily upon. Yeah, so electricity rates soar. Invest in additional infrastructure to handle demand? NO WAY! Brown-outs are good for the planet!" or my personal favorite, locating the homeless shelter and associated soup kitchen (that collectively take up most of a city block) right in the business/entertainment/prime real estate district.... and then wonder why people are getting turned off by aggressive panhandling and why there are criticisms about wasting a prime piece of real estate. After all, if we located it a few blocks (or miles) away, all the homeless people would no longer be near public transit and their downtown ecosystem.

I love Austin, but sometimes all I can do is giggle.

I'm with you as well.

I cut my teeth on a Commodore PET that was donated to my school as part of a grant program. Most kids (and teachers) ran away, and I couldn't keep my hands off it. I actually had my mother drop me off at school early in order to get a couple of hours on it each morning. At night, I would hand-write out more program code.

By the time the VIC-20 and C64 rolled around I was hooked. We were poor and couldn't afford them, but a teacher at school brought his C64 in. From there, I saved (and saved... and saved) and eventually got into the Atari line for the better (to me) graphics and gaming potential. I lusted after the Apple ][ but certainly couldn't afford that.

Ahhhh, memories of direct memory manipulation, no look-asides, no threads. Back in my day....

Historically take a sample set of people considered to be at-risk for HIV, give them safer-sex counseling, and then track them against a control for infection rates. This study was different (hate to say RTFA, but it does describe it):

So, in the article he does suggest some process is probably good. That's good. But then he suggests that "better" coders might need less. In practice, that is probably true, but his implication goes farther than "let's hold the hand of the junior guy a bit more."

So... how to architects, civil engineers, electrical engineers, graphic designers, technical writers, project managers, and, I dunno... just about every white (and blue, for that matter) collar employee stay "passionate" in the face of some level of process and bureaucracy? How would you like to go on a bridge (or a plane, as others have mentioned) built by folks who are so smart they don't need any process to validate their genius?

This sounds more like "I'm so good I don't need to do these dumb things that slow me down" and less "perhaps we should keep the process just at the point it is beneficial".

I just spent two years with a team of 6 refactoring a critical legacy application built and maintained by people who were "smarter" and "better" than code reviews, TDD, planning, documenting, or hell, breaking that 8K header file into header/class and maybe even into a couple of objects. And truth be told: they were ALL really, really smart.... and really, really willing to cut corners just to "get something done", resulting in an unmaintainable mess that cost us somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.8MM to clean up.

To all you guys who are WAAAAAY too smart to have processes: that's awesome. Please just go work somewhere else, preferably someplace I'll never work.

You utterly, totally hit it out of the park. It's good to plan for contingencies, but you can be paralyzed by what-ifs. Rarely does one course of action ever define itself as singularly best with no risks or downsides.

Funny - I will have to add the Martian lizard baby bit to my list of what-ifs that I use to talk to customers who start worrying about edge conditions. I work in traffic, and when they start going down the lines of "...and then, if a semi jack-knifes while a motorcycle with a side car is going through the zone, and swerves into the should to avoid it, and ..." I usually pull out the "...and a flying saucer swoops down low enough to go through the laser scanners but doesn't touch the sensors embedded in the road..."

You are so correct. Where are my mod points? Their articles are actually really, really good. They're varied, too - not always the same thing. Most actually had some depth to them (unlike most mens' magazines, like Details or Maxim, that give you a paragraph and two pages of pictures). Obviously, Playboy had dual-appeal - which is part of what made it sophisticated. The whole joke - "I read it for the articles" - came about BECAUSE of the quality of articles. That joke didn't start around Penthouse or Hustler for a reason.

Extremely true. As a once almost-rich-and-famous musician, I can attest that's all *really* true... It's also why I'm writing software and posting to /. It was fun, but boy you really get screwed even if you do well.

Agree. The whole "OMG you're telling CRIMINALS you're not home" is BS, and also sounds remarkably like the same argument used when answering machines came out... and when people put announcements of weddings and funerals in newspapers... and ... Oh wait, someone wrote a better article about it than I can: http://waxy.org/2010/02/regarding_foursquare_and_please_rob_me/