shanwang (u/shanwang)

shanwang commented on A Chinese Finance Giant That’s Secretly an AI Company (2017) technologyreview.com/s/60... · Posted by u/astdb

vadimberman · 8 years ago

Like others mentioned, it's marketing fluff. The use of future tense and "in the near future" already makes it clear.

And they have (drum roll) an equivalent of the FICO score! It uses "advanced machine learning algorithms"!

There's really nothing related to privacy or societal implications, it's an advertorial. I don't understand why it went past the radar of MIT Technology Review.

A bigger question from me, is China really that advanced? I hold a neutral position on this, but am now seeing a consistent pattern of articles hyping Chinese cookie-cutter tech (or stuff which is bigger) sounding like Cold War era Soviet propaganda. If they really had some kind of grandiose tech achievements, why bother with this?

shanwang · 8 years ago

I agree this one is more of a marketing fluff. But if you think all tech advances in China are Cold War era propaganda then you have not been paying attention to the tech world in the last 20 years.

shanwang commented on Business questions engineers should ask when interviewing at ML/AI companies medium.com/@danielgross/s... · Posted by u/danicgross

purerandomness · 8 years ago

> haven't talked to many potentially users?

Any bad answer to these questions is a showstopper, yes. It's an indicator that this company is definitely going to fail.

In your example, not having talked to many customers is the classical Juicero approach: Build a solution, then search for a problem that this solution is solving.

Not talking to customers means not understanding if there is demand for something, and if there are customers who would like to pay for a solution. (Problems exist in markets where target groups are not used or not willing to pay for digital solutions)

If you're starting out, I highly recommend reading the blog of Amy Hoy and Alex Hillmann (https://stackingthebricks.com/) - they defend the idea to first go on a "sales safari" where you simply obvserve your target group, and then find a solution for their pains.

As a founder, you want to continuously talk to potenttial customers about your idea or your prototype: make them use it and perform thinking-aloud tests.

shanwang · 8 years ago

Good points. But how many customers you talk to is enough? If I'm building a product for enterprise, is talking to one keen potential customer enough? For a first time founder, I can't imagine someone without much connections can get the chance to talk to multiple potential enterprise customers.

What about a product targeting the mass market, if I'm building a mobile app, is talking to a dozen friends enough? or should I pay for a market research which can reach hundreds of strangers.

Do you talk to customers with prototypes of the features or do you just have a basic skeleton and say 'what if I have this and that'?

I actually subscribed to Amy Hoy's mailing list but haven't checked it out for a while...

shanwang commented on Business questions engineers should ask when interviewing at ML/AI companies medium.com/@danielgross/s... · Posted by u/danicgross

shanwang · 8 years ago

So, if I'm interviewing with a startup in AI, and asked all these questions, how many good answers I should expect? Is it ok for a startup to have a defensible business to solve a problem 10x better, knows how to make money in a big market, but have no experience in marketing and haven't talked to many potentially users?

As a wanna be startup founder, I found my ideas have bad answers to at least 2-3 of these questions.

shanwang commented on The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business theatlantic.com/health/ar... · Posted by u/Firebrand

shanwang · 8 years ago

Sounds like the script of a Black Mirror episode.

shanwang commented on Ask HN: How much do developers earn in Europe? docs.google.com/forms/d/e... · Posted by u/ciaoben

briandear · 9 years ago

That logic makes no sense. Since health isn’t an employer cost, salaries in Europe should be higher than the US where the employer incurs health/social costs. However, in France “social charges” are incurred by the employer which means that their cost per employee is about double of their actual salary. That means that French employers are paying social charges which finance those who aren’t employed.

In the US:

An employer pays salary + health costs for that employee.

In Europe:

Employer pays salary + health costs for both the employee AND the rest of society. Which means your European salary is subsidizing other people not even related to the company.

On top of that, the employee gets to pay tax rates approaching 50% in many cases.

The average take home pay after factoring out health costs and benefits is dramatically lower than an equivalent position in the US.

shanwang · 9 years ago

Health care isn't the reason for the pay gap. The technology sector in Europe is far smaller than those in the US, these days there isn't a single tech company in the EU can rival those tech giants in the US, so the pay gap makes sense.

If you are a banker or a hedge fund PM working in London, your pay will be on par with or even more than your colleagues in New York.

shanwang commented on Ask HN: How much do developers earn in Europe? docs.google.com/forms/d/e... · Posted by u/ciaoben

pmlnr · 9 years ago

> But generally the developer wage is very low in Europe compared with US(Bay area).

Because it usually comes with built-in social security and nationwide health insurance.

> AFAIK London have the highest salary among european countries,

Nope. Scandinavia.

shanwang · 9 years ago

so what are those numbers look like in Scandinavia

shanwang commented on Ask HN: How much do developers earn in Europe? docs.google.com/forms/d/e... · Posted by u/ciaoben

shanwang · 9 years ago

Can't open the doc because it's blocked by my employer. But generally the developer wage is very low in Europe compared with US(Bay area).

AFAIK London have the highest salary among european countries, usually handed out by Investment banks and other financial service companies.

In London a tier 1 bank's VP developer will typically get £90k-110k base, plus 15-40% bonus. If you work for a hedge fund, the base is typically 10% higher with 10-20% more bonus. To get a VP job in a bank you usually need 7 year+ experience after graduation.

In contrast the big tech companies in london pays about 10-20% less base salary than banks, far less cash bonus. But depends on which one you are working for, the RSU could be either similar to the states side or a bit less. The signon bonus is usually quite low as well.

Startups in London have very low pay, typically 50-60% of your market value in a bank.

So if you are a top developer with 15 years+ experience, works for a top hedge fund in London, you'll most likely take home < £200k, which is like $260, that's only about average wage for a google senior developer.

shanwang commented on Once a Model City, Hong Kong Is in Trouble nytimes.com/2017/06/29/wo... · Posted by u/acdanger

shanwang · 9 years ago

HongKong's rise was largely due to the decline of Shanghai and mainland China falling to communist government. Now with the rest of China rise up, I can't see how HongKong can return to its former glory

shanwang commented on The CTO Journey at a Small Startup zapier.com/engineering/st... · Posted by u/vinnyglennon

shanwang · 9 years ago

Good article, but why people are calling Software Engineers Hackers these days?

shanwang commented on Why we’re betting against real-time team messaging blog.doist.com/why-were-b... · Posted by u/farslan

onion2k · 9 years ago

Real-time chat happens quickly — one line at a time — discouraging full, thoughtful conversations.

Slack supports shift+CRLF for line breaks, so users can write epic poems broken up in to hundreds of stanzas if they want to. Using Slack as a one-line-at-a-time chat service is a choice that a user makes. Slack itself doesn't enforce it.

Topics are all jumbled together in a channel so it’s nearly impossible to piece together the full conversation.

Only if users interrupt the current conversation with something else. Again, this is a cultural choice that users make. It's not a Slack thing, or even a chat thing. Also, Slack does support threaded conversations (albeit with a pretty horrible UI).

Important team knowledge — like what decision did we make and why? — gets buried and lost within hours (even with powerful search).

I totally agree. Slack is not the right place for documenting important stuff. Nor is a different chat app, or email. Important knowledge should be put in a knowledge management app (eg a repo wiki for code, or a Word doc for business related things).

shanwang · 9 years ago

I actually think document should be kept/written by a chat/email app.

Most companies have a wiki for document, but how many of them can stay up to date? Discussions happen all the time, and they often require changes to previous documents. Maybe an ideal tool is one can capture team communication, present it in a organised way, and let people edit it later for a more polished view.