Top all-time · #12
Patrick McKenzie
Personal blog · kalzumeus.com · on HN as patio11businessstartupsprogramming
Patrick McKenzie writes Kalzumeus Software, a personal blog at kalzumeus.com about business, startups and programming. Since 2008, 1,102 different Hacker News readers have linked it 1,776 times, most often “Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names (2010)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-02-10, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 10 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Patrick McKenzie's posts for practical advice on salary negotiation, value-based pricing, and falsehoods programmers believe about names. Commenters describe the blog as known for interesting posts on startups and software outside the Bay Area.
- Recommended for · 10 comments
- Salary negotiation post called 'excellent' and 'a great read'; the blog called 'interesting', and 'other good blog posts' by the author.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names (2010)178 people · 205 mentions · first linked 2016-06-02
- Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names94 people · 97 mentions · first linked 2010-06-17
- Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued (2012)68 people · 78 mentions · first linked 2018-03-02
- Don't Call Yourself a Programmer, and Other Career Advice (2011)65 people · 89 mentions · first linked 2018-02-17
- Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued61 people · 68 mentions · first linked 2012-01-23
- Don't Call Yourself a Programmer59 people · 67 mentions · first linked 2011-10-29
- Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You (2017)49 people · 55 mentions · first linked 2018-04-22
- /34 people · 39 mentions · first linked 2009-08-09
- How Discount Brokerages Make Money32 people · 43 mentions · first linked 2019-06-25
- Patrick's greatest hits30 people · 31 mentions · first linked 2010-09-17
What Hacker News says?
> The customers are the businesses on the other end, in Robinhood's case the market makers who are paying for the right to front-run trades. Front-running is super illegal. You're referring to payment for order flow (PFOF), in which a sell-side party like Citadel pays Robinhood for the right to route your order to the exchange. But there's a catch: Citadel is allowed to take the other side of your trade without rout…
Comment linking /2019/6/26/how-brokerages-make-money/
on “Robinhood is limiting purchases of stocks: AMC, Blackberry, Nokia, and GameStop”Submitted Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You as a story · 1088 points
HN discussionDon’t just pull RH’s, pull all brokers’. Paying a commission doesn’t protect you from anyone maximizing profits. All the discount brokers sell order flow. > Schwab earned 1.4% of revenue from payment for order flow, TD Ameritrade about 8.4%, and E TRADE about 6.1%. They all make half or a lot less of their revenue from commissions. > The contribution to revenue across the discount brokerages is minimal: 6.8% at Schw…
Comment linking /2019/6/26/how-brokerages-make-money/
on “Robinhood is limiting purchases of stocks: AMC, Blackberry, Nokia, and GameStop”Submitted Don't Call Yourself a Programmer as a story · 1021 points
HN discussionI can't figure out how to parse your comment, so I'll leave this here just in case: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...
Comment linking /2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/
on “Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources”Submitted Announcing Starfighter as a story · 932 points
HN discussionPerhaps try automating a non-tech job: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/tenoq > Hired full time, and I make a good living. My work involves a lot of "data entry", verification, blah blah. I am a programmer at heart and figured out how to make a script do all my work for me... > So reddit, am I a scumbag? I work about 8 hours a week doing real work, the rest is spent playing games on my phone or reading re…
Comment linking /2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/
on “Ask HN: What tech job would let me get away with the least real work possible?”Submitted I’m Joining Stripe to Work on Atlas as a story · 850 points
HN discussionCheck out the periodic table of SEO: http://searchengineland.com/seotable Kalzmeus on SEO (click around his blog for more, guy's a genius): http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/01/24/startup-seo/ Also some quick, simple advice: 1. Blog 2/3 times per week minimum. Target a single, relevant keyword per blog post (relevant to your domain). The post title, H1s, H2s etc, image tags should all contain your primary keyword. Blog…
Comment linking /2010/01/24/startup-seo/
on “Google Reader shutting down”Submitted Japan's Hometown Tax as a story · 847 points
HN discussionThis is absolutely true. I remember Dan Luu [1] and patio11's [2] blog posts from 9 years ago and 13 years ago respectively, which were widely shared, arguing essentially that you should always prefer to join a FAANG. With FAANGs all downsizing to varying degrees, or at the very least not in growth mode, this advice seems less clear-cut. For better or worse, I think we're starting to see the pendulum swing a bit tow…
Comment linking /2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/
on “Silicon Valley's best kept secret: Founder liquidity”Submitted Doing Business in Japan as a story · 818 points
HN discussionThis might help: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-r...
Comment linking /2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-reports/
on “Before buying a NYT subscription, here's what it'll take to cancel it”Submitted What I Would Do If I Ran Tarsnap as a story · 801 points
HN discussionYup. This seems like the right spot to plug this excellent article that has made me many 10s of thousands of dollars over my career: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ Good thing patio11 doesn't demand a percentage for the millions and millions of dollars he is responsible for people collectively getting in increased salary/comp.
Comment linking /2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/
on “A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize”Submitted How Discount Brokerages Make Money as a story · 696 points
HN discussionThis is why calling people "coders" annoys the hell out of me. There was a popular blog post a long way back[1] about how you shouldn't call yourself a "programmer" because that builds the expectation that programs are the key output of your work. "Coder" takes this problem even further — your job is no longer to build a program (with all the thought and design work that entails), but rather to type out code. I'm no…
Comment linking /2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/
on “Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer”Submitted What Working at Stripe Has Been Like as a story · 685 points
HN discussionTaking value literally, spend an hour learning how salary negotiations for new jobs work and how to ask for & get more. patio11 has written an excellent intro to the topic, and if you're an entry-level Silicon Valley engineer, this is easily worth a cool million ($25k/yr * 40 years) in lifetime earnings. https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/
Comment linking /2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/
on “Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?”Submitted Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake as a story · 673 points
HN discussionFor the lame definition of valuable: if you are not in the practise of negotiating, try to negotiate in more situations and see what happens! Attempting to negotiate will not harm your situation when dealing with another party making you a genuine offer. Even if you are a very mediocre negotiator, you might be able to easily eg obtain a somewhat higher salary when starting a job versus just accepting a given offer i…
Comment linking /2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/
on “Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?”Submitted Talking About Money as a story · 650 points
HN discussionJust ask. People absolutely love talking about their problems, it'll probably be the most animated thing they have to say about the business they're in. "Some people profess difficulty at finding applications to write. I have never understood this: talk to people. People have problems — lots of problems, more than you could enumerate in a hundred lifetimes. Talk to a carpenter, ask him what about carpentry sucks. Ta…
Comment linking /2010/03/20/running-a-software-business-on-5-hours-a-week/
on “Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?”Submitted Salary Negotiation as a story · 609 points
HN discussionA great read for this author would be "Don't Call Yourself a Programmer" by patio11: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pro...
Comment linking /2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/
on “My Biggest Regret as a Programmer”Submitted Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued as a story · 596 points
HN discussion> The price is defined primarily by how much you ask for and what you can offer in return. I couldn't agree more. I know a lot of developers that have the mentality to just accept what they are offered without negotiating. It's up to you to get a good price for the value you bring to the company. Negotiation is the best way to significantly increase your salary, regardless of your technical skills. Patio said it bes…
Comment linking /2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/
on “My Biggest Regret as a Programmer”Submitted Don't Call Yourself a Programmer, and Other Career Advice (2011) as a story · 570 points
HN discussionCheck out this great overview on salary negotiation: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/
Comment linking /2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/
on “We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage”Submitted How Running A Business Changes The Way You Think as a story · 477 points
HN discussion
