Hacker News: harshalizee

New comment by harshalizee in "Today I've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%"

harshalizee — Tue, 05 May 2026 20:58:12 +0000

> - AI-native pods: We’ll be concentrating around AI-native talent who can manage fleets of agents to drive outsized impact. We’ll also be experimenting with reduced pod sizes, including “one person teams” with engineers, designers, and product managers all in one role.

And then this person leaves, leaving no documentation or workflow. That's ok though, another ai agent will pick up right back and add slop on top of that until the codebase is a black box interacting with another black box.

Oh and this company handles other people's money? That's going to end well.

New comment by harshalizee in "Math Is Still Catching Up to the Mysterious Genius of Srinivasa Ramanujan (2024)"

harshalizee — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 17:11:00 +0000

The average life expectancy in the 1920s, even in India, was most definitely not 21-25 years. Various sources show the expectancy age as 51-57. This is because there wasn't enough data for this.

New comment by harshalizee in "The economics of software teams: Why most engineering orgs are flying blind"

harshalizee — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 22:59:02 +0000

Except now you also team up with people who are adept at sales, marketing, accounting, etc. now to form a cooperative instead of a corporation. Maybe workers can get back some of the rights and fruits of their labor.

New comment by harshalizee in "Ask HN: What do you look for in your first 10 hires?"

harshalizee — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 16:37:52 +0000

This is funny, because these exact same things were great filters to eliminate BS candidates. It's always the ones who talk a big game who tend to be the worst when the tire meets the road.

Some of the absolute best candidates were always the ones with a github that hadn't seen a commit in half a decade, nary a presentation or conference mentioned in their cv. This was true at two different FAANGs and a couple of other FAANG-adjacent companies.

New comment by harshalizee in "Datacenters are becoming a target in warfare"

harshalizee — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 23:04:59 +0000

It's understandable. Big tech wanted to be part of the military industrial complex, now they get to experience the side effects that come with it.

New comment by harshalizee in "The bare minimum for syncing Git repos"

harshalizee — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 17:42:12 +0000

Exactly! I was in university around that time. Our team project needed a non-public repo for us to sync to. Free/Personal Github at the time did not allow for private repos, so I just used my Dropbox folder as the "server". Worked well enough for a bunch of students to use that as a centralized repo.

New comment by harshalizee in "MIT Living Wage Calculator"

harshalizee — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 03:41:32 +0000

That's comparing Apples to tortoises. If an investor wants to invest/gamble on a startup, it's their prerogative. Same as if Bob's uncle wants to give him a small loan to buy into a franchise. I still expect both of them to pay rightful living wages to their employees. Owner's business problems are not the employees problem

New comment by harshalizee in "MIT Living Wage Calculator"

harshalizee — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 02:30:30 +0000

What happens when private industry colludes to decide what "market" wages are?

This has literally happened even in Big Tech, leading to lawsuits within the last decade.

If a business can't pay a person working full time to satisfy their basic needs, their business model is not viable. If they can and don't pay so, it's plain exploitation. Ex. Walmart employees can't support themselves and rely on social services despite having a full time job.

New comment by harshalizee in "Web Browsers have stopped blocking pop-ups"

harshalizee — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 17:54:29 +0000

Firefox has been far faster for me than chrome ever was (I have way too many tabs open that the same number would make chrome chug). It is also an interesting take to have while defending a browser that is actively hostile to the user.

New comment by harshalizee in "The Rise and Fall of the H-1B Visa – American Affairs Journal"

harshalizee — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 18:58:37 +0000

So you want talented individuals to come in to prop up the economy for decades with their output, but forbid them trying to establish a normal family life in the country?

New comment by harshalizee in "The Rise and Fall of the H-1B Visa – American Affairs Journal"

harshalizee — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 18:53:58 +0000

To be clear, ANY US Citizen or Permanant Resident can eventually bring in some families after an arduous and long process.

This is a non-existent issue with H1-B.

The current wait times for an H1-B from the Rest of the World(ROW) is around 10+ years to be a citizen. For India/China/Mexico, it's around 12-27 years to become a Permanent Resident if they applied for their I-140 before 2020. If they applied after 2020, it's currently estimated at 34-75 years!

New comment by harshalizee in "Oracle is underwater on its $300B OpenAI deal"

harshalizee — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 21:11:52 +0000

Oracle is the one to look out for if/when the bubble bursts. Most of the big tech will be fine, albeit hurting for a while. For Oracle, this might be existential.

New comment by harshalizee in "GitHub: Git operation failures"

harshalizee — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 21:01:27 +0000

Could also be the hack and slash layoffs are starting to show its results. Removing crucial personnel, teams spread thin, combined with low morale industrywide and you've got the perfect recipe for disaster.

New comment by harshalizee in "Report: Tim Cook could step down as Apple CEO 'as soon as next year'"

harshalizee — Sat, 15 Nov 2025 23:13:01 +0000

What do you do with your phones that it doesn't last more than 24 months? I've had only two iPhones for almost 11 years. An iphone 6s and currently an iPhone 13 mini there entire time. They're solidly reliable

New comment by harshalizee in "Enjoy CarPlay While You Still Can"

harshalizee — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 22:58:08 +0000

Have you tried cleaning out the lint in your phone's port? For me, that was it and my Mazda CX-5 connects fine every single time after I did that.

New comment by harshalizee in "AI Broke Interviews"

harshalizee — Sun, 02 Nov 2025 17:19:48 +0000

Unless your firm is offering a solid paycheck and a 6 month severance package a la Netflix, no rational candidate is going to bet on a place that'll boot you in 3 weeks because they felt "the vibes are off". You'll be self selecting for only the most desperate candidates in the market trying to get a job.

New comment by harshalizee in "Show HN: Are You a Good Estimator?"

harshalizee — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 00:05:36 +0000

Fun test. 4/10

I never realized how absolutely massive a blue whale can be!

New comment by harshalizee in "Inside Amazon's engineering culture: Lessons from their senior principals"

harshalizee — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 21:35:07 +0000

5-7 years isn't that long ago and it was just as terrible back then. Yeah, the same "leaders" now have infected other tech companies with their culture and are actively ruining the industry.

New comment by harshalizee in "'We need the smartest people': Nvidia, OpenAI CEOs react to H-1B visa fee"

harshalizee — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 23:37:32 +0000

E-1/2/3 visas are treaty investor visas. These are pay to play visas.

We're talking about EB-1/2/3 which are not visas.

O-1 is a real visa, but also really expensive and limited to niche conditions, also not what we're talking about here.

New comment by harshalizee in "'We need the smartest people': Nvidia, OpenAI CEOs react to H-1B visa fee"

harshalizee — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 14:07:58 +0000

I know this sounds crazy, but Wikipedia is completely wrong calling it a visa. It's a "visa classification", you still need an underlying visa to enter into the country. Most O-1 Visa holders and some H1Bs get classified under EB-1, individuals with advanced degrees, experience get classified under EB-2 but hold H1-B / L1 visas, etc. You can be under H1-B and not have a classification (no PERM).

If you don't believe me try to find an image of an actual EB-1/2/3 visa, I'll wait.

Source : Former F-1/H1B visa holder classified under EB-2, with over a decade of experience dealing with USCIS paperwork.