Not to take away from the substance of the article itself, but is anyone else surprised that they have 2 billion "documents", which presumably means active ads/listings? That seems like an awful lot.
#1 is a great example of why founders should be vested. The rest aren't really about startups as much as teams (dev or sales) in general, but obviously they're still relevant to startups, and further illustrate how important the hiring process is for startups.
Not that I've had to directly use it, but a friend of mine was showing me their university's new student center portal called SOLUS, and it's awful. It's impossible to find anything on it, and yet it's the only way to change courses, check marks, etc. It's sort of like a router interface, but harder to use and swamped with more information. The worst part, of course, is how much money it must've cost to transition this year.
Agreed. The fact that it uses Hadoop should be secondary to who they are. "Software Company Raises Money" would also be factually correct, but not particularly useful.
I think it's a bit premature to suggest that either a) Facebook would move out of California or b) a new social network would start up outside of California and eat Facebook's lunch because it didn't have draconian laws. Surely there are easier ways to solve the problem at hand.
At the risk of going off topic here, with some of the new things Qt is planning (getting away from its C++ roots), maybe it would be best if Qt 4.7 (which is in my opinion one of the best platforms to dev Windows programs, never mind cross-platform) was left as it is, and put into an open-source maintenance mode instead of trying to innovate.
It's worth noting that at the moment nearly 2400 people flat out want all software patents abolished.
Plus, lumping the other options in together isn't necessarily fair. Revoking existing software patents would have some pretty severe effects on legitimate companies and their shareholders. And the "other changes" is extremely vague - one could assume that other changes includes placing the onus on the company applying for the patent to prove its uniqueness, which would increase the cost to receive a patent and decrease the likelihood of abuse.
All in all, 19 votes at the moment support the current system. Less than 1%. And to be fair, roughly 15% believe better software patents would be OK.
If the potential home buyer wanted to keep their monthly outlay at $1700 whether they rent or own, then I think in 5 years if they lose $50k on their house they are likely out more money with a bigger headache than renting would've cost them.
Without property tax, $1700/mo means taking a 25 year loan of $320k at 4% interest. Obviously whether this is too high or too low depends entirely on where they live, but again I'm assuming that they were getting a similar place for roughly $1700/mo in rent, and are comfortable in that lifestyle. That's also assuming they have the cash for a down payment ($65k if they want to put 20% down).
So, if you run the mortgage numbers, in 5 years, assuming interest rates stay at 4%, they will have paid $61k in interest. Property taxes over 5 years (where I live, anyway) on a $385k home would be $15k-$20k on top of that. If we factor property tax into the $1700/mo, then they can only afford a $265k loan, and only pay $50k in interest over 5 years.
Either way, $50k or more interest + $18k in property tax + $50k in depreciation + $15k in closing and real estate fees costs them a lot more than renting for the same time period, and that's assuming that nothing goes wrong. If their roof starts leaking, the deck collapses, they need to move for work or their growing family in less than five years, they are in an even worse situation. (One might suggest we should amortize the $15k in closing and real estate costs over the 5 years and buy a smaller place accordingly, but at that point your $1700/mo rent becomes more like $1150/mo in mortgage payments, so at that point the question becomes how out of whack the renting and buying markets are, assuming again that you want to maintain a similar living standard, and not be downsizing as you're turning 30.)
The obvious question then is how likely "even if your house will depreciate $50k" ends up being.