"My hope is that our employees never, ever feel patronized, belittled or small."
Anyone applying to your company after having read that pile of patronizing crap are probably genetically incapable of feeling patronized or belittled.
(Seriously, I don't think I know a single highly qualified person who wouldn't quit the same day if you showed up and told them that this is how the company will be run from now on, and half of them would punch you in the face on the way out.)
Hint: you can use search engines to find job descriptions:
"As an AdWords Associate, your main responsibility will be to manage a portfolio of advertiser accounts. You will be working directly with your advertisers to drive revenue and customer satisfaction."
And of course they have phones. If you were the kind of customer they'd be interested in talking to, you would probably have their number already...
"A canoe is deeper, wider and fatter (like some Canadians perhaps ;)"
Not sure about Finland (where the article's author lives), but a wide, fat open canoe is actually called "a Canadian" in many parts of northern Europe.
The concept of an "open kayak" sounds pretty confused, though, given how they were originally built (skins wrapped around a thin wooden frame) and used (coastal sea regions, including the open sea).
It resulted in a 9% increase of the "calls to hotline" metric, so you can just go ahead and pay him:
> In April we began prominently displaying the number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at the top of the results page for certain search queries in the U.S. Since then, our friends at the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline have reported a 9 percent increase in legitimate calls to its hotline.
You're seriously arguing that a throw-away comment from an anonymous internet poster is enough to invalidate her story, and that we should ignore the victim's story because we might find ourselves in the attacker's situation? What the fuck is wrong with you?
I'm probably unusually dense today, but I don't understand the "Can't I find out where you live by seeing your goo.gl links" part of that question. How do I get to see someone else's links?
No, health care in Sweden is not solely financed through regional income tax. Large parts of the social security system are financed through payroll taxes and corresponding mandatory contributions from self-employed people (the latter is called "egenavgift" -- feel free to Google it).
But looking again, he's in fact born before 1983, which means that he has to pay pension contributions as well, bumping the total contribution up to nearly 30%. In addition to income tax, that is.
Public health care doesn't mean that nobody pays for it. Since he's not employed by anyone else, it's part of the ~15% in mandatory fees that he'll end up paying in addition to the ordinary income tax.
His company (Mojang Specifications) is a sole proprietorship, so the tax situation is interesting (i.e. most of it is taxed as personal income, and Sweden has a progressive tax system, and he has to pay insurance contributions as well). I can understand why he's scrambling to establish a real company :)
Ok, I can see why it may be fun to counter something that partially reads like a personal attack on Magaziner with something that's definitely a personal attack on Peters (insert discussion about HN as a forum for spectator sports here), but do you also disagree with the argument about planning vs. doing that he's actually making?
Anyone applying to your company after having read that pile of patronizing crap are probably genetically incapable of feeling patronized or belittled.
(Seriously, I don't think I know a single highly qualified person who wouldn't quit the same day if you showed up and told them that this is how the company will be run from now on, and half of them would punch you in the face on the way out.)