Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

You < *Engineers (plural)


Fishtoaster was reacting to the ludicrous use of "invariably", so his or her counterexample was quite sufficient, and beautifully written to boot.


Is beautifully written now a byword for credible? I must remember that for future dissertations.

The author posited that engineers in general are happier. Fishtoaster attempted to refute the claim by citing anecdotal personal evidence.

Admittedly invariably was a little strong but it was just figurative, not literal.


I actually don't really see any evidence in the article that the author believes any engineers would ever be happier in a smaller company. I'm not sure where you're seeing that softer view in the text. It's basically calling anyone who doesn't want to work for Google deluded.

It's not as if everyone in tech works for a startup, though I'm sure it often seems that way from the valley. Most likely the vast majority of engineers do in fact work for large companies, so the hysterical tone of the article only makes sense if you think even that small fraction of the industry that works at startups is fooling themselves about what makes them happy.

Of course, the article also seems to believe that most startup founders are engineers, and I'm not sure that's at all true either.


Then it's bad, misleading, imprecise writing to say invariably. A single counterexample does disprove it, by the definition of the word. If the writer didn't want the argument blown up like that, he should have looked among the other hundreds of thousands of words in English to find one that actually does say what he meant.


It is not a technical proof that lends itself to be proven or disproven.

it is a piece of prose that took some license with it's language. Also, the total number of words in the English language != the amount of synonyms for invariably.

By your own standard you are just as incorrect as the author the article. You have posted a bad, misleading or imprecise sentence to suggest the author has hundreds of thousands of words to choose from. He does not.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: