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Inside Votizen - Tech, Design, Culture

paulstamatiou.com

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Re: Inside Votizen - Tech, Design, Culture

#21

Post by msrpotus »

aamar wrote: post #19
scarmig wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing that their database isn't voter registrations but individual votes--one person can have multiple votes and registrations recorded over the years. I still don't see how that could add up to a factor of 10, though. I'm in a similar space and typically people will have fewer than that, although the voter records we have don't go back more than a decade or so.

A ~10 year record could mean ~30 chances to vote, but hardly anyone votes in a majority of those elections. I, too, am curious how they have an average of 10 votes per voter.

I haven't used Votizen but in other voting records databases, they record "Yes" or "No" as to whether they voted (and sometimes other information depending on the state).

Re: Inside Votizen - Tech, Design, Culture

#22

Post by famousactress »

What are typical working hours? Can engineers work from home?

Jason: 8-10 hours in office, more from home / weekends. Yes if needed but we prefer to collaborate in the office. Since we run continuous deployment speed matters, and that means you need high intra-office bandwidth.

If the bit about intra office bandwidth isn't ridiculous misdirection, then apologies... But it sure sounds like it. I think it's interesting, in an age where shops are bending over backward to rethink what makes people productive, and go above and beyond when it comes to equipment (or tequila), that telecommuting still seems to have an unfounded shroud of taboo hanging over it.

What am I missing? Please feel free to tell me why intra-office bandwidth is a really important attribute that deserves a place in the answer to this question.

(For the record Votizen seems rad, and the article is awesome. Sorry for coming off negative)

Re: Inside Votizen - Tech, Design, Culture

#23

Post by jdunck »

aamar wrote: post #19
scarmig wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing that their database isn't voter registrations but individual votes--one person can have multiple votes and registrations recorded over the years. I still don't see how that could add up to a factor of 10, though. I'm in a similar space and typically people will have fewer than that, although the voter records we have don't go back more than a decade or so.

A ~10 year record could mean ~30 chances to vote, but hardly anyone votes in a majority of those elections. I, too, am curious how they have an average of 10 votes per voter.

I just looked at a rough count - it's 1.1B voter history records. I don't have an offline copy to do heavier analytics on it - just from analyze stats on indexes for now.

Also, after signing up, people can correct/revise their voting records:

http://imgur.com/a/NOj4I

This is because 1) the states themselves don't keep complete records and 2) we don't have all voting history forever, as scarmig pointed out.

scarmig, you're "in the space" I googled and this was 1st: http://www.strike-the-root.com/3/scarmig/scarmig1.html What do you work on?

Sideline, is that related to Lessig's Root Strikers? Seems to be a different Libertarian site w/ unfortunate brand collision. :-/

Re: Inside Votizen - Tech, Design, Culture

#24

Post by saraid216 »

dgouldin wrote: post #13
saraid216 wrote: post #4

They claimed 2B rows for their voter database. If I understood that correctly, that means they know about 2 billion people. Do they cover countries other than America? Because the population of America is only 300 million or so; even accounting for false positives (failing to sync two accounts as one person) or fake identities (pet dog has an account), I don't really see how you can get from 300m to 2b.

I'm a developer at Votizen. Just our voter history (whether a voter actually voted in a particular election) is, on average, 10 rows per voter record. 200 million voter records * 10 history records per voter = ~2 billion rows.

Ah, okay. That makes more sense. Thanks.

Re: Inside Votizen - Tech, Design, Culture

#25

Post by scarmig »

jdunck wrote: post #23
aamar wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A ~10 year record could mean ~30 chances to vote, but hardly anyone votes in a majority of those elections. I, too, am curious how they have an average of 10 votes per voter.

I just looked at a rough count - it's 1.1B voter history records. I don't have an offline copy to do heavier analytics on it - just from analyze stats on indexes for now. Also, after signing up, people can correct/revise their voting records: http://imgur.com/a/NOj4I This is because 1) the states themselves don't keep complete records and 2) we don't have all voting history forever, as scarmig pointed out. scarmig, y…

That's not me, though I'm quite sympathetic to the libertarian critique, particularly the public choice side of things. Otherwise garden-variety left =)

As far as where in the "space" I am, it's a fairly well-established player, though I've been thinking of moving on recently. Just out of curiosity, how much a requirement is Python over there? Was thinking of dropping off a resume...

Re: Inside Votizen - Tech, Design, Culture

#26

Post by pnathan »

famousactress wrote: post #22

What are typical working hours? Can engineers work from home? Jason: 8-10 hours in office, more from home / weekends. Yes if needed but we prefer to collaborate in the office. Since we run continuous deployment speed matters, and that means you need high intra-office bandwidth. If the bit about intra office bandwidth isn't ridiculous misdirection, then apologies... But it sure sounds like it. I think it's interesting…

Basically, it's nice to walk over to someone's desk and chat.

Re: Inside Votizen - Tech, Design, Culture

#27

Post by jdunck »

famousactress wrote: post #22

What are typical working hours? Can engineers work from home? Jason: 8-10 hours in office, more from home / weekends. Yes if needed but we prefer to collaborate in the office. Since we run continuous deployment speed matters, and that means you need high intra-office bandwidth. If the bit about intra office bandwidth isn't ridiculous misdirection, then apologies... But it sure sounds like it. I think it's interesting…

Devs use IRC, even in the office. And we do standups with some members on Skype. But meatspace still matters.

We generally prefer people in the office, all other things being equal. All other things are generally not equal, but it's a complex set of factors.

I worked as a contractor with several clients for about a year, almost all remotely from my home office. It works, but it is definitely still good to be in person.

I was able to do that because of market imbalances - I was, for some value of "better", the best available option, despite being remote. And that is certainly still true for some future employees. There's also the difficulty, when you're mostly central, that the off-site people are somehow less real or feel less ownership.

I wanted to relocate before I knew I'd be joining Votizen. It was a happy accident.

I do think, at some point, if the startup funding ramp continues, that it will just become absurd to try to pack in all the people moving here. And, of course, the world is a big place and there are more smart people living elsewhere than living here. But the density of skills and funding does matter, too.

Re: Inside Votizen - Tech, Design, Culture

#28

Post by jdunck »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #20
jdunck wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, I'm a dev at Votizen. I haven't read that study yet - it's on my list - but I tend to agree that existing social ties are somewhat orthogonal to political views. We are surprised by our friends' views precisely because we don't feel comfortable discussing things. This limits communication and understanding. The two-party winner-take-all system, combined with slow feedback loops (I won't vote for Pelosi because sh…

Don't you think your efforts will just be co-opted though? I've got a number of friends on social networks who don't hesitate to share their political views now. The problem is that they're doing so by whatever divide-and-conquer meme the political masters are spinning this week. It's the same as it ever was, only faster and 10x as annoying. I've actually hidden a couple of people on my FB timeline because of it. Wha…

It's a risk, but it's one we recognize. We're in this to disrupt hierarchy and broadcast-as-politics. I think that peer re-broadcasting is basically incompatible with the spirit of the interaction. The medium is the message, and the message is formed by the medium.

I don't think you can successfully run a broadcast system on top of the peer-based medium. The transition may be slow[1] and painful[2], but the change is economic (in terms of transactional overhead and diminishing returns); it's hard to see how it could be avoided short of censorship and regime[3].

If these peers are just spouting the message (the easiest thing for them to do - RT "yeah!") that will not be persuasive. The angels don't need to be saved.

What's new here is that collaborating on issues can span time and space; group-forming doesn't need a reason before it can happen. The reason can be discovered.

[1] http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reportsitem.aspx?id=100284

[2] http://www.ajr.org/article.asp?id=4517

[3] http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2012/01/newspapers-paywalls-and...

Re: Inside Votizen - Tech, Design, Culture

#29

Post by jdunck »

scarmig wrote: post #25
jdunck wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just looked at a rough count - it's 1.1B voter history records. I don't have an offline copy to do heavier analytics on it - just from analyze stats on indexes for now. Also, after signing up, people can correct/revise their voting records: http://imgur.com/a/NOj4I This is because 1) the states themselves don't keep complete records and 2) we don't have all voting history forever, as scarmig pointed out. scarmig, y…

That's not me, though I'm quite sympathetic to the libertarian critique, particularly the public choice side of things. Otherwise garden-variety left =) As far as where in the "space" I am, it's a fairly well-established player, though I've been thinking of moving on recently. Just out of curiosity, how much a requirement is Python over there? Was thinking of dropping off a resume...

We're fairly invested in python at this point, but I think smart devs are professional learners. We have a great dev on staff, Emily, who came from Rails and has been immediately productive.

We're definitely not "full stack python" - best tool for the job, etc.

Re: Inside Votizen - Tech, Design, Culture

#30

Post by famousactress »

jdunck wrote: post #27
famousactress wrote: post #22

What are typical working hours? Can engineers work from home? Jason: 8-10 hours in office, more from home / weekends. Yes if needed but we prefer to collaborate in the office. Since we run continuous deployment speed matters, and that means you need high intra-office bandwidth. If the bit about intra office bandwidth isn't ridiculous misdirection, then apologies... But it sure sounds like it. I think it's interesting…

Devs use IRC, even in the office. And we do standups with some members on Skype. But meatspace still matters. We generally prefer people in the office, all other things being equal. All other things are generally not equal, but it's a complex set of factors. I worked as a contractor with several clients for about a year, almost all remotely from my home office. It works, but it is definitely still good to be in perso…

More conjecture. I feel like the honest answer to this question would be closer to:

"We've been lucky enough to find smart people who are happy to come into the office so this isn't a bridge we've needed to cross, which we're happy about because we don't really have much idea how it would impact our company or what challenges it might introduce"

It's unfortunate that the idea of remote employees is perpetrated as a compromise (we couldn't find anyone better, closer). So many of us literally make tools that throw rocks at the problem of erasing physical space (including you). I find constant inspiration in remote working that gets fed into the tools I build, and that's far from the only benefit. I'm not arguing that it's better, I'm arguing that it's not worse.. and if anything, is likely a rounding error in the equation of who the best person for your company is.

Also, all other things are never equal.

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