Coax

I've done plenty of work with web graphics, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc., but I have a problem that's trickier than anything I've dealt with before. Not only do I now know who to solve it, I don't know who to ask how to solve it.

Here's the issue...

I work for a theater nonprofit. I have a bunch of bitmap images of Broadway theater seating charts. I want to turn these seating charts into beautiful vector graphics to make interactive seating charts for our website. I could go image-by-image and try to recreate each one in Illustrator by hand, but that would take forever. I'd like to build a systematic way to take a bitmap seating chart and convert it into a vector graphic that captures the shapes of each seating section.

What's the best way to go about doing this? I realize the solution is complex and probably can't be answered on a HN post, but I'd just like to know what resources I can turn to. What folks would know about this sort of thing?

We have a small (5-6 person) NYC startup. Thus far, all hires have been developers, but we're getting ready to make our first non-technical hire, a social media manager.

I get the impression that there is a glut of non-technical "business" people trying to get hired by startups. Therefore, I assume we can pay this person substantially less than we'd pay an entry-level developer. We'll still give him/her the same amount of options that we give all technical folks we've hired.

Is that correct? How much should an entry-level social media manager make in NYC?

For most of my life, I've felt largely impervious to stress. I've always been abnormally low-key.

But I'm now leading a startup (venture backed, with a dozen or so employees) and I feel constantly stressed out. Not sure what to do about this. It isn't about one thing in particular; it's more of a constant sense of tension. I love most things about startups, but this particular aspect is something I'm growing to hate.

I'd love to hear how other members of the HN community deal with the tremendous stress that is associated with running a startup.

It's been a while since there has been a "who's hiring" thread. What companies out are there looking for hackers?

Our startup would like to hire an econometrician. Resources abound for people who want to hire developers, but there seem to be few venues for hiring mathematicians and statisticians.

We're looking for someone with an statistics or econometrics masters degree, so we are contacting the appropriate departments in certain schools

Beyond contacting schools, can the HN community suggest how we can go about finding an econometrician?