alex504

You are doing what you are accusing the author of this piece of doing.

Do you have anything to add about the total lack of evidence of the Bulstrode piece?

Are you claiming that the 18% number the Museum of London piece is claiming is anything less than fantastical? Can you engage with the argument with any evidence?

The reason the author couldn't find hard evidence about the number of black people in London in the 1300s is because there were so few that in this context it is a silly question.

A 100% salary boost is pretty large.

If they are doubling your salary at the start up your compensation at your previous role is probably at about the bottom or even below the bottom of what you would make on the market if the startup goes bust.

If the economy gets so bad that you get laid off from the startup and (seems unlikely at this point) that you would be unable to get any job at your current low salary, there is a decent chance you would have been laid off at the first job regardless.

I would say go for it, completely ignoring all quality of life variables like work life balance, getting along with your team, doing interesting work, and so forth. These things matter a lot as well so it's worth thinking about those. In terms of money it seems like a no brainer to me.

Its funny because my experience has been the exact opposite. I have sold three cars to them in the past 2 years (long story) and all of them were several thousand above what other dealers in the area or carvana/shift/vroom were willing to pay. Every time I got one of their offers I was like, "Huh. Ok".

However in buying cars from them, everything seems a overpriced compared to the local market.

My understanding of it is that they make money by doing used car arbitrage. They knew they could make money on the cars I sold them by shipping them across the country. And I think people are willing to pay a little more to buy a car from them because of all of the guarantees and how painless it is.

Bobby Fischer was one of the greatest players in history, and he was EXTREMELY paranoid.

As soon as I see the JSX critique I roll my eyes. This has been around since reacts inception and it just doesn't hold any water for me. I remember interviewing with a company in 2019 that was still on Angular 1 because they didn't like JSX, and didn't want to learn typescript. It just "looked yucky" to them.

Very very poor reasoning. I have never thought to myself, man I wish this wasn't JSX and just normal Javascript, to myself in the 6 or so years I've been using React. It just isn't something that anyone should care about and it shows the author has probably been biased against React forever, for no good reason.

That's the thing about react, there basically are no edges or very very few edges left. There were edges in like 2018, but the team has made it relatively easy to do anything you want to do, while writing scalable and maintainable code.

So if these fields weren't highly regulated demanding personal projects from candidates would be a good approach for hiring?

Its the drugs fault.

If the drug causes negative effects on a large subset of the people who use them, that is a problem with the drug.

This seems like it was more or less just a straight-up scam. They told customers that they were investing their funds in a diversified set of stablecoins. They promised the customers they could not lose money because the stablecoins were all backed. They then put all of the money into Terra, an algorithmic stablecoin, which is not backed by anything.

Terra gave yields near 20%, but Stablegains gave 15%, so they were basically just skimming 5% off the top. I wonder if it will be possible to sue or even prosecute.

In my experience none of what you are talking about is necessary to have a successful tech career. In my case I have an English degree, went to a boot camp, and worked fairly hard at medium sized companies for a few years. I work at a company where I make as much or more than a lot of doctors. A lot of my colleagues are from places like Google, Microsoft, Facebook etc.

I could probably not have even gone to college, it was just getting the first job that mattered. Probably wouldn't have gotten into Google or whatever with that first job, but it isn't hard to work your way up if you interview well.

Maybe we disagree about what "really successful" means. I personally feel that the way things are now if I was actually motivated to make as much as possible I could get promoted and ladder my way up about as far as I wanted to in this industry, but I have no desire to do this because I make plenty of money and only work about 25 hours a week. If I wanted to I could also go work for some exciting startup, but I would have to work a lot harder which is something I don't want to do.

The point being that what you do in high school, college, or even most of your career doesn't really matter that much if you are smart and can actually figure out what you are doing.

I am definitely not an expert, don't know about the data around shelters. My understanding of shelters is that they make it a lot harder to do drugs and that is why a lot of the homeless prefer camps. My understanding is that abuse, violence and drug use are reduced at shelters and that is the main advantage of them.

For those saying they should give these people services as well as housing - the problem is that they refuse services, but are given housing anyway.

I just finished reading Sanfransicko by Michael Shellenberger, who is a critic of housing first.

He doesn't seem like the most trustworthy author, especially after reading parts of his other book, Apocalypse Never, this scathing review of it (https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/07/review-bad-scienc...), and Shellenberger's really poor defense (https://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2020/8/3/bad-scie...)

However I think what Shellenberger is saying makes a lot of sense: you shouldn't give free housing to people without asking for something in return like getting off of drugs or taking antipsychotic meds. Shelters, yes, apartments, no. Addicts go into these places, overdose, and die, because there is no one around to help them when they overdose. It is also just a huge waste resource-wise and might even make the problem worse, because you are enabling people to live these lifestyles that they need to get out of.

Please kill me

They can look at the ledger, and show up to your house, take ownership of your house and put you in jail.

You have to hire people that don't have big egos, and are also high performers. Some people will obviously be higher performers than others but without egos communication works. If someone is not performing well, everyone should feel open and trusted enough to communicate about it and find a resolution.

If you hire even one person with a big ego communication breaks down and you are in for a really bad time. Pretty much every high performance team knows this and put a lot of effort at weeding these people out.

A lot of it is also setting a good example once you've made the hire through your team and company culture. Hopefully when someone joins the team they will see how others communicate and carry themselves and it will rub off on them. Everyone should have enough respect and trust in everyone else not to have a huge ego even if they might have had one at their previous job where people treated one another poorly.

It is possible to be disagreeable in a constructive way, combined with a “disagree-and-commit” attitude where the team’s success is the priority.

Disagreement is absolutely key to making a team work. Disagreeing with humility, and trusting others to take disagreement without having their egos involved, is what is needed. Being overly agreeable happens when you don't trust the other person to take your disagreement without ego.

To be honest (as you asked for), it does come off as egotistical and a bit condescending. I would remove the "Thank you and sorry" and "The bar is high because my word carries weight" sections. The tone of sentences like "I'm insanely lucky to be where I am today", and "My word carries weight" is a bit self-aggrandizing.

Without those sections I think the rest is fine. If you want to introduce the whole thing to explain why it's necessary I would entirely leave yourself out of it because it comes off as self aggrandizing. I would just write something like, "I appreciate your interest in working at Loom. I can't simply pass your resume on if you contact me, because it isn't fair to my hiring manager. It makes it easier for everyone when I provide the below information up front because its saves us both time".

It seems like if they intended to offer the bonus to you that this is a mistake, or a company that you don't want to work for, so it should be pretty easy to ask them about it and see what happens. Any sane company wouldn't intentionally lie about this.

I'm at a company that is about one tier below FAANG and I'm making 250 total at a senior 1 role. Or I was before the stock market started tanking, now I'll be making about 220.

The bank will only cover what it is appraised at. You have to split the difference with cash. Some banks might be willing to give you different terms (higher apr, more down) but that is generally how it works in my experience.

itunes isnt p2p

This reminds me of a joke Norm MacDonald did on his podcast:

Did you see the Great Gatsby? Did you see it in 3D? It was almost like the sober examination of the unrestrained materialism and absent moral center of the roaring 20s jumped right out at you.

Definitely not saying that. I would also argue that I am contributing less than a majority of my non tech friends, who all make less than me aside from a couple of doctors.

When I initially quit, I thought I was going to do something similar to what the author here was trying to do, after taking a couple of years off. I had some fantasy of being an artist. I don't believe the notion that there is a position in tech that I would be passionate enough about that I would really care all that much, but I work remotely for about 5-6 hours a day now and have plenty of time to do the things that I care about.

My perspective now is that there are two ends of the work/life balance spectrum you should avoid. The first is not working at all, or working as little as possible. This would include doing something far below what you are capable of like working at a grocery store just because there is no stress and you can manage to get by on that type of income. Lots of people fall into a lifestyle where they realize they don't want to be materialistic, so they never get a career going, and then they pay serious consequences as they get older and have no money or freedom.

The other end of the spectrum to avoid is materialism. Measuring your self worth in status, or seeking status, especially through money, is a challenging thing to avoid at least in the US. Being close minded and materialistic, in my opinion, is robbing yourself of experiencing life in the way it can be experienced, because it makes it hard to build good relationships or empathize with people. Materialism is a huge huge issue in our society and it is something that too many people who start making lots of money take for granted, and this is ultimately rooted in fear and insecurity.

I think I was pushed down the path of materialism by default. I was an insecure twentysomething who was working hard at something that didn't make me happy, and everyone was telling me how well I was doing and to keep at it. The more I made it a part of me the more unhappy I became until I eventually quit.

When I quit and started hanging out with people who had also quit (or never started) I felt like a weight had been lifted off of me and that I was now living the dream. Eventually I realized how lucky I had been to have the career I had, and backed off of the path I was on by starting to work again, but with a much better sense of balance and perspective.

There are many people who have conquered their fears, and are simply bad at whatever they are trying to do. Either that or they aren't really trying to do anything except enjoy themselves, and they don't care / are oblivious to the fact that their lifestyle is a net drain on society that will eventually land them in a very bad spot.

I agree with everything you are saying. I'd like to share my perspective.

I quit my job for about 2 years, thinking I would never go back to full time. It was extremely liberating but also a somewhat scary experience. The reason for this is I think delusional thinking unfortunately plays a big part in what happens to people who stop working for long periods of time.

There are many, many people in my experience who stop working at some point, have nonwork become a big part of who they are, and never go back. They realize their current mode of work and life are making them miserable, so they throw out work complety instead of finding something more balanced.

I've met probably a dozen people like this and most if not all of them are in a deep state of laziness that is probably also a certain category of depressipn. Its quite sad when they realize they are 50, have no money, no way of making money, and no family because they couldn't afford one.

The author to me seems like a very delusional person. I hope I'm wrong but it just comes off as very naive. Is this magazine going to somehow change the world? How is he going to make money? How long has he not been working? How much savings has he lost in opportunity cost?

There is nothing more liberating than not working and convincing yourself that you don't need to work. For every 1000 people who think they are going to do this about 1 succeeds, and 100 manage to support themselves by living cheaply, contributing nothing to society, and mooching off of their relative, friends, and social safety nets.

I should also say I think taking time off, even long periods of time, is one of the best things that people who can afford to can do. It changed my life. I just wanted to point out there is a dark side to this, that a lot of people fall prey to. I could be reading too much into the article but I thought I'd give my perspective as I've thought a lot about this.

Fine art and NFTs are not theoretically the same. With fine art there is only one object, which can only be picked up, looked at, and so forth, in one spot. People go to museums or private collections to go see these pieces because looking at them on a computer or in a print doesn't have nearly the level of detail needed to appreciate them. Seeing a reproduction or a computer image of fine art is like going to a movie theater VS watching a movie on an iPhone SE, or going to the opera VS listening to it on your iPhone. And only one person can own that experience.

This is untrue for NFTs. There is basically no value whatsoever to an NFT as far as I can tell VS say an svg of whatever image you downloaded. NFTs don't need to be owned to appreciate them, and "owning" them is basically meaningless insomuch as someone who takes a screenshot has about the same level of ownership as the person who "bought" it.

I've been using it for over 10 years, and there have been lots of small annoyances that have piled up in a way that no other software has.

The most egregious and the one I can fathom the least is that the podcast feature with video podcasts is just fundamentally broken. On android it is constantly stopping and restarting podcasts, replaying ads, and stopping for no reason. I pay for premium which means I'm supposed to be able to skip ads, but they make it difficult by forcing you to drag the playhead all of the way through the progress bar, for every ad. About 1/10th of the time I do this it sends me back to the beginning of the podcast and I have to go through and skip all of the ads again, sometimes succeeding and sometimes getting sent back to the start again.

This feature also forces you to use video. There is no audio only option. This is obviously terrible if you have a bad connection. I live in a city where the cellular connection is spotty in a lot of places so many times I will want to play something, have it freeze on me over and over again and I will just give up.

There are tons of people complaining about the ad issue and this all over the internet. Spotify is spending billions of dollars developing and buying exclusive podcasts only to have them on a player that is such shit that people who have been listening to them for years give up.

They must have an engineering budget in the hundreds of millions of dollars a year range, and they can't fix these basic issues. There are many podcast apps that are much much better that are available for free. Video sucks on mobile, especially android, but for the love of god make it optional, and fix these basic bugs. I have a very widely used android phone running the latest operating system. I can't imagine how issues like this could exist for years on a company like this' core product without getting fixed.

For another example that I experienced today on desktop mac osx, there are lots of times the player will simply stop, when my connection is on very fast wifi, and I will restart it, only for it to stop again. It is like kick starting a motorcycle sometimes. I think this has to do with bluetooth, but I've never encountered this problem with any other audio or video software. This is something that I have been experiencing for years, on different osx devices, with different versions of spotify, and different bluetooth devices. It is clearly just a very common bug. It is something that should be easily caught by telemetry but spotify is too incompetent or crazy politically to fix it.

Hi, I am very interested in doing this. I am wondering if you have any advice for making the switch from full time? I know that my resume and experience are what these companies are looking for but I don't have a very good network and have found it harder to find companies than with FT work. Cheers Alex

Spotify has the most frustrating and bug-ridden UX of any software I have ever used, by far.

From the article:

The social-work school was contractually required to share about 60% of revenue with 2U and ran into financial trouble.

My impression was that most of what 2u did was marketing, I might be wrong about that though. It seems like a combination of marketing and their online platform.