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iamacynic

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“Stop Zillow” 9 years ago

being a realtor is a sales job. the good ones know this - they don't care where the listings and the numbers come from, they do the footwork and hit the phones hard, to sellers, to agents, to bankers, to government agencies, to lawyers, to engineers, to appraisers, to everyone involved, which can sometimes be wasted time, in order to get their clients into successful deals first, meaning FAST.

when i was buying my place my realtor was sending me links from zillow, redfin, his MLS, his agency's private listings, even fucking craigslist, everything. he would send me stuff on weekends, after hours, even midnight. i culled the list down and he spent time setting up a viewing on every single one i asked for. the more listings the better, in his eyes. i referred him to 2 of my friends, both of whom bought places through him also.

TLDR Stock Options 9 years ago

a c-suite would get more than that, probably closer to 3 or 5%, and also a signing bonus, as well as performance bonuses, a huge options package, and a termination clause / parachute clause. hell, throw in a relocation package and a credit card for entertaining customers and partners also.

i'm constantly surprised at how many people in our industry have a problem with articulating their own desires / needs in general.

i wouldn't be surprised if the same people asking HN how to get a higher salary are the ones hitting 'flag' on individual posts they don't like. you can't just push a button and get what you want in life.

do you think your analysis applies to states like texas, virginia, arizona, north carolina, georgia, utah, etc? even the in-between states such as colorado and florida were doing fine before the blue takeover of 2005+.

i've been to all of these places in the last 10 years and they're all doing more than fine.

it seems to me only a handful of states over-whelmingly tied to particularly depressed sectors of the economy are the ones losing their people and tax revenue. and a lot of those were blue states just 5 years ago!

and of course, this is to amazon's benefit. the more concentrated their buying power, the more leverage they have over the vendor, the more profits they can squeeze from the entire supply chain, because shit rolls downhill.

most vendors of course will dive head-first into this arrangement with their eyes wide open, because most of them don't think long-term, they want that revenue now cost-be-damned, and quite frankly they're just not as good as the executives running amazon.

see: walmart from 10 years ago. wonder how many of those nice folks made the move from arkansas to seattle recently...

yes, it seems to me people starting businesses in this space are trying to solve the wrong problem. do we really need yet another really cool small home concept that will never be purchased or installed by anyone?

the market needs a service that will undertake the arduous and confusing task of navigating the political process of actually installing and inhabiting a small home in a place anyone would want to live. but i guess photos of that product don't look cool in an architectural digest.

the trick is to finely calibrate your bullshit meter through life experiences.

what people tend to respect innately is a genuinely nice person who can instantly turn into a no-holds-barred asshole if bad intentions are detected.

i said good looking and good fitting. of course most people don't wear clothes that fit or look good. the person i replied to mentioned he looks 'sloppy' in t-shirt and jeans.

i'm pointing out the fact that you're guaranteed to look sloppy in t-shirt/jeans/sandles unless you buy the expensive stuff or are top 10% fit and attractive, and even then, there's no saving some really cheap stuff. those good looking 'casually dressed' people are spending real money to achieve that look.

thrifting isn't exactly fringe these days, even among yuppies and rich fashionable young people. the problem is it takes a lot of time, because finding the right fit becomes the real challenge.

the dirty secret of jeans and t-shirts is: the good looking and good fitting jeans and t-shirts are pretty damn expensive. and those band t-shirts, if authentic, probably are too. it has become a fashion category in and of itself, complete with a high end range.

jeans are all over the spectrum, but unless they are obviously from a giant bin at a discount store, probably are at least $100, likely above $200 per pair. and there are plenty of $500 pairs of jeans out there...

my casual white dyed hemp rainbow sandals are $50, some of the special edition ones i've had over the years (braided leather, etc). are $100+. pretty expensive for basically a flat piece of rubber and a strap of material covered in cloth.

when someone shows up to work in truly cheap jeans/t-shirt/sandals, it doesn't look good, they look trashy and nothing fits properly.

it's just a signal of spending power / hipness on the more casual side of the scale. i've seen people dressed in "jeans and t-shirts" wearing vintage swiss watches. in wealthier areas where a tech company would be, a casual 'jeans and t-shirt' outfit could cost either $25 total or $1000 total.

i think that if someone makes you dress a certain way, it's going to be tough to enjoy it. if you do it on your own, as a passion or just to differentiate yourself from others, it can be fun and even relieve stress.

of course there's a third option, one that small businesses are opting for en masse: pay for a well-known 3rd party to run a simple remote vulnerability scan, pass the results (full of false positives and just plain wrong information) to someone else to deal with, and pretend like you just accomplished something useful, and reject all recommendations for anything that costs more.

80% about sales, the other 20% is the thing you sell

uhm, well i would put it at more like 33% sales and marketing, 33% R&D&O, and 33% other stuff like HR/finance/administration/etc.

and 1% glamour and glory like going out to drinks to celebrate after a release/sale/hire/investment/acquisition.

sales should not be 80% of the effort, unless you are literally a reseller.