So far it's a lot of words and graphs with a tenuous grip on reality in a few places:
> There are, however, some groups in lower income brackets that do poorly in inflationary environments. If someone doesn’t have a lot of money and lives on a fixed income in retirement, they have a lot of vulnerability to inflation. Those sorts of folks should consider owning inflation hedges to protect their lifestyle, if they expect that high levels of inflation have a reasonable probability of occurring.
If you think someone in a low tax bracket on fixed income has the spare money to invest in anything, you're not understanding the words "low income" or "fixed."
> Capital had political control from the late 1800s through the 1920s. Labor had political control from the 1930s through the 1970s. Capital again had political control from the 1980s through the 2010s. I’m not sure what’s next but signs are increasingly pointing towards labor regaining some influence, and it’s a topic I continue to monitor.
> If you think someone in a low tax bracket on fixed income has the spare money to invest in anything, you're not understanding the words "low income" or "fixed."
The low fixed income often comes from investment. For example, you save money in 401k, then as you near retirement, you shift investments into safer instruments ie. bonds. The result is exactly low fixed income and vulnerability to inflation.
The whole appeal of someone like Alden is that she isn't playing for either team, shes just trying to step back and analyze. And it is a much more useful an interesting perspective on the world than turning every single discussion into team sports politics.
The fact that the parent is one of the more upvoted comments I've ever written seems to indicate that I'm not alone.
A final point is that her publicly listed example portfolio performance seems to indicate the she has an exceptionally solid grasp on reality.
> shes just trying to step back and analyze... And it is a much more useful an interesting perspective on the world than turning every single discussion into team sports politics.
When is the last time you read a serious financial analysis that divided up 150 years of world history in such a way? Or tried to relate it to investment?
> The fact that the parent is one of the more upvoted comments I've ever written seems to indicate that I'm not alone.
Does that mean you're correct?
> A final point is that her publicly listed example portfolio performance seems to indicate the she has an exceptionally solid grasp on reality.
I read through her website, and it's pretty much the same thing you'll get on other pitch sites ultimately selling a newsletter. It's not bad advice in general, but wealth managers and other investors don't post example portfolios. They post their track record with real money.
> When is the last time you read a serious financial analysis that divided up 150 years of world history in such a way? Or tried to relate it to investment?
Ray Dalio, the founder of the world's biggest hedge fund does primarily this in his public communication.
Anyway suit yourself, the whole point of it not being team politics is that it really doesn't matter at all if people disagree. I factor her advice heavily in my own portfolio and it has benefitted me. If you think she's wrong ignore her. And I guess complain loudly that other people find it useful.
Yes it does. Because I'm not playing team politics, it is not competitive, in the sense that there are two sides where one wins.
I'm stating that people find this take useful. The fact that it is getting updated indicates that people indeed do find it useful. In that case it is tautologically correct.
As mentioned before, the awesome thing about playing my game instead of your game is that the fact that you disagree is totally meaningless to me, as I mentioned I'm not on a team, I have no opponent. Unless you have a way to stop me from using Lyn Alden's advice, I simply place zero value on your opinion and move on. (except in the sense that it is fun to point out the fallacies for sport in the context of a message board).
The idea that workers were lording it over the rich from the 1930s through to the 1970s is preposterous. Unless the words political and control have been twisted to mean their polar opposites.
The post-WWII-but-pre-1970 economic world - the world of “embedded liberalism” - was a pleasant place. There were corporations, but they didn't do anything garish like compete with each other. Executive pay was taxed so heavily that nobody had much incentive to try to increase their profit margin; workforces were so heavily unionized that companies were nervous about any changes that might upset employees. As long as companies followed the script, the government embraced and protected them. Starting a new business was considered some bizarre act of alchemy, like discovering a new form of matter; normal people worked for the same giant company their whole life and got a nice gold watch as a reward when they retired. The government wasn't exactly socialist per se, but it kept starting and expanding programs like Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, and every night you went to sleep knowing there would be probably be another uncontroversial, mostly-successful government welfare program tomorrow.
was it really so pleasant? inflation was very high, medical treatments were not so great, entertainment was expensive, most jobs still did not pay much, hours were long. Someone with a tech job probably earns more money on an inflation-adjusted basis and has a much nicer standard of living compared to someone living in the 60s
Some of the assertions are questionable. college and healthcare have gone up but the amount people actually pay relative to sticker price is small . There is tons of financial aids and other deference and forbearance programs, so college is quite affordable if you finish.
Everyone is well aware that any promise of company loyalty isn't worth the time it takes to say it. To attract in-demand employees, you have to make every week count for them so if there is an acquisition or yet another useless management shuffle, they can walk away without regretting the time they invested. The easiest way to achieve this is to offer some amount of equity and/or the exact weekly schedule and vacation time they are looking for.
The most excited I have seen engineers get is when I tell them my primary goal is to keep them out of meetings, away from process rabbit holes, and focused on programming and documentation. We have one weekly 30 minute meeting limited to the product team, and ad-hoc stand-ups if we are picking a long term path that affects the whole team. The acronym KPI is never mentioned. Our only measure of success is deployed features.
The toughest part here is usually dealing with management who think you can't get anything done in 25-30 hours, or that having "face time" is worth sucking 10 hours out of someone's life every week with a commute. Or even worse, they have mandatory "all hands" meetings or "team building exercises" as if their employees are children. (To anyone offended by that, try building a team of adults through hard work instead of the equivalent of circle time.) They cannot comprehend that a focused 5-6 hours a day is much more productive than trying to enforce 8x40x50 and pretending that every hour is similarly productive.
"Everyone is well aware that any promise of company loyalty isn't worth the time it takes to say it."
100%
I was hired by a company that said they don't outsource, they don't lay off employees, and that the pay structure was good (3 10% promotions and a 4th larger one if going into management, plus a $25k-ish profit sharing bonus).
Within 2-3 years, they started outsourcing, the promotions turned into 7% raises with the need to get 5 of them to be making near the same amount when considering the change to profit sharing. The chance to go into management and get that money was greatly reduced, requiring you to work both as a PM and a manager with pay being about the same as the PM role. Within 6 years they started laying people/groups off.
This is a company that has a high reputation for doing the right thing, marketed themselves as different, etc. Yet I have seen the erosion of pay and benefits, violation of their own policies, and all while trying to sell it to you as some great benefit.
> people have been organizing into large work entities since time immemorial
Mercantilism didn't appear until the 17th Century.
> Yet people act like working for someone else is some new construct that exists to oppress everyone and most of the common mans ills are because of capitalists. This to me is quite silly.
Criticism of capitalism is as old as capitalism itself. Organizing a hierarchy that replicates monarchy/aristocracy carries the same problems -- mostly incompetence hidden by birthright and social status.
Markets work and have existed since time immemorial. The problem is that modern capitalism is so corrupt that is has destroyed the market. All products are more or less terrible, because the executives running the company never use the products they produce, or have any real idea what their workers do on a daily basis. This reality was even recognized by Adam Smith:
"The trade of a joint-stock company is always managed by a court of directors. This court, indeed, is frequently subject, in many respects, to the control of a general court of proprietors. But the greater part of these proprietors seldom pretend to understand any thing of the business of the company... The directors of such companies, however, being the managers rather of other people’s money than of their own, it cannot well be expected that they should watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which the partners in a private copartnery frequently watch over their own. Like the stewards of a rich man, they are apt to consider attention to small matters as not for their master’s honour, and very easily give themselves a dispensation from having it. Negligence and profusion, therefore, must always prevail, more or less, in the management of the affairs of such a company. It is upon this account, that joint-stock companies for foreign trade have seldom been able to maintain the competition against private adventurers. They have, accordingly, very seldom succeeded without an exclusive privilege; and frequently have not succeeded with one. Without an exclusive privilege, they have commonly mismanaged the trade. With an exclusive privilege, they have both mismanaged and confined it."
> Most everything else that is worth having in life takes discipline, work, and self growth. Yes some people will get more of those good things, some for less effort, so what though? As long as they are not breaking laws to do so I am fine with it. If someone breaks the law then punish them.
The privatized natural gas company in your town hires a lobbyist to eliminate safety regulations. The gas seeps in your home and explodes when your partner goes to light the stove. You survived the explosion, but the hospital bills emptied your bank account. Your insurance doesn't cover negligence by a third party. No law was broken.
You are now bankrupt, homeless, alone, and unable to work. How is discipline, hard work, and self growth going to help you?
A non-touchscreen way to operate windshield wipers. VW makes a car with an electric drivetrain, Tesla makes an electric drivetrain with a place to put people and things.
I don’t really get what you mean, sorry? Why does a family need different wiper controls to a single person? And obviously you can put people and things in a Tesla.
So the person responsible for keeping their family alive doesn't look away from the road trying to perform a very common task. A car is designed around the idea that maintaining the driver's attention on the road is the primary function. I am not sure what is driving the design of Teslas for the newer models.
I like Teslas in general, but their decision to remove things like buttons and stalks from their vehicles is both dangerous and stupid, and people have already died because of it.
You’d imagine they would have engineers think about this stuff. Such dummies!
Looking forward for that link of a death caused by operating the wipers. I haven’t touched mine (not Tesla) for years since they work automatically, maybe other families have special windshield wiper adjustment needs?
Tesla resists efforts to prevent distracted driving, and also resists the consistent call from regulators properly set expectations for the capabilities of its autopilot feature. People are dying as a result. You'll notice that you won't find the same articles about GM's SuperCruise feature, because they don't oversell the feature and have more safety measures in place to make sure drivers aren't distracted.
Waymo's CEO even claims that Tesla isn't a competitor. There is an obvious conflict here, but he's not the only one saying that 1) Tesla will never have a fully autonomous driving system and 2) their existing autopilot feature is falsely advertised and dangerous.
Hold on, you were talking about the danger of operating the wipers on the touchscreen. That is completely unrelated to autopilot.
You’re just pushing your agenda here. By the way, a tip on that: that first site completely discredits any kind of safety discussion as soon as it’s mentioned. It scares you with a long list of accidents when only 6 are potentially related to autopilot in a decade of its existence, vs 1.3 million deaths happening every year for all car brands.
> Remember that BMW and Audi combined had 9 driver fatalities in nearly 900,000 vehicle years? Clearly, 11 Tesla driver fatalities in 265,000 vehicle years is not a good start. But even those numbers likely understate the danger of driving a Tesla...
> Even without making any adjustment whatsoever for missing fatality data, Tesla drivers are much more likely to die than their peers driving other luxury cars. Eleven deaths in 265,290 vehicle-years is a stunningly high driver fatality rate of 41.46. That’s quadruple the rate of Audi and BMW, and more than triple the rate of all luxury cars combined.
The issue is whether design decisions by Tesla are leading to fatalities. They are, if you compare them to the luxury segment they are in. Advertising an autopilot feature which does not work, and moving standard controls to a distracting, inconsistent touch screen interface is leading to more crashes and more deaths.
Tip of the hat: don't discredit information because you don't like it.
There's a really great video about the cockpit design of fighter aircraft. Basically, everything is color coded and feel the same in every plane to avoid mistakes like what telsa is introducing.
Teslas have a physical button that controls the wipers when needed. They also can run automatically. Finally they also can be operated via the touch screen, but I never use this last option. You seem to think it’s the only option, but that’s not the case.
In every safety system, there is a point where human intervention can override automated activity. In almost every car these systems have standard tactile controls so you can override through muscle memory in an emergency without taking your eyes off the road. (If you haven't noticed, even the icons used on stalks and buttons are standardized across the industry as a matter of safety). In a Tesla, overriding the auto sense wiper feature is available through an interaction with the touch screen at the precise moment when a driver should not be distracted (ie, when they are having trouble seeing through the windshield). As far as I know, they are the only auto manufacturer that doesn't stick with standard stalks for things that affect visibility (wipers/headlights/turn signals, etc).
This is why I don't think a Tesla is a feature complete car -- it simply lacks the common set of safety features found in every other modern vehicle.
> On Model 3 and Model Y vehicles, Tesla didn’t install normal windshield wiper settings through a steering wheel stalk.
> Instead, the automaker is detecting the rain through its Autopilot cameras and automatically adjusting the speed based on the strength of the rainfall.
> If the driver wants to adjust the speed, they need to do it through the center touchscreen.
> The driver in Germany was adjusting those settings when he lost control of the vehicle and crashed.
The wiper can actually be activated via the stalk on Model 3 and Model Y. Not every fine grained setting, but the actions you need.
> The driver in Germany was adjusting those settings when he lost control of the vehicle and crashed.
Yes, user error. He should have used the physical button or voice controls instead. I mean, when driving, the first rule is pay attention to the road.
Anyone can snipe and nitpick, but in actual use with responsible drivers the system works great. With irresponsible drivers, all bets are off, as with any car.
That doesn’t take away the fact that the physical controls are there for the using.
As well as automatic and voice controls.
As with any car, if the driver chooses to look away from the road for any reason, they have to be responsible about it, and they did have other options here.
As I said in another reply, Tesla is the only company advertising automated driving and other features that don't work in edge cases which is bad news for staying alive, even if you aren't the person driving a Tesla. They are also actively removing standard physical controls that have been around for decades, and through design, they are training people to rely on a touchscreen device that is not consistent or reliable.
Sure there are people who also hit cruise control on a 96 Accord and expect it to drive itself, but Honda never told them that would work. These are the kind of realities Tesla should responsibly deal with as a mass market manufacturer, but they don't want to take the PR hit to accept accountability and potentially have to refund millions of dollars for a feature that doesn't work as advertised. They'd rather blame the drivers for as long as they can get away with it.
> training people to rely on a touchscreen device that is not consistent or reliable.
This is a common misconception, easily avoided by getting some firsthand experience owning a Tesla.
We literally do not use the touchscreen for driving. And for that matter, almost not at all while driving.
As with any tool there will be those who misuse it and put others at risk. I look forward to hearing you give even a single example where a human driver was not to blame. And, preemptively so you won’t waste your own time, I don’t mean citing links where if you dig in you find that the link does not support your case.
It’s true that over time people will learn to rely on controls less and less. The world has been through similar transitions with horse and buggy -> car for example. There will be accidents along the way but the end result will be a world with far fewer accidents.
Its possible there is a better way to get to that world, but I haven’t thought of one. Perfect systems do not just spring up out of nowhere.
There are at least 3 known cases where autopilot failed and someone died. (Also note that no one has died from the failure of Waymo or SuperCruise driver assist tech.) Here are a few articles in the past few days on the same subject.
> The investigation identified the following safety issues:
> - Driver Distraction.
> - Risk Mitigation Pertaining to Monitoring Driver Engagement.
> - Risk Assessment Pertaining to Operational Design Domain.
> - Limitations of Collision Avoidance Systems.
> - Insufficient Federal Oversight of Partial Driving Automation Systems.
> - Need for Event Data Recording Requirements for Driving Automation Systems.
As far as I know, Tesla has not even responded to this report. A good place to start heading towards that better world is for Tesla to demonstrate some accountability.
Why are you getting into the definition of fallacious? Read the NTSB report.
> The Tesla Autopilot system did not provide an effective means of monitoring the driver’s level of engagement with the driving task, and the timing of alerts and warnings was insufficient to elicit the driver’s response to prevent the crash or mitigate its severity. Requirements are needed for driver monitoring systems for advanced driver assistance systems that provide partial driving automation (SAE Level 2 systems), and Tesla needs to develop applications that more effectively sense the driver’s level of engagement and that alert drivers who are not engaged...
> Despite the system’s known limitations, Tesla does not restrict where Autopilot can be used. Tesla should incorporate system safeguards that limit the use of partial driving automation systems (Autopilot) to those conditions for which they were designed...
> The Tesla’s collision avoidance assist systems were not designed to, and did not, detect the crash attenuator. Because this object was not detected, (a) Autopilot accelerated the SUV to a higher speed, which the driver had previously set by using adaptive cruise control, (b) the forward collision warning did not provide an alert, and (c) the automatic emergency braking did not activate. For partial driving automation systems to be safely deployed in a high-speed operating environment, collision avoidance systems must be able to effectively detect potential hazards and warn of potential hazards to drivers
Autopilot 1) failed to detect a distracted driver and engage them, 2) is not limited by Tesla to areas where it actually works, and 3) depends on collision avoidance which does not work. Tesla is claiming they will solve these problems without LiDAR. Volvo, Waymo, GM, VW, and many more claim that even semi-autonomous driving isn't possible without it. We'll see how many more people have to die before Tesla changes their mind.
We have to be careful about moving the goalposts to measure Autopilot according to supposed qualities it never claims to have.
It’s likely that implementing the suggested solutions would add more problems than it solves. For one thing some of them would exacerbate one problem you seem to be concerned about, driver overconfidence and over reliance on the system.
So while these bureaucratic opinions are fascinating, like many such committee driven conclusions they should be taken with a grain of salt. Tesla has thought things through pretty well.
Ultimately the best solution for now imho is to keep full responsibility with the driver.
If autopilot allows itself to be activated in an area where it doesn't work, who is accountable for that? If it depends on collision avoidance that performs far worse than other solutions, who is accountable for that? When Tesla sells a $10k package that calls itself autopilot and then people die when they have it turned on, who is accountable for that?
> So while these bureaucratic opinions are fascinating, like many such committee driven conclusions they should be taken with a grain of salt. Tesla has thought things through pretty well.
Every other driver assist technology limits its own scope to prevent over-reliance. That's because those companies (Subaru/Toyota/GM/Ford/Volvo/BMW/VW) are working with regulators across the world to develop and adhere to standards. If Tesla's solution was better, you'd have some numbers to back it up instead of a bizarre assertion that industry experts are suddenly clueless when they are part of a regulatory body.
Tesla has created an unreliable semi-autonomous system and made it available before it's ready against the advice of the NTSB and other regulators. That is irresponsible and people who would have otherwise been paying attention have died because they, like you, assumed that "Tesla has thought things through pretty well."
Much like an IT department that fights tooth and nail against a third party security audit, it should be obvious why Tesla is so dedicated to pretending that there isn't a problem. They don't want to admit autopilot isn't ready, and will likely never be dependable until they have proximity sensors in addition to cameras like every other solution does. They'd rather blame the drivers for relying on the technology they just paid for. It's a ridiculous defense that will ultimately fall apart.
You don’t seem to be reading the clear onscreen warnings about this stuff from Tesla. There is a lot of misinformation out there, so I can understand how you could form negative opinions about them. My personal, first hand experience of their stance, as the owner of two Teslas both with the FSD option paid for, has been different from what you describe.
BTW about FSD I don’t expect it anytime soon. I paid for it (yes twice!) to support the company at a time when it was in a fragile financial state. It does give me some small benefits for now but I do look forward to more in the future. I don’t know how it will turn out but I’m thrilled to help do a small part to enable awesome futuristic technology! And to support a company that is not brain-locked sticking to the playbook of a committee of fuddy duddy old world car thinkers.
There are plenty of technologies that are working in a limited scope for driver assist, and functioning reliably if not perfectly. Tesla's death rate (measured in vehicle years) is three times that of their competition in the luxury segment.
Step 1 is to not sell something called Full Self-Driving/Autopilot when it can't do either of those things. Step 2 is to develop a reliable system (per NTSB advice) to make sure the driver is paying attention. Step 3 is to make sure it's only active in the domain where it can be trusted. Step 0 is to not do anything else until your collision avoidance works as well as your competitors.
Consider these differences:
"Subaru EyeSight Driver Assist Technology" -- with disclaimer about not being optimal in all conditions
"GM SuperCruise hands-free driving-assistance" -- with a similar disclaimer
"Tesla Full Self-Driving" -- and their disclaimer is "Full Self-Driving is in early limited access Beta and must be used with additional caution. It may do the wrong thing at the worst time, so you must always keep your hands on the wheel and pay extra attention to the road. Do not become complacent."
The marketing bait and switch is pretty common, but this is "Thanks for the $10,000 USD for Full Self Driving. It doesn't work. Don't trust it. In fact, pay extra attention while it's on."
I have never seen the tech community so excited about paying to be alpha testers for technology that is literally killing its users.
I understand what you’re saying but you missed the question. It was how do you develop an FSD system? The systems you mention are not
FSD, and only one of the three (Tesla) is working toward FSD. Do you see a better approach to get to FSD?
I don’t agree that the system is killing its users of course. That kind of inflammatory wording doesn’t help anything imho. The users are possibly contending for Darwin awards… they are doing it to themselves.
If you're keeping your car for 20 years, there are at least three or four timing belt/chain replacements and a ton of maintenance if you are putting typical miles on. Plus you're always one bad part away from blowing the engine, and there's no way to stop the inevitable long term decline of engine compression and replacing your transmission/clutch.
Electric vehicles outperform ICE powered vehicles on every metric, including price. Electricity is getting cheaper and cleaner over time, and so are batteries. In 10 years today's $10k battery pack might be twice as potent and half the price. I would stick with VW or other manufacturers, as Tesla is being cheap about battery chemistry for long term performance.
> Tesla also uses a different battery chemistry — aluminum, in addition to the standard nickel and cobalt — than other major automakers. The battery researchers said that choice has led to maximum range because of a higher-capacity battery chemistry, though downsides included a higher fire risk and shorter cycle life, or life span over hundreds of charges.
I would not listen to any advice on HN. I have a pretty solid hiring strategy, but it got downvoted to hell because HN skews to people without much real world experience. They can only think of tech products to sell to other tech companies. (I'm a CTO, and I've raised seed money for two different products. Our market is small -- under 200MM ARR -- but our nearest competitor starts at $30k per year and their product is terrible).
Focus on smaller companies that need help solving actual business problems with automation. Offer to do a project for $20 an hour. Get a job doing straight up IT stuff until you earn their trust, and then show them what you can do software wise. There is a lot of room for competent IT people, but you need to be way more realistic about who is going to hire you.
Honestly, I don't know why anyone wants to work for Google anyways. I took a developer course from one of their former employees, and it was a fucking joke. His ego trip was so ridiculous he said the words "no good Javascript developer uses four space indentions. Have you ever seen one??" And I was thinking, yes, in the library you had us review last week.
Lots of imposters and jackasses out there. Do honest work for smaller companies. It can lead to a lot more opportunity.
> I would not listen to any advice on HN. I have a pretty solid hiring strategy, but it got downvoted to hell because HN skews to people without much real world experience. They can only think of tech products to sell to other tech companies.
< Proceeds to give advice on HN >
This part doesn't really seem worthwhile to post.
> Focus on smaller companies that need help solving actual business problems with automation. Offer to do a project for $20 an hour. Get a job doing straight up IT stuff until you earn their trust, and then show them what you can do software wise. There is a lot of room for competent IT people, but you need to be way more realistic about who is going to hire you.
> This part doesn't really seem worthwhile to post.
I restrict my social media time to a couple of hours a week. If you want to be successful, hustle on LinkedIn. HackerNews is a procrastination hole for people who want to talk about developing software instead of actually doing it.
When is the last time someone shared obvious misinformation about covid on LinkedIn? Or women and POC being harassed via DMs? Or people vomiting influencer spam?
LinkedIn is the only social media site with the possibility of return on time investment, which all suffer from the problems you mention. So why pick the one that can't possibly get you paid?
Also, I'm still curious on how many recruiters have contacted you through Facebook and viewed your resume, as compared to LinkedIn.
> LinkedIn is the only social media site with the possibility of return on time investment, which all suffer from the problems you mention. So why pick the one that can't possibly get you paid?
Do you think influencers go on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram because they aren't getting paid? They just like it?
> Also, I'm still curious on how many recruiters have contacted you through Facebook and viewed your resume, as compared to LinkedIn.
To compare, the answer is 0 to both. I haven't been on Facebook since probably 2013, and I only had a LI at all because we were required to make one in college, which I logged into for the second time ever to deactivate also probably around 2013.
I assumed we were talking about software development, not influencing. Why are you so interested in chiming in on products you haven't used in 8 years?
> I assumed we were talking about software development, not influencing.
I am, which is why I totally ignore LinkedIn :)
> Why are you so interested in chiming in on products you haven't used in 8 years?
I didn't realize I wasn't allowed to post verifiable information about products unless I also participated.
Your comments seem to be increasingly condescending and short. You're welcome to take that behavior to LI, but I will not continue participating in this discussion. Have a great day.
> Focus on smaller companies that need help solving actual business problems with automation.
Thirding this. Smaller companies are easier to get into and actually more satisfying to work for (YMMV). Another responder also said basically "keep your head down and learn for the first year" which is great advice too.
PS: Never sound desperate. If you have the skills, confidently and honestly explain them to anyone who will listen. Tell them you'll work for cheap to prove yourself. You should have a job in no time.
> Honestly, I don't know why anyone wants to work for Google anyways.
I can tell you why - www.levels.fyi
Google is quite literally one of the most well-known and powerful tech companies in the world - I assume it's not that hard to think people who work in tech would want to associate with an organization int hat position.
---
I don't understand your basis of judging the skills of their engineers either. You had one data point of taking a course from a former engineer - not working together with, not a current Googler. Google employs thousands of Software Engineers and represent a large part of the Internet.
The former Googler used to be a Product Manager and I thought I would get some valuable insights. For as high up as he made it, I have no interest in learning how Google operates after seeing his interactions with others.
Through hard work and some dumb luck, I've also interacted with other Fortune 10/50 corporations at the VP level. I wasn't impressed with them either. So it's not just an anti-Google thing.
This is why software is terrible. Would you test Frank Gehry on the basics of architecture? Or have Frida Kahlo count her brushstrokes or plan her day hour by hour?
I test all developers by paying them to make the equivalent of a bird box. If it comes back relatively well designed, cool, I've got a developer. If they come back with three designs for different environments and species, I know I have an engineer.
As it stands, we have kids who have zero real world experience at the helm of corporations and the results are easy to see. They rarely produce anything of value for the general population. So rare we have to call them unicorns.
Yep. Software and products at these companies are often a horrific mess. Leaving one and taking a big pay cut just so I can go work with a small team of people who give a shit about software and products again.
Specifically, I wouldn't hire Frank Gehry because his buildings leak.
The subfield of software development where artistry outweighs cleverness and productivity is game design -- and not all game studios exist to do things that way, just particular boutiques centered around one storyteller's vision.
Okay, so... architects design the building. Engineers engineer it. Construction firms construct it. Why do you think Gehry was pouring concrete instead of designing his next award winning building?
> Would you test Frank Gehry on the basics of architecture? Or have Frida Kahlo count her brushstrokes or plan her day hour by hour?
Not sure if it's relevant? Google has hired Guido van Rossum and James Gosling. I'd imagine Google didn't ask them to "reverse a binary tree", whatever that means.
I.e., if you are Frank Gehry or Frida Kahlo, you don't need to go through hoops. (If you're reading this, you are probably not Frida Kahlo.)
"you are probably not Frida Kahlo" is not the same as "you will never be Frida Kahlo."
It's just a fact that most people are not one of the very best in their field: 50% of people can't be in the top 1%. That's not to say people shouldn't try - after all, many of the "very best" tried very hard to get where they are.
Why are you assuming that everyone has the same metric for being the "top"? There are millions of artists out there, creating from the world around them something unique to their time and place. Your base assumption appears to be that a bell curve can be applied to human creativity. Ask yourself who told you this and why.
Walmart purposefully designs their pay structure to externalize their labor costs to taxpayers.[1] They have gladly led the way in lobbying for offshoring manufacturing jobs.[2] They do everything they can to avoid paying taxes and bust unions.[3][4]
They will burn a small town's economy to the ground so they can turn a profit selling goods produced in sweatshops and labor camps. If that's not evil, I'm not sure what would qualify.
> There are, however, some groups in lower income brackets that do poorly in inflationary environments. If someone doesn’t have a lot of money and lives on a fixed income in retirement, they have a lot of vulnerability to inflation. Those sorts of folks should consider owning inflation hedges to protect their lifestyle, if they expect that high levels of inflation have a reasonable probability of occurring.
If you think someone in a low tax bracket on fixed income has the spare money to invest in anything, you're not understanding the words "low income" or "fixed."
> Capital had political control from the late 1800s through the 1920s. Labor had political control from the 1930s through the 1970s. Capital again had political control from the 1980s through the 2010s. I’m not sure what’s next but signs are increasingly pointing towards labor regaining some influence, and it’s a topic I continue to monitor.
What?