While reading this yarn about the Varangians, the Mongols, and the "Finno-Ugric substrate," a modern, unhinged empire is writing its current bloody chapter in real time.
We aren't living through an intellectual exercise about "The Third Rome," and it feels like distraction or misdirection to waxing poetic abut five-century-old antecedents while blood runs down the streets of Kyiv and Kharkiv.
If I was going to give my energy to writing about a murderous empire, I wouldn't shine up their history with gilded theory on why the attacker felt entitled to attack. Turn the lens where the people are dying and being attacked - today, as I write this.
When the average US salary is something like 45k, $150k is a high salary especially when you have no plan or clear path to the goal
Based on your comments in this thread, I'd suggest that soft skills could use a refresher and might be the difference between getting something and getting passed over again next time - good luck, it isn't easy
To be fair to the OP, the median (so lower than average) salary for a single person with a bachelor's degree (in USA) is ~$80,000, give or take a few bucks.
The average is likely higher, and then higher again for higher COL areas.
So it's not unreasonable for OP to expect to start at this level, and work their way up to $150k over the next 5-7 years.
> So it's not unreasonable for OP to expect to start at this level, and work their way up to $150k over the next 5-7 years.
So you're actually saying that OP xpecting $150,000 now, given that is what they're expecting (and elsewhere they scoff at $200k), is out of touch.
But you feel compelled to say some people, with years of experience, make more? Yeah. That's sensical - but it doesn't apply now unless you think giving advice 5-7 years in advance is helpful when someone is looking for a job now.
Not talking about average US salary. The OP is a software engineer so we should be talking about average SWE salary bands. Even ignoring crazy FAANG/MANGO salaries, $140k is not “insane” in overall tech.
People on HN saying $150k is a "high bar" is frankly insulting. Anyone in the bay who's not a founder or working for a meaningless company easily clears $200k.
I've started two companies, exited one and technically have the skills of a "senior engineer". I've managed teams of engineers and have architected remote factory production systems for one of my companies along with a dozen or so relatively complex web apps in the fintech space.
My resume is pretty scattered. I had good interest with a recruiter sending me FDE roles.
But most large orgs look at my resume and run since I have multiple two year stints and stints starting / running my own companies.
I'm also fully willing to admit that relative to "senior engineers" of today, maybe I just suck. In that case, idk how to move to what's next. I'm social, but not exactly normal. Also willing to see the humor in your comment that points to my potential conceit.
Are you only applying to senior roles? Idk the specifics of your background, but it sounds like you haven't been somewhere long enough to get promoted and have largely worked on your own projects.
To me that doesn't really say that you have senior engineer skills, i.e. designing scalable systems (both in compute and development-wise), leading multi-person projects, considering trade-offs, etc.
I built a bespoke IOT stack that currently runs over 10k devices and a full production line interface / deployment for a factory we used in china. I'm not going to define what "senior engineer" is, but this was done largely solo with engineers I managed to maintain it.
Based on your responses, I think your soft skills / people skills are letting you down. I would recommend working diligently on how you interact and communicate so that you do not come across as arrogant, dismissive, or out of touch.
I recently paid a guy about $10k to roof my house. $3500 materials, ~$6500 labor. Maybe 32 hours labor tops, it is a hella small house. Might be worth looking into. He was cheaper than pretty much anyone else.
The tradesmen in higher COL areas seem to have no problem charging dev hourly rates ($150-200/hr) and also upcharging ridiculous amounts on materials (one of them tried to charge me $75 for a $3 capacitor).
> (one of them tried to charge me $75 for a $3 capacitor)
How much do you upcharge people for your services and "products" (often virtual)? What is acceptable to you?
If you had to have a physical copy of the apps you work with, in your truck, had to buy them in advance, pay shipping, store them, then take the right copy with you to a client's house. If they paid $3 would you be OK with $30? $60? You seem incensed with $75
I used to work retail. Belkin cables were under $2 each for the store, they sold them for $39-$69 depending on what it was.
If you work in a professional role, your markup on services (almost no costs involved) and products (usually very low costs) is probably many many thousands of times more than the hardworking tradesperson you think ripped you off when they were solving an issue you needed help with and had the expertise, time, and parts to help.
I don't mark up anything on physical goods, because my profession is services-only.
If the tradesman wants additional income, I have no problem with that, bake it into their hourly rate.
> had to buy them in advance, pay shipping, store them, then take the right copy with you to a client's house.
A warehouse/shipper already does all of this, perhaps not for $3 but for $3 + shipping.
For this purpose in my relationship with tradesmen, I just pay them whatever their rate is to identify what the problem is, and then fix it myself at my own leisure using my materials, unless it involves something hazardous or requires a license.
> I used to work retail. Belkin cables were under $2 each for the store, they sold them for $39-$69 depending on what it was
You certainly don't have to explain these banalities to me (I also worked retail and ecommerce for 11 years) and they don't really contribute to the point. There are scenarios where you can get away with charging exorbitant markups and maybe 1% markup, and everything in-between. The question here is should you take advantage of under-informed homeowners
For professional services, I do mark up my time, obviously, but it is not a 25x markup as in the capacitor case.
If I calculated strictly my bare necessities to live (e.g. mortgage/food/healthcare/utilities), my rough markup would probably be around 2.5x-3x.
What? It's an utterly straight-forward summary of their work experience and a factual statement about salaries offered as a counter-example to the parent. There's is no (obvious) hubris in it.
You’re coming across in this thread as, er, honestly pretty insufferable. This likely isn’t doing you any favours in interviews; you may want to work on that. _Particularly_ for senior roles; an asshole junior may be just about tolerable, but an asshole senior can be a real problem and most companies won't want to hire one.
I agree with the author's take that shifting how you use mobile technology has huge impacts, but maintaining that shift is more difficult than it sounds in today's QR-code and App-checkout world.
I don't think avoiding phone usage completely is needed, just a shift in mentality towards favoring "I'll sit down and work on this when I get home" over pulling out your phone to take care of things when you first think of them.
Not intended as sarcastic: how is that working out for you?
It's easy to say "Oh, I'll just use my phone in a healthy way in the future" while pouring yourself another drink. I can quit when I want mindset.
I quit. It's very difficult. I had to come back out of the real need for a smartphone today. I noticed the patterns that the author described very quickly slipping back into the day by day.
It's working pretty well. I certainly use my phone for some things, especially if I'm away from the house. But I've just set habits that if I'm doing certain things (writing more than a sentence or two, buying things online, etc.) I just default to a laptop.
Having a microwave doesn't force me to eat TV dinners for every meal. But sometimes it's convenient to just microwave food. Just not all the time.
> Having a microwave doesn't force me to eat TV dinners for every meal. But sometimes it's convenient to just microwave food. Just not all the time.
It's hard for me to remember the times I accidentally scrolled two hours on my microwave, or saw a person hand a microwave to their kid in a restaurant to entertain them. It feels like the argument you're making doesn't really fit the problem smartphones have become.
I've never really understood people spending hours on a phone. I get fed up and move to a computer. At the very least, it's got a bigger screen and a keyboard, making it easier to respond to a post than the phone does.
I recognize that it's a problem for a lot of people, and I'm sure that OP does too. Because it seems like they're arguing for purposefully using a phone less. They're describing a different way to choose to be.
It's weird to bring it up in response to an article about the US falling behind authorities china and how that's bad. Unless you think we can't improve our energy infrastructure in the USA without using child labor too?
> Unless you think we can't improve our energy infrastructure in the USA without using child labor too?
I think pointing out child labor anytime we're discussing someone who is doing it... actually is a good thing. You seem to not have your priorities on this.
Please stop being obtuse just because you're wrong.
Using "what about child labor" as a counterpoint to they are advancing at neck breaking speed, is a pointless argument because it's using a moral argument against a non-moral statement.
It's like saying: green energy is displacing coal towns, therefor it's bad!
Do you think moving a town is similar to child labor? What environment/culture do you live in where you do not want to stand up for children and would rather child labor not be brought up? Do you benefit from child labor?
> Weird you brought it up as something that should be ignored?
They didn't say it should be ignored but instead that it's not relevant to any point that was made by the person it's in reply to.
They are pointing out that something is true and then someone else points out how that thing became true, seemingly as a refutation of the initial point. The first point wasn't about how, so the second point is changing the topic.
“The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law’—which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants—becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.”
He's absolutely right. Most people have nothing to say to each other, and that's why social media is a small number of people broadcasting and an overwhelming number consuming. Most pairs of people don't say anything to each other. Absolutely spot on.
He's substantively wrong; he’s right that most people have nothing to say to each other, but its a scaling law being discussed, and “most people have nothing to say to each other" is an issue impacting the constant multiplier, not the scaling rate.
Porn drove electronic payments and a lot of other tech. The fax machine did not carry porn. Look to the medium's ability to be used for porn as a clear indicator of adoption.
It's weird how you just replied to me on social media to tell me people have nothing to say to one another. It's almost like you're ... unaware of what is happening?
I can anecdotally say you didn't add to the conversation with this link, so maybe you are one of the folks who do not have anything to say to another, as Mr. Krugman so eloquently put it.
That is actually the issue. All these talking heads, professional experts, writers, etc. make their reputation and money by constantly making predictions while never getting benchmarked.
It's the whole trope behind the book Superforcasters.
Do you believe Paul Krugman's intelligence and impact on the world to be equivalent to a 5th grader? Do you want to try to make an argument that support's Mr. Krugman's point of view, or did it just upset you that I brought up a factual quote from the past?
You know why you posted that quote, it's not just to "[bring] up a factual quote", it's to imply the man is a fool who's not to be listened to. And when challenged you pretend you're "just posting a quote".
Here's a Krugman quote from today (in fact it's in the post):
> A powerful faction in America has become deeply hostile to science and to expertise in general
Having performance available when you need it is the alternative to waiting.
Even a simplistic 2D game loads data, runs routines, and while the person is doing that they expect the phone to stay connected to a network, keep up with notifications... you act like Apple is doing something bad.
Intel/Chromebooks still are being sold in the USA at Best Buy with the Celeron N4000-series and Pentium-4200 series chips if you prefer to have zero performance overhead on your devices.
Life's most precious resource is time. A newer device is often much faster at a person's current routines. Why would you want a fast device to do harder things? Fast alone is worth it.
because if they allowed you to boot linux/macos/windows and dock it to get a full desktop experience, it could replace laptops and even desktop PC for most people. It legit has the cpu power of a >2k$ gaming PC. For the average person buying the ipad pro, the ipad will be the fastest computer in the house, by a very very wide margin.
Not even an iPad, iPhone A series are as powerful laptops and can do just about everything users need to do - even gaming. A19 has over 20 billion transistors it's absurd. How restricted it is, is absurd as well. The most capable chip that has been constrained to tiny subset of potential applications and use cases.
> The most capable chip that has been constrained to tiny subset of potential applications and use cases.
Having run Asahi Linux on an M1, it's obvious that a A and M chips were purpose built/designed together for the software Apple creates.
I have a 2018 MBP that dual boots to Windows. Everything from the color of the screen to the CPU performance is totally unrefined in Bootcamp on Windows compared to the macOS side. Same hardware. A lot of it comes down to how much effort is put into making the hardware and software work efficiently and well together.
We aren't living through an intellectual exercise about "The Third Rome," and it feels like distraction or misdirection to waxing poetic abut five-century-old antecedents while blood runs down the streets of Kyiv and Kharkiv.
If I was going to give my energy to writing about a murderous empire, I wouldn't shine up their history with gilded theory on why the attacker felt entitled to attack. Turn the lens where the people are dying and being attacked - today, as I write this.