This is a decent start, but then again remember you only have 60 minutes. And what might seem relatively easy to you, might not be so easy to someone with a time limit (60 mins), and pressure (trying to get a job you want).
By "spent more money on congress people" @psadauskas is not simply just referring to "who spent more money last year", he's implying that the foothole that a Comcast or a Verizon has in the capitol goes much further than say a Google. And that makes since right? Especially from a government's perspective. If you can be chummy with an ISP, you hardly need the help of a downstream application builder (e.g., Google).
> Most rank-and-file joining one of these cos in the last 4 years or so will be lucky to net $1-2m pre-tax
Yea I'm confused as to where all these splurge-happy millionaires the article mentions will come from. There will definitely be people well off (as you mentioned), but I'm not sure if these folks will have the money (that they want to spend) on boats, and lavish parties. It seems like a good deal of these employees will get early retirement/nest egg money, and a few execs will get a few million, while founders obviously make out the best. Not sure why that would "eat San Francisco alive".
A sensationalist headline if ever there was one {facepalm}
The SF housing inventory is not large, only a few hundred homes on the market, and few thousand sales per year total. A couple hundred people that can buy at any cost, and a thousand more that are willing to push their finances to the limit and you could see a pretty significant change.
There's also a multiplier as price jumps let people cash out of their current homes with lots of spare equity.
My point is that most of the rank-and-file at these companies will make, on an annualized basis, about as much as a typical FB or Google or Netflix employee makes in liquid comp today (of which there are many thousands). I'm just not sure if the marginal increase in "people who are now liquid" will do anything to the market and from what I've seen prices are not trending sharply up in anticipation of some sort of bidding war. I could be wrong. It's just an observation.
Yes, and the people who have really made a lot of money (the founders, execs, earliest employees) have likely already had several opportunities to cash out over the years, so the market is already priced accordingly.
This type of disclosure is quite literally standard in almost every type of public company financial disclosure. Surprised this made it to the HN front page
Funny you mention this, I was just reading [1]this article related to the quote on "putting your eggs in one basket". Conventional wisdom says "diversify". However, I'm of the belief that you'll need high risk for a high return (can't have your cake and eat it too).
Premature diversification is a great way to avoid ever getting rich.
You diversify to retain or safeguard wealth, you concentrate to first create wealth. The second best way to destroy a great investment/ownership position, is to diversify the returns away with other mediocre positions. Conventional wisdom about diversification is bumper sticker investment advice, it's worthless advice without context. It gets repeated generically so often for two reasons: it's easy to repeat to amateur investors for their comfortable digestion and it's safe advice that incompetent investors (bloggers, authors, journalists, talking heads on tv, etc.) can give out everywhere.
Andrew Carnegie was right: "The way to become rich is to put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket."
That's also advice that Warren Buffett followed to get rich. He didn't do it through rampant diversification, rather, through intense concentration into a small number of investments that he understood exceptionally well. Nearly everyone on the Forbes 400 list followed that path in one manner or another, with few exceptions. Once you get rich, you diversify to avoid losing it (no need to get rich twice, if you hold onto it the first time; doing it once is hard enough for most people).
I mean seriously though. I love how various media platforms ALWAYS talk about Bitcoin as a failure. What? But then again, they only think of “success” as some idea cut from the same cloth as current capitalist alternatives - the very alternatives bitcoin was meant to disrupt. Bitcoin is an incredible success IMO
I'll start the discussion by just pointing out how Bloomberg and the NYT absolutely love to talk about China being a surveillance state, but hardly ever talk about the surveillance state that we live in here in the US (relative to how much China bashing they do)
Did you read the article? It obviously focuses on China, since that's the subject, but it ends with a non sequitur dig at the US for exactly what you're talking about: "Then again, when it comes to poor privacy protection, the United States seems to be doing its best to take on China."
Any more details (that you're willing to share) on this? You mentioned they're only the "Head of HR", but you say you were a core product dev (senior by the timeline you give). Did you accept underpay because you were early? I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around an 8-month "Head of HR" making out significantly better than a (first 20?) Sr Product dev (not questioning your story though).
This is at least pretty common in Canada, options are set to vest on a schedule but all future agreed upon options will vest if the company is sold/goes public/what have you.
> Open standards and interoperability made public networks more useful, but now that the networks are in place, and access is ubiquitous, walled gardens can spring up and dominate MUCH faster than distributed protocols.
And personally, how do you suggest distributed protocols work to keep up with their centralized alternatives? Obviously one could build a walled garden (UI, API, Database) much quicker than its decentralized alternative.
I dont. Consensus and standards take some time to develop. It's about an attitude, where companies willingly allow 3rd party clients to access their data, or allowing services to interop.
The quickest to market car isnt always the best or safest product. Consumer safety laws even the playing field a bit. Im not advocating regulation, but it is one way to achieve more parity between products.
It's pretty well known that these BigCorp crypto/blockchain plays are just smoke and mirrors. There is no actual differential value gained here (unless as @dwiel says,they get some sort of loophole crypto tax break). It's a bit saddening to see that the tech has been picked up by the exact institution(s) that the tech was meant to combat. But if anything that just proves that there's meaning behind the concept (regardless of a f'ing coin price).
I look forward to the day where the JPM's and the like are put out of business for this sort of thing due superior, user-friendly technology.
> I look forward to the day where the JPM's and the like are put out of business for this sort of thing due superior, user-friendly technology
That seems like a good thing for cryptocurrency fans to start working on. Part of that would be looking at the big problems which have prevented it so far, which aren’t really technical as much as philosophical: practical reasons to switch (which is to say being competitive on pricing), barriers to adoption (i.e. until most people you know use a system its benefits are mostly hypothetical), and not having a fraud story other than “we’ll say you should have had better opsec”.
I wouldn't say its so much the UX. The UX even on some crypto projects is just fine (see some EOS projects, apps, and dApps). The problem I see is that what incentive do end users have to use crypto/privacy/blockchain/whatever apps vs the centralized alternatives? Currently? None, because no one gives a damn about their privacy/data. I don't think it will be my generation (millennial) that picks this tech up, I think it will be later generations that have seen our missteps when it comes to digital privacy.
Keep in mind that the EOS ecosystem extends far beyond downloading a CLI client/etc. EOS Lynx[1] is a wonderful example of a decentralized wallet that has abstracted layers away to the point where it looks/feels/acts like a "regular people" iOS app
Shameless Plug:
I am trying to working on something around those lines, its called Bitcharge[0]. Its essentially paypal.me for crypto with multiple cryptocurrencies. I would love to hear your thoughts about the general UX for the project.
