chris11

Yeah, I really don't get SPACs. From a company's perspective it just seems like a faster way to go public with less regulation. SPACs seem decent for the initial investors. But I don't see how investing in a public SPAC is better than investing in an IPO. There's a lot less disclosure, and you don't really get any special benefits.

I'd do about anything on the International Space Station.

Isn't 10k a small investment?

> If you do amazing work and nobody knows about it, your luck is zero.

But I don't think that implies the type of marketing social media apps gets you is valuable. For instance, I'd think that giving talks at conferences would be much more valuable than trying to become a LinkedIn influencer. I think you can work on networking and marketing in a way that limits distractions.

My employer is talking about having a core set of days where everyone is onsite and then a few days where you can wfh. I like that, it avoids losing my desk and wondering if someone is in on a certain day.

Is that a really fair comparison? I'd say it's location dependent. A street in a small neighborhood, yes kids running out in front of you could be a possibility.

But I don't know if humans can handle that well. It's safer to brake instead of swerve if an animal darts into the road. Of course a kid darting into the road is more serious and traumatic, but the typical driver may not be able to avoid a crash.

I've noticed that increasing the number of something usually indicates increases complexity. Working with another team takes more time than just keeping the work in one team. Working with two takes longer. Same with things like the number of repos, languages, or services.

I still have a 4770k. I have a newer gpu, and it seems to be working ok for me. I'm planning on upgrading in 2022 when DDR5 is available.

In their defense, I went to a large state university, and some classes used automated grading as part of the assignment grade. One class was basically just one large group project, a large portion of my grade there was based on peer feedback. The most detailed code review I got was at an internship. But I do agree, I'd say in-person and online degrees should both be higher quality than a MOOC.

> people using Waterfall for software development.

Is anyone really doing Waterfall now? Maybe earlier some industries used a Waterfall like process. But actual descriptions of Waterfall seem to go back 50 years to Royce's paper, Managing the Development of Large Software Systems. That model was explicitly described as bad. I don't fully agree with that paper, but his suggested improvements are more iterative. Personally it seems like now Waterfall is mostly used as a strawman.

> but not usually for software where you learn more from users about what should be done and tweaked as you go along

I agree with that. I wonder if Agile is highly influenced by it's leaders being closely involved with consulting.

> I too have worked many places that did not have success with scrum -- all of them had one thing in common, they didn't actually follow one of them

To me that approach goes against the original principles for agile, especially "Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools". I'm not a huge fan of highly structured Agile and scrum processes. But I think the best agile implementations come when teams have ownership over their own agile processes.

And if the team truly has ownership they are responsible for their success or failure. Sure, their process may be objectively bad, but that doesn't mean a better process should be imposed from outside of the team. The team should have some level of trust to fix it.

I also disagree with your three points being hard requirements. They may be really good suggestions for teams doing scrum, especially in lower trust environments. All three are specifically for scrum, for instance they lose meaning if you aren't doing sprints. But that's just arguing semantics. Fixing compromised scrum isn't strictly necessary if the team can be successful by dropping scrum.

Same here. My employer is fortunate to be doing well. I've heard we are seeing some really good applicants. But they want to compete with top tech companies. So initial offers are going up, they are still giving out raises, and benefits have improved.

> So while it’s not branded, the reputation is overall positive.

I agree. Trader Joes has a lot of white label stuff, I'd say I usually have a higher impression of their white labeled products than branded products at the same price range.

Central Computers can have decent pricing on items, it can be really convenient. They also were reserving gpus for instore customers for awhile, albeit marked up.

I really liked Fry's years ago. It was depressing to see inventory go down so quickly last couple years. I would like a local Microcenter. Their prices are decent and they have good motherboard/cpu combos.

> no one works as a team anymore. everyone gets their project

One complaint I have about some agile implementations is that it takes away individual ownership and reduces larger problems to a series of less interesting choices. I agree with a lot of your other points though.

> Seriously, I was between jobs for a while and it was the best time I've had in ages.

I guess that depends on your financial situation. When I've been between jobs it has always stressed me out. I haven't been in a situation where I was worried about making rent or buying food, but I was worried about finding a new job.

That's an easy question to answer. She has a cs related masters and Phd. And she has done research at Johns Hopkins and Microsoft.

Also, artificial intelligence is dealing with a lot of controversial issues. Things like privacy, data ownership, and discrimination. Government is getting involved. SF banned facial recognition, and both progressives and conservatives are accusing big tech platforms of bias. Having an internal ethics team they can claim is independent would probably be helpful politically.

What about equity though? It seems like tech companies headquartered SF/Seattle are more likely to give large equity packages. Sure, startups are risky, but equity is liquid if the company is public.

That was a political decision made intentionally to prevent federal oversight of their power grid. I have read they have a few connections though.

Full functionality requires both lane keep assist for steering and active cruise control for gas/brake. It uses data from car systems, but the model is closed so I'm not quite sure how the data is used.

The website does list what cars are officially supported. People have gone a lot further to get it on older cars, make unofficial forks, or even add radar or swap EPS.

It doesn't give you a self driving car, but I found it's significantly better than stock systems for highway driving.

It requires a car with adapative cruise control and also uses data from the cars stock radar.

There's a lot of drives on youtube available. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22y-LaiDkrM I love it for freeway driving. I don't really use it for city driving though. If you would find cruise control annoying on some road open pilot probably wouldn't help you.

Yeah, I'm including equity. Equity at a public company like Google is liquid and easier to value. But usually new grad offers don't include a lot of equity. I'd say that pre-ipo unicorns can also be a great option if it's available to you. Base salaries are usually high, and equity can end up being really valuable. Recent IPOs have made a lot of millionaires.

But I do agree with you, it's high risk and there's a lot of luck involved. And it's much more important to find a job that's a good fit for you.

> The best advice I've seen is to value stock options at zero.

I don't know. I understand that, but on the flip side I got lucky and currently my equity is worth money. In SV equity can make up a large portion of your compensation, it shouldn't be ignored.

Sure, generally equity from a public company is worth more money. But equity at startups can still be valuable. A better conservative approach to startup equity would be to negotiate first for a good base salary and then negotiate for equity. VC-funded startups can pay well.

There's a wide range of salaries. The highest paying companies will pay $175+ to a new grad. A of jobs pay $200k+ with equity for senior engineers.

If significantly raising the pay of Amazon's low-paid workers would negatively impact it's value then part of Bezo's wealth comes from keeping Amazon's cost of labor low.

What's the average effective tax rate for high-net-worth+ individuals if unrealized capital gains are included as income? It seems like people get an increasing level of control over their taxes as their networth increases. Choosing when to exercise options means you have some control over AMT. If you invest in indices, it looks like direct indexing has a lot of tax benefits over an index fund. You can get variable and fixed rate loans against your investment accounts.

It's not a good idea for tax minimization to be the main goal of your investment strategy, but it seems like people can get access to a large portion of their investments without actually realizing capital gains.

That's cool, I'll have to try it out when it's in the bay area.