chris11

> Armstrong took public stance that he wanted Coinbase to focus on crypto space stuff.

I don't think that he would have taken that public stance if he didn't feel that the company was being distracted internally by racial justice issues. It being a fair response is highly dependent on those internal conversations.

And the NY Times reports that prior to this conversation there was a public meeting where Black employees brought up difficult experiences at Coinbase. Being told that people should leave politics at home or leave the company is a horrible response to complaints about discrimination.

I was at an F500 that spent a lot of money with AWS. I heard rumors that services were becoming more expensive. If you are spending a ton of money, moving off of AWS is major project that will require a lot time, money, and personal. You are kind of locked into AWS unless you convince senior management you should move off.

> it should be easier to migrate off these platforms, since their pricing is optimized for users of all business sizes and use cases

Isn't the financial implications of capex vs opex a huge consideration? I've heard that opex is is a lot simpler to account for. Technically once you get big enough cloud becomes more expensive. But hiring people to manage both your own datacenters and cloud services does complicate things. I find it understandable that companies are willing to pay more for cloud providers if their core business doesn't require expertise in cloud computing.

I agree with you on social media. I think Facebook targeting engagement has led to an extremely damaging level of polarization.

America has a ton of issues, but I think some democratic reforms are critically important. Voting rights are being attacked, and I don't think most people are represented well by the two party system.

Social media is now a primary target for foreign election interference, I'm sure that's a major cause. In 2016 Russia targeted Clinton and supported Trump. But they also generally tried to increase division. One ugly thing about that is disinformation campaigns would actually get support from some Americans.

The House is Democratically controlled, but Republicans control the senate, so there's bipartisan agreement on this. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/technology/indictment-rus...

https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...

https://intelligence.house.gov/social-media-content/

> How famous does one have to be to get this special treatment? Or is it just for political candidates?

The special treatment is placing the warning instead of banning them. But you have to be important enough that executives think applying the standard policy to you would be a bad idea.

Biden wasn't my first choice the primaries, but if Bernie had more support he could have beaten Biden in a head-to-head race. Though I think part of the cause for this accusation is that Bernie does well among non-voters. Thinking back to 2016 Clinton clearly had more support in the primaries than Bernie, but Bernie had a lot of support from people who didn't normally vote. So it does make sense that when Bernie lost, that group didn't feel represented by the democratic party.

The makeup of the US government does not reflect it's population. Harris wasn't the first female VP candidate to run for a major party. Geraldine Ferraro was the first, and Palin also ran in 08. Being a minority candidate doesn't mean they are qualified, but the lack of diversity in the US government is a huge problem. About 50% of America are women, and a large portion of America is not white. That's not represented by our government. Those firsts are important.

> Democracy was stress tested, and it still worked.

The fake allegations of voter fraud and the extensive efforts to suppress votes will damage future elections. And the presidential election survived attacks, but the senate could be impacted.

Prop 15 and Prop 19 are on the ballot. I think those would reduce market distortions if they pass.

I wouldn't consider it self driving. But the hw for LKA and adaptive cruise control can do a lot. That's all that Comma AI's Open Pilot needs, and a Toyota with TSS 2.0 is considered the best platform for Open Pilot. I definitely wouldn't say it's self driving but using Open Pilot gives you a really nice hands free experience driving on the highway.

California now requires that companies reveal the salary range if asked.

That should be a call to action to fight against America's abuses, not a reason to ignore other countries abuses.

Roblox's history actually goes back decades. In 1989 Dave Baszucki cofounded Knowledge Revolution and created Interactive Physics, an educational physics simulator. Seeing how students used the software inspired him to cofound Roblox in 2004.

There's been a lot of talk about antitrust investigations and regulating big tech. I think one really useful step would be to require multiple methods of authentication with devices like this. Oculus shouldn't require a Facebook account to use.

Working at a good company can also help out. MS/Facebook/Amazon/Google all have reputations for a decent hiring bar and need to recruit a lot of engineers. There are other companies that have decent reputations and are less selective about interviewing.

I think a suit would be overdressed for a lot of west coast tech interviews.

Coinbase does offer stock options though.

Open Pilot's driver monitoring could be improved. After the last update I got a ton of false positives when driving at night. Nighttime would make driver monitoring more difficult, but it's also when people are more likely to be distracted.

It also seems like pay and experience are also a huge factor. I worked at a F500 once headquartered in the midwest. I was paid really well. I brought up wanting to move out to SV and the COL adjustment they mentioned would have been a paycut.

Plus it seems like major tech companies downlevel you if you don't have relevant experience at peer companies. And salary negotiation is harder if you don't have competing offers.

I was single and was fine renting a small apartment, so the COL hit wasn't too bad. But moving out west if I had a family or owned a house would have been a major lifestyle change.

I wouldn't expect much from a congressional hearing. Especially since it would start out extremely political. But Facebook should be questioned over things like how they handle things like health conspiracy theories and blatantly fake political conspiracies.

There should be standards, even if they aren't defined by law. "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" was republished by Henry Ford as part of a series of anti-semitic articles. The decision to publish them was immoral and is evidence of Ford's racism. I'm sure employers at the Economist would be angry if it started to run articles that would be a better fit for the National Enquirer.

Facebook is kind of different, it argues that it's a platform not a publisher. They do have some ground to argue for looser guidelines. But their business model targeting engagement incentivises them to promote divisive and false information. I'd be much more comfortable with Facebook if they didn't promote extreme and dangerous content. What those standards should be is a thorny issue, but better moderation would be an improvement.

Joe Lieberman killed the public option in Obamacare. He threatened to vote against the bill if a public option was included.

A local tech meetup I go to has managed to get some very well-known and accomplished speakers. They don't pay speakers fees, so having a large personal network is really useful. The local tech community is large, and a few senior tech leaders are involved with the meetups.

The meetup is also involved in running a conference. And some companies are willing to pay travel expenses for their employees to come out and speak. It's good for marketing and recruiting.

I'm not saying it's useful, just that I found out it was a metric for management. I was originally expecting it to be an internal metric. The company I was at actually used it in performance reviews somewhat comparable to stack ranking.

There was an expectation that devs complete about 8 points a sprint. I don't know if the eight point target is common, but SAFe does talk about comparing story points across teams.

> At scale, it becomes difficult to predict the story point size for larger epics and features when team velocities can vary wildly. To overcome this, SAFe teams initially calibrate a starting story point baseline where one story point is defined roughly the same across all teams.

...

> Give every developer-tester on the team eight points for a two-week iteration

https://www.scaledagileframework.com/story/

But companies doing SAFe can use developer velocity to help judge individual dev productivity. That can be surprising if you aren't aware of what story points are used for.

MSR was doing work with digital mapping in the late 90s, but Google still beat them to market in 2005.

> I founded a startup before Google

You've got more personal experience with this than I do. But I would think it's a bad idea on a personal level if COVID wfh is the main cause for your burnout. I'd find founding a startup to be more isolating that working at a company right now.

> NSOs are ultimately worth maybe 10%-20% less than "equivalent" ISOs

I'm at a company that gives NSOs. Can you explain what you mean when you say that NSOs are worth less than ISOs?

I've also noticed a lot more ads those types of programs. I'm wondering if the bad economy has made adds on youtube more affordable and get rich quick programs more attractive.