overrun11

You're making no distinction between the content of the coverage. The Hunter Biden laptop story was widely covered pre-election in the context of it being false or disinfo.

Politico: "Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say" source: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/19/hunter-biden-story-...

NPR: "Analysis: Questionable 'N.Y. Post' Scoop Driven By Ex-Hannity Producer And Giuliani" source: https://www.npr.org/2020/10/17/924506867/analysis-questionab...

Compilation of journalists calling it disinfo: https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1440402740409110528

I honestly don't think I am following your argument at all. The fact that they wrongly reported on something without evidence is exactly the point.

If you include social triggers as harm then free speech becomes meaningless. Only the most vapid and inane speech would be protected under such a definition. The reason speech needs protection is because there will always be some group wanting it suppressed because they believe it will cause harm.

I suspect most of the commenters supporting the right of a private company to moderate content is completely contingent on what those moderation policies are. Commenters feign holding an absolute position but would certainly balk if the moderation ever turned against them and the idea they support.

If you believe on principle, the right of private companies to moderate content, then you must support all kinds of absurd outcomes: Twitter deciding to subtly push pro-Russian viewpoints, Facebook deciding to boost antivax content etc.

You claim to support private companies adopting whatever moderation policies you want and yet your examples of "hate/conspiracy bullshit" go against this. If you believe this absolutely then _what_ is being censored would be unimportant.

You are unwilling to confront the idea of Twitter censoring true things that you agree with but by your own principles you'd find this agreeable.

People like the moderation policies of Hacker News but not the ones of Twitter. This isn't some grand hypocrisy.

Do you have evidence that it wasn't? Why do you get to decide the null hypothesis?

Yes now it is. It wasn't nearly as well known _before_ the election.

I did maybe 5-10 hours of preparation for my current job's interview and most of my colleagues didn't grind either. I'm skeptical of this idea that the only people who work at FAANG are Leetcode machines that have sacrificed their lives to grind questions.

I believe you that this is the level of talent at western European universities but what about all the other universities outside of Western Europe that aren't like this. Should companies exempt you from a grueling interview process only if you are from one of these schools?

I meant risk for the candidate. I have to quit my current job just to try out for yours. If after the month you decide not to hire me I'm now unemployed. Sounds like a terrible deal for me.

I agree that style of interview can be better. I think FAANG companies don't use this style because it's not selective enough and it requires special questions for every role.

Dropbox is fully remote. All of these companies have offices around the country. I don't see how selection bias plays in here

> It perpetuates the myth that there's something really special about Silicon Valley engineers

Why are you sure it's a myth? My prior would be to believe that engineers at the most exclusive companies with the highest hiring bars that pay 3-5 times more than average would be better programmers. The article is just one data point confirming what intuitively should be true.

If Silicon Valley engineers are no better than anywhere else then someone should notify the execs at FAANG, I'm sure they'd be interested to know they are dramatically overpaying for talent.

I don't understand what is so uncontroversial about this. SV companies recruit the best talent from around the world and it's where the best talent wants to work. Similarly, the best financial talents are in NYC and London, the best actors are in Hollywood etc.

Software engineering is the only field I know of where someone with zero pedigree or education can make as much as a doctor. If you can pass a grueling technical interview then you can get a high paying job (200-500k+) no matter who you are or what your background is.

The tradeoff is that you have to go through the same grueling process every time you change jobs. I think the tradeoff is well worth it and would not like to see software become more like medicine where you have to put in 10+ years of schooling to prove your worth.

Is that avoidable though? It's not perfect but I'm not convinced any of the alternatives are any better.

There has never been any rails code at Dropbox

It's easy to criticize the current state of tech interviews but I've never really heard anyone propose a better solution.

Startups ask questions 80% of engineers can answer because they don't have many applicants. Dropbox might have 50 decent applicants who could all probably do the job for every opening. How do you decide who gets it? Ask an easier question and you end up with way more passes than you have openings.

You end up with a far less merit based hiring pipeline. I work at a top tech company and don't have any degree at all. The current process gives people like me a chance, yours wouldn't.

Maybe Scandinavian countries have more rigorous degree programs. If so they are fairly unique in that regard. I don't see how we can use that during hiring thought. What are tech companies supposed to do: only hire from these universities? That seems less fair than the current process.

> hire you for a month as a contractor and pay you a fair market rate.

Huge risk for anyone who currently has a job. I'd much rather the technical interview.

I don't see this claim being made anywhere. The article claims the opposite: the best performers on their technical interview happen to be from Dropbox/Google etc.

There's not been enough thought on this. UBI is basically irreversible. If it ends up not being good policy you're still stuck with it forever.

Adobe, Oracle, Salesforce, IBM, SAP etc... You also have the arguably less boring but equally stable and more lucrative options like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple.

I agree the stock market has positive skew but in your career you will have enough bets to smooth out the effects of betting on a single stock. Additionally, you're not really making the same bet as an equity investor because your bet has optionality. Your downside is capped at less than a year in loss earnings because if the stock goes down and the company cannot bring you back up to market rate you just switch companies. If the stock goes up, you enjoy 4 years of above market compensation before getting reset to market rate.

You aren't guaranteed your salary either though and in many of those cases in the 2000's workers were laid off. Being paid entirely in cash salary doesn't make you immune to market turbulence.

Every company I know of with the exception of Stripe and Coinbase have 4 year equity grants. In the real world you'd receive a 400k a grant that vests over 4 years. For most white collar workers who don't need the money to pay bills the 400k grant is worth more than an extra 100k a year in salary.

It's a free call option on the stock. If it goes up you keep vesting at the new stock price which might be way above market rate for you position and if it goes down you get refreshers at the end of the year to bring you back to a market rate salary.

Both of these drugs are generic. There’s no more financial incentive to push these than to push Aspirin or Advil.

Your mistake is thinking these are substantially different jobs than any other. Don't fall into the Just World fallacy where you try to justify why compensation is so high by assuming there must be some hidden tradeoff. The tech job market just isn't very efficient.

Stupid question but have you actually ever tried? Your tech stack seems modern enough that I'd be surprised if you couldn't get some offers from startups. New grad level at a startup generally pays 90k+ in my market so you shouldn't have a problem at least matching your current comp but I think 150-200k is probably reasonable but you might need to work remote for a company in a major city.

> People who spend a lifetime learning about something will, on average, make better decisions about that thing then you or I.

I'm not convinced this is true. If you spend a lifetime doing something then I'd agree you'd be better than average at it. In such cases experts do not face much scrutiny, there's little doubt on a pilot's skill at flying a plane and no sane person thinks they are better at chess than Magnus Carlsen.

What is happening now is that we are taking people who have merely studied something extensively and asserting that knowledge gives them superior insight into decisions about the future. These "experts" might even be directionally right more often than an average person but that isn't enough. If expertise through a lifetime of learning leads to your confidence in your own abilities outpacing your actual abilities than they are going to make worse decisions than a lay person who is cautious in the face of uncertainty. Examples of this effect are abundant, the greatest team of financial experts ever assembled (LTCM) managed to lose every penny and then some while my parents 401k remained solvent.

There's good reason to believe a life insulated from the ups and downs of normal life leads to suboptimal risk judgement compared to a less educated person. There's a clear assymetry between overskepticism and overconfidence, the latter hurts you far more than the former. To suggest that skepticism is the more dangerous of the two denies the reality of most of the largest disasters of the last century.