pink_dinner

Many IT titles are fluid. I've been a: Computer programmer, software engineer, software developer.

Right at the bottom it states:

"Software Engineer: $0.94"

My issue is that before his consulting career, he was lauded as a business god, when in reality his main business couldn‘t pay the bills for a single person in most parts of the US.

"Here is what we are witnessing: the end of the on-demand dream."

The problem is that city managers are seeing money they can't tax and either pushing these companies out completely or creating new taxes and diminishing the profitability of the business.

If you want to blame someone for not being able to have flexible services, blame the government. Uber has been pushed out of many cities and Airbnb has had all kinds of crazy taxes added to them in San Francisco, in attempt to push them out. It's only a matter of time before it buckles under the pressure or just plain go out of business completely.

It's sad that our own local governments have to get in the way of innovation.

"I discovered this when the company told me they couldn’t show off a lot of things they wanted to."

Many of these factories will tell you anything to get you to buy, so I wouldn't exactly believe this.

The problem is that not only can they share your secrets, there is pretty much no legal recourse.

"Many companies, especially rapidly growing startups, make the somewhat false assumption that cultural wins come from superficial perks. Games rooms, zen gardens and branded loot (from skateboards to iPads) are all dangled enticingly at candidates, subconsciously suggesting ‘We’re a fun place to work’."

This isn't really a false assumption. For potential employees just coming out of college, it's a great perk.

For people that have been in the industry for 10 years, not so much.

I generally just want more vacation time or better pay.

You can probably find a VPS provider at $5/month, but it most likely won't be reliable. I probably went through 50 or 60 providers over the years and most of them are fine, until there is a major issue, and then you will see why it's only $5/month.

In some cases, I had weeks of downtime or lost my data completely. Of course I had backups, but this is just unacceptable if you are trying to run a business.

Your hosting provider is something you don't want to get cheap.

Dating apps and sites are a tough business. As soon as you obtain a customer (which can be costly), your app will ensure that they don't come back if you are at all successful (happy people in relationships don't pay for dating apps).

This is why Tinder is such a different business model. It encourages short-term hookups where you will keep coming back for more.

"one of his “friends” was sure to groan and say how boring Ross was, how stupid it is to be smart, and that nobody cares"

The sad fact is that the majority of people will find intelligent discussion extremely boring. Especially if it's about extremely esoteric topics.

From another perspective, Ross didn't seem to understand social cues and continued to talk about topics that his friends clearly didn't understand or enjoy.

It's less about bashing intellectuals and more about pointing out ineptitude that many smart people have when it comes to social intelligence.

I enjoy watching these types of shows because I don't really have to think. It's the same reason I watch stupid reality TV.

"This may seem like a non sequitur, but I’m convinced consumer culture and idiot culture are closely linked"

I disagree. It really depends on what you are consuming.

"And finally: protect the nerds"

Really? Nerds comprise most of the 1% in the US. It is pretty much the best time in history to be a Nerd. Startups in Silicon Valley are cool.

Do they really need that much protecting?

This won't work when I need to scrape 100,000 pages in an hour.

"if someone steals my TV, gets caught, and the punishment is for him to buy me a new TV and fix my door that he broke and another 100 hours of lawn care on top of that, that's a lot cheaper and better for society than sticking him a prison for several years."

If the the criminal is stealing your TV, do you actually think they will have the money to pay it back? There are plenty of cases where a judge forces a person to pay money back and the person just doesn't pay it back or doesn't have the money.

Even the guy from "The Wolf of Wallstreet" hasn't paid the millions he owes. I just don't think this will deter petty crime.

"The main idea isn't going soft on crime, it's letting the victims decide on the punishment"

What if, as a victim, I decided that the person that stole my TV needed to have his hands chopped off?

Your method seems to be more based on emotion and retribution than our current system.

It may be more expensive, but I don't see a problem with our current system in terms of deterring crime. I don't mind paying more for something that will help society.

This is why I started my own company: So nobody could tell me what to do. It's not really even about the money.

It really isn't just about knowing the words. It's about being disciplined enough to memorize/study them.

You could really say that about many subjects. I don't use half the math I learned in college. Does this mean I shouldn't have learned it?

"Entrepreneurs are willing to work 80 hours a week to avoid working 40 hours a week."

This statement, but itself, doesn't really give you the entire picture. I've had my own company for the last 10 years.

Running a company is more about controlling my own destiny, than the amount of hours I'm working. I can choose if I want to work 80 hours a week or 20...and I don't have a boss or a manager leading me on a path I know will be a failure.

Because millionaires have something to lose.

"Don’t assume we want to become mothers. And if we already are mothers, don’t assume that we’d rather have fewer hours or responsibilities. "

This isn't just an assumption. Pretty much every woman I worked with that became a mother, cut their hours, and focused less on their career and more on their family. This isn't a bad thing, but on the flip side, you can't expect to get paid the same amount (or get as many promotions) as someone who is willing to work many more hours.

"young women identified finding a higher paying job, a lack of learning and development, and a shortage of interesting and meaningful work as the primary reasons why they may leave."

You could replace 'women' with pretty much anyone in this situation. I'm not a woman and I have left jobs for all of the above reasons.

"You could work with them to develop their skills and use their talents in interesting, meaningful ways"

I'm getting fatigued by special treatment and double-standards that are becoming acceptable. The only way to succeed is to find your own interest in your career. An employer can't develop your skills, you need to take responsibility for this yourself.

"You can default to paying them even more money, and you just might get lucky and have them stick around a while longer"

So women should get paid more than men for simply being a woman? Why isn't this considered sexist?

"PAY WOMEN MORE. Pay us what you pay our male co-workers who do similar jobs"

This narrative keeps getting spun, but there have been numerous studies on pay and women in the workforce and when you compare similar jobs, hours, educations, and skill levels, women get paid around the same as men.

Logic says that if pay were this different, we would see entire IT companies staffed with women. Companies are always trying to reduce costs. This just isn't happening.

It happens in other industries where companies know they can hire illegal immigrants and underpay them.

Why does 'diversity' have to be just another form of sexism?

It reminds me of Webvan all over again (the first time all of these food delivery startups failed).

Food delivery is extremely difficult to get right. You needs lots of money in the beginning and the shipping routes need to be really efficient.

I have no comment on Valet parking startups, but it doesn't seem like a very profitable space, especially when VC wants a 10X ROI.

So..more free press for Donald Trump?

" If you’re going to copy, copy the really important stuff like a diverse workforce."

I disagree. We shouldn't be pushing for a 'diverse' workforce. We should be pushing for a merit-based workforce where the best person gets the job regardless of gender, sexuality, or race.

I used Fiverr to make a logo a couple of months ago. The company I used not only wouldn't follow any of my directions (they were very simple, considering it's only $5), but the logo quality I received was nothing compared to the portfolio that was advertised.

I tried a few other sellers with different services and it was pretty much the same thing.

It leads me to believe that most of the sellers are overseas workers with copied portfolios.

Wow, they fooled everyone!

In reality, everyone I know were laughing at anonymous because we already knew the info had been public for years.

I find it funny that anti-trump protesors have to resort to violence (there were violent protests this weekend) and extortion.

Yet, sanders and hillary rallies see no such violence or protesting (unless you count blm).

If you are getting paid the same salary and aren't being 'fully utilized', this isn't 'underemployment'.

Underemployment is when you aren't working full-time and/or your employer isn't giving you enough hours.

"There are several problems with this simplified view of the economy. Namely that the inflation rate is not realistically tied to minimum wage in any way."

'Simplified' is believing that raising the minimum wage to $15/hour is a great solution to an increase in spending power (as opposed to a person learning a new skill and increasing their own value).

My view is complicated and nuanced and displays the unintended consequences of a raise in the minimum wage.

What do you think will happen when the costs of everything in a supply chain of a company is doubled? They will pass it onto the consumer.

When the majority of companies do this (which will definitely happen), everyone's spending power is decreased. The dollar doesn't go as far as it used to.

Realistically, it's hard to see how inflation isn't tied to a raise in minimum wage.

As a counter-example. Let's look at some of the events put on by the fashion industry.

It alienates and has a not just 'unconscious bias' but a clear-cut, in your face, bias toward heterosexual men.

I'm okay with this as long as we go after the fashion industry next.

All too often, people use excuses for their own failure s.

Getting funding is damn hard. African americans make up only 14% of the population. Only a small percentage of this will pitch VC and an even smaller percentage will get accepted.

Zuckerberg wanted his employees to read the latest book by the current Chinese president a few years back. The book was pure propaganda.

I wish he represented freedom and standing up for everyone's freedom of speech (and privacy), but just looking at his personal history and actions, I just don't think this is the case.

Mandating a higher wage through law won't work in the long-run. Inflation will catch up in a few years and a person making $15/hour will no longer have the increased spending power they once had when they first got the boost in pay.

This has happened with pretty much every site that has gotten big. Look at Twitter: They gave developers access to their data, allowed them to build companies around it, and then removed access abruptly.

In some cases, they offered these companies the same data at an exorbitant cost. Most of the time, it's not even factored into the business model of the company and they are forced to find another source of data or quit.

This is why you shouldn't base your entire company or idea on one source of data.

It's like anything in life. You have enthusiastic people that have this vision in their head about becoming a software developer and joining a startup.

When the realities hit and they realize that some of it is mentally taxing and boring work, they give up and quit.

I've been writing software for 20 years. I haven't gotten bored yet.

In any boring task, I can always learn something new that's interesting.

Many people thing $10 is too expensive for a movie ticket, why would they pay $150?

Global trade is very similar to the Music (and software) revolution that happened over the last 15 or so years.

The original creators of creative works were upset because free music, software diluted the value of the original work and it would make it more difficult to sell it in the future because most people would just get it for free. These companies essentially needed to compete against the same software/music they were selling, but free.

The same thing is happening now, but with jobs. Companies are going overseas for workers and Americans now need to compete over a worker that can essentially do the same job, for a lower wage.

Many people here have defended software and music piracy and even said things like "I wouldn't have purchased it anyway".

Well, companies "Wouldn't have hired Americans anyway". It's ironic that so many of those same people are now clamoring for government protection when they fought against patents and copyrights for so long.

Instead of complaining, you basically need to compete and offer companies something that they can't get overseas. This is exactly what the software and music industries have both needed to do to survive.