The best personal finance advice I know of comes from the Bogleheads community (basically, total-market index investing with low expense ratios and allocated for risk tolerance and tax efficiency, and misc. forum advice like recognizing your salary probably has bigger impact than any investing details): https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Main_Page
> gave Ferraris to employees who recruited 10 programmers,
I might be misremembering from when that was first promoted, but I though it was a year's use of a Ferrari (a Spider or similar).
> Greenspun defends those expenditures as inexpensive ways to retain and attract talent. He also writes that it created the impression of a wildly successful company.
At the time, it seemed a little indulgent. Like all the fresh startups that would buy Aeron chairs for everyone, and have expensive launch parties.
But in hindsight... How else were you going to get MIT grads to feel like they were in on the dotcom boom, when they were working as TCL programmers in gloomy Cambridge? (Rather than move to the sunny SF Bay Area, where most of the action seemed to be happening, and where most of their friends were moving.)
(OTOH, "homies on lock / for insider trading" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaXZI81gRvk
fwiw my spouse doesn't interpret this ad as parody: "for once you send me a video with normal people in it")
If you want to become wealthy without learning a ton about finances then read the total money makeover by Dave Ramsey or spend a few months listening to his podcast (go back a couple years before some of the new personalities who will be replacing him have started to come on).
Then, if you get curious enough to learn more advanced topics (don’t look to Dave for these) then head over to boggleheads.
The path to wealth is boring consistency. But it’s a much shorter path than most people think with the right discipline.
People who follow his plan pay tens of thousands of dollars in debt off in 1-2 years on modest incomes.