Yes, if they bring insights. Not merely facts or data.
Matt Levine, Farnam Street, James Clear - they add value in their own ways.
I dont read every issue though.
24 karma · joined August 28, 2020
That is spiritual in a way. Or more spiritual than many humans.
Sources: 1: https://www.cbc.ca/strombo/news/saying-goodbye-elephants-hol... 2: https://www.indiatoday.in/trending-news/story/elephant-pays-...
Examples: A setting where the group has pre-decided to exclude you - think snooty neighbourhoods. Pre-conceived biases cant be overcome. An unruly boss who bulldozes and dominates. A cool crowd that stigmatizes the nerds. Or cultures where fragile masculinity hinges upon dominating at all costs and multiple folks speaking over each other.
Also: these rules are hard to remember and apply in rapid conversation, for folks who are borderline autistic.
[1] Back in 2006, created a web scraper with .Net framework and C# that helped my wife run a home-based scraping business for 2 years. There were no tools / libraries / frameworks for spidering / scraping back then - or at least I wasnt aware of them. Helped her have a replacement income since she had quit her job for maternity. She of course enhanced it and made it better. Was fun while we were the early ones in it.
[2] SAP's Community Network in 2002: Supports a million users today, started with a much smaller user base of 10k, implemented it from scratch as a Java MVC web-app with another colleague.
[3] Amazon Ads in 2015: Contextual commerce ads in review websites and blogs, this single product drove (and still continues to drive) multi-hundred million dollars in incremental revenue for AMZN every year. HN doesnt like the Advertising business, but hey.
An easier, and more forgiving entry path based on self-learning ("hack my way through") in software development as compared to the entry barriers of EE - especially in India where Oscilloscopes and other equipment were crazy expensive some decades ago.
20% of my batch has moved to software over the last 25 years, compensation being one key factor.
On the plus side, the interviews were a breeze due to the depth I had built up on the tech side in my startup, and I had instant street-cred every time I talked to new coworkers.
Experience as a founder was very valuable due to the much bigger picture that I could see most of the time and easily switch my thinking hats from tech to product to business, and add value to most discussions, even with executives.
a) Rows limited at a million since 2007.
b) SQL querying capabilities, especially when large datasets (1M+ rows) are queried in-file.
b) What the next job level entails and how to get there. Whether to take the career path of being an individual contributor, manager, architect, tech-lead manager, etc.
c) Compensation, equity, and how RSUs, ESOPs, etc. work.
d) Alternate, overlapping fields of work - in case of software developers, how can they explore product management or running tech programs.
Motivation and other labels only go so far. Its discipline that got me anything worthwhile. Showing up and getting shit done, even when I didnt feel like it. A realist view of what could cause me to fail.
A little bit of world-weary jadedness does wonders in channeling creativity towards what really needs to be done.
Assumption: Let's say you run an application / function with 5 qps traffic, needing 256 MB RAM max, 50ms execution time.
EC2: t2.micro instance - 1 instance available as always free, hence using as a baseline. This comes with 1 vCPU and 1GiB RAM - cost $0.0116 / hour x 750 hours a month = $8.7 / month.
Lambda: For 5 qps traffic, it would amount to 13,392,000 requests in a month. With a 256MB instance, and 50ms of execution time, that comes to $2.48 / month, after accounting for 1M free requests.
The math goes in EC2's favor once you cross 20 qps.
Can a t2.micro run such a load - oh yeah!
[1]: AWS EC2 On-demand pricing: https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/on-demand/ [2]: AWS Lambda pricing: https://dashbird.io/lambda-cost-calculator/
Ageism is also a factor with some age cohorts preferring to hire within their age groups who play with their cohort's favorite tech-stacks.
A badly behaved interviewer - arrogant, rushed for time and treating the interview as a nuisance, egoistic - all of these make it harder for candidates to get a job.
Data point of one: I have faced the worst lot of interviewers in startups and Unicorns, and have had the best-behaved and reasonable folks in FAANG companies.
Doing a Masters removes some of the visa risk, while bringing in the campus hiring advantage of FAANG.
On another note, have you thought of what you would think once you see folks raking it in there with PhDs in Machine Learning?
[Not an investment advice, markets are risky, losses are probable - you know the usual disclaimers]
How does one solve for risk in the markets? As in, mathematically. How does one do short term predictions of prices, with a day or two as the prediction range, with a probability > 0.5.
Was it distracting or mildly discouraging? Sure.
I finally jumped onto the touchscreen and app boom, lost a lot of time and money, but sharpened my development skills.
I have seen multiple booms where closed-networks of folks and insiders make huge money leaving the vast majority out.
I do my thing based on my capabilities and networking skills. Sucks to be an introvert on the autism spectrum. I have learnt to not be impressed by the highlight-reel of folks that is heavily curated. If you dig deep, you will learn the insider stories of the superficially happy-family folks and the ones with the latest cars.
Each of us have our own miseries, even the ones with money. Especially the ones with boat-loads of money.