How this got 6 upvotes and posted to Ask HN while my stuff never sticks is beyond me.
280 karma · joined October 11, 2009
https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-si...
It's going to take a huge change in habits.
If you're determined, I would say don't listen to the haters. I've been a member of FIRE since college, downshifted and it's amazing. I never really enjoyed working (actually, hated it) so I get to spend my time on this earth doing what I want to do (read classic books right now.)
But you bring up a good point.
I HIGHLY suggest vetting the placement "statistics". For me, I just read 95% get a job, went to the open house, listened to a couple "rah rah" testimonials and did it. It was a big mistake.
A friend of mine from the class estimated that only 30-40% of us got actual dev jobs. The rest are either in customer service at a tech company, sales or testing (keep in mind this is people who dropped $15k+ to do the bootcamp), back in our old industry or in the case of one, working at Trader Joes.
I was under the impression that 95% get good jobs. If I had known only 30-40% did I would have never done the boot camp.
How did they manipulate the numbers? I never dug deep but here are my thoughts:
* to qualify as "actively looking" you can't have a job to support yourself. That's right you're supposed to not have an income while job searching, kinda hard when it can take more than six months. If you get a job, you get dropped from career support and your statistic gets placed in the "not actively looking" category
* "industry related jobs". If you go to a dev boot camp, you want to be a dev. You're paying $15k to do it. A customer service job at a tech startup is better than nothing but you don't have to pay $15k to do it. Likewise for sales.
As a positive point, all the females in our cohort got dev jobs, including the only one who actually failed the class. Startups are pretty aware of the gender discrepancy and actively looking to hire those with double x chromosomes. Not complaining about affirmative action, just wanted to give you as full picture as possible
Bewares statistics! They can be easily manipulated.
Interesting. So which is more important, working hard or working smart?
I remember reading the giddy business articles on HP+Compaq being a "transformational" merger and we all know where that went.
The expert: Joel Salatin, co-owner of Polyface Farms and author of half a dozen books on sustainable farming
This screams conflict of interest.
This is going to sound condescending, but remember those kids who had no inclination to try in school and go to a good 4 year college? That's going to be at least 75% of the students there. My brother took some summer classes there and he said they were a joke.
I've heard that teaching at one sucks, and the one or two students that are truly motivated really make the job worthwhile.
I would expect to find this especially true for a math-oriented subject like programming or engineering.
This argument is disingenuous.
Sure, the big G doesn't make any money off of news searches. But the triple-A content provided by newspapers are what makes Google so useful in the first place.
Google is then able to monetize its relationship with users when they do highly profitable product searches. It's like people going to the gas station and picking up a candy bar from the convenience store (where all the money is made.)
I think it's a good comparison to Google. The big G can say "We're not being evil!" all it wants. But the fact is that it has a near monopoly on search engine advertising which allows it to treat its advertisers awfully. Imagine a radio station randomly pulling ads without a proper explanation. What would happen? The radio station next door would get the ad dollars.
Try calling Google Adwords phone support (trust me it exists, my friend works there.) You won't find the number listed on their site. I googled and found it on some obscure forum. I was answered with a teleprompt, asking me for my adwords customer number. I'm not a high roller (couple hundred bucks a month) so after the system identifed me it dropped my call. I had to use their crappy email system, where I was answered by a cut-and-paste response that didn't answer my question.
I've had no trouble reaching Yahoo and MSN's search engine marketing groups by phone.
I remember back in high school when web games like Earth 2025 (games.swirve.com/earth/) were quite the rage and everybody was playing them. This lasted for a year or so until the novelty wore off. Some still play but the casual players are gone and the audience is a tiny fraction of what it once was.
I've noticed that my FB friends that play FB games tend to stop playing after a couple months. The games are mindless, cookie-cutter and repetitive for the most part.
<EDIT>I don't think WoW is a good comparison as there is clearly a huge depth between it and Zynga games. The experience is entirely different.
"Easy come, easy go" could apply to this market. I mean these games come out of no where to millions of players. These are not hardcore gamers that develop strong loyalty and build communities, but "casual" players that probably started playing because their friends are.
"Casual" gamers are notoriously fickle. Look at the Nintendo Wii, which is the most popular console but has the least average amount of titles bought per owner (which is where the real money is.)
In 2-3 years I would not be surprised that after all this over-exposure these x-ville games will be significantly less popular. These "games" have more in common with Tamagotchi and Beanie Babies than Wow or Call of Duty... </edit>
I'm not. You're just playing devil's advocate. The way you are responding, you have no interest in actually debating the idea.
Can you explain why media companies "greatly benefit" from being excluded from major search engines?
First of, Microsoft is providing an option for beleaguered newspapers. More options is universally better than less options right?
Second, they're getting cash. And the newspaper companies (struggling with shrinking advertising and layoffs) are seriously considering the cash. So it seems the media thinks that cash is more beneficial.
Can you show why this means that "beneficial" investigative journalism continues, increasing the overall welfare of citizens moreso than open access for search engines? For that matter, can you show that newspapers do more "long form" and expose more government corruption than bloggers do in aggregate?
Yes. I'm not sure how to exactly prove this in an excel spreadsheet for you.
What if newspapers accept this deal and transition to more "blog" articles and fewer "investigative" articles, leaving citizens with "no" investigative articles and no single search destination?
Completely irrelevant to the argument at hand. Microsoft would have no hand in this.
Unfortunately this is hacker news, not philosophy news. Provide a counter-argument that is based on the topic because I have no desire to argue with a troll trying to sound smart.
The world is much more complex than "good" and "evil".
Notice he doesn't even mention that media companies will greatly benefit? Journalism positions will be preserved. And I'm sorry, blogs for the most part digest and regurgitate news. It's newspapers for the most part that need to cover expensive journalism such as "long form" and stuff like government corruption. So the average citizen will benefit as well.
Awful. A company that uses sleazy monetization tactics (until someone called them out on it) and blatantly ripoffs games from competitors will be worth more than one of the most innovative game developers.
Mobwars > GTA?
I guess the valuation though reflects the business fundamentals of social vs console gaming.
What would CarbonMade do with a $3 million investment?
The AOL name is tarnished with both investors (from the disastrous merger with Time Warner) and consumers (nightmare cancellation tactics) alike.