It's not options either (that would be ESOPs), but actually a kind of bonus structure. If there is an exit event, as specified in the VSOP agreement, you get a bonus that should be the same as what real options would have been worth. They are taxed as normal income, but you do not have to pay tax when you receive them. In the past you would have to pay tax on real options when receiving them even though they'd most likely never pay out.
I have never worked as a pure PM, but I have worked with several. I would say that the most important thing is to build trust with your team and to be ready to adapt to the existing process. From there on you can start introducing small changes towards a better working mode, but do not get caught up in process over outcome. Remember why you are there.
Kon-Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl, a explorer/anthropologist. He and a group of other volunteers sailed across the pacific on a raft built using ancient methods to prove that the pacific isles were settled by south americans (this turned out to be wrong based on population genetics). Great read!
I kind of agree, but I would also argue that of those who treat coding as a craft many are in danger as well. Code in the end is just a tool. Deep understanding won't be replaced any time soon, but I have worked with software artisans who were really effective and ones that saw the code and system as an end in itself. If you're in the latter group I'd be worried.
I didn't do it last year, but the years before I used Racket and Common Lisp. I might try Common Lisp again since I really want to rediscover the experience of programming w/ Sly (a fork of SLIME).
I'm also considering trying to solve everything with Z3.
And here you're assuming that making software engineers more productive would be a service to the world. I think the jury is out on that one as well. At least for the majority of software engineering since 2010.
I also remember a similar discussion about mathematics. You can easily brute-force a bunch of theorems starting from some axioms and logic, but without any sense-making or context they are effectively meaningless.
Is it? It looks more like an interesting discussion about tools and what a good tool should do. One point of view is that a good tool should augment you in a process, something generative tools don't do.
I really enjoyed The Fat Tail by Ian Bremmer and Preston Keat, which is about political risk and how to mitigate or manage it. Think revolutions, regulatory changes, elections etc. and how they affect markets. Another gem I found was the book Rational Choice in an Uncertain World by Robyn M. Dawes. It is a bit dated (the first version that I read is from 1988), but covers a lot of early research by people like Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. As someone born after the book was published a lot of the examples and scenarios used to illustrate rational choice were also new to me, e.g., the Cuban missile crisis, Affirmative Action. However, there is also a second edition from 2009 so it might be a better option.
I'm a fan of rebase myself, but understand the point made above. For me, the biggest pro of a clean history is when doing `git blame`. If the history is clean and the commits are good, it might solve my issue. On the other hand, if the commit in question is a huge mess of unrelated things it doesn't help me at all. I also find it way easier to review a PR with a clean, well-described history.
There are definitely interesting times ahead. What surprised me with ChatGPT is the impact of the interface. The quality of the responses are essential up to some threshold, but the chat interface arguably had an even bigger impact.
I also remember having the same questions in my last job (in logistics) where potential customers wanted to know how we use AI. This sometimes seemed more important than whether our results would enable them to cut costs. Fascinating.
My optimistic take is that more time will be spent thinking about specification and validation. I also hope that code synthesis tools and verification becomes more common to use.
Not going to do the math here, but the magnitudes are quite important.. It seems like the worst years are around 20% worse than the S&P, but there are several years where their outperformance is more than 100%.
I know how you feel. Today I had an unexpected day off and the default thinking mode is how to use this day efficiently. I decided against doing anything productive, but even then I try to make sure I read the "best" book (ideally a classic) or find the best spot to enjoy my coffee, which should be the best as well. It is crazy.
What works for me, which I eventually managed to do today is to get off the computer and get outside. Just pick a direction and go. I took a bike ride, brought a coffee and a book and just sat on a bench watching people, reading and remembering that life is good. It doesn't really matter what I do as long as I get out. Nature works best, but going to a museum or just some new shop in the neighborhood also works. Even if I feel awkward as hell in the beginning as it just feels weird to do these things alone.
Innocent until proven guilty, presumption of innocence and so on. The system is insane, but not for the reasons you seem to think. It is unfair to the poor.
I've actually met a couple of people randomly on flights that worked as software developers until the dotcom bubble burst. They both said they couldn't find anything the following years so they changed careers: one became a carpenter and the other ended up as an accountant.
Strongly agree here. It is the only podcast where I more or less listen to every episode even if I don't find the topic or guest particularly intriguing at first glance.
Do they though? It depends on your definition of often I guess and it has definitely been happening more in recent years. I'm unable to find data, but in my experience I can only remember seeing this in sexy companies like Tesla where there are a lot of retail investors. It makes little sense that issuing a lot of new stock leads to a significantly higher market cap (unless there was uncertainty whether a company would be able to raise money at all).
I don't think "memed into existence" is gibberish; just hyperbole.
The writer isn't disputing that Tesla didn't exist before, but just pointing out the fact that issuing shares actually lead to increased valuations. The argument that it has to do with the fact that Tesla turned into something more than "just" a car company.