htss2013

What is the fundamental reason why MRI machines could not be produced in higher quantities at much cheaper unit costs?

Landlords require a certain multiple of rent in proven income. So the rent is automatically capped by local wages.

It's pretty black and white - either the landlord asked a price in line with local wages or they didn't. If they go too far,the landlord gets punished with expensive vacancies, or they loosen rent/income requirements and get punished with even more expensive evictions.

Point is, landlords aren't gangsters who can demand whatever number they pull out of their arses. They have to keep rent a reasonable ratio of local wages or they feel the pain.

Because the definition of vaccine has been muddled with what used to be called gene therapy. In this case, they are tricking the body's immune system to attack specific cancer cells like it would learn to attack a flu virus or any other antigen.

Can we not make a reasonable assumption that whistleblowers against a powerful company have a much higher than average risk of dying? Knowing nothing about them personally we can reasonably conclude:

- They get regular death threats.

- The opposing law firms probably have PIs digging into their lives for dirt to discredit them.

- Their careers in their line of work are over and as far as I know, there's no whistle-blower retirement fund.

- Everyone they knew and worked with for many years and who still works there probably cut them off for fear of being associated with them.

- Because of all this their sleep is probably horrible, they're much more likely to have unhealthy alcohol habits, and to have financial problems.

This assumes the risk of getting caught offing whistleblowers is less than the risk of more whistle-blowers coming out. Does it really make sense that you'd risk exposing a whistle blower murder program as opposed to whatever corporate problems they have? Not to mention, it's a lot easier to smooth over corporate screw ups than getting caught hiring hit men.

I'm baffled by how someone can say crypto is a scam in 2024, at least for Bitcoin. But I'm grateful that it is taking many people so long to adjust to the new reality. Their stubborn skepticism is keeping the early(ish) adopter window of opportunity open way longer than I would've imagined.

Oh don't worry. When you get an audit notice you get assigned an agent dedicated to your case. You can talk to them easily. They will talk to you all the time. It's amazing. The question and answer flow is just non ending.

I don't think there is long term evidence that ESG adds alpha. Even if it did in the past, there's no reason to believe it will continue once it is being gamed as it is now and the term becomes amorphous. Texas ever investing in ESG in the first place was the ideologically impure thing to do, if their only goal is performance.

Toilets haven't been fundamentally changed in 100 years. We flush unfathomable gallons literally down the toilet because we can't think of a better way to move poop around.

You mean they bought a house assuming they could WFH and the RTO mandate forced them to quit since it was too far away? Or they said no to the ultimatum and bought a house elsewhere?

People are so naive to think that the big tech firms don't know exactly what theyre doing. They all more or less operate the same way.

If someone is a top performer within a highly valued part of the org, then one way or another they will be able to navigate RTO without serious problems.

For everyone else, RTO is a dial for management to fine tune voluntary attrition before having to resort to more unpleasant tools like higher PIP quotas, at a time where big tech firms all still need to cut employee costs.

>An organization that wants people to come to work at their detriment is one that doesn't value their people, and this is how they are expressing it.

Yes this is the entire point. They want to turn up both voluntary attrition or be able to fire for cause. Either way they get to lighten their employee costs which is the goal.

Lots of folks are in great health but find themselves voluntarily bed ridden for lack of motivation to do anything else. It can often happen after no longer needing to work. Saying you'll do XYZ once you have the freedom isn't the same as actually being in that situation. People under appreciate the mental component of the puzzle.

Interest rates went up and now profitability matters. Tech companies' biggest expense is employees, so it's the lowest hanging fruit to generate higher profits. It's really that simple.

If this these extremely common viruses were the root cause of obesity, then why does obesity affect different countries so differently?

Viruses all passed around globally so you have to assume all developed countries are getting pretty much the same level of population infection.

Maybe it's because if certain viruses do play a role in obesity, it sounds like an evolved adaptation in humans. Ie, if you're sick, you respond by burning less energy and storing more of it as fat.

Like all evolved adaptations, they don't affect all populations equally. I'm guessing if ad36 contributes to obesity, you must first be genetically predisposed to it happening.

It's very convenient being able to fire remote workers for cause if they won't RTO. It's a lot cheaper than actual layoffs.

My furnace broke after 15 years. I called a business to fix it. They replaced the dead pump motor and it worked again. The repair guy was paid well and I was happy to pay. What exactly is inherently unethical about this?

What do you mean by eugenics? That academics studied eugenics? Or that eugenics was widely popular among academics?

I guess the pendulum always swings to the extreme other direction. Today, the more disadvantaged your intersectional identity, the better your prospects in academia.

Why can't you be a millionaire who becomes a billionare through compound interest? If university endowments can do it so can individuals.

Never talk about the psychological toll any job takes on you, because there are people in worse circumstances somewhere, and everyone should always be able to foresee and "navigate" contrived reasons for deficient performance.

Thank you for the enlightening insight.

Beliefs around WFH didn't change. Economic circumstances did. If it reverts to difficulty hiring and retaining people, WFH will change back. Productivity is an excuse after the fact.

>When margins are high the returns to growing revenue are much greater than cutting costs.

Margins aren't necessarily high and growing revenue isn't always an option. Certain products/services just aren't in demand, no matter how well you execute.

AWS is high margin but retail isn't. For better or worse the two businesses are merged and considered together by Wall St. which means management also has to look at it that way.

>and because return to office in their minds is a good way to make the org more productive over the long term.

If WFH destroys long term value creation, then why didn't the stock market punish every tech company when they all announced permanent WFH?

People don't appreciate what a total mindfuck it is to go through this.

- You aren't told you're being targeted to be managed out when it starts. Managers often do not tell you that you're beginning phase 1 of getting managed out, whatever it's called.

- You've always known this could happen to you or anyone else, so you are always guessing if that email from your boss is just a normal email or was it the beginning of a paper trail? You sense something different, but is that just in your head?

- You might think you'd realize you're being managed out, reading the room, but that assumes there's a rational foreseeable reason to PIP you. Often there is not. Management gets PIP targets and someone has to get PIPed. It can be you for political reasons above your head that you are oblivious to.

- You are subtlely being setup to fail, and even if you don't explicitly fail, finding a reason to frame your performance as deficient is always possible.

- There is always something you could have done better, and nothing ever goes 100% perfectly. Those things will be magnified 100x. Are they being over magnified? Or were you delusional to minimize them?

- To be on the receiving end of this is totally disorienting. It's basically gas lighting. Suddenly everything you do is somehow deficient in some way, even when you thought you were doing well. How could you have not realized this? Is this proof you can't trust your own judgment? That you're incompetent?

- Your paper trails are useless. You can always be criticized for subjective reasons, like your style of communication, some 20/20 hindsight way you arguably could have done things even better, you're "not showing enough leadership", yes you're doing your core job but at your level we also expect XYZ, etc.

- This can go on for months, working 60-80 hour weeks, on little sleep, with constant stress. You start to question your ability to assess reality. What else are you missing if you didnt realize you were screwing up so badly? Are you doing this outside of work too?

- You think, wait, this has never happened to me before, but maybe it was just luck until now. Was imposter syndrome not a syndrome this whole time? Was I actually an imposter and this is what it feels like to be found out?

At the end of this gas lighting psychological manipulation marathon, you have a hard time knowing up from down and you're fired.

Who do you talk to about this to get your bearings back? You are ashamed this happened, and yet you're also not because bullshit PIPing is famous. It's not your fault. Or is it? Anyway you probably should find a way to process this right? Or maybe it's best to shove it deep into your subconscious and move on.

Isn't this what therapists are for? Sure, go explain that your mind is vaguely screwed up from getting fired from a $300k/year job for...reasons? Did you screw up? Well no, but technically yes, but in reality no? Maybe? How the hell do you even articulate this without sounding like an incoherent spoiled brat?

If the people and their bipartisan representatives demand something, and the government ignores them with no accountability, is that not the death of democracy? Or does it only count when it's helpful for partisan ends?

Divorce was a totally different animal before no fault divorce became a thing. The idea of an amicable divorce didn't really exist in the public mind. Divorce itself was also scandalous, if you could even get it done.

The rate of cohabitation was probably sky high because most couples who wanted to divorce just stayed married because actual divorce wasn't worth it.

It's just odd from the perspective of a non American, because in much of the rest of the world houses are usually kept in families multi generationally. So your dream of passing on the oven would have worked most other places. It's just your desires are incompatible with the American treatment of houses as commodities to be frequently traded in bidding auctions.

Why do you take it that way? I took saying "not American" to mean his perspective is from outside looking in, which is useful context.

What unpopular world view exactly?

She wrote a letter to an EMDR therapist. The point was to criricize the therapist of dropping her as a patient for doing sex work. That aside, she spent a lot of the letter saying the therapist shamed her by suggesting ways to make the most of her health insurance without copays. She interpreted this as an attempt to shame her financial situation...

I've had doctors mention stuff like this to me before and I've never taken it as an insult. I appreciated the empathy for my having to deal with insurance. Am I weird for thinking this is not offensive at all?

Ok but did they ever say every American's records were leaked? Or are you assuming that given multiple people's records leaked?