Actually they do - the combined Microsoft 401k fund is large enough that they can reduce fees compared to normal places. I think most of the indexes I am invested in were at something like 0.05% costs. It's similar to the benefit of Vanguard Admirals shares.
This is at Fidelity, right? You can still use the exact same investment options as when you were a Microsoft employee, you just can't add to the account. The Microsoft 401k has some of the lowest fee investment options out there, so when I left MS and analyzed my options, I decided to leave my money in there instead of rolling it over. Do you have a NetBenefits account for the website? If not, you'll have to call Fidelity, but they should be able to sort you out pretty easily.
Your pros and cons for option 1 are wrong. You don't incur the long term cost of translating all strings just by making your software localizable - you incur it by releasing localized software. (Same for making it accessible to the larger market). It should say something like "pro: reduces future cost of deciding to release in other languages. Con: may be extra work". And how big a con that is depends a ton on what technologies you're using and whether your current plan is to just hardcore strings everywhere.
We're not talking about the whole group of tech people, we're specifically talking about the ones who own several houses. I agree that it is laughably atypical and the commenter who brought it up as a problem is overstating the frequency.
I know some of them. They moved here in the early 90s to work at Microsoft, or they made a ton of money when their parents and grandparents all died and left them a couple houses in places like Queen Anne and Ballard. I don't think they have any good advice on how to replicate it.
They could have voted for transit in the 70s. They could have not reduced allowable density across the city. And then when they realized people were moving in they could have increased density, a couple decades ago. And the increased density would make transit, even buses, more of an option, with both more riders and a larger tax base.
It is certainly possible to meet women in a way that is unambiguously not creepy, and you could always aim for that if you have trouble with where the line is.
I think your argument was a bad one which you attempted to shore up with an irrelevant and misleading rhetorical sleight of hand, comparing money grad students don't get to money other people do get and implying that because it was a high number that made them well off.
Yes, they're correlated. If that's the only understanding you have of the relationship, would you agree with my assertion that the cost of employing a grad student is about 10% of the median cost of an employee?
Did you know that many people buy lottery tickets week after week based on their understanding that other people are winning, and not their own experience of losing constantly?
Yes, it does. God forbid I wanted to work on something and not keep listening to the five nearest conversations in case they are relevant to me, though. Why would I ever need to focus on anything at work?
And if you're doing all this and still depressed, there's no solution and you should kill yourself. That's how I read advice like yours when I was a college athlete. Fortunately, instead of walking in front of a bus I went to a doctor and got antidepressants, which helped tremendously.
Did they say they asked? I thought that comment just indicated that they had noticed. And since you are the person who brought up the concept of identifying as a boy in this context, I don't think anyone else can tell you why it might have seemed relevant.
I don't understand why you would expect anyone to say "this is for boys" when producing a toy that is generally considered to skew male. Try looking at Meccano, for instance - I've never seen them say "boys" but I'd bet money that most Americans see a racecar/truck/etc kit and think boy.
It would seem rude for a toy maker to be asking children for their gender as assigned at birth (which is what I assume you mean) so they probably don't know.
20% is definitely higher than average, and higher than any company I've worked at. And you're assuming a completely random distribution, which is not the case in my experience, for whatever reason.