noodle

> Problem is, scaling up is about $50 per gigabyte of memory which makes it a dead end for anything non trivial.

That isn't exactly true, for a few reasons.

First is, the top tier public sticker price is roughly $35/GB.

Second is, at higher scales, you'll sign a contract with them that discounts your rates further.

Third is, this is presuming you're paying $ for memory alone. While that might be relevant for individual apps which need that specifically, on the whole you're paying for the ecosystem, the standardization, the PaaS. You're trading money for your time back. The product you're buying is not simply GB.

Without getting into specifics, I've had two higher up referrals at FAANG companies, for people asking me to join their specific teams. Both companies are ones who tout the ability to move laterally very easily. Both times, I went through the generic tech hiring process (as in, it had little to do with what I was being asked to do as a member of these teams), and both times, the end result was that I was unable to join the team I was referred to join.

Yeah and that is what I mean when I say that the company is pushed forward not the work. You're buying in to the idea that you'll be paid well and that you'll probably find something you're interested in. My personal preference is to find something I'm interested in first, and join it. I'm more motivated by the team, work, problem, impact potential, etc..

Sure. I mean, I get the reasoning/justification behind it. But I'm generally not interested in jumping through all of the toxic tech interview process hoops without first knowing what's at the other side; I've learned that lesson the hard way. And I think that probably filters a certain type of talent away from FAANG companies.

> I've turned down numerous offers because when I asked what the specifics of my day to day job were going to be, the answers weren't clear.

Same, from FAANG companies. The feel that I get is more like, FAANG companies don't even know what you're going to do. They just want to hire top talent and figure out what you're working on later. They want someone "smart" who can ultimately work on any team, since whatever team you initially land on might be gone in a few months.

The consequence of this made the interview process for these companies feel much more like a "drinking the kool aid" test. When I asked what I would be doing, the sales pitch I got always boiled down to "you'll be working for X" as if that was enough. That might be enough for a fresh grad, but I'm an experienced specialist. Understanding my role and impact are key to my job happiness.

I don't think the intent is to be secretive, its more about - the people in the recruiting pipeline don't even know themselves, or if they do, you might get rearranged quickly, so focusing heavily on the specific work is more of a detriment. You kind of NEED to drink the kool aid since you're buying in to the company moreso than buying in to a specific team, work, etc..

> This is the problem with much of the spectrum of political rhetoric in America, they're almost all somehow unrealistic in their basic, shared presumption of a world without some over-determining Other

I mean, you can essentially formulate any world view that takes any clearcut stance into the in-group and out-group dynamic. People who are pro democracy are looking for a world without oligarchy/monarchy, making those who want to consolidate power around a few people as the out group. Etc..

> when there isn't those built hierarchies bad/selfish people don't amass power so everyone else can actually handle them on equal terms.

This doesn't really ring true to me. In a society where hierarchy is removed, the bad people will form a hierarchy to create power. It being "not allowed" in that society doesn't mean it won't still happen, due again to the people being "bad" in the first place. Two bad people will form a group and use that to derive power over any non-grouped individuals. Or 10 bad people over smaller groups, etc..

Well, both things can be true, making the situation more complex and therefore the article a bit misrepresentative in both directions. It sounds like the Zoe is outselling Tesla in Europe. It also sounds like Tesla sells every car they ship to Europe.

There are a few more coming, too.

My armchair guess would be, this is a win win market. Its booming, so you can ride it as it goes up. And if you don't do well, you can blame COVID. A lot of companies were on the cusp and this probably accelerates them all.

This is a pretty broad brush. It puts a lot of installable desktop or mobile apps into that bucket due to things like code push. And of course every web app falls in this territory.

I've read somewhere else that its in the territory of $250. But that was reporting from a while ago, and things might be different now.

> This feels like bit of a knee-jerk reaction to the sudden shift towards remote only work.

This isn't a super new thing, though. There have been a number of companies in the past 5-10 years that offered similar functionality without the hook of having a separate device (Sqwiggle, pukkateam, sneek, etc).

They have some better and different features; but also lacking in some features people considered essential.

For me as a viewer, an easy example is that taking clips of streams is relatively new to Mixer, and you can't even sort/filter them. Clips helped build a lot of Twitch streamers' popularity by making things bite-sized and shareable.

Well, lots of streamers really don't like Twitch. But Mixer was a downgrade for most people in terms of features and functionality. Same situation with YouTube - a lot of content creators aren't happy with it, but everything else out there is just a worse version of YT. The bigger, older platforms have a lot of momentum.

> Finding qualified engineers who have the skills you're looking for who aren't happily employed and making above-market rate already is often a real challenge.

As a happily employed engineer who has FAANG recruiter friends and gets scouted fairly regularly, I think you also forgot "and is willing to jump through the hoops you put in front of them".

Also, this doesn't sound like it needs to be an engineering problem. A customer support team could alleviate the workload. Even if its an internal-only, non-public support team, just people whose job it is to do the manual data scrubbing.

This sounds like a possible revenue opportunity as well. People would probably pay for the ability to ensure accurate data for their Places, which could also serve as a way for G to ensure the Place data is valid and meets their editorial guidelines. Don't know if this already exists or not but it sounds like it should.

This is true but its not linear. Even remote jobs are coalescing around a median salary. If you go from SF to Chang Mai, you probably aren't going to take a 85% pay cut, it will probably hit a local minimum for your role/experience/etc.. Your skillset still has a certain value regardless of location. Below a certain line, your savings rate will go back up again.

I feel like there's an implied "and keep their comp". There are a decent number of remote jobs out there right now. They pay well, but certainly not SF TC.

I dunno, I feel like this could swing either way. I'm a remote worker and I work out of a coworking space. If more people go remote, demand for coworking space could also increase.

> I don't know if I could say I "liked" my insurance company, but I can say with a great deal of certainty that my interactions with my insurance company are orders of magnitude more frustration free (enjoyable seemed like too much of a stretch) than any of my mandatory interactions with State/Federal government.

I think I'd suggest that you ask around your social circle to see if you're the outlier or the standard with your experience. Particularly if you've never had a major unplanned life event that resulted in a large medical bill.

I feel like, at least for me, I'd rather have a system that has a constant amount of low grade frustration in it; instead of a system that is smooth sailing while you're healthy and paying, but will throw you under the bus when you actually need them.

> My worst interaction with an insurance company in my entire adult life was being billed in an annoying fashion and having to sit on hold for half an hour to get it fixed. Compared to just my last trip to the DMV the insurance company is already pretty far ahead.

My worst interaction was watching a family member of mine begin to actively die and then pass away a few months after insurance decided to stop covering their primary medication - which was literally keeping their disease at bay, keeping them alive. It was too expensive to cover without the insurance.

> While I lean strongly libertarian, I'm pragmatic enough to understand the current half commie, half free market health care system is entirely untenable, and I seriously doubt it will be acceptable to move in the free market direction anytime soon.

I'm actually shocked that more libertarians don't take this view. Healthcare is almost by definition not a free market and never will be. You can't make a rational purchasing decision when both parties know the possible outcome of not buying is your literal death (amongst other similar reasons). It's an outlier in the business space that needs special considerations (IMO).

> I've never heard that - I don't know anyone who likes their insurance company.

I've never heard any normal citizen say that. I was mostly commenting on current politicians saying that to justify their stances. For example:

"One hundred sixty million people like their private insurance" - Joe Biden, Nov 21 2019

"You don't start out by saying I've got 160 million people I'm going to take away the insurance plan that they love." - Michael Bloomberg, Feb 19 2020

etc

> Not sure what other arguments there are.

The one I've heard the most lately is that "people like their existing insurance companies", which I think is an almost absurd thing to say on its face. But its probably just a way to say "people don't like change" that doesn't get insurance companies or "people" salty about it.

I mean, that's a fair point, but its also not the question you asked.

To try and answer that question, I think its because this one is fairly easy to read, understand, they're very open with their data, they show their work on how they calculated MRR (which is probably useful for some people), and while yeah this is probably a marketing tactic, they are also not really being pushy about it.

The point is the process. The MRR that sustains a full time job doesn't suddenly appear from nowhere, and there aren't a lot of people talking about the "pre-success" data points.

I myself am much more interested in the data behind the people in the process of going from 0 to successful, even if they fail; not the hindsight blog posts about people who are already successful.

Agreed. It's good to have the skillset required to develop a mobile app in its entirety, including the API layer if one is necessary.

Oh agreed, it's a lesson to learn, just like the rest of their engineering practices were learned. You don't usually absorb stuff like that fully by having someone tell you once.

> Why it works in our case is because I acknowledge it's a debt and then later we pay it back. A huge problem devs have is - there is a push, promises are made, and then something new and urgent comes along.

I don't think it works any other way. A lot of times the only difference between "intentionally accrued tech debt" and "shoddy work"/"bugs"/"brittleness"/etc is communication.

> A huge problem devs have is - there is a push, promises are made, and then something new and urgent comes along.

If you're constrained by time and money, this is usually the case. You accrue tech debt to meet constraints, and you pay it off over time, not necessarily immediately. It's just normal roadmap prioritization. All you can do as an engineering leader is correctly advocate for the urgency of tech debt, communicate interdependency issues ("we must pay down this tech debt before we can tackle feature X"), and pay off some debt when it makes the most sense.

> We can have the most technically sound product but if the money runs out the game is over.

I think most engineers are just not used to ever thinking about time and money as a constraint - they're just things abstracted away from them so they can do good work (or they've worked for companies where those aren't constraints). Just being up front with them about the fact that these constraints exist will usually change how they think about a problem (in my experience at least).

> The problem is if the tech debt is not a conscious decision you're making

100%. The entire debt metaphor fails if you aren't knowingly doing something that you're going to have to "pay off" later.

IIRC there are still many large companies using Ruby/Rails still, they've just also diversified their tech stacks (as larger companies tend to do). AFAIK the list includes: GitHub (MS has a few Rails-based acquisitions now), Airbnb, Groupon, Square, Cookpad, Kickstarter, Hulu, etc..

To answer both questions, IIRC it's more of a symbolic (and probably marketing related) thing, not really reflective of market prices.

Depends a lot on your definition of "successful" and "business".

Most very successful one person businesses I know of are specialty consulting businesses.

Other smaller stuff too:

  - Porche's Taycan EV is supposed to be the closest direct competition for Tesla cars, but its having production issues.
  - Tesla just pushed a new software update that includes a lot of useful features (voice keyboard/commands, an official camping mode, saving camera clips on honk, etc)
  - A lot of miscellaneous positive press is cropping up from the end of the year and end of the decade type reporting - Time for example put it as one of the "best gadgets of the decade".
  - They recently released and presumably are testing a paid software update to boost M3LR off the line acceleration, which is an interesting situation to obtain revenue from already sold cars.
  - Internally they're pushing to sell a lot to break sales numbers before EOY.  Some places are reporting that they're even selling showroom floor models.
  - They secured a US$1.4B loan from Chinese banks for GF3 acceleration, which was already ahead of schedule.
  - They closed on the land for GF4 and are reportedly looking to start building Jan 2020.
  - The recent news of possibly reinvigorating the EV tax credits in some way probably also helped.
  - Solar is ramping up as well.