rmk

> I’ve been writing for a while but I feel like I’ve stagnated for a while.

You could rewrite this to say "I have been writing for a while, but feel like I have stagnated for some time now."

Be a ruthless editor of your own writing, to begin with. Read actual printed words that have been through rigorous editing. Examples include print magazines and newspapers.

Read Strunk and White's Elements of Style and try to put it into practice in your writing. Read a variety of works, both fiction and nonfiction. Read classic writers such as Melville, Trollope, or Hemingway and pay attention to the plot devices and writing style (you will have to re-read individual pieces in isolation, again and again).

Take every opportunity to write, including in this forum or other places where you can write and have an actual conversation with like-minded, intelligent people. I'm sure there are internet forums and subreddits for aspiring writers where you will find opportunities aplenty to write, critique and hone your craft.

Hardly surprising, considering that the state has failed massively to tackle homelessness and is perpetually on the edge of ecological ruin. Massive, long-lasting drought that may turn the most fertile soil in perhaps the entire world into a dustbowl, and failure to bury power lines + casual arson causing massive wildfires that regularly burn down lots of property. Of course, this doesn't even account for the major problem that will ruin the entire west, which is the rapidly shrinking Colorado river and its watersheds.

The law and order situation in the cities is also poor, and open drug use has turned LA, SF and Oakland into urban hellscapes that are an eyesore.

The entire country is in a phase of migration to the south. Westward migration continues but the main trend is migration to the South which is relatively unencumbered by wacko environmental regulation prone to abuse and a lower tolerance toward crime. Also has a better water situation I suppose and overall courteous and friendly people also.

I wonder if one could employ a legal strategy to 'taint' as many judges as possible by retaining spouses etc. to get a favorable judge. Brings to mind an episode of The Sopranos where Tony Soprano is advised to consult all the leading divorce lawyers in the area to deny his wife the opportunity to retain them if a divorce were initiated (he ends up doing that and crippling his wife's chances of retaining a good lawyer).

That's called taxation, and the billionaires you are referring to pay all the taxes that are due. None are behind on any tax bills AFAIK.

Of course it is easy to say 'put money back into workers creating it'. But the labor market is just that - a market, and no-one is being forced to give away their labor for free or less than it's worth.

If the tax code is riddled with tens of thousands of exceptions that incentivise a gazillion different behaviours, again, that's the will of the people asserting itself via the tax code. It's much harder to unpick those, right? Thus the highly enlightened conversation about making billionaries illegal and such.

> And second of all, even if we just gave the money away and people "pissed it away", the money is still being circulated and put back into the economy.

Yeah, that worked out great and totally did not result in historically high inflation that will now cause a recession with massive job losses (thus hurting the cause of the workers it purports to support). Also, the inflation is totally not a tax that will be paid mostly by poor people or those on fixed incomes.

The US Budget was $1.65 Trillion. If a couple billion fed every hungry child in the country (and yes, it would), childhood hunger would be a solved problem. And in the US, it mostly is a solved problem because of a combination of state and federal benefits that deploy money towards feeding and heating needs of poor families. There is also a child tax credit that outright put money in the hands of families with children (last year, I think?). All of that is already happening without your proposed (forced) transfer of the 1%'s wealth to their workers.

It's very easy to demand accountability of billionaires and supremely difficult to collectively hold our political leaders responsible. The law doesn't require billionaires to be accountable to the general public beyond obeying laws and paying taxes that are due, but our public representatives have higher standards to live up to, and our focus should be on them, not billionaires. All the wealth of American billionaires would add up to a couple years' federal budgets (or perhaps less than a year of federal and the top 4 populous states' budgets).

EDIT: The City of Los Angeles apparently spends ridiculous amounts of money on a per-person basis to 'solve' the homelessness problem (https://ktla.com/news/los-angeles-is-spending-up-to-837000-t...). This is just one example of ridiculous rent-seeking government bureaucracy and nonprofit hucksters. Money is not the problem, lack of accountability is.

It often doesn't (and I'm also questioning what these 'resources' are, as well). It simply dissipates them.

Wrong on that score too. To 'hoard' capital is to take it and put it in the equivalent of a mattress. I assure you, the family offices of these billionaires are doing anything but hoarding capital: huge chunks of it are invested in various vehicles. And the idea that billionaires should simply give away their wealth to their workers is widespread, but wishful thinking. The average person who wins a lottery (the equivalent of the recipient of a billionaire's largesse that you envision) pisses it all away in a few years, rarely deploying it for his own benefit, let alone that of society.

It's not a luxury car, never has been. I'm not sure it's even portrayed as a luxury car, perhaps it was perceived as a bit of a luxury car before it came out with the Model 3 (buying a Model S was the first thing someone coming into money from a startup exit would commonly do in the early-mid 2010's).

What resources are the rich hoarding? Does Elon Musk own 500 pairs of pants that could otherwise have clothed other poor men? Is he hoarding 500 tons of grain that should be released to starving country? He burns tons of jet fuel, literally, but so do an equivalent load of 300 vacationers on a jet to a holiday destination (and they do not produce the same GDP increase, to boot). Is Jeff Bezos monopolizing the I-5 freeway, SeaTac airport, or clean air in Seattle? What are these resources that are being 'hoarded' by the rich and denied to poor people exactly? And how is an average American living in a 2000 sq ft house 'hoarding' a resource a homeless person could be living in? Should the average American take in a homeless person so that his 'hoarding' of resources is lessened or alleviated?

Getting some sort of employment should be the first step. Work fills a large part of one's waking hours and is beneficial insofar as having some structure in life is concerned. Even if it is somewhat beneath your ability, having a job that helps you fill your days and get a small sense of accomplishment will do much more than any therapy or introspection will, all things considered.

If you are gainfully employed, you will find that your social circle will also start coalescing around you, and some benefits will follow.

Once you are employed, you can consider therapy. Do not neglect dating or forming romantic attachments either. It is much harder at age 43 but not impossible if you keep expectations in check. But I do not think therapy in the absence of basics is of much use.

If you have a job, you can use money from the job to visit the US (assuming you have a visa or can obtain one), and get a taste of the life you miss for a few weeks every year.

Seems to me it's perfectly in line with Elon's 'freedom of speech, not reach' comments. Can't say about suspending the account, but as a private company with whatever TOS (I have never read any ToS of any software or service that I use), I suppose this was bound to happen.

No, this is just one scenario. There could be other scenarios, for example, 300m being born but 100m losing their lives because of British policy, and the rest dying because of high infant mortality, epidemics, and so on. The point is, 100m over 100 years because of an inhumane and callous colonial master is just not as unthinkable as the parent commenter makes it out to be.

Edit: 11 million minorities, including 6 million Jews, were killed in 4 years during the holocaust. In many countries, the Jewish population did not recover at all.

In 2020, Covid-19 slashed the average American life expectancy by 1.8 years. This is for a population of 320 - 350 million. The article contends that Indian life expectancy dropped by a whopping 5 years at the height of British colonial power. For a large and populous country to lose 5 years of life expectancy is a pretty big deal no matter what way you slice it.

Why? If 169m were born during that period and 100m lost their lives because of British policy, then it still means that 100m lives were lost unnecessarily.

That is a fair point. However, my point is not that the CEO should face consequences, but voluntarily take responsibility in some meaningful way. "That's on me" in a corporate email != taking actual responsibility. The empty platitudes are the problem. The accommodations for employees who are being let go are above and beyond, which is the silver lining.

Why not? Is it very difficult to countenance a founder who has 'got his' leaving to make way for someone who has a little more ethics? Every single one of these CEOs hired an untold number of people full-time during the pandemic, and then discarded them just a year or so after said binge. They knew the game they were playing, only they pretend to be paragons of virtue and write meaningless blather about it.

It's a slap in the face of legal immigrants. This, along with quotas that restrict permanent residency based on place of birth, are inhumane policies that signal to legal immigrants that they are not wanted here. Apparently, the fact that millions of hispanic illegal immigrants already break the putative purpose of the quota: that no large segment of the population has close ties to any given country, so that they can not disproportionately influence foreign policy toward that country (e.g., Donetsk and Luhansk) is of no consequence: the quota remains in place. Meanwhile, Canada is planning to bring in 500,000 immigrants a year to replace boomers leaving the workforce. A phenomenal opportunity to bring in highly-paid citizens who will integrate very easily into the country and provide economic benefits from day one to the host country.

It’s great that they have set a March 1 termination date for those on visas. And the severance and stock vesting are also reasonable. Not to mention the fact that health insurance continues for quite a bit longer and then goes into Cobra.

The verbiage is standard PR pap but the actual actions are quite very considerate.

However, what actual responsibility are the CEOs taking after hiring like crazy knowing fully well that the pandemic exuberance and stimulus wasn’t going to keep the recession away, only delay it? I’m sure competitive pressure was part of the reason for the overhiring but it’s still not the whole story.

You can, but on the assumption that your spouse also works (and earns enough to can handle the mortgage payment on her own and provide for the family on her income alone until you raise your first round).

It's not sustainable indefinitely, and with the current funding environment you may not be able to raise money. Even after raising money the startup life will be all-consuming so spending extended time with wife and children is going to be next to impossible.

The complexity is not recent and isn't accidental. And even a person who is as smart as Musk can not comprehend the true complexity of legacy systems that have resulted from many layers of acquisitions, technology cycles and just plain mismanagement that happens at any technology company that has been in existence for more than a few years.

Musk can not simplify Twitter's architecture, and he doesn't care to. All of this is theatre while he trims the fat. His companies are well-known as places with poor work cultures, especially for software people, who enjoy a wide variety of choices in where they work. He simply wants to be seen as doing things and garnering publicity while he searches for the next CEO for Tesla, Twitter, or both. One of his original reasons for buying Twitter, which is to reinstate Trump (and thus buy favor with the possible next President/Republican Party), has been accomplished now.

Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post, Elon Musk is showing that he is infinitely cooler by buying Twitter.

Companies rarely give honest feedback, if ever. This is partly out of risk aversion but mainly because they can't admit they are dysfunctional. As far as they are concerned, if you leave with a neutral or positive impression overall, it's a win for the recruiter. That rules out saying anything truthful about the team, hiring manager, or work culture. Recruiters can usually tell you a great deal but they are barred from doing so and they also have zero incentive: if you leave with a mildly positive impression there is a chance you will let the recruiter connect with you on linkedin and search your contacts for matching skills, but if you have a very negative impression then you will give an anti-recommendation to your friends and also decline the opportunity to add the recruiter to your network.

It may just be the timing. We are in the midst of what may be a recession: tech stocks have taken a beating because of tightening monetary policy, and companies are loth to increase investments, including hiring employees. It may also be that you do not have experience that matches expectations closely. In my experience, people say they do not care about experience matching what they need but then go ahead and do design/architecture discussions during the interview that will go well only if you already have prior experience with what they want.

One way to eliminate the latter would be to interview with for jobs that require experience that substantially matches yours.

That is true. It is pointed out prominently in the article that this is a rare instance of a baby boom in an economic downturn.

Work from Anywhere may be a nightmare in terms of tax compliance and labor laws for smaller companies. That's one reason smaller companies have location restrictions. Larger companies have well-established processes and payroll systems to be able to handle that, not to mention the IT infrastructure.

Learn how to write. That's more important than learning how to program. This can be done, for example, by engaging with the articles here and taking part in the discussions. Maybe you will be ignored, downvoted, or ridiculed, but if you persist, you will become a better writer and proponent of your ideas.

You need structure when you learn to program, and you should not have any preferences when you are a beginner. Learn to program by becoming a QA person, which is much easier in third-world countries that receive work from places like the USA and the UK. QA is often manual, but there is a trend toward automating things, and it's a wonderful way to get into programming.

TL;DR: Get a job as QA, and write often.

Yes, the difference is visible. I use AWS day in and day out with nary a complaint, whereas the GCP and other Google stuff that I have to interact with, as someone whose enterprise relies on Google, is just a f*cking nightmare. For enterprises, AWS is the clear winner over GCP/Google OAuth/Other APIs.

Life changes. People can often grow in their careers, and also grow apart. And even if you work in FAANG, self-respecting spouses will demur or reevaluate the relationship if you go asking for a prenup. This kind of thing is almost unheard of for people who work for wages and do not have an agent, legal team or other type of representation already.

We need this because we are a nation of laws and punishing legal immigrants who scrupulously adhere to the law is an affront to our notions of fair play. H-1B holders are among the most educated and highest paid people in the country, and are a huge net-positive for the country. There are hundreds of rural counties where they are practically the only doctors who provide care, and there are scads of industries that will be thrown into disarray by turning them away. It’s better to encourage immigration from people who speak the language fluently and can integrate into American society better and practically immediately, than to throw the doors open to poor uneducated people who are mostly here illegally, break dozens of laws everyday merely by being present here illegally, and are likely to remain an underclass for generations irrespective of how hard they work.

America has consciously busted monopolies in the past. Not so much nowadays, so some skepticism is definitely warranted. It seems that huge swathes of the economy are dominated by outright monopolies or comfortable oligopolies.

New York City being a 'nice' place is a laughable idea. Freezing weather with rude people is the very antithesis of nice. Contrast that with weather that rarely goes lower than 45F in the daytime, relatively easygoing people and unrivaled access to natural beauty.

Affluent or not, New York City does not even begin to approach 'nice'.

He does use or mention a lower effective tax rate. Even though he points out a 53% on-paper tax rate, he mentions 42% as the effective tax rate in the next paragraph. This does seem closer to the truth.

He also specifically says that case-by-case numbers are more complicated and vary, so it's not fair to argue that the numbers are extremely sloppy. He has made an attempt to use well-researched average numbers that appear to rely on actual rates people pay, not the theoretical marginal rates. Mentioning the marginal rates is a rhetorical device he uses, not the rate he uses to illustrate the scenarios.