ruswick

The parent referred specifically to "the school of your dreams," which implys elite schools. The situation is obviously different for schools outside of the top 25.

I'm currently 17 and have done internships for both of the previous summers. Although getting experience was both edifying and fun, there was still a huge opportunity cost. I would have preferred to spend a bit more of my summer indulging my personal interests. Although it was certainly a great experience, I'm unsure about whether or not I'll look back in ten years and wish that I had taken advantage of my summers.

As for the second point, I'm not sure whether internships really create an appreciable advantage at elite schools. Based on anecdotal evidence and some cursory research, I would posit that most qualified applicants to elite schools will have one if not two internships for major organizations. Many will have done academic research. I know a guy who is attempting to get his research on binary star systems published (his first choice is MIT). Careers start early.

Internships are definitely desirable things to have, I don't think that they differentiate students. If anything, they are a prerequisite. Trying to get into college is hard. From what I've experienced, I'm not sure if enslaving oneself to the cult of standardized tests is worth it. The OP seems to have a fair idea of what he wants to do, and has a non-trivial amount of ability. He should think critically about whether or not college is worth it.

I would definitely not endorse the long, arduous process of maximizing attractiveness to colleges during one's high school career in the unequivocal way that you did. One's career aspirations and expectations are highly personal things.

> if the CEO can do it, then so can you

That's not how it works. I doubt that the customer service reps have the ability to arbitrarily dole out perks with no justification other than that they felt like it.

On the one hand, it's nice to see that executives are receptive to their customers. However, the OP clearly states that they did not quality for a free transfer, and the fact that they got it seems sort of arbitrary. What if the CEO hadn't responded, or if the other executive hadn't chosen to cancel the contract? What if that person were having a bad day, and chose not to make such a gesture to the OP? One data point isn't conclusive, especially under such odd circumstances.

Good service is service that is both high in quality and in consistency. I highly doubt the ability of a single CEO to handle every email in the same way (if at all), and I'm not sure if I like the idea of unwarranted perks being handed out at the discretion of executives. It seems too much like a lottery, especially because the OP did not qualify for the transfer in the first place.

This is so true. I'm currently a student and am sort of terrified to join the workforce in this industry. I really have no desire to surround myself with people who are so ignorant of and inured to the way real fucking people live. As someone who spent the majority of their childhood in poverty and was homeless for an extended period of time, this sort of hubris is profoundly saddening. It's very upsetting how abundant this form of arrogance is in the tech industry.

The average yearly income in the US is $43,000. The base price of a Model S is $63,000. There is simply no way to afford a Tesla as an average, middle-class laborer without making massive tradeoffs in quality of life elsewhere. If you can afford a car that costs such an absurd amount of money, you are either living in squalor to afford it or you are not middle class. It's tiring to see people who are obviously the beneficiaries of economic privilege pretend as though they are "average." You are not, and to assert that you are demonstrates a fundamental ignorance about the difficulties that "average" people face.

As for the house argument, you and I both know that the two are totally incomparable. Putting a roof on your head is a much bigger priority than buying an electric supercar. People need to pay for shelter. They generally can't afford to pay a lot for luxury cars. If you argument is true, why isn't everyone buying $63,000 cars? (Not to mention the millions of people who can't even afford homes.)

Your posts demonstrates everything that is wrong with class stratification in America. I don't think you or your friends who elected to choose Teslas over Porches know what it means to be "average."

I disagree. The issue is not exposure to customers, it is the mindset of customers. The market has matured as smartphones have become ubiquitous and free apps have come to dominate the market. Direct sales have simply faded because they are less lucrative at the highest level, and users have re-based their perceptions around that. Even if you could get your paid app to the top of the charts and attain maximum exposure, you would still make less than if you had used a fremium or ad-based model. Why do you think all the highest-grossing apps are free?

I don't think this is a particularly surprising phenomenon. People work very hard for their money and have far too little of it. If they can get something for free, why would they not? Moreover, if everyone else is distributing their thing for free, why on earth would people pay for anything?

Money is valuable because it is scarce, and if people can avoid paying, they will.

So people with occupational aspirations and a desire to be happy are somehow unworthy of working for your company?

Talent is a commodity and is pretty fungible. But you can't replicate the pre-existing ecosystem of companies, nor the funding apparatuses that are present in major tech hubs.

What's really appalling about that post is that the expectation was that people don't complain about working excessive hours. The implication is not only that workers need to work more than the internationally-accepted precedent, but need to do so with total enthusiasm.

I can see people begrudgingly working extra time if the circumstances demanded it, but the idea that complaining about working those extra hours should be a capital offense is horrifying.

I've never understood the pure desire to give away one's money. In my book, parting with money is a significant thing that only comes after careful consideration and knowledge of clear benefits. Even then, I'm never happy to get rid of my money. The unpleasantness of giving up my money is simply outweighed by the utility of the thing I'm buying.

What is the reasoning as to why one would voluntarily give money when not absolutely necessary? It just seems odd that one would be happy simply because of that. (In commerce, that is. Charity is a different animal.)

Then again, I might be the weird one.

This, like most pieces on Medium, is just an extended platitude. Having complete flexibility and ample free time is great. You know what else is great? Stable employment with a benefits. There's a reason that most people continue to operate within the established hierarchy instead of becoming self-employed: companies afford certain things to their employees that freelances do not receive.

Working for yousef can be difficult and fruitless. Working for a company can be more lucrative, more secure, and easier. The latter are worth being bored with your job to many people.

One thing to note is that CFLs take time to "warm up," which is significantly irritating to ensure that I don't use them in most cases.

Unless there is some sort of significant impediment to changing a bulb (eg. a covered fixture), it takes 30 seconds to a minute maximum to change a bulb. It will probably take everyone reading this more time to read the article and participate in this thread than it will to change every light bulb in their house for the next decade. It's negligible.

There are many things to take into account when purchasing bulbs; chance are, the time it takes to change them is not one.

What happens when he stops supporting the original version and it ceases to work after an iOS update?

There's something very pernicious in this story. The fact that you almost feel obligated to give this developer money just so that he doesn't stop supporting the app seems disconcerting. Developers have an obligation to support their paying customers even if it is not expedient for them to do so. I would never give money to an app simply out of fear that the developer is going to cease developing it; that just seems like throwing fuel on the fire.

I agree with this sentiment completely. Too often people assume that buying a product is equivalent to making a charitable donation to the developer. I don't buy software to "support" the developer, I buy it because it will provide value to me. I don't care if the developer makes $10 or $10 million. The only things that pass my mind when buying software are the utility of the app to me and the cost relative to other apps. In the case of Reeder, the additional charge from paying for an upgrade is not worth it when the Feedly App is free.

Commerce is not charity. That does not change just because the developer is self-employed.

Because people would rather believe a provocative falsehood than accept a benign truth.

There's no evidence to suggest that this was malicious in any way, nor anything to suggest that FC intended to "trick" him. Plenty of service implement these types of defaults, and bugs occasionally happen.

He's taking a presumptuous "principled" stand against something that is not necessarily an ethical issue. Sometimes shit just breaks. He has no idea whether there was any malicious intent, nor has he even finished dealing with FC customer service. (I bet they'll give him a refund.)

He is writing a screed based on an unproven assumption about an incident that will probably be amended by FC. This seems like linkbait.

The iPad POS market is saturated, and Square already has a tremendous foothold. I have serious doubts about the whether this system can succeed so late in the game.

Moreover, I can't really be brought to care about these types of POS systems, primarily because they're all categorically atrocious. Many of my favorite coffee shops have been replacing their registers with iPads, and the universal result has been longer lines and more errors in recording orders. These things have consistently caused a regression of the customer experience in businesses. They're slow, they're unwieldy, and for whatever reason people demonstrate considerable ineptitude at using them. In my opinion, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the cash register. Things like Square should be used only in instances where using a traditional register would be untenable. The fact that companies are needlessly adopting these things and subsequently worsening the experience for their customers is tremendously disappointing.

The iPad will never be better at taking people's credit cards than a traditional register. It wasn't designed to, and companies should stop pretending otherwise.

Interestingly enough, the product appears to be entirely functional once that modal is circumvented. I'm not sure why they would direct the user to a functional product when they are ostensibly not open for public use.

$5,000 is an incredible amount of money. If I were to spend that amount on a pre-order, I deserve to know what I'm paying for and how much it will cost me.

Try as I might, I simply can't get worked up about Tesla.

They make excellent toys for rich people, but are irrelevant to everyone who is not some sort of millionaire entrepreneur or high-paid executive.

Electric vehicles are incredibly attractive and massively beneficial to society if they are adopted at scale. Unfortunately, Tesla seems content to cultivate an image as an ultra-luxury brand, and hasn't attempted to lower the barrier to entry for electric vehicles.

I have no problem with companies that only want to sell expensive things to very wealthy people, but we can't possible pretend that companies like these will matter in the grand scheme of things.

Wake me up when we can buy an electric car for $12,000.

Unlike the things you listed above, college isn't perceived as a choice. It's perceived as an obligation. Because of this, a myopia has set in among most students: "I need to go to the best possible college or kill myself trying." The decision is no longer theirs, it is the product of tremendous stigmatization, social pressure, and the nonstop inundation of students essentially from birth with platitudes about the necessity not just of education, but of the prestige that comes with an expensive education. The notion of college as a commodity product that needs to be evaluated based on value is foreign to people. As a student currently in the process of applying to schools who tends to associate with academically hyper-qualified students, I can tell you that most of them are taken aback if not totally incredulous when I say that going to my state flagship would be ideal.

Society has not equipped people to evaluate colleges rationally. I don't think it necessarily the fault of the students.

I see people use coupons all the time. By the time I get to the register, I've already effectively "accepted the total amount." Coupons don't bother me.

Why would they? Moreover, why would I want to complain?

Are coupons really that egregious to you?

Because that's really unintuitive.

They can go online and search for coupons. It never takes me more than two or three minutes to find a coupon through Retailmenot and another aggregator. If no coupon exist or if they're all expired, then I'll pay full price. There is no downside for me. I don't understand why this equivalent to a "slap in the face." Frankly, this vastly improves my shopping experience through occasionally saving me money, while never exposing me to any risk or increasing the prices that I pay.

First, I'd like to point out that his suggestion is fucking absurd. Without codes, there would be no way to discern between methods of customer acquisition (eg. is this ad more effective than that ad), especially on non-web content. Moreover, the efficacy of customer acquisition would decrease tremendously (most people respond to ads because of the promise of a discount). I don't understand how the OP believes that this is financially tenable for most sites. Codes are a fundamental aspect of advertising strategy for many companies.

Second, the notion that this is hostile to the user just bemuses me. I don't understand why this has any detrimental effects on the customer. If they are fine paying full price (as they were when they began checking out), they are free to pay full price. If someone with expendable free time would rather dig through these coupon sites, that is their prerogative. The existence of a coupon code field merely gives the option to seek out a discount. This is similar to most other forms of commerce. If I have free time and want to save money, I can dig through circulars and clip ads, or I can just go to the store and pay full price. Is it offensive to the user that the self checkout also has a slot for placing coupons? No one is forcing anyone to do anything. How is it bad customer service when a user literally isn't forced to do anything other than ignore the field if they so choose? Giving people the option to save money if they are willing to exert some effort is an unequivocal positive aspect of most sites.

This piece is just incoherent to me. I honestly don't understand why this is bad in any way.

I thought someone might bring this up. This still isn't comparable to altering the actual content of your mail. The ads, though displayed with all of your genuine mail, are still discreet items and are noninvasive. This type of advertising is quite similar classic snail mail, where junk mail is mixed in with regular mail.

You're making impertinent responses, and doing it wrong.

If there is a distinction between target and untargeted ads, it isn't being made through the insertion analogy. Invasiveness has nothing to do with specificity, and the shock value of the piece was clearly intended to come from the opening of the mail and inserting of the ads, not that the service "keeps profiles," which was just a brief aside in the post. Obviously, it's an analogy. Nothing about it is literal. However, analogies are supposed to bear resemblance to the real world, which this doesn't do and which is why it's detrimental to the discussion around these issues. That was my original point.

The OP clearly objects to relinquishing your data in general. He links to articles about "owning your own data" in the footer. I don't think this primarily about targeted ads. What if the post office opened and replicated every piece of mail that you sent or received, then kept it on file in case you needed it at some point. This eliminates any adverse reaction that might come from advertising while providing a valuable service. Do you think that the content of this post is condoning that? I'm not 100% sure of the OP's intentions, but this piece seems discourage relinquishing your data in general. It paints with an incredibly broad brush and fails to acknowledge the complexity of this issue. That is precisely why I don't like it.

If storing mail is bad even without ads simply because it makes you susceptible to surveillance, doesn't that validate the OP's point that storing of any kind is bad? I don't understand. Your arguments seem contradictory, and I suspect that you're making responses just to make them, not because they are constructive to the conversation. I'm not interested in a regressive conversation that is predicated on interpreting the intentions of a third party or engaging in a line-by-line debate that has strayed from the actual issue.

I'm not sure what's nitpicky about my post. Seems like you just read what you wanted to read.