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tastybiteson Redditors earning $100k+ a year, what are your secrets to your success?

Then they are winning the game.

tastybiteson Paul Graham's Search for the Next Facebook

Our lawyer (we're based in LA) says that on many smaller Hollywood deals you're lucky to even have a written contract...

tastybiteson Redditors earning $100k+ a year, what are your secrets to your success?

Clearly it's subjective. Working a schedule that fits your preferences has a huge value associated with it. Others prefer cash, and lots of it.

tastybiteson Redditors earning $100k+ a year, what are your secrets to your success?

$100k isn't anywhere near the highest salary possible. What in the world are you talking about?

tastybiteson Redditors earning $100k+ a year, what are your secrets to your success?

I've worked with professionals located in SF, LA, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Omaha, Atlanta, St. Louis, Ann Arbor, Boston, New York, DC, Miami, and Charleston.

$100k is still the minimum professional salary for someone who has a highly skilled, technical job like sr. engineer, architect, investment banker, CPA, attorney, etc.

tastybiteson Redditors earning $100k+ a year, what are your secrets to your success?

$150/hr for a few weeks/months of work

Good consultants can get this rate year round and book a quarter million net. The trick is adapting your offering to what the company you're working for actually needs and then telling management about those needs.

tastybiteson Redditors earning $100k+ a year, what are your secrets to your success?

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if you're an entrepreneur and you "can't imagine" what you'd do with $100k, you might be in the wrong line of work. Allocating capital is a big part of being in business.

tastybiteson Redditors earning $100k+ a year, what are your secrets to your success?

$100k isn't successful, it's the bare minimum as a professional. If you're an engineer, all that's required to earn that much is show up on time and be good at your job.

The cold, hard truth is if you don't earn at least that much, you either suck at your job or suck at negotiating. Your bosses and many of your peers earn twice as much as that.

Edit: IF you work in the corporate world. Clearly if you're a lifestyle-biz/consultant working over wifi at the beach in Thailand this doesn't apply at all. In fact, congratulations, if you're this guy, you probably win the game.

If you asked a lawyer, a CPA or a banker if they'd take $100k to work their ass off for a corporate master, they'd laugh in your face.

Edit: It's quite typical of HN when this topic comes up for someone to be downvoted by people who make very little money when they come out with the cold, hard facts. This place is full of millionaires and super-successful entrepreneurs who mostly stay quiet in threads like these. Wake up and smell the coffee.

tastybiteson The lost art of pickpockets

$400 seems right. Jack someone's wallet and then walk into the nearest big box store to use their credit cards.

I've had my credit card # stolen 3 or 4 times and $400 is about the average amount of fraud that happened each time.

It's usually like a tank of gas and a trip to Best Buy to purchase something like a video game console. One time they bought a plane ticket online for $350.

tastybiteson Hacking your apartment's electronic entry system

I would buy it! You could charge per-usage too, since most people don't have an unlimited stream of people coming to their apartment every month.

I'm not sure how the phone # allocation works but I imagine the biggest challenge is getting local #'s for people who don't have google voice or whatnot.

tastybiteson Poll: Do you have a formal CS or a general computing degree?

BA Economics. Dropped out of EE, thank god.

tastybiteson How do programmers in the west see programmers in the east?

Your experience with Japanese video games is extremely limited, and extremely outdated.

tastybiteson I would like my $0.37 refund, please.

At least she didn't pay with a check!

tastybiteson I would like my $0.37 refund, please.

Well, hold on. It's certainly in the top 10 reasons of why I spend money, probably not in the top 10 reasons of why I try to save it though.

tastybiteson How do programmers in the west see programmers in the east?

Any discussion like this always conveniently forgets:

1. Japanese programmers wrote a huge proportion of cutting edge video games in the 80s, 90s, and 00s.

2. China (and Japan, and Korea, and India...) has a massive domestic consumer and b2b internet, written and scaled by domestic talent. It's much bigger than the US internet.

3. You better believe Koreans and Japanese write a WHOLE LOT of firmware. When was the last time your TV or BluRay player or Toyota ECU crashed? China is clearly playing catch up here - Chinese electronics crash all the time lol.

Of course then there's always the people who don't consider Japan to be "the east"... which always makes me laugh.

tastybiteson Breakup Notifier Shut Down By Facebook

That's why the smart thing to do is open several locations, which is what restaurateurs generally aspire to, for that very reason. Sometimes it backfires, usually it doesn't if the restaurateur knows what they're doing.

tastybiteson Breakup Notifier Shut Down By Facebook

lots of customers

A customer is not necessarily someone who uses your product or service. That's a user. Think of a venn diagram....

tastybiteson New 13" MacBook Pro

Seems to me like it's the next logical step in their current cinema display/USB junction system.

tastybiteson Solving The Hacker News Problem

It probably works both ways, depending on exactly how low or high the rents are held. I've lived in some really, really nice areas that are rent controlled (SF Pacific Heights, Santa Monica, Downtown San Diego), apparently others have lived in relatively crappy neighborhoods where rent is also controlled.

Now that I think about it further, it seems obvious that rent control would be a tool that can be used by a municipality to control rents in either direction, depending on their goals.

tastybiteson Breakup Notifier Shut Down By Facebook

On credit applications our business bank specifically asks if more than 25% of your revenue came from one source in the past calendar year.

If you think about it, a typical brick and mortar gets its money from hundreds if not thousands of customers every year (restaurant/cafe, auto mechanic, etc).

tastybiteson The 80/20 Rule of Technical Founders

I believe what he meant was the stuff in between 'starting' and 'finishing', i.e. doing the work. Lots of people start and do some of the work and never finish. Many also start, do a huge amount of work, but also never finish. It's 3 distinct phases, each of which represents a progressively smaller proportion of people.

tastybiteson How HackerNews ruined my morning

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2252152

Here's an entire thread for you.

tastybiteson Solving The Hacker News Problem

Lots of landlords are stupid and will raise rent beyond the market clearing rate just to make a quick buck, resulting in empty units and shitty communities.

tastybiteson Solving The Hacker News Problem

In my experience (SF, LA) the rent control is there to prevent the gouging of yuppies, not to keep the poor people in. The idea is the city wants to keep rent just high enough to retain the rich people for the tax and spending base but low enough that the landlords to squeeze them out, which they most likely would do if given the chance.

It might be different in places other than California though, like New York.

tastybiteson How HackerNews ruined my morning

I'm not talking about ideas that angels or VCs like, I'm talking about running a real god damn business. Your mind has been twisted into thinking like a VC. You're talking about the toilet paper market having niche market segments. Are you out of your mind?

Angels and VCs want 100x+ multiple exits. Business people don't need that, or anything at all like it. What they need is a business with customers.

tastybiteson How Borderline Douchebaggery Helps Land A Great Roommate

I'm really glad I'm beyond the phase of my life where I think living with roommates is a good idea... for any reason.

tastybiteson Solving The Hacker News Problem

Let's not forget it happens in the actual cities we live in as well! Hipster-ism gives way to gentrification and then the cool kids move because there are way too many yuppies. Same things happens with suburbs - they get too crowded and people start moving to the country to make new suburbs.

This is just human nature, it manifests itself in the clothes we wear, the cars/bikes we drive, the places we live, it certainly also applies to social websites. I'd be surprised if it doesn't - we'll see how facebook fares, or if there will be a coolkid exodus as the rest of the world gloms on.

It's basically a (sub)cultural arms race that everyone fights in.

tastybiteson Pittsburgh is the most liveable city in the U.S.

A house like that isn't 7 figures in California - it would definitely be above 500k but it wouldn't break a million in a lot of places near SF, LA, or SD.

tastybiteson How HackerNews ruined my morning

I see startups (or at least companies much younger than P&G etc) in those spaces too - seventh generation and 'simple' are the ones that pop into mind first.

tastybiteson How HackerNews ruined my morning

I think you're wrong. Take a look at the toilet paper selection at the supermarket next time you're there. Every single brand you see has a fractional market share, and very few of them are going to zero any time soon. There's millions of dollars to be made in wiping asses.

According to your theory of market dominance, there should be only one type of TP available after all the 'fractional' players go to zero. Or at the very least, several 'defensible' niches - how exactly would that apply to the squares of paper you wipe your shit with? To me they look the same. They're rolls of paper on cardboard tubes that differ in price and softness.

Business goes way beyond websites.