thebradbain

A big range like that means you should feel more than fine selecting the average— so $400k— at the minimum. Anything less and you’re essentially admitting you don’t think you’re worth what the salary range is.

Personally I would ask for clarification, and if they refuse to provide any, ask for near or above the top-end of the range. Theres plenty of $215k salary jobs currently, so if you happen to not land this one, then no loss of what you never had. But if you happen to get this job, making $700k, simply for asking, then congrats!

As a Texan who moved and bought a home IN California, you’re forgetting about CA Prop 13 (which has its own giant set of problems)— in California, property taxes are not re-assessed after the purchase of the home. In Texas, they are every year _at market rate_. There was a cap introduced in 2022, but it’s still a cap of 10%/year. In many high demand city neighborhoods, you are indeed seeing property taxes grow at 8-10% year.

As far as the $2263-4000 difference in property tax the first year, where are you getting that? Texas’ property rate is about 2.12% of market value, forever (it can be more or less, depending on local programs and school districts, but is usually around there) California’s is 0.77%-1.07% the year you buy and is essentially frozen forever. So a $500k house in TX (which is _no longer_ enough for an in-demand Austin or Dallas neighborhood) will often carry the tax tag of a $1m CA home. An $700-1m house in TX (which _is_ where a home in an in demand Dallas neighborhood begins to start) carries roughly the tax burden of a $1.4-2m CA home.

That’s a lot more than people expect! And your payment will be increasing, sometimes significantly, forever!

Almost like we should just blanket-provide the same amount of aid and safety net to everyone, cut out any and all pre-qualifications, and completely change our tax system to ensure all costs are recaptured by a progressive tax system.

That way someone who used aid and becomes wealthy would pay into it in the future. Right now our systems more or less just keep you where you are.

You can’t game something when the maximum award is still designed to be Not Enough On Its Own. That describes quite literally every US government aid program— from food stamps and school lunch debt at the very bottom of the financial ladder, to grants+loans for those who have demonstrated the academic merit to get into college, to healthcare and social security for literally every citizen in this entire country.

There is not a single program in the US, by careful design, that can give “too much”. Yet we still spend so much money on the bureaucracy trying to disqualify anyone from their own programs.

Imagine how much we’d save, socially (less homelessness! no death for lack of healthcare! a more educated and informed country!) but also maybe financially, if we actually _gave our people what they need_.

As someone whose partner works as a writer in Hollywood — the strike’s AI-demands weren’t “resistance” to AI, as studios and certain circles were reporting.

It was a protection of payment: specifically, ensuring AI itself could not be given writing credit, nor could it be considered “source material”. These are important distinctions because if AI was considered a “writer” (and potentially thus a “showrunner”), then other human writers in the room could be paid as merely “writing assistants” to what is ultimately itself is supposed to be the assistant, like a tail wagging the dog. Furthermore, AI-generated scripts being unable to be classified as “source material” on their own means a studio can’t simply generate a very rough story outline, have writers actually make it a real story, and pay the writers much less because their work is considered an adaption rather than an original work. These are the same rules e.g. a Wikipedia article, or court case transcripts, etc fall under— they can be used as inspiration, but they don’t effect how much a writer gets paid.

Nowhere is AI usage actually prohibited, on both the studio and writer side of the equation.

Essentially, this would be like if Google announced everyone would be taking a 1-level pay cut because AI potentially makes them more efficient. That doesn’t make sense!

Yet it can’t be used to stop California vehicle emission standards, which is why almost all car manufacturers in the US make cars up to California’s higher standards, because they’re so big.

Unions don't set pay-levels, just minimum pay and percentage pay increases, generally.

Furthermore, just look here in California to multiple successful white-collar unions: the WGA (writers), the DGA (directors), and SAG (actors). If you're bad at your job or people don't like to work with you, you won't get hired, yet meanwhile, the unions guarantee everything from health insurance to minimum pay to pension to residuals and therefore allow much greater mobility between studios, jobs, and shows.

^Texas has property tax on individuals and businesses (in fact it’s one of the highest in the nation)

Texas does not have income tax

Wow, as someone who follows the construction progress of Los Angeles' Purple Line (the only heavy rail transit line currently in active boring in the US) I did not know how fast that even reaching the speed of a snail would be:

If we assume the tunnels are being bored at somewhere near the average of ~100meters/week, and the snail is about ~1000meters/week, that's a 10x speedup in the time to dig right there!

The total length of the three segments is about 9 miles (~14,500 meters)[1], with the last segment projected to open in 2027. Digging started in Fall of 2018[2]. Los Angeles is using what looks like 6 TBMS, two for each segment, to dig parallel tunnels. Segment one completed digging in January of 2022[3], and as of August 2023 Metro has delayed full completion of segment one to 2025[4], therefore it appears that even though digging is not the end-all-be-all, it does take up >50% of the entirety of the construction timeline (~4 years digging + 3 years other construction for segment 1, including stations, track, electrical, and testing).

Using the article as a guide, then, somehow speeding up the digging by a factor of 10 would mean digging could take as little as 21 weeks or ~5 months months, rather than ~4 years, and reduce the project timeline by 50% from 7 years to 3.5 years!

This would be huge for when Los Angeles eventually begins to bore the heavy rail tunnel under the Sepulveda mountain pass, which would be 14 miles, most of it likely tunneled [5].

[1] https://www.metro.net/projects/westside/ [2] https://twitter.com/metrolosangeles/status/10458317962341130... [3] https://thesource.metro.net/2022/01/31/purple-line-tunneling... [4] https://twitter.com/numble/status/1709258555117777016 [5] https://www.metro.net/projects/sepulvedacorridor/

Congrats! Then it is impossible for you to be underwater on it.

As someone close to the industry, this was an interesting thing to think about -- but without some other, huge structural changes to the industry, it won't really happen.

1) Distribution is where studios' value-add really comes through: they're the ones who have contracts with the big theater chains (or, in the case of tv, often own the networks+streaming services) and are in control of the dates/weekends/IMAX exclusivities/etc.

2) Financing - Movies and TV are _expensive_. It's not just the high-profile actors or marketing budgets – indeed, many high-profile actors will take huge pay-cuts to work on passion projects – but, if you were to take away those costs, and for sake of argument let's say that everyone acting/shooting/editing the movie is working for free, there's still huge capital expenses to be outlaid: location fees, permit fees, cameras (even a single indie-film camera can be upwards of $50k), sets + construction, props, editing+vfx software, food, transport, clothing, makeup, logistics and infrastructure including things as fundamental as electricity and plumbing if you're filming anywhere that's not a backlot... It takes a huge capital upfront outlay to make a movie or tv show that looks anything like what we're used to seeing on tv and movie screens. Studios can (a) provide the upfront cash and deal structure such that financing the productions is feasible in the first place (b) re-use and cost-optimize everything from sets/space/cameras/software/support-staff across productions where it makes sense, so a show or movie isn't having to re-invent everything from the ground up each time.

The closest right now the WGA or SAG can possibly be to "creating their own movies" is working with an indie studio, like A24 or NEON, who are still very much studios, but often with a more "can-do" and "per-production" approach. These studios also settled with WGA and SAG very soon after the strikes began, and were granted strike waivers so they could continue production, while the Disneys and Netflixes were picketed.

In short, unlike software engineers where a single dedicated engineer can pretty much create an app or business mvp in a weekend, writers and actors deal with the constraints of the real-world.

Gemini did not collapse though. Genesis, a lending company that Gemini held deposits customers who opted into their “Earn” program, collapsed.

Gemini the actual NYC-compliant exchange is still solvent (and afaik still compliant)

WGA is a guild, technically, not a union — because most writers are 1099d by studios, not actually full-time employees. Hence the need for collective protections, as contractors in the US have much less guarantees than W2 employees, and thus a co-op structure is almost infeasible any way you look at it.

This chart is annual income, not net worth – in Los Angeles, for example, the median 2bd starter home is over $1 million, while in many states $300k is enough for a 3-4bd home with a yard and a garage.

Have them join the union then, or make it a program sponsored by the city workers (who else to better manage it anyways than those normally responsible for trash pickup?).

That was also apparently one of the reasons that NYC could “never” have containerized trash pickup like literally any other city in the US. Surprise! Despite that, and a million other “intractable issues”, the city has essentially switched to trash containerization pickup overnight, and everyone is better for it.

And yet if we look around, in any city or town in the US, it’s easy to see there’s still garbage needing to be picked up; old buildings falling apart; sidewalks and roads in need of repair; the need for more libraries and parks, more librarians, more teachers, more doctors, more first responders, more social workers, more… everything?

At best, the public realm meets, but almost never exceeds our, needs. Oftentimes it doesn’t even do that! Sure— if you’re fortunate enough, you can avoid the system altogether (private school, private healthcare, personal assistant to organize your DMV appointment, etc), but that just proves the point: what is there to be proud of?

There’s so much that needs to be done and yet we’re not doing any of it. Instead we’re mostly coasting on the infrastructure (imagine if building highways then took as long as high speed rail today), (what’s left of the) social safety net, and institutions we created in the 50s and 60s.

Why?

Regardless of the fact that California is much, much more strict in what they allow, to the point where oftentimes a company’s lawyers won’t even try:

Fine. Don’t fight, I agree, that would be an unfair fight and a waste of time/money.

The US court system requires a “good faith” effort to settle the issue before it enters the legal system. A cease and desist for example— whatever it is, you’d have plenty of time to simply decide it’s not worth it and remove the code once they take notice.

As it is, this is all no harm, no foul.

I wrote the comment above, though I'm not the author of the code that you appear to think I am. But I am in agreement with him.

> Their employment contract for-sure states they own any work produced by you during your employment, and you agreed to this.

There are many open legal questions as to where this line is drawn. Surely the line falls somewhere between "every character I've ever typed on a keyboard" and "the verbatim code". I personally don't think he's crossed it. IP ownership is much more complex than portrayed in HBO's Silicon Valley. That is my opinion.

Furthermore, when I worked at GitHub (now acquired by Microsoft, so I'm sure things have changed drastically) -- there were very lax IP ownership agreements in the employment contracts around code ownership, because the legal department was worried that if found in any way conflicting with California law it would render the entire IP claims null and void (which does have precedent in California).

The point is we don't know, and I think OP would know better than us if it was disallowed or not.

Cool -- if one of the companies wants to issue a takedown request, they're free to make the case for it.

It's funny there's this idea that a company _might_ be potentially injured over code they do not want or know they had being made open source by its actual author, even though many of those companies will gladly use open-source tooling without ever contributing anything back.

Perhaps more soundly, though, in California – where Uber is headquartered – IP/Copyright for code is a huge legal question that the state and federal Supreme Court has no clear answer to. Sure, you obviously can't secretly clone Uber's entire stack, slap a new company logo on it, and start up as a competitor. But if you, as an author, wrote some code for a company under an IP agreement, then no-longer worked at said company, and then later adapted and expanded upon that code (or even started over, with the knowledge of what you learned from others' work): are you, at the originator, not legally allowed to be inspired by your past work? That's not something you, me, or even the company could decide.

Because it’s beautiful. Where else can you ski and go to the beach on the same day? Or be in hours proximity to not just one, but three world-class national parks within a day-trip from some of the largest and most metropolitan cities in the world? Add on the fact it’s got one of the best climates in the world, no mosquitos, and no humidity…

The funny thing, even if jobs left, a large amount of people who live here won’t. The land will just always be inherently desirable. A large contingent of people will always refuse to give that up. And if enough people leave at once such that real estate crashes, you’ll just see people move back here, because they can afford to again. So too with jobs— they go where the people are, not vice versa.

Whereas say, Detroit collapsed due to the auto industry leaving and white flight to the suburbs— California is #1 in the tech industry (SF), #1 in entertainment (Los Angeles), #1 in biotech and pharmaceuticals (Orange County / San Diego), #1 in agriculture, #1 in shipping (Los Angeles), #1 in military (San Diego), #2 in energy… This state simply can’t collapse from just one pillar falling. And again, unlike Michigan, there is no coastline in the US that is as near as desirable as California’s to live on.

I don’t live here because it’s affordable, or particularly well-run, but because I have family and friends here and I could not imagine living anywhere else.

Pro-union sentiment is the highest its ever been since 1965 and growing.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/398303/approval-labor-unions-hi...

Truthfully, based on the state of our sidewalks in the richest cities of the US like NYC, SF, Chicago, and LA— we need to be replacing them maybe not every two or three years, but at least every 5. Right now it seems like 20, if we’re lucky. Meanwhile most towns and newer parts of smaller, less affluent cities, or even wealthier suburbs don’t even _have_ sidewalks.

I think it’s ultimately part of our philosophy toward the built environment that “Europe is built with screws, the US is built with nails”— we build something that gets the job done at the time it’s built, then never come back to it. Maybe that allowed us to build fast, but now the bigger issue is maintenance of what we already have.

Except the only demographic of net in-flow _moving to California_ are those in the top 5% or so.

https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-skelton-income-t...

Note: this article is from 2019, which is obviously pre-Covid. I still think it’s too early to predict any trend on post-Covid migrations (which would really be captured and 2022-2023 and 2023-2024, assuming you started planning to leave mid-pandemic 2021-2022)

California had its largest tax surplus in the history of a state ever the 2022 fiscal year.

Suppressing tumor growth is how you kill cancer, is it not? Cancer cells themselves, like the original cells they mutate from, don't live forever. Depending on which type of cell we're talking about, they can die within hours (e.g. skin cells)/days (e.g. blood cells)/months (e.g. liver cells). The issue with cancer cells is they are reproducing like crazy way faster than they die, which is why the tumors grow bigger and bigger. Chemo and surgery attempt to kill or remove the tumors immediately, yes, but my understanding is that's because we have no way to stop the growth and the only hope is to eradicate them entirely before they grow too big to treat, which is why the cancer could come back if any parts are missed.

You stop the cancer cell reproduction and overall tumor growth, you also kill the cancer.

I didn’t say it wasn’t pleasant— there’s so many ways transit comfort and safety could be improved — but it’s really not as bad as people who have never taken a train or bus, and never will regardless of how comfortable it is, say it is

The funny thing is that a lot of the “crime, drug use, and general anti-social behavior” on transit is overblown in the very minds of people who don’t take transit regularly. Sure, in the US it’s nowhere near as pleasant as it could (or should) be, but it’s really not that bad, nor as slow as people with a car imagine it is.

My realtor said I was the only person she’s worked with who has ever bought a house that doesn’t own a car — in Los Angeles, of all places.

Yet 8 years later, I still get around by a mix of Uber and trains and bus. And the funny part is, I am almost always the first to arrive because I don’t have to worry about parking, and even with 50% of my trips done via Uber to fill in gaps in the network, after gas/insurance/parking I am still spending less!

I do walk a lot too, but that’s one place I would agree LA has absolutely systemically dropped the ball on outside of the historic pockets that the city didn’t demolish. I often feel like I’m the only one who has walked on a given sidewalk in years, and wonder if I’m supposed to be walking there

They’re not asking for sympathy. All employees in any industry, union or not, have the choice to work, or not.

Actors here are just collectively using that power to withhold their work in order to negotiate a better deal, as is their right. They’re not asking for sympathy, they’re demanding studios meet them at the negotiating table. If they’re wrong about how important they are, then studios will continue to disregard their demands until SAG eventually folds— my guess, though, is that actors know they’re more important en masse to studios than studios are to them, or else studios would’ve refused to exclusively work with SAG along ago.

After all, most actors are very used to having second jobs to make ends meet. They can work other jobs or more hours or whatever else they want to do during the strike. Studios are the ones with corporate 9-5 employees who won’t have anything productive to do or show their shareholders the longer the strike goes on.

Yup— that’s what I meant. dates and engineers don’t work well together

Producers are often studio executives, who are on the other side of this debate.

Directors are not on strike, as they are the closest of the unions with studios and have never been on strike in the history of their union.

I don’t understand what point you’re trying to make, this year Hollywood is on track to exceed its pre-covid performance at the Box Office worldwide and domestically. Netflix/etc are growing more than ever.

It seems like all signs point to this sector being on the up and up.

Your complaint is at the studios, including Netflix, then. They’re the ones who own the IP, they’re the ones who decide to use it. The actors have absolutely no say in whether Disney decides to make another Marvels movie or not.

Actors are the ones looking for a gig, often any gig, but when they have a choice, the highest paying gig. And believe me, every actor and writer in Hollywood wishes studios would invest more in mid-budget B movie not based on any cinematic universe: those are what paid many people’s bills.

As Union members, actors have a contract with studios that they negotiate every 3 years. Every three years since the last strike in 1960 they’ve reached a deal (and the result of that strike was the creation of revenue sharing for cable and film tv with actors and writers, which they are now hoping to apply to streaming).

No deal? Fine, studios have the right not to sign. But actors have the right to withhold their work. Eventually a deal will be reached.