Viewing profile — pjdemers

If the earth is one big tomato garden, maybe aliens will leave us alone. Also, native Americans were very aware that other groups of humans existed beyond their horizon, and some o…

Back in the early 2000's I did consulting work with Home Depot's backend developers. Their office is the "store support center", which is in the NW suburbs of Atlanta. I remember t…

Paying by card doesn't round, the amount charged is exact cents, or at least that's the way it worked last time I was in Canada.

There is no end game. He makes everything up as he goes along. When (if?) the shutdown ends, he will claim victory no matter what the outcome. If it doesn't end, he will still clai…

>> senate will nuke the fillibuster. No, they will not. They will make a deal, probably covering spending until the end of this year.

It will never last. There is a 0% chance even one company or person will ever pay this fee. Only an act of congress can change visa requirements, and it will never come up for a fu…

I get 5 calls and texts a day about my Google and Coinbase accounts. So many that if either Google or Coinbase really did try to contact me, I wouldn't see it.

The only retention bonuses I ever seen were to be paid in immediately, in full on involuntary termination. There was a "for cause" clause where bonuses don't get paid for terminati…

Darn right. Lots of smart, hard working, innovative people in China. And every single one of them would get on plane tonight if they could get a visa to live in US or UK (and a few…

I've always asked for better non-monetary things in writing: title, spot on the org chart, automatic promotion soon, which parts of the product and stack I will work on, even as tr…

I know for certain that in Virginia you can sell a house for any price you want, because I transferred one to a family member for zero. Of course the county's assessor had other id…

there are lots of companies where promotions are very very rare. Find one. Look for companies where the current managers have been in their exact same role for 10 or 20 years or mo…

Given that most jobs in the US pay 10X or more what the same job pays in China, they are probably concerned that trips to the US will be one way.

From the article: "Building enough houses in the right place is the single biggest action governments can take to restore the link between work and wealth" No greater truth can can…

The same reason sports teams fire their head coach (or manager) when the owners want a change - because it is easy to replace one manager than an entire team.

My experience is that a list of employees ordered by (compensation/contribution) is created, sorted highest to lowest. Those nearer the top of the list are most likely to be let go…

I used to have a side gig as the CFO for a not-for-profit (an unpaid volunteer). Anyway, this organization was over 125 years old, associated with a larger organization 80 years ol…

Anyone serious about stock trading at the time knew who they were and what they did. They also advertised heavily in print. So anyone who stayed on the call for more than short tim…

Well, with free products and services, our policy is "if you're not happy, we'll give you double your money back"

My experience with non-technical cofounders is: "We already have a CTO. However he/she is too busy/important/senior/all-of-these to build an MVP. What we need is someone to take ou…

I got the problem wrong because I didn't know he never opens the door picked nor a door with a prize behind it. That's because I hadn't seen the show since I was about 5 years old,…

What's the company worth now? I once passed on a similar funding round at a startup that I had left. The investors in that round lost ~80% of their additional capital.

The end result will be that OpenAI pays the Times a few hundred million dollars for a license. Chump change for OpenAI, but real money for the Times.