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No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

sahillavingia.com

521–530 of 543 posts

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#521
post #392

I work at Gumroad, mentioned in this article. Sometimes, I read things by CEOs about how a company works on the inside and I wonder if it really looks like that, or if it is a view from the top that doesn't reflect what it's really like. This article, with its discussions of the upsides and downsides, is accurate to my experience and my understanding of other people's experiences. For many people, Gumroad wouldn't be…

I'm curious how they hold their technical architecture together. Is the architecture mature enough that there are no decisions to be made? I know if I ran my team without syncing up directly on things we'd end up with horrific inconsistencies all over the place and it would become impossible to support. I would guess longer term quality would suffer as well.

how do FOSS projects run by volunteer contributors hold their architecture together?

either one person is calling all the shots, or decisions are made through email discussions or irc or whatever forum they favor nowadays.

synchronous meetings are not required. if you consider that in a meeting everyone takes their turn, people respond to each other, and eventually maybe vote on decisions, all this can be done by email. it just takes a bit longer, and you have to factor that in your time planning.

not having meetings doesn't mean that people don't talk to each other.

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#522
post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In Australia I pay about ~28% of my salary in tax. 2% is for medicare ... This is a common misunderstanding in Australia. The Medicare levy, as it's called, is an administration levy, not a 'this all goes to healthcare, and healthcare is only funded by this' tax. Originally set in 1984 at 1% and guaranteed to never to go up , it is now at 2%. (Aside - within two years it was raised to 1.25%, then in 1993 bumped to…

Fair point, I was looking up pay withholding breakdowns and that's all that's directly paid to Medicare. > Point being it's incorrect, and quite misleading, to assert that 2% of your salary 'is for medicare', as a simple breakdown for public health shows that, per-dollar, it's somewhere in the range of 10-25% I want to push back on this a little though. The implication that it actually costs 10-25% of your salary is…

You're absolutely right, and my apologies. I failed to heed my own warning about the complexity of trying to reverse engineer these numbers.

I believe I was thinking - if not typing - that it was anywhere from 10-25% of the average person's income tax burden.

I found figures similar to the ones you did - around 14% of federal expenditure. There's local, as well as state, health costs, and those are funded via disbursements originating from federal budgets, but not tracked in detail in same. There's also aged care, which will come under this, much of which is semi-funded through ersatz religious groups that have their own tax avoidance schemes in place, and other complexities.

But the ~14% figure seems about right -- and reminds me that I also forgot to tie that back to OP's figures, which, prima facie, aren't too horrendous in light of that figure.

However, that assumes those insurance payments cover all (or the vast bulk of) costs for health care ... which they clearly do not within the USA health system . Copayments and exclusions appear, from what little I've heard, to be a significant cause for concern even for people with 'good' insurance coverage.

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#523
post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are some of those? Snapchat is one? I wonder if they have in mind an IPO instead

A quick Goog search will turn up some notable mentions, but yes, Snapchat, Twitter...

Google itself: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/remember-yahoo-turned-down-1-...

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#524
post #316
post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's a quirk. In Germany the public health insurance is based on your salary, but private insurance is not -- and independent contractors (such as everyone working for Gumroad) are required to use the private option. From the private insurer's point of view, it would be crazy to charge more or less based on how much someone works or earns. The public insurance does so out of a solidarity imperative co…

Contractors can buy the public option are actively discouraged from doing so because they are on the hook for both the employer and employee contribution. Also ofc there is the "if you have ever been privatly insured you cannot simply go back to public". But for contractors with 2-3 kids public might still be cheaper than private.

It wouldn't have even occurred to me to switch over to private if I became self employed, just assumed you would price the employer contribution into the day rate. Is switching to private widely expected? I would've thought that Germans were more biased towards the social solution.

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#525

I work at Gumroad, mentioned in this article. Sometimes, I read things by CEOs about how a company works on the inside and I wonder if it really looks like that, or if it is a view from the top that doesn't reflect what it's really like. This article, with its discussions of the upsides and downsides, is accurate to my experience and my understanding of other people's experiences. For many people, Gumroad wouldn't be…

How does one apply to Gumroad?

I didn't see any open positions, maybe they're not hiring right now.

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#526
post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things like paying for a non-public health scan are indeed facing legal crackdowns, though: https://www.kelownanow.com/watercooler/news/news/Provincial/... So someone in this position now would have fewer options besides waiting their turn in the queue.

> Extra billing is defined as additional fees charged by a physician or a clinic for a publicly-funded health procedure that is medically necessary, or when a patient pays out of their own pocket for such a procedure in a private facility This is about extra billing, not per se about MRI. So still seems fair to me.

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Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#527
post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things like paying for a non-public health scan are indeed facing legal crackdowns, though: https://www.kelownanow.com/watercooler/news/news/Provincial/... So someone in this position now would have fewer options besides waiting their turn in the queue.

> Extra billing is defined as additional fees charged by a physician or a clinic for a publicly-funded health procedure that is medically necessary, or when a patient pays out of their own pocket for such a procedure in a private facility This is about extra billing, not per se about MRI. So still seems fair to me.

So it's fair that you cannot get an MRI done paying for it?

In any case, that shows that getting private care may not be an option in Canada.

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#528

I work at Gumroad, mentioned in this article. Sometimes, I read things by CEOs about how a company works on the inside and I wonder if it really looks like that, or if it is a view from the top that doesn't reflect what it's really like. This article, with its discussions of the upsides and downsides, is accurate to my experience and my understanding of other people's experiences. For many people, Gumroad wouldn't be…

> Everyone at Gumroad is paid very well and should be able to afford the same. I wrote a long and very emotional response to this. In the end I decided to simply say that, if I worked at Gumroad instead of at an employer who pays me about 10% less but pays even just part of the premium on mediocre health insurance, the events of the last six months would have killed my partner, bankrupted me, and left me widowed and…

huh? why wouldn’t you buy private health insurance? it’s a wash.

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#529
post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Extra billing is defined as additional fees charged by a physician or a clinic for a publicly-funded health procedure that is medically necessary, or when a patient pays out of their own pocket for such a procedure in a private facility This is about extra billing, not per se about MRI. So still seems fair to me.

So it's fair that you cannot get an MRI done paying for it? In any case, that shows that getting private care may not be an option in Canada.

> So it's fair that you cannot get an MRI done paying for it?

Yup, while the system is being subsidized with public money you can't just setup something competing while taking advantage of the public system too.

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#530
post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what end of the scale of PM OP is on. It goes from "I make PowerPoints" to "I write unit tests and debug code before I start the deployment." $250 an hour is great for the bottom 75% of the market though and better than average for anyone not in facebook/google. I'm a contractor too and the tax breaks you get are essentially another 20% raise.

$250/hr is equivalent to half a million dollar per year. Most PMs at FAANG do not make that much. If that’s the bottom 75% of the market, what does the top 10% look like?

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