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Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

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Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#341
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting product from CBA. Doesn't afterpay act more like a loan? From looking at this it looks like CBA is trying to get people to splash their money and manage the payback themselves. Those management fee's are also based on the idea you can get the card paid off in the month (CBA also use a rolling bill day. so they have a 30 day month and a 25 day payment period for that month. And those details are pretty opa…

Black is reserved for their premium card. NAB have a similar product https://www.nab.com.au/personal/credit-cards/nab-straightup-... Yes the chunking into 4 payments, is the primary benefit of BNPL. It allows you to buy something significant (i.e. a laptop) and spread the payments over time. The downside is its very easy to overspend and get stuck in a debt spiral

If someones cashflow is pushed to the edge with BNPL purchases it's so easy to get toppled over by an unexpected emergency. It really is quite scary thinking about it. Is it financial irresponsibility causing people to overextend themselves and their cashflow on frivolous purchases, or is it out of necessity and a wider issue such as poor economy / job market / wealth distribution causing people to turn to these services? - Either way, they feel rather predatory to me...

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#342
post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brisbane has plenty of tech jobs. I'm netting $250,000 inc bonuses as an SRE and the markets rife for oppertunity. Not FAANG either.

250k net means ~230k + super? Is this contracting? And may I ask your rank in org?

$150k salary, 10% super and the rest I get in bonuses.

The bonus break down is:

10% of my salary paid quarterly if I hit my targets and I get around 0.9% profit sharing.

My position title is just SRE. Same rank as the other engineers.

CEO > VP of Engineering > All the SWE/SREs sit here

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#343
post #326
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sector are you in? According to linkedin and glassdoor senior engineers in Melbourne earn between 110k-160k. 250k is very high.

SREs are usually higher, up to about 180k last I checked, with the market getting really hot in the past 12 months, I would not be surprised if that number's passed the 200k mark now. 250k for non-contracting is indeed impressive. I'm guessing a trading firm, in that case, they are outliers, curious if they have presence in Brissie though.

We're not a trading firm. Relatively small company, 7 software engineers including myself. Around 60~ staff between the Continental US and AU/NZ.

We're in Brisbane.

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#344
post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that Australia's economy is propped up by continued ion growth, a giant pyramid scheme if you'll excuse the hyperbole. However Australia has such a large amount of land, and such a small population that forecasted worldwide population drop won't affect Australia so much. It's such a desirable place to live that immigration at the current rates will be sustainable regardless of the rest of the world's populati…

15-20 to start feeling it in the most developed nations, end of the century worldwide. Immigration can stall the former but current policies are not promising. Germany will sing songs of praise in Merkel’s name.

Well the sooner countries can start to transition to an economy that is not reliant on perpetual population growth the better.

I am always amazed at news reports from Japan about how the sky is falling because their population is shrinking. For some reason no one ever says "on the plus side, Japan is one of the most densely populated places on the planet, a slow decrease in population will help improve quality of life measures and sustainability".

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#345
post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why not us debit card? Chargebacks are also available and risk of ending with spiral of debt is removed. (Yes, it is a real risk. Yes I know that you and me are not going to e so stupid. But I am not trusting this belief.)

If someone fraudulently or mistakenly charges my debit card $5,000, that's $5,000 gone from my bank account until I get it fixed. If someone charges $5,000 to my credit card in error, I've got 30+ days plus to resolve with zero financial impact to me. If it doesn't get resolved in that time, I have the option to not pay the bill (or that portion of the bill), knowing that if the error is fixed, the penalties and inte…

> If someone fraudulently or mistakenly charges my debit card $5,000

in my case payment will fail due to spending limits (though repeated small charges would go through)

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#346
post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

15-20 to start feeling it in the most developed nations, end of the century worldwide. Immigration can stall the former but current policies are not promising. Germany will sing songs of praise in Merkel’s name.

Well the sooner countries can start to transition to an economy that is not reliant on perpetual population growth the better. I am always amazed at news reports from Japan about how the sky is falling because their population is shrinking. For some reason no one ever says "on the plus side, Japan is one of the most densely populated places on the planet, a slow decrease in population will help improve quality of lif…

In other words, aging society is the problem, and shrinking makes the problem much worse. Fixing the problem in ethical way is difficult.

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#347
post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SREs are usually higher, up to about 180k last I checked, with the market getting really hot in the past 12 months, I would not be surprised if that number's passed the 200k mark now. 250k for non-contracting is indeed impressive. I'm guessing a trading firm, in that case, they are outliers, curious if they have presence in Brissie though.

We're not a trading firm. Relatively small company, 7 software engineers including myself. Around 60~ staff between the Continental US and AU/NZ. We're in Brisbane.

props for your employer to build a lean bussiness that can sustain paying bank to engineers, and for sharing the profit. This is a reminder for myself not to overlook companies like yours

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#348
post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not a trading firm. Relatively small company, 7 software engineers including myself. Around 60~ staff between the Continental US and AU/NZ. We're in Brisbane.

props for your employer to build a lean bussiness that can sustain paying bank to engineers, and for sharing the profit. This is a reminder for myself not to overlook companies like yours

I was as shocked as you are when we started talking salaries.

Thought I'd interview because I was getting sick of the old job. Wasn't intending to start actively looking.

External recruiter approached me on LinkedIn, had an interview with her, another 3 interviews with the company. No leet code nonsense. Did do a personality and IQ test though. And a problem solving excercise which involved troubleshooting Python and SQL. The final interview followed by a group chat with the whole engineering team.

Honestly the whole interview process was really enjoyable. I'm stoked to be here.

That said, I've worked for small companies in the past. Two in fact. And they both hold the rungs for second worst and actual worst companies I've worked for. With this new company though they also hold the top! But it's early days. So far so well.

This was all in March/April too. Quite recent.

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#349
post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, magically and by the power of the market, the fee will still be paid for by customers. It isn't like the merchant has a non-customer source of income. The money has to be coming from them. If you don't want to pay the surcharge, shop somewhere that doesn't offer Afterpay. Or somewhere that doesn't honour the TOS, I once got an extra egg in my soup for paying cash.

>And yet, magically and by the power of the market, the fee will still be paid for by customers. Yes, by all the customers, including those that don't use Afterpay.

Which doesn't make it an externality, because they are still choosing to use the vendor. My favourite take-out place for a solid 2 years was the cheapest on the street and probably because they didn't support Afterpay or credit cards. The customer has all the power to avoid the cost if they want to.

They pay the Afterpay surcharge because they want a standard shopping experience that supports lots of different ways of paying. If they want to shop on price Afterpay will vanish from their view.

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#350
post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember the jokes about how FB purchased a photo filter app and how easy it was to make photo effects. Sometimes it feels like techies not always get what is valuable and what is not as much.

When Microsoft bought LinkedIn for $26B, my tech lead said to me "why did they buy it for so much? It's just a website, I can code a website".

This is so ridiculous, I don't know what to say...
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