Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
Okay, great, and how is that a "luxury" that's available to the "average American"?
It would be if we elected people who started wars for our interests instead of their own.
My $0->$100M->$0 in 5 years story
181–190 of 224 posts
Re: My $0->$100M->$0 in 5 years story
#182> Ultimately I ended up with a bunch of highly paid employees who don’t know how to do anything but to “build and lead amazing teams.” I've worked at a lot of startups. The worst of them were led by people who list things like "organization design" and "build and lead amazing teams" on their LinkedIn. At the most dysfunctional company, the ex-FAANG CTO would take key job descriptions and add the requirement that they…
This makes for frustrating reading, coming from an industry where "Organizational Design" can have extremely serious consequences: the military.
A brief case study: Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The argument has been made (and I agree) that much of their early failures stem from not understanding/implementing Unified Command. They didn't have a Joint Task Force Commander who was responsible for the entire Area of Operations. They didn't have an Air Component Commander subordinate to the JTF to ensure all air operations achieved synergy with, and were in support of, the ground scheme of maneuver.
Most field-grade officers who have planned and/or executed a major multi-service or multi-national training exercise are familiar with Command Relationship org charts and understand WHY they are important (if that stuff isn't clear, responsibilities get fuzzy when edge cases arise, and then in the resulting confusion/friction....people die). It's also just as important to understand how much of that "big DoD" cruft you can peel away when you are doing small, localized training with a developing nation with....austere practices, shall we say.
So I could see adding "Organizational Design" to my LinkedIn....unknowingly putting myself in the same bucket as "hot-air no-nothing ex-FAANG managers". And then no one cares what digital signal processing stuff I could do for them as an IC... :(
Re: My $0->$100M->$0 in 5 years story
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
And in what sense are we better off for this? Is the claim that innovation only happens in the USA? That the only good companies are US companies? What are the specific benefits, other than merely indulging the startup fantasies of a relatively small number of founders, that come from this "high risk, high reward" environment?
An insane amount of money, world hegemony, and a very high standard of living. I’m not sure the average European appreciates just how comfortable life in the US is. And the average American doesn’t know that things they take fir granted are luxuries even to Western Europeans. Outside of a handful of small countries with specialized economies, European income per capita is at or below per capita income in even the poo…
You cannot be serious, this has to be a troll. By pretty much every quality of life index most European countries (esp Western European) rank higher than US. Why do Americans group Europe into one chunk like this? And what exactly is the benefit of income per capita when the environment you have to spend it in isn’t as nice as 90% of European cities/towns?
Re: My $0->$100M->$0 in 5 years story
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
The food comment is frankly bizarre. The food you get in Whole Foods is at best similar to what you find in a petrol station in Europe. The US has the worst food in the developed world.
That is not remotely true. Petrol stations in Europe do not sell grass-fed beef, acai bowls and organic produce. They're like 7-11 not Whole Foods. The US has more variety by far.
To the extent that petrol stations are like convenience stores (which they typically are), the ones in my European country sell freshly baked bread, pastries etc. and have deli and hot food counters (and yes the beef they sell there is all grass fed). They also sell fresh fruit and while I don't know what's considered "unorganic" when it comes to this, it's all similar to the so-called "organic" stuff at whole foods. I don't know about variety but that isn't what I was talking about, I was talking about quality.
One time I was in a Walmart Supercenter (or whatever it is they call the huge ones) in Michigan. I had been there a few times but I couldn't find the fruit & veg section any more, they seemed to have moved it and put Halloween candy in it's place. After burning 10-15 minutes searching the whole store, I gave up and asked a staff member where they put it. "Oh we got rid of that sorry". It's literally the biggest supermarket in the city and you can't buy an apple or a banana.
There was a fancier place I used to go to in that city, Fresh-something-or-other. The kind that models themselves after Whole Foods. Everything time I went there, they only ever had green bananas. I mean, totally inedible, days away from being ripe. Every time.
Re: My $0->$100M->$0 in 5 years story
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
The food comment is frankly bizarre. The food you get in Whole Foods is at best similar to what you find in a petrol station in Europe. The US has the worst food in the developed world.
That is not remotely true. Petrol stations in Europe do not sell grass-fed beef, acai bowls and organic produce. They're like 7-11 not Whole Foods. The US has more variety by far.
> Petrol stations in Europe do not sell grass-fed beef, acai bowls and organic produce.
Honestly can't tell if this is satire or not. To think that you can reduce the food argument to the availability of _grass fed beef_ at a gas station?
Re: My $0->$100M->$0 in 5 years story
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
And in what sense are we better off for this? Is the claim that innovation only happens in the USA? That the only good companies are US companies? What are the specific benefits, other than merely indulging the startup fantasies of a relatively small number of founders, that come from this "high risk, high reward" environment?
We get more rockets (literally), faster. We get Tesla, SpaceX, Google, Facebook, AirBnB, Stripe, etc...
Musk's businesses, Google/Meta/Airbnb have arguably only been harmful and we would be better off if they didn't exist.
Re: My $0->$100M->$0 in 5 years story
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
I interviewed an ex-FAANG (developer) currently working as a software executive for a director role at a previous company. This person included 5 years-ish of Haskell experience on their resume. I don't know Haskell at all, but am aware of the language and its design principles, so I figured a lot of my technical questions would be pretty easy for him Boy was I wrong. My first question was "Name the most common data…
I write code every day and I still had to ponder your question for quite a while before I could think of a data structure I use regularly by name. It is not exactly useful knowledge to keep top of mind. It is not like you need to look up how to use daily data structures. I had an easier time remembering the names of data structures I almost never use, or even have never used, as retaining their names actually has som…
I'm sorry, but what? If you can't even remember what list/set/map whatever is called, how are you going to use them? We're not talking about exact syntax here, just what data structures you use...
Re: My $0->$100M->$0 in 5 years story
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Outside of a handful of small countries with specialized economies, European income per capita is at or below per capita income in even the poorest US state. And yet the quality of life doesn’t even begin to compare.
My friend has a huge 4,000 sq foot brand new house in the South for 1/3 the average price in London. You cannot find that type of house even in the richest areas in Europe.
I don't know how amazing your friends house is, but while a 371 square meters house IS large, it's not absurdly large. And of course you find houses like that, whatever it is, in Europe.
But North America is fricking huge, and if you are willing to move out of the city it's hard to not grant you that at least: you have a loot of room.
Re: My $0->$100M->$0 in 5 years story
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Outside of a handful of small countries with specialized economies, European income per capita is at or below per capita income in even the poorest US state. And yet the quality of life doesn’t even begin to compare.
My friend has a huge 4,000 sq foot brand new house in the South for 1/3 the average price in London. You cannot find that type of house even in the richest areas in Europe.
Here’s [1] one of dozens of houses of that size currently listed in Bath.
As a European who also lives in a 4000 sqft brand new house in the south of the US, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone though. I’d happily take a 2000sqft house that was built at least to the standard of the second of the three little pigs, something which seems to elude construction crews south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
Regardless though, the size of your house says very little about the quality of your life.
[1]: https://www.winkworth.co.uk/properties/sales/lansdown-road-b...