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The Art of Money Getting

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Re: The Art of Money Getting

#191

Post by kaladin-jasnah »

neilv wrote: post #56
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and that's pretty important to me The older I get, the more I realize what a critical component of personal and social relationships it is, and how deeply it reinforces virtually everything good in society. There's never a good reason to forgo it, and never a good reason to accept spending time with people who don't have it. It only leads to trouble. I started my career in ad tech and it was often such abject miser…

Like you, I've found that working with people of integrity (or some qualities closely related to that) is very important to me. Not in a "new-grad or corporate PR appropriating meaningless platitudes" kind of way. But in a "I have seen multiple times how one untrustworthy person can easily wreck all the work of a team or organization, and make their lives miserable, so averting that is a high priority" kind of way. L…

As a new grad, I think a lot of the companies that have respectable goals to me only hire at the senior level. So what am I supposed to do, go do something I deeply disagree with for a few years so I can eventually work on something respectable?

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#192

Post by galangalalgol »

KellyCriterion wrote: post #165
galangalalgol wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started programming at 5, making it do what I wanted it to provided dopamine. I never found a sport I enjoyed. I do like painting though. I doubt very many people get into sanitation because they love making toilets clean, but even there I'm sure a few do. Before 2000 I think it was pretty normal for people to select software as a career without considering the compensation as a factor. It wasn't excessively better…

> Before 2000 The salary expectations exploded when the VC/PE-bobos went into the space and started "build-and-sell-high". Sure there were Billionairs made before tech & internet, but public was not aware of most such transactions.

And that never changed salaries nearly as much in games, embedded, or outside the us. I never worked in any software position adjacent to the online economy, so I never saw any of those wacky salaries.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#194

Post by jb1991 »

conductr wrote: post #147
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and that's pretty important to me The older I get, the more I realize what a critical component of personal and social relationships it is, and how deeply it reinforces virtually everything good in society. There's never a good reason to forgo it, and never a good reason to accept spending time with people who don't have it. It only leads to trouble. I started my career in ad tech and it was often such abject miser…

The older I get, the more I feel it’s becoming in shorter supply. Even when I don’t like associating with those that seem to lack it, they seem to find me everywhere I go. This is professionally, as a consumer and even just socially. I’m probably just old and grumpy and this is a yearning for the good old days, but, when I look around it just seems to be getting out of control. For example, politics is huge indicator…

I also think a big part of it is that it’s becoming more and more easy to cheat your way through life in many respects. Many people always chase the thing that makes the most money, and they’ll take every shortcut they can to get it. And the tools for cheating your way through life are evolving. Every aspect of the tool chain.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#195

Post by LeanOnSheena »

duzer65657 wrote: post #185
LeanOnSheena wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am CPA, former auditor, and a self-taught programmer. I am in a director level finance & technology role at an American, private-equity backed portfolio SaaS company. I have worked with all kinds of finance professionals. I studied accounting in part because my father was an engineer at a public company that was rocked by an accounting scandal. It impacted my family in many ways for years and left deep impressions…

It may seem glib, but if there are good ones out there, they're not typically "private-equity backed portfolio SaaS companies". IME (3 times now) this is where good companies go to die. I'll reluctantly take the naked (but aligned) greed of the VC startup over PE from here on out; it's one thing to implode on the launch pad but I can't watch PE destroy real value any longer.

I'm not commenting on the the particulars of different ownership and operational business models. Certainly private equity backed portfolio company structures deserve their fair share of criticism; the balance of incentives they create can certainly be net negative for the business and its customers in the long run, however I think it's a separate conversation.

My point is just that there are lots of people that wake up every day and make serious, sustained efforts to exercise due care in their professional duties.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#196

Post by matheusmoreira »

armchairhacker wrote: post #181
matheusmoreira wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we did bad things to people and made filthy money I blame society. It systematically rewards sociopathic behavior. I was raised with integrity and honesty as core values. Every single day I am psychologically assaulted by the fact we not only have all these sociopaths running around but also the fact that they are the ones making it . It makes me wish I was one of them. Maybe one day I'll finally break and start ca…

> It makes me wish I was one of them. Imagine feeling starved no matter how much you have, knowing the vast majority hate you and would gang up on you, so you form close alliances with others who (like you) would mercilessly betray you if they felt it would benefit them. Society doesn’t reward every sociopath or even most of them. It rewards people who are smart, disciplined, charming, and (in other ways) lucky. But…

I'm a loser then. I'm definitely not content with what I have. I want more. I want to make it.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#197

Post by SoftTalker »

kaladin-jasnah wrote: post #191
neilv wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like you, I've found that working with people of integrity (or some qualities closely related to that) is very important to me. Not in a "new-grad or corporate PR appropriating meaningless platitudes" kind of way. But in a "I have seen multiple times how one untrustworthy person can easily wreck all the work of a team or organization, and make their lives miserable, so averting that is a high priority" kind of way. L…

As a new grad, I think a lot of the companies that have respectable goals to me only hire at the senior level. So what am I supposed to do, go do something I deeply disagree with for a few years so I can eventually work on something respectable?

Yes, if that's the viable path. The world isn't a perfect place, and you still need to eat.

Also, you can do your own job with personal integrity regardless of what others are doing.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#198

Post by SoftTalker »

crimsontech wrote: post #129
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and that's pretty important to me The older I get, the more I realize what a critical component of personal and social relationships it is, and how deeply it reinforces virtually everything good in society. There's never a good reason to forgo it, and never a good reason to accept spending time with people who don't have it. It only leads to trouble. I started my career in ad tech and it was often such abject miser…

Totally agree, I took a very well paying job with a company doing what I enjoy doing, but the attitude of the company was very much to extract as much money from the clients as possible. We had three hour monthly call where everyone would take turns to explain how they had upsold or otherwise made money for the company that month, someone from each call would get a token award for it. I hated it, and wrote my resigna…

I'm sure it wasn't common, but even in such a company you could "extract as much money from the clients as possible" by delivering as much value as possible. Doing things carefully, solving problems, going a little above and beyond what was expected to the point that your clients were glad to pay your billings.

Also, it's just two sides of a point of view to see something like "upselling" as pressuring clients into buying things they don't need, or making them aware of things they didn't know you could provide.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#199

Post by tasuki »

coliveira wrote: post #148
triprjt wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think he meant having stuff that he brought to life

But he didn't, it was given to him by AI.

If he was constraining the AI's output, his input was meaningful.

Did you ever bring anything to life? Whatever it is, you are also relying on the work others have done before you and standing on the shoulders of giants.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#200

Post by SoftTalker »

conductr wrote: post #147
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and that's pretty important to me The older I get, the more I realize what a critical component of personal and social relationships it is, and how deeply it reinforces virtually everything good in society. There's never a good reason to forgo it, and never a good reason to accept spending time with people who don't have it. It only leads to trouble. I started my career in ad tech and it was often such abject miser…

The older I get, the more I feel it’s becoming in shorter supply. Even when I don’t like associating with those that seem to lack it, they seem to find me everywhere I go. This is professionally, as a consumer and even just socially. I’m probably just old and grumpy and this is a yearning for the good old days, but, when I look around it just seems to be getting out of control. For example, politics is huge indicator…

Weekly church attendance is at all-time lows. Nobody I know today goes to church. It was common when I was a child. And I'm not talking about going to save your soul from damnation, but for regular reinforcement of the Golden Rule, and other wisdom on how to live, and belonging to a group of people who care enough about those things to show up for it on a regular basis.

Teaching of right and wrong in school has fallen off. Anything touching on traditional morals risks being conflated with religion, which is kryptonite in the public schools. So now it's much more about how you feel, and excusing bad behavior because of hurt feelings, "disrespect," or some culturally or socially disadvantaged group you might claim to belong to. The soft bigotry of low expectations. We've stopped demanding that people follow the rules. If a kid got in trouble in school, he could probably expect to be in trouble at home too. Now, it's more likely that the parents will call the school and complain.

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