361–370 of 393 posts
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It's a challenge for me to imagine "exceptional quality code" with "albeit a bit on the spaghetti side". Can you elaborate?
It covers a lot of corner cases, it is fast, it is robust, and produces good quality data. Only thing is it is hard to navigate.
It still shocks me that Europe hasn't yet built a response to SF. Sure, London's a tech hub, but not anywhere close to SF. Eastern europe has a lot of talented engineers, but lacks capital and know-how on building an international business, places are cheap to live in and so on.
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Young developer here. The "lifestyle inflation is evil" mantra never made sense to me. The definition I usually find is "living better than a college student once you are a working professional," so apologies if you mean something different. I was raised to save 15% for retirement, to never carry a credit card balance, to build a 6 month emergency fund, etc. All of these priorities come first. But, after they are fun…
In San Francisco, anyway, having "a decent apartment to myself" and "a decent car" already seems like a huge extravagance. Median 1BR rent is $3,620, add $300/mo for parking and let's say $300/mo for a car lease, you're at $4,200ish before any sort of food, travel, etc. Even if you're making nominally $120k/year, you need a lot of frugality to make that work. I remember moving to SF and making ~$110k, and renting a ~…
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A 6 figure burn rate is what's required to own property in or near sf. Take a modest $900k 3 bedroom condo: it costs nearly $5k/mo in mortgage (even with a sizable downpayment), insurance, taxes, and maintenance. And you haven't eaten yet, or owned even a single car.
At 3.92% interest rate for 30-years fixed with a 20% downpayment that's about $3,400/mo and at $900k property tax is another $6k/year, insurance is less than $100/mo so you net out at less than $4k/mo in PITI. And maintenance you'd hope to check what's wrong with the house before you buy but a new roof costs about $20k so unless you replace a roof a year I doubt you'll be spending over $1000/mo for maintenance, at le…
The property tax rate is 1.1826% of assessed value in SF (1% state + a small % local). And your initial assessed value is based on your purchase price.
I think it's more realistic to say you'd be spending close to 4500/month net assuming you didn't live in a place with an HOA. If you live in a condo with an HOA, you could easily be spending 5000 to 5500/month.
On the plus side, at least you get to deduct all that mortgage interest and property tax on your federal taxes. When you are paying 3k/month+ in interest and taxes, that's a really nice tax advantage over renting a similar property.
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I think you forgot another important metric: * Are the startups that are hiring taking up enough of the talent compared to large established companies with billions in the bank such that if there were a bubble, and it were to pop, it would actually make an impact on the hiring environment. I'd love to see some hard data on the % of people employed by the "startup ecosystem" vs. large established giants like Google, F…
Hiring is definitely a good indicator of the bubble bursting because hiring indicates that startups are getting funding and they turn around and hire people. When the funding dries up, these same startups tighten the belt, the hiring drops and then the layoffs start. A good indicator of a bubble in SF/SV startups is measuring the IT job market using local Craiglist and Dice job postings since startups heavily use the…
The latter has such massive hiring needs in comparison that even if funding dried up (which they do not need since they have lots of profit and are already oftentimes publicly traded), I don't think it would slow down the market THAT much.
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Hiring is definitely a good indicator of the bubble bursting because hiring indicates that startups are getting funding and they turn around and hire people. When the funding dries up, these same startups tighten the belt, the hiring drops and then the layoffs start. A good indicator of a bubble in SF/SV startups is measuring the IT job market using local Craiglist and Dice job postings since startups heavily use the…
I guess I'm making a clear distinction between "startup" (ie. no clear business model or path to profitability yet) vs. "established tech giant." The latter has such massive hiring needs in comparison that even if funding dried up (which they do not need since they have lots of profit and are already oftentimes publicly traded), I don't think it would slow down the market THAT much.
When these tech giants have layoffs - usually in the 100s or 1000s - it's a big hit to the job market. May not be reflected on Craigslist or Dice, but there'll be a lot more job-seekers. Instead of getting 50 resumes per job posting, hiring managers would be getting hundreds.
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Hiring is definitely a good indicator of the bubble bursting because hiring indicates that startups are getting funding and they turn around and hire people. When the funding dries up, these same startups tighten the belt, the hiring drops and then the layoffs start. A good indicator of a bubble in SF/SV startups is measuring the IT job market using local Craiglist and Dice job postings since startups heavily use the…
I guess I'm making a clear distinction between "startup" (ie. no clear business model or path to profitability yet) vs. "established tech giant." The latter has such massive hiring needs in comparison that even if funding dried up (which they do not need since they have lots of profit and are already oftentimes publicly traded), I don't think it would slow down the market THAT much.
"To big too fail" isn't a thing.
> Everything is too expensive. I’m from New York... I take issue with this one. It's entirely possible to live frugally while living IN San Francisco. I moved here about 7 months ago and expected it to be incredibly expensive but it hasn't been the case (beyond rent). The author mentions $15 crappy local IPAs but I've actually never found a beer for this price. There is no shortage of $7 craft beers you can buy at a…
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0/Near 0 interest is the end-game of fractional reserve banking. Consider the alternative: Rates climb back to 20%. You (and everyone else borrowing) now need to somehow collect an additional 20% (ignoring compounding and early payments) money each year. 1) that's not going to happen unless massive amounts of money are borrowed by lots of people 2) that money must move fast enough (and be continually reborrowed) to m…
Do you see a potential solution?
Then, perhaps, we try to figure out how to engineer solutions that will guarantee certain certain conditions will be met (e.g. Enough food for every person in an area will make it to that area for everyone there to live satisfactorily).
As the dependencies are mapped out and tracked, it will become obvious which tasks are necessary to fulfill the current economic objectives. Then, it's simply a matter of performing the tasks.
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At 3.92% interest rate for 30-years fixed with a 20% downpayment that's about $3,400/mo and at $900k property tax is another $6k/year, insurance is less than $100/mo so you net out at less than $4k/mo in PITI. And maintenance you'd hope to check what's wrong with the house before you buy but a new roof costs about $20k so unless you replace a roof a year I doubt you'll be spending over $1000/mo for maintenance, at le…
actually, property taxes in sf are a little over 1%, so you're looking at $10.4k/year on that $900k condo (note: on the cheap for sf). $3400 + $900 tax + $100 insurance = $4.4k, again, without any condo fees, maintenance, or utilities. So you'll net much closer to $5k than $4k. Which to my claim, means you're out $60k post tax (over $100k pre) without eating, health insurance, owning a car, or parking yet.