Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Ponzi Career

drorpoleg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 310 posts

Re: The Ponzi Career

#91

Post by adkadskhj »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #85
adkadskhj wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My fear with this mindset of "They're people i wouldn't want to work with anyway" is that it's easy to say that when i'm not hungry. If my mortgage is on the line my desire for a paycheck increases. Perhaps i don't live simply enough - but i'm always concerned about stability and until i'm retired i will always be concerned about the next paycheck. I too lack skills to feel confident about common interviews, but i lo…

Unfortunately, this hits the nail on the head for a lot of folks, these days. It's easy for me to say that I will only work with those I want. I'm set, and don't actually need the work (the money would be nice, but it's not a need ). I refrain from being an "OK Boomer," but I would gently suggest that folks starting out, devote significant portions of their income to savings, and conservative (not politically "Conser…

> but I would gently suggest that folks starting out, devote significant portions of their income to savings, and conservative (not politically "Conservative," real "conservative") investments. I'd further suggest against looking to your peers for guidance in spending habits or lifestyle choices.

I do, but this is unfortunately not what i'm describing in the post. Yea, i don't have enough to retire, but i've got ~12mo full expenses.

My concern is a concern for the long term, the career.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#92

Post by [deleted] »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #85
adkadskhj wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My fear with this mindset of "They're people i wouldn't want to work with anyway" is that it's easy to say that when i'm not hungry. If my mortgage is on the line my desire for a paycheck increases. Perhaps i don't live simply enough - but i'm always concerned about stability and until i'm retired i will always be concerned about the next paycheck. I too lack skills to feel confident about common interviews, but i lo…

Unfortunately, this hits the nail on the head for a lot of folks, these days. It's easy for me to say that I will only work with those I want. I'm set, and don't actually need the work (the money would be nice, but it's not a need ). I refrain from being an "OK Boomer," but I would gently suggest that folks starting out, devote significant portions of their income to savings, and conservative (not politically "Conser…

[deleted]

Re: The Ponzi Career

#93

Post by VRay »

prox wrote: post #72
tjs8rj wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m usually in total agreement about blockchain just being stuffed anywhere, but observationally, there must be a good reason why blockchain shows up in these situations so often. There’s definitely the hype factor, but blockchain does have value in that it’s reasonably trusted by average people (perhaps unlike signing a contract everytime you wanted to purchase a piece of a creator - coins gamify it), and it’s easy…

Author mentions the ponzi scheme, and quite right. As long as the general trust is there and the investments are on the up and up you’re fine. But the insidiousness is once you’re in, you’re in. Once you bought 4000 Tupperware to resell (insert any pyramid scheme here) , you can’t find fault in it, and when it crashes you’re burned. I don’t want to bash blockchain, there might be interesting use cases, but I haven’t…

It's sort of useful for sending money to Asia without losing 1.5 to 5% on transaction fees, but that doesn't involve actually investing in it

Re: The Ponzi Career

#94

Post by Klinky »

kingsuper20 wrote: post #21

I've run into that with doctors now and again. You'll meet a younger doctor who complains heavily about student debt and how impossible life in the US is. I'll offer to write a check for the debt in return for a negotiated percentage of their income from now on. Silence ensues.

Please provide the full terms before you imply the young doctor was being unreasonable. The silence was probably because you were offering an awful predatory loan, not that you were delivering the ultimate gotcha zinger.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#95

Post by hinkley »

musingsole wrote: post #59
lisper wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't have the personal skills to "sell" myself Actually you do. You've demonstrated them in this very comment. Maybe you don't realize this, or maybe your self-deprecation is a deliberate part of your strategy. Either way, it worked on me. This comment led me to your profile, which led me to your company web sites, which impressed me. I don't need an iOS app developer at the moment, but if I did you'd be at the…

To reiterate, it is very likely that those people who passed on you or didn't become interested due to the lack of self-marketing are not the people you would want to work with and doubly are not actually offering the job you thought you were applying for. Grifters interview and hire grifters because their org/team/company relies on the grift more than the truth to make ends meet. If you can't grift, you frankly don'…

One of my favorite bosses got summarily fired for getting tired of the grift and telling a customer we were still in analysis on something that the founders wanted them to think was well underway. This wasn’t the first time and our code was on the way to intractable due to layers of expediencies.

When a bunch of us quit 18 months later, we had stuck around for 6 months for a bonus that worked out to about 7-8 weeks’ pay. As we sat around having a beer down the road, I asked if it was worth it to stay the extra six months. Almost 3/4 said no.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#96

Post by arberx »

To call this a ponzi scheme is pretty disingenious, probably great for views/clicks though.

At the core a ponzi relies on guaranteed return, paid for by other investors.

Just because you might not like or understand how something works, doesn't mean it's a ponzi.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#97

Post by eplanit »

lisper wrote: post #52
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #13

I enjoyed the piece. Personally, I want no part of it, but I think it might work well for people who are not me. I've always been "on my own." My life really is a series of watersheds, where I've been the only person to believe in me, before the event, and a whole bunch of folks seemed to believe in me, after the fact. Not a particularly good setup for selling "Chris-Tokens™." Not a bad thing, in the long run. It hur…

> I don't have the personal skills to "sell" myself Actually you do. You've demonstrated them in this very comment. Maybe you don't realize this, or maybe your self-deprecation is a deliberate part of your strategy. Either way, it worked on me. This comment led me to your profile, which led me to your company web sites, which impressed me. I don't need an iOS app developer at the moment, but if I did you'd be at the…

> I don't have the personal skills to "sell" myself

Your comments do just that, though. Perhaps writing is a good medium for you to make the point to others -- I recommend you do more of it. It makes a great first impression, from which you can follow-up. Be genuine in person as you are in your writing.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#98

Post by Klinky »

ghaff wrote: post #50
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'll offer to write a check for the debt in return for a negotiated percentage of their income from now on. Silence ensues. Writing someone a check in exchange for their future earnings "from now on" is a terrible deal. You're essentially offering a loan that can never be paid back, yet requires payments forever . Loans are a good deal because the terms are known ahead of time, payments end when the principle is pa…

There is such a thing as a perpetual (consol) bond although it's rare. What happens is that, over time, inflation erodes the real value of the payments. (And at that point, it looks a lot like equity with a contractually fixed dividend payout. Debt and equity can look a lot like each other.) And, if this is a lifetime thing, this is just a form of annuity which are fairly common. (Give someone $X and they promise to…

A doctor's salary is unlikely to be eroded by inflation.

Annuities often underperform inflation, and life annuities are typically offered by insurance companies with risk pooled assets, not by a single individual.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#99

Post by lifeisstillgood »

0x4d464d48 wrote: post #71
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #63

Is it just me, but isn't an Income Share Agreement ... taxes? Is this just a failure of government to supply the upfront investment in its citizens so that they pay enough tax in ten years?

"Is it just me, but isn't an Income Share Agreement ... taxes?" No. Its profit sharing akin to how companies do so by issuing dividend paying shares. So far as the government is concerned theyre just looking out for their most important stake holders, wealthy individuals and monied interests, by keeping taxes extremelly low. Universities being underfunded to the point they need to raise tuition to the point where stu…

I think we are violently agreeing?

Profit sharing with your citizens is basically government. I think ...

Re: The Ponzi Career

#100

Post by robotresearcher »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #43
llaolleh wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha I love this. If we think about it in terms of pure game play, medicine is a part of the game where the strategy is to take on a massive amount of debt, high risk and uncertainty for incredible returns.

> medicine is a part of the game where the strategy is to take on a massive amount of debt, high risk and uncertainty for incredible returns. Not really. It's exceedingly rare for someone to complete medical school and then not be able to find a relatively high-paying job if they want one. The risk would be something like later deciding not to pursue a career in medicine, but that's a personal decision rather than an…

Illness and accident can end anyone's career any time.
Post reply on HN