cnorgate's comments

Irony is he will probably burn more shorts with this announcement than he did with the initial set of tweets... and the SEC helped him do it this time around!

Social security will always be around in one form or another. Despite the fact that many Americans detest the idea of a welfare state, we're still collectively bright enough to realize that you can't simply leave no options for the sick, poor, and disabled.

The better question to ask is whether you will be happy living out the twilight of your life on a government controlled amount of money. This amount will likely always gravitate toward the prevailing poverty line. Unlikely to lead to a truly comfortable existence. Definitely not enough to live in any high COL location. Average monthly benefit in 2017 was ~$1,300, and MAX was $2,687 [1]. ~$15-$30K will cover the basics in most lower COL parts of the country, but not much more.

[1] http://time.com/money/4644332/maximum-social-security-benefi...

Sounds like it's time for a change to the state constitution. Everything is a negotiation:

"Because the state’s constitution bans any reduction in worker retirement benefits, the government’s pension costs will continue to rise as it faces pressure to pay down that debt, a squeeze that has pushed Illinois’s bond rating to the precipice of junk."

Where in the Rust belt? I agree, much more affordable. Interested in which city you chose, and what your experience has been...?

Just because certain people can't describe or understand the value of a given task or job, doesn't mean it has no value. Clearly if person A pays person B to perform a task, then person B must be creating at least as much value as they're being paid. Who are you or I to judge that value? We're neither receiving the value nor paying for it. If person A is consistently paying more than $2 for $1 of value, then they'll soon be out of money, and the system will unceremoniously remove person A from decision making authority.

While it's nice to suggest that Wall St. doesn't create any value for people, ~20% of our GDP would suggest otherwise. The truth is that Wall St. acts much like Adam Smith's invisible hand. For our system to work, capital must be allocated to optimal uses. Command economies do a poor job of this, except in war time. Wall St. helps us reallocate capital to the most productive endeavors. That sounds pretty valuable to me. Even if the folks on Wall St. don't build your car, they did pool the capital necessary to finance the construction of the manufacturing facility. Can't have one without the other.

As a final point, if the 'caring class' isn't compensated enough, perhaps it's because there is an oversupply of 'caring folks'. Or perhaps they're not really creating any value for others? Perhaps some of the 'caring class' should get creative and find other ways to be caring, or perhaps they should find ways to provide more 'care' with their time so they can command a higher share of the value they create?

At the very least they are the product owner, and if needed can step into a scrum master role depending on resources / constraints.

Call it whatever job title you want, there inevitably needs to be someone steering the boat. You can get rid of 'PMs' but you can't get rid of the need to set strategy / vision, understand the customer problem, identify solutions, collaborate with design and corral the rest of the organization (marketing, sales, support, operations) to bring it all together. If you don't have a PM performing those functions, then a member of the engineering team needs to step up, or perhaps someone from the executive team. But then guess what... that person is doing the things that PMs do, so I guess you might start calling them a PM...? Or a 'Product Editor'... or 'Program Manager'. All just names for something pretty similar.

When organizations are small enough, the whole team performs those functions together. As you grow it makes sense to have someone double down and own those responsibilities. Though this doesn't absolve engineers of the need to understand customers and help paint the product vision.

Perhaps the better question is 'Where did all the non-technical-purely-business-MBA PMs go?'

The answer is that it is likely a disappearing breed. An MBA won't teach you how to build great software or lead technology teams, so it's foolish to believe that someone with such credentials would be a natural fit to come lead a software organization. Good PMs I've worked with can have a conversation about the technology stack as easily as they can debate a marketing strategy. Great PMs these days need to span the entire 'company stack' if that makes sense.

Lastly, if you don't know why a given role exists, then it's probably because you haven't worked with someone great in that role. There are a number of roles in tech companies I found less useful until I met someone who had mastered the craft - when I saw them in action, it became clear why the role existed and how they could perform a certain function infinitely better than I.

As a last thought, I worked at Intuit a while back and I'm not sure they are a 'shining star' of PM training. They have done a good job of 'marketing' themselves that way, and they are an example of a company that typically has 'less technical' PMs in their organization. This is because Intuit is more of a 'marketing / business' driven organization. This contrasts with Google who is known to favor promoting engineers into the PM role. Neither model is 100% - the ideal is probably somewhere in between.

Just recently got in the market for home furniture. Found it a bit of a mess. Something like this could be useful - effectively like hipmunk, but for furniture. i.e. make the experience of understanding your options and finding what you want easier.

I like it.

I also noticed you guys are up in Toronto (my original hometown). If you want more candid feedback from someone in the market for furniture, or if I can help with anything else silicon valley related (I live in SF). Let me know.

This article is confusing cause and effect. Bus routes have been opened to cater to people who choose to live in desirable neighborhoods. It's not the buses that make the neighborhood desirable. If all googlers decided they wanted to live in Marin, I would bet that google would send a bus up there in a heartbeat.

I work with The Climate Corp as a product manager - there have been no problems retaining employees. In fact, from my point of view, morale is higher than before the acquisition. We are pretty passionate about our mission of helping farmers improve their yields. Our vision is to use data and analytics to help them do that in a more sustainable way. The acquisition has helped accelerate our vision by at least 3-5 years - which is why people are pretty excited... also why we are hiring aggressively.

The Climate Corp is one of the best companies I've worked for - the combination of great (and smart) people, mission, vision and real world impact are hard come by. If you're interested in learning more, I'd be happy to chat anytime.

For what it's worth, I believe they took a sample of close to 600 people - 237 from Harvard, and another 332 who were less 'advantaged'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Study

Yes, they were all white males. Not a great study if they were trying to definitively answer the question for everyone in America. But to suggest the findings have no broader applicability would also be short sighted.

hpvic - not sure if you're working this solo, or as a bigger team, but I'm a PM, I love Trello, haven't used Pivotal, and can't stand Jira. I've been considering building out a Jira-killer myself as a side project. Might be good to chat and hear more of what you're working on. If you want to connect my email is cameron.norgate at the gmail. Cheers!

This 'response' was needed. Thank you! If anyone is interested in getting a refreshing perspective on job and life satisfaction, you might consider reading 'So Good They Can't Ignore You' by Cal Newport - great read on what provides for a fulfilling career. I think the original writer of the post could benefit from that.

http://www.calnewport.com/books/sogood.html

Enjoy

You can form your own opinions about global warming, rising ocean levels, the acidification of the seas, the destruction of our rain forests or the unsustainable nature of our carbon based economy (see peak oil). I don't have time to reference the multitude of articles on the subject, but they're abundantly available... there's this great site called Google.com which can help you with that.

Regarding the issue of 'natural beauty' in the world, I see it on a micro-level when I go to a lake in the summer that was once pristine but is now overrun with seaweed due to Nitrogen runoff from farmer fields. I see it on a macro level when I read about things my children's generation might never enjoy, like the beauty of a coral reef.

At the end of the day with so much 'pseudo science' thrown around from fringe scientists, all anyone has is an 'opinion'. You now have mine.

The reality is that the best way to control population expansion is by bringing good healthcare to a region. People in the third world have huge families for a number of reasons - a few of them include the reality that:

1) Many children will die young, so in order to have at least a few that survive they need to have a large number of them

2) They have no form of birth control available available to them, so even if they wanted to they could not control the population

To go along with this, in societies that lack a social safety net / old age pensions, your children are your retirement fund, so you tend to have many of them.

It's a multi-faceted problem, but there are humane, concrete solutions that don't involve acts of god.

The problem with this thinking is a failure to realize that we are already taxing the Earth far beyond its carrying capacity. To continue supporting even our current population will force us to devastate our planet to the point that we won't recognize it in 50-100 years. What's the point of supporting more people if we bring them into a miserable world?

Certainly we COULD continue developing innovations that harness and shape the natural world to support continued human population growth... but that line of thinking doesn't give room to consider whether we SHOULD do that.

Should population growth be a goal? What about raising the standard of living of all those who are already on the planet - helping them move from mere sustenance to abundance, and the opportunity to explore the true wonders life has to offer?

Should we live in a world void of natural beauty? I don't think it's a fair trade to have a few more billion people on the planet if everyone then has to read about how beautiful the Earth was before we poisoned the seas, melted the ice caps and drained the soil of its nutrients.

We are at a point now where we as a Human race can and should be thinking about our population growth responsibly. To suggest that we COULD adapt to a future world taxed by overpopulation doesn't imply that we SHOULD follow that path.

It's a prisoner's dilemma. All countries are better off if everyone shares information, but there is a huge incentive to 'cheat' in this agreement.

News of an outbreak in a given country will have a substantial, negative economic impact. At the very least, tourism and trade will suffer. It's not unreasonable that other countries will quarantine and outright block off ties with the affected country.

Back in 2003 with SARS, Toronto Canada took a substantial hit in tourism dollars, so much so that the Rolling Stones stepped in to host a charity concert to help the city out... Chinese tourism was likely affected worse.

As a politician or public health official, crying wolf early or raising the alarm of a potential outbreak will certainly have a negative financial impact... what's not known is how serious a given outbreak might be. So in short, they are weighing a known, substantial cost (lost tourism) against an unknown and unquantifiable benefit (avoiding an outbreak)... being the political worms they are that got them into office in the first place, they will most likely take the route that provides the least direct blow-back to them, which is sadly the route of hiding the outbreak.

Totally agree with Zeteo's assessment - only thing I would add is that people shouldn't assume someone else'e job is 'bullshit' simply because they can't directly see or appreciate the value it creates.

For example: in the case of corporate leadership, it is easy and appealing to suggest they aren't creating any direct value... i.e. fire the leadership and 'widgets' will still get made. The problem with this thinking is that the output from some individuals only shows up in the medium to long term... take away great leadership from a company and they will make the numbers for the next few quarters, but in a year they will be out-maneuvered and out-performed by the competition. In today's economy it's not about how many widgets you make, it's about making the right widget in the first place... figuring that out is a lot harder than actually making the thing in the end.

The value some jobs create is more difficult to view directly, but is no less valuable in terms of delivering things people want, that they are willing to pay for - i.e. creating wealth. Investors understand this very well, which is why they are willing to pay huge sums to top leadership.

As a final thought, if you really want to 'reap the benefits' or our more productive society, you can work 15 hours starting today. The tradeoff is that you'll need to move to the middle of Colorado, buy a small plot of land, build your own house and purchase a straight edge razor. If you want to enjoy the vast benefits (however small) that our progressive society enjoys, then you also need to live within that system and work in some way to push things forward... however incrementally.

I think the bigger problem lies in how they are taught. They can be extremely 'hard' when taught in an unintuitive, abstract way. There are some people who are drawn to the sort of raw problem sets that typify science and engineering courses - But I believe there is a much larger set of people fully capable of success in those courses, but dissuaded by lack of engaging content and clear path to a future impact on the world (i.e. applicability)

When learning something new, it's important to help the learner see progress and applicability of what they're learning - two things I believe are sadly absent in most entry-level STEM courses... too much focus on theory, too early on.

A few thoughts:

1) You need to focus on one or two things - no use in being a jack of all trades and master of none

2) What do you naturally do when you have free time in the evening? For any of the above mentioned activities, do you ever 'get into it' and pull up hours later after a big session? If you do, chances are it's something that really engages you... that's a good thing, follow it

3) A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step - you just need to start walking down a path, even if you can't see over the next hill, you need to start walking... do you know anyone who did anything for 3-5 years and still sucked at it? Probably not, so chances are if you commit to something and put in the time, you'll get great sooner than later too... but it won't happen overnight

I used all of the above lenses to focus on becoming a world class product manager and technologist... hope it helps you.