gpresot's comments

I realise the article was written for a specific audience for which this may be obvious, but what is the difference between data scientist and data engineer (in terms of what their job is)?

A good presentation is not a matter of software. You can make outstanding presentation without embedded videos and fancy transitions. And you can make them on PowerPoint, Keynotes, Libreoffice, or translucent sheets. Focus on a clear storyline, and key messages of each slide, keep it simple, use some visuals instead of a wall of text, use bullet-points wisely... People spend months on a project and then 1-2 days on the final presentation and wonder why the audience does not understand / is bored. Management consultants (whose main output are presentations) start working on the final deck from the first weeks / days of the project.

It is one of the few subscriptions to media / news sites that I really value. Apart from their Editorials section, all articles have a balanced point of view, presenting all sides of an argument. They are all well written, and manage to explain complex topics (science, economics) in a fairly accessible way. And is also a good way to keep up to date on what happens around the world as each world region is covered and articles are often a well argumented summary of any relevant topic in that area in the past week(s). Their Christmas double issue is joy to read. But you can buy the print version at your newsagent for a few weeks as a trial.

Former management consultant here (with one of the Big 3). It is true that some of this type of work (twisting analysis to fit conclusions) happens, but my experience has been the opposite, as in the medium-long term clients appreciate more the consultants that don't hide the truth, and in the end consulting partners want to keep long term relationships with the executives they work with. Consulting has offered me a lot. Money, but more importantly exciting projects that one usually doesn't work on at a relatively young age, the opportunity to learn how to structure communication effectively, how to manage stakeholders with opposing views (and how to become a bridge between them), how to break down a problem in pieces that are solvable with the experience and tools that you have. This in turn has accelerated my career (also outside of consulting). I also went back to consulting after working in industry.

Companies hire consultants for many reasons. In general they have the skills internally too, but unless they have overcapacity, their people have a day-job too and it is preferable to throw a group of smart and motivated mercenaries to solve a tough problem working full-time on it. Sometimes consultant are the only ones that are capable of liaising across functions and departments, without seeming skewed towards any particular one: as roles in industry tend to specialise ever more, this is becoming more and more important. And some problems (organization, process, etc) benefit a lot from an external view.

Sure, sometimes Mck, BCG, Bain (and many others) are used to provide validation for something that the CEO wants to do. But it happens a lot less often than people think.

Who is this product for? The majority of expert Excel users in a company, do not know how to code. The majority of people that in a company are coding (for whatever aim) are never asked to produce business reports from excel. People who need the report (management) do not care how easy or complex it is to create it. Airtable is (somewhat) successful because it allowed a vast group of people with limited excel knowledge to create good looking reports with a simple visual interface. I think your app just gives people who know how to use (coders) it something they don't need (excel reports), or gives people who would need it (analysts, controllers, managers) something they would be scared to use (too much coding!!). So nobody is really going to bother management with the request to try it and buy it.

Really great app. One minor issue I have with it is that when you sort alphabetically (by ticker symbol), the watchlist and the portfolio get mixed together, which is counter-intuitive and a bit unfriendly to the eyes. I would expect it to sort alphabetically but grouping separately the watchlist elements and the portfolio elements.

> But there's literally no difference between the hardware of a Macbook, Mac Mini, and iPad Pro apart from peripherals (e.g. screen, keyboard, touchpad).

screen, keyboard, trackpad, touch screen ports, are A LOT of what defines the hardware. It is clearly not only chipset and RAM.

> Why would a developer even need two devices when the laptop runs the same hardware and is only missing things (modem, touch screen, sensors, cameras)?

Maybe they don't need two devices in the first place. Isn't a MBP a very capable, portable, software development device? If the issue is that moving around with a MBP13 and an iPadPro with keyboard is cumbersome / heavy, then maybe the MBP plus the cheapest iPad with no keyboard would be more bearable and cover most of the use cases? Maybe the MPB and the iPhone can cover enough use cases.

I think my point is that the reasoning around iPadpro and MBP should not be that they are in principle equally powerful, so they should allow me to do the same things equally well, rather than the two have distinctive hardware features (form, keyboard, ports...) that make one better suited than the other for specific tasks. Whether I value these specific tasks enough to buy both, depends on my personal needs (and cash reserves)

I work as management consultant and the iPad+Apple Pencil+OneNote combination has been a game changer for my workflow. No need to have tons of paper notebooks to take notes during meetings (and then misplace 2 months into the project), no need to print powerpoint or pdf presentations or documents to make comments for the rest of the team. The OneNote app works really well and syncs perfectly with my windows 10 laptop (and my macbook pro for personal use). I haven't found another compelling use for it (I wouldn't use it to make powerpoint presentations, nor excel spreadsheets; i could use it for text documents in MS Word, but the full keyboard of a laptop and far superior trackpads make this a non-starter). For emails, the phone is good enough if i need to reply on the go. All this to say that how fitting an instrument is to your work depends on the kind of work you do. From what I have seen, graphic designers and artists have embraced the iPad. Do software developers really crave a touch-first instrument that is barely more portable than a MBP 13"?

Actually, roughly 55% of annual demand is for "practical" uses: jewellery and industrial products. The remainder for storing in vaults (by investors or central banks). https://www.statista.com/statistics/299609/gold-demand-by-in...

The PE funds you describe are only a portion of the many PE strategies. Some take over well managed family owned companies where the family wants out; other acquire parts of larger groups that are being sold off because the current owner needs cash to invest somewhere else; in many cases PE funds come in to provide the cash needed for massive international expansion etc etc. The vulture/turnaround funds you describe certainly exist, and give the acquired company some hope of survival (usually, at least initially, with massive cost cutting). The fact that all these are leveraged investments (some less than others) means that a negative turn in the economy can have a massive negative impact in the ability of the company to cover their debt obligation, hence the bankruptcy.

Companies in Germany, like Switzerland, Netherlands, US etc import green coffee from around the world, roast it, mix various types and origins and qualities to produce commercial recipes that have a stable taste, then grind it and pack it in air sealed packs (as soon as possible after roasting). Being an import hub for green coffee allows the mixing, essential for commercial coffee. Coffee producing countries usually put duties on imports of green coffee to protect local production. They could import roasted coffee to then mix with local production, but that would have to be air/sealed in bulk, which i imagine is quite costly. And I suspect the market for single origin coffee is still too small to allow economically viable operations. Once roasted and sealed from the effect of air oxidation and humidity, coffee can last quite a while, certainly enough to be exported throughout the world.

True. But that unpredictable change in tasting notes is the enemy of commercial packaged coffee: your box of illy, carte noir, maxwell house, nescafe, nespresso MUST taste the same every time, and MUST have a stable cost of raw material (apart from baseline coffee prices fluctuations). The same happens for chocolate and tea (lipton's and twining's teabags can be a mix of 20-30 tea varieties that change continuously)

Apart from the need of roasting coffee close to where the demand is to ensure "freshness", the other main reason that most large roasting operations are in Europe and US is "mixing". Most commercial coffees that you buy at a supermarket or even at coffee shops are a mix of various varieties. The provenance and ratios in the final mix change continuously to adapt to different taste (that may vary from harvest to harvest in the same estate), yields and prices, with the aim of maintaining a stable taste year on year and a stable cost. So even large coffee producing countries can not produce the right mix, and usually choose to penalise coffee imports (with duties) to protect local farmers.

Locking the costs at a fixed amount for a fixed amount of time. This certainty allows retailers to plan promotions, discounts levels, special offers without impacting profitability. It also simplifies accounting and budgeting. Making a profit from the hedge is not really a priority (it is difficult enough for professional trading firms with full research departments at their disposal). Also, retailers (and other producers, like coffee roasters) MUST buy their raw materials quite regularly, so the profit potential of hedging tends to average out.

A business like Google Cloud would not be wound down, it would be sold. MS and Amazon woulc not be allowed to buy it for antitrust issues, so potential buyers might include Rackspace and Apple, among others.

I am a management consultant, so field of work might be different from yours, but general rules are probably the same. Also, I am not a freelancer, though i have worked often with them. My two pence:

- Always have a Scope of Work (SOW) agreed BEFORE you start working: Clients are often bad at explaining what they want in detail, and consultants are equally bad at being realistic at what they can offer in the amount of time available.

- Always (ideally) have a contract signed before you do any substantial work. The contract and the SoW are your main protection against scope creep. And usually it is the consultant who drafts them first, not the client, so it is your best chance of driving the project details.

- Rates vary with client, length of the contract, stage of client relationship (lower rates for first project), but ...

- Rates tend to be sticky. If you work for Xusd/h for the first project, many clients will expect that rate to stay for the next one too. So your first negotiation is the more difficult and the more important at the same time.

- Rather than offer a low rate, state your full rate and the discount you apply and why (e.g. first project, long project, maybe the client is putting some resources and tools on the project...)

- Preferably charge by hour, day or week. The proposal or contract should have an estimate of total price, based on estimate of duration, but it should clearly state that it is an estimate and you will change based on time units.

- However, it is very likely that yours is not the only offer they receive, so they will compare them on the same basis, based on a fixed amount of hours per day, and the duration of the project. A consulting firm staffing a team has more leeway with the composition of the team (junior consultant to Partner), and comparisons among firms are slightly more difficult (usually done on the basis of blended rate). The quotes of freelancers are very easy to convert and compare.

- Expenses are always on top (travel, hotels; meals are a question mark)

- Try to find out hourly or day rates of consulting firm (in you field of activity) in your country: they are likely a lot higher than what you think of charging, partly because they have higher costs, but also because they factor in a % of idle time of their resources during the year. You should do the same. Your rate will probably still be lower then theirs as there is a real value in being part of a firm with established methodologies, expertise, examples... (this may be less applicable in other fields of consulting )

- Think about why they need a consultant: is it because their resources are too busy or because they do not know how to resolve the problem they have? The latter gives you more leverage on the rate.

- Remember that every client is different: some impose work based on a fixed total price, some do not want to reimburse expenses (and may be fine with a % markup on the rate). Often it is due to internal procurement rules and guidelines, which will be difficult to change.

- Bill often throughout a project (frequency depends on project duration: weekly for short assignments, monthly for longer).

- A good practice is to send a fee tracker weekly to the client, showing hours worked and incurred fee. This avoids surprises. It is best if you have some deliverables or progress report to show as well.

- If you feel that the project is taking longer than expected, be open about it and explain why (it may be because some input from the client was delayed, and they usually do not object to additional compensation, or at least they will push to accelerate on their side; it may be because things are more difficult than expected: this may become a difficult conversation, so be prepared to explain why it is so, what can be done, etcetera).

- Your project is also the best occasion to get another project with the same client (as a follow-on activity or maybe because while working on it you get to know they have other problems that you can help with. It is BY FAR the best form of business development.

You axe it if you can use the same resources (people, capital, time) to produce something with a higher absolute margin (or better, future cash stream, which is the real measure of value for a company). So you don't axe it but keep the costs in, idle. You could even discontinue the product, restructure the company to fit, and give back the cash to shareholders if the contribution that product was giving is less that they can make elsewhere (on a risk adjested basis). At least in theory... in practice cutting the costs to fit is very difficult...

I agree. A simple to use software, that does very well the things you need for personal / home ( & very small businesses) use (family/personal business budget, lists, calendars, small inventories...). With a large library of well designed, elegant templates. For LibreOffice ( and many other FOSS packages, really) many more contributors should focus on how things look and feel, rather than how many things the software can do... More Airtable than Excel.

Hats off for this. I was thinking more about as a substitute of a simple paper list (or if on mobile, just a list on whatever default note app is you have in iOS or Android)

I found the Ribbon a good evolution. Especially if you use plugins for Powerpoint and Excel. Once you have a few of those (and if you work in finance or management consulting it is easy to have 3 or 4 installed by default by your Company) the ribbon layout ensures a certain cleanliness of the toolbar.