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jcnnghm's comments

jcnnghm | 10 years ago | on: Bernie Tax Calculator

Sanders plan will adversely impact the bay area, and home prices in particular. If you're making over $250k, the social security phase out goes away, you have 2.2% of extra income tax, and 6.4% of new payroll taxes. Add in 11% for CA, and you could easily be losing 70% to tax all-in at the margin. It'll be tough to get employers to pay an extra $100k a year to cover a $30k rent differential. Considering that you can already afford much higher quality housing with a higher standard of living outside of the bay area on half the money, why stay out here? San Francisco is gross anyway.

This plan will push the bay area in particular far to the right on the laffer curve. What'll happen to US GDP growth if the tech industry starts imploding and moving out? It's possible to make more in the bay area than in the rest of the country, but if you're only retaining 30% of that excess, all of which is soaked up by long-time landowners and the insane cost of living, why bother.

jcnnghm | 10 years ago | on: The US digital service

Did the people that charged $200 million to build healthcare.gov get to keep the money after the project failed? What about the people that allocated that money, do they still have their jobs?

It seems kind of disingenuous to ask engineers to do a "tour of duty" at a substantially reduced rate, when they could instead contract at normal rates and actually deliver working software. If you want to help the government, contract at normal rates and actually deliver high-quality, working software - don't take a pay cut to do it.

jcnnghm | 11 years ago | on: Is San Francisco losing its soul? (2014)

San Franciscans have no one to blame other than San Franciscans for the housing policies that are pricing people out of the market. Well meaning but ultimately deeply misguided liberals are still insisting that housing supply doesn't affect pricing (http://truth-out.org/news/item/26656-developers-aren-t-going...), while others are are calling for a moratorium on building (http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real-estate/201...).

Meanwhile, in Washington DC, rents are falling because of the increase in supply, while both the population and number of jobs in increasing. DC also has a unique character that they've been able to preserve despite growth; San Francisco needs to do the same, and fast.

San Franciscans need to start pushing the city for a lot of new housing units, probably 100,000, with expedited planning, approvals, and building if they don't want to get completely priced out of the market.

More on DC:

* http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/11/dc-rents-ar...

* http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/falling-rents-in-dc-a-product-o...

* http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-04-23/washington...

* http://dcinno.streetwise.co/2014/08/01/did-you-know-d-c-s-re...

* http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/dc_area_rents_drop_3_a...

jcnnghm | 11 years ago | on: How Wall Street recruits so many Ivy League grads

Goldman Sachs 2011 net income was $162,913 per employee. Average pay was $367,057. It's harder to get data on Google, but it looks like the mid-career median salary is $141,000. Google's Gross Profit (Total Revenue less Cost of Revenue) was $24.7B in 2011, and GS's was $24.5B. At the same time, Google had 32,467 employees to GS's 35,700. Yet, the Google net income was $9.7B compared to $4.4B on the GS side. The difference seems to be made up entirely by the difference in employee compensation.

It's the money, stupid.

jcnnghm | 12 years ago | on: Ask HN: What under $100 item would you recommend everyone buy?

A Leatherman Multitool

I recommend the New Wave, though I also have a Charge TTi. I find myself using them all the time, and they last a really long time. I still have, and use regularly, the Leatherman Super Tool that I got in the mid 90's. I keep one in my office, one in my care, my girlfriends car, and one in the utility room. Really nice to have a solid multitool nearby whenever you need one.

jcnnghm | 12 years ago | on: Facebook acquires Oculus VR

Diversification at the corporate level isn't a good idea. Investors typically demand a discount (the conglomerate discount) for diversified corporations because they can easily diversify themselves by holding a variety of securities. Imagine an investor that values social networks highly, but who doesn't care for VR. They'll view this as a distraction from the core business, leading to a discount of the core business and an even greater discount of the VR portion. Diversification makes companies harder to analyze and reduces management focus, and has the tendency to depress both earnings and value.

There are some exceptions around market inefficiency, for example in the case of emerging markets where companies are difficult to manage and finance, but those are becoming less common, not more. I think there may be an argument that the market inefficiency caused by the extra reporting requirements imposed by SOX is causing more companies to go public by way of acquisition instead of IPO, but I haven't really seen clear data on that point.

jcnnghm | 12 years ago | on: Secret Raises $10M At A $50M Valuation

In retrospect, I think this is the result of Facebook transitioning from a "private" social network to a public network, when they decided to accept anyone over the age of 13. When Facebook was college-only, I think one of the major appeals was the ability to widely share information, with the one restriction being that it was kept to your peer group. I think there is a whole host of things that young people are willing to share openly with their peers that they also don't want to share with their parents or other authority figures. Further, in many cases, that desire for privacy is not misguided; protecting controversial beliefs from people that have power over you is actually kind of wise.

jcnnghm | 12 years ago | on: Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (March 2014)

SEEKING WORK - San Francisco, CA (preferably the Peninsula) or Remote

I'm a full stack Ruby/Rails developer. I started working with Rails in 2006, and I've been writing software for over a decade. Outside of Rails, I've been working with Python at my day-job for the last six months. I am finishing a Master's with a Finance concentration now, and I have a BS in CS, in case you might be interested in someone with some specialized knowledge.

I am particularly interested in working with startups, working on data issues (I process data for a site with > 100M Uniques at my day job), or working on anything marketing-related. I've got a lot of experience running A/B tests and offsite marketing.

Email: [email protected] https://github.com/jcnnghm

jcnnghm | 12 years ago | on: Stupid Simple Things SF Techies Could Do To Stop Being Hated

The US gives about 1.85% of GDP, the highest in the world. Second is Israel at 1.34%. The US also volunteers more than all but two other nations, the Netherlands and Sweden. In 2010, the US spent almost 3 times as much on foreign aid as any other developed nation (US at $38b v. Germany at $13.5b). Don't let the facts stand in the way though.

jcnnghm | 12 years ago | on: Are STEM Workers Overpaid?

The Soviet Union put humans in space. And you have to be able to compete at all before you can lose a multi-decade arms race between superpowers.

At what cost? How many Ukrainians did they starve to death in the process, how many "political opponents" were purged, how many people died in the gulags because they didn't tow the line?

Unfortunately, what you want has been tried, and it didn't work very well. What you'll end up with is many people not working at all because its not worth paying them, and a bunch of others forced to work at gunpoint to make up for the people that can't produce. It's pretty shitty to be in either group.

jcnnghm | 12 years ago | on: Are STEM Workers Overpaid?

The backwater pre-industrial, post-war torn nation that beat the US to space? No, I don't think that was why they couldn't compete

Pretty amazing what you can do when you're willing to spend your country into insolvency and collapse.

So if you give people interesting challenges and make sure they can meet their basic needs, people are likely to preform.

It's not like 50% of workers in the USSR admitted to drinking on the job, or 40% held second jobs to make more money, right? I guess if you're not motivated by a strong aense of community and bullshit pay, the gulags and purges might help.

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