schkkd's comments

Tbh, even I don't understand "grok" :)

True spherical hackers in the vacuum want to be undisputable experts in complex topics and as this often mixes with sheer egoism, they like to flex with this knowledge and remind others how unsophisticated others are. But ideal spherical hackers are rare. Moreover, smart people like to learn new stuff not only about the tech side of things, so if they sniff you're trying to manipulate them, they'll pay you back with the same coin and you'll get a team of cynical snarky devs. If you want to become a leader for them, you'll have to earn their respect (again, a lazy attempt to earn it by slipping how you know some python will dump your rating that very moment, as that would be seen as a cheap manipulation). A leader for them can be a super knowledgeable jerk (e.g. Linus) or a super humble guy who sends the message "you know more than me, so I'll step out of your way". In other words, if you really want to step on their ego by telling them what to do, you'd better be an undisputable expert, or expect a delayed counter reaction.

Reddit serves its purpose well. It's a honeypot for lazy emotional people: reddit offers them space to procrastinate and gets to influence them in return (ads, politics).

One day there was a post there about free 5 bucks for some PlayStation stuff. The post received 30k comments. Thats all you need to know about the reddit audience.

What would improve the content quality is a requirement to maintain membership by answering a complex enough question once a month. Questions could be prepared by mods. But then all the reddit audience would be gone, and with them the reddit's power to influence the lazy internet crowd.

There's no wealth there. All Google employees get something like 25 billions a year. The US budget is measured in trillions and to cover up just this recession alone, Fed created 6 trillions, or 240 years worth of wages for those employees. Do I need to say that in ten years there will be another recession, where Fed will create 20 trillions?

They have to sell something only if the Fed don't give them money (and dilute the share of the lower 90% as a side effect).

There's this Wall Street movie made in 1970 (?) about this very kind of people.

That's pretty much size of a mobile app. But the thing with web apps is that they are downloaded every time and hence the outcry.

Everything is negotiable. You can negotiate a private office with a ocean view if you're valuable enough. This won't work for rank and file employees obviously.

Nope, no one. And I could negotiate terms with directors, VPs and CEOs (of small firms) over lunches: meaning that they deemed it valuable enough to spend a few hours of their time on me, make a sales pitch and listen. Some admitted that while my terms were reasonable, it would just too expensive for their company to hire me.

That's why when a yet another aspiring startup wants to hire me, I ask for a high sign on bonus as an insurance, monthly vesting cycle, at least 200k in base pay and high severance upon termination. Never been given that, but I don't regret: looking back, all those "just 1 year till IPO" companies are underwater.