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xiaosun | 2 years ago | on: Remote work brings hidden penalty for young professionals, study says

Sales and sales development roles are very different, especially if you are in an inside sales role. The number of feedback touchpoints are much higher for those roles. Sales interactions happen very frequently and getting feedback real-time increases the quality and relevance of the feedback.

xiaosun | 3 years ago | on: Distributor cancelled an order and we need to move 30k bags of coffee [updated]

>>To make this order happen, we had to take $45,000 in personal loans from friends and family, $65,000 in business credit card debt, $35,000 from a business loan, $60,000 in personal credit card debt, $20,000 in outstanding invoice debt, and $11,000 in loans from us personally to the business, for a total of $216,000 in debt.

I don't find myself very sympathetic. Feels like there is plenty of evidence that the business owners here aren't the most diligent or detailed oriented.

$45k+$65k+$35k+$60k+$20k+$11k adds up to $236k

Best case this is the result of their own naivety/incompetence, worse case this is just a distasteful marketing ploy.

>>Mid July, after 6 weeks of roasting 21 hours a day on the roaster in 3 shifts, working 12-16 hour days, regularly working until 11 pm to finish bagging and boxing.

Despite this work schedule, had no problem releasing their weekly hour-long podcasts every week in June/July.

xiaosun | 3 years ago | on: Amazon investors nuke ethics overhaul and say yes to $212M CEO pay

The award is for 61000 shares, which would have been worth $212M as of the 12/31/2021 share price. It's worth far less now.

Quite frankly, this is as sensible of a comp package for a CEO as one could propose. Compensated in primarily in equity with a long horizon for vesting. If a company wanted its executive to be aligned with the interests of its shareholders, is there really a better structure?

Aligning the incentives of the CEO to the incentives of shareholders by awarding the equivalent of an 0.012% ownership stake seems reasonable to me.

xiaosun | 4 years ago | on: Gov. Newsom signs law to stop UC Berkeley enrollment cuts

"The main reason people live there is to feel remote and rural. It is a way of life."

Marin County is one of the most segregated counties in the Bay Area, and by design from legacy housing policies. It's hard to ignore the fact that "preserving the essence" is the same thing as "continue to be a heavily segregated" locale.

"An inordinate number of the most segregated cities in the Bay Area are smaller cities that are more than 85 percent white in Marin County (Ross, Belvedere, Sausalito, San Anselmo, Fairfax, and Mill Valley are each in the top 10). Two of the top 10 are similarly small-sized, heavily white cities in San Mateo County (Portola Valley and Woodside)."

https://belonging.berkeley.edu/racial-segregation-san-franci...

xiaosun | 4 years ago | on: A short conversation with a bank

Well, I suppose the devil's advocate argument is once you get to this stage (publicly traded company), the company's priority is no longer just "do things to get traction", but also "do things to support share price". You could argue the ex consultant MBA type product manager is better suited to solve a problem that institutional investors run by ex finance MBA types have.

xiaosun | 5 years ago | on: Why are so many successful founding CEOs software engineers?

I know I'm being repetitive of points already made by prior posters, but the logical fallacy of this article is so egregious that I can't help but post it again.

The opening paragraph of this article:

"From the onset, we have chosen to use one of Wall Street's measures of a better CEO – namely, market cap. In other words, by this measure, CEOs that create the most value are the best CEOs. Sure, there are other measures perhaps more virtuous; but market capital is well-known, generally reliable, and historically trended. So, let’s just roll with it as our measure of “better CEOs” as we have lots to discuss.

An objective review of the data leads to the conclusion: top companies are increasingly founded and managed by software engineers."

The first 100 words in this paragraph and the "objective conclusion" drawn is all you need to read to know the remaining 7000+ words are completely logically flawed. It's like making the assertion "the best restaurants in the world serve the most meals, so an objective review of the data leads to the conclusion that fast food restaurants have the best chefs."

xiaosun | 5 years ago | on: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

About ~10% of AirBnbs shares were offered in the IPO. So only the shares sold in the IPO "left anything on the table". The other 90% of shareholders still have the option of selling at the higher market price.

Who's the say this wasn't the intended effect - the benefit to the valuation of the 90% of shares still being held is greater than the opportunity cost of the 10% shares sold in the initial IPO?

xiaosun | 6 years ago | on: Private Equity Wants in on the Bailout? Spare Me

>As long as operational cash flow is positive, then no amount of leverage or debt distress will halt the continued operations. The business might "fail" in the sense that the entity is legally re-structured and the equity owners, or even junior debt owners, are zeroed. But there's no reason in a country with well-developed bankruptcy law for this to have any impact on the employees, customers or operations of the business.

You're naively assuming the equity owners meekly turnover the operations to the debtholders in bankruptcy when business performance suffers but cash flow is positive.

Equity holders are going to inflict a ton of pain on the employees and customers of the company first. They are going to layoff employees to the bare bones, sell otherwise performant assets, play games with vendors/receivables, and otherwise do anything else they can do to squeeze more runway before giving things up in bankruptcy.

xiaosun | 7 years ago | on: Making $300k in San Francisco can still mean living paycheck-to-paycheck

God I hate idiotic articles like this.

I'm pretty sure the definition of "paycheck-to-paycheck" doesn't mean having "difficulty" (only $4500 of cushion!) affording discretionary and luxury expenses like "weekly date nights, 3 weeks of vacation, luxury 3 row SUV, Coach & Banana Republic clothes, and $7 grand for entertainment).

xiaosun | 7 years ago | on: Golden Rules for Making Money (1880)

If the equity sold has preferred returns or liquidity preferences, then the impact of the compounding cost to common shareholders is not too dissimilar from the impact of debt.
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