Strongly agree, especially when it comes to things like AWS services. Their APIs and services evolve so quickly that things like local mocking (or emulation for local development) is an anti-pattern.
Where possible, I prefer to utilize short-term, pay-per-use infrastructure for development and testing.
Can anyone confirm this information is actually shared? Last month, I went through a background check for a new position which used The Worknumber. Not all data was present & correct (a previous employer was acquired and that goofed some data). When I was asked by The Worknumber to correct it, they wanted a W2 and said (direct quote from web form):
"Please redact or conceal any compensation related information on any documentation you submit. It is not permissible (either by law and/or company policy) for <new company> to view such information as part of your background check."
So can the new company actually get access to the compensation information? Is that perhaps a state law?
There are several states which prevent asking about current compensation (MA allows it only after making an offer of employment; other states likely have their own wrinkles).
I concur with a lot of what Nader has laid out here. Specialization + Content are keys to unlocking much higher pricing power.
Getting started is tricky, but my most profitable side work has been workshops and lunch-and-learns, which is beneficial as I can re-use a lot of the same content between engagements.
I agree as well. You can be a "cloud consultant" or you can go all in on AWS costs, have a newsletter, keep your face in front of people, etc. Guess which one probably does better.
Of course it has to be a specialization that enough people need to be willing to pay for.
You also have to keep a clear lookup for a new area or areas if your specialty is in decline. You don't want to be the Y2K mitigation expert in 2001. Or the top performance expert for some legacy or discontinued computer architecture.
The issue is when the ultra-wealthy take out loans against their investment assets (and thus, those unrealized capital gains).
By doing that, ultra-wealthy _are_ realizing the value of their investments without being taxed. That's how this wealth is being accessed, and that's a large component of what drives these ultra-low tax rates for the ultra-wealthy.
Then HELOC would be taxed which many middle class people rely on. Also its a loan so it need to be paid back. Will payments on private loans be deducted from income then?
This is not on topic, but to me it's ridiculous that something like HELOC exists and is somehow widely accepted. Like dude, you'll never pay down that debt. Your house is not an ATM machine.
The underlying assumption that prices only go up. It's so deep in the culture you don't even see the absurdity of not building any equity except for what's generated by upwards price momentum.
Well, population growth has been a constant throughout that culture and that nation's entire history, so all of the consequences of that are to be expected, no?
Housing prices always reverts back to CPI over multiple decades, i.e they offer no real capital gain. Robert Shiller wrote a lot about this.
Also I don't understand how a growing population leads to increasing prices, while there's so damn much unused land? Either there is enough new land, then people eventually spread out (and prices revert to the CPI, to the cost of construction), or there isn't enough land and homelessness increases as more and more people are completely priced out. Right now nearly every country is in the first situation.
> Either there is enough new land, then people eventually spread out (and prices revert to the CPI, to the cost of construction), or there isn't enough land and homelessness increases as more and more people are completely priced out.
It's not binary. People like to live near other people in cities. Demand to live close to one's job, friends, activities, and loved ones drives up prices in dense areas even with unlimited room to expand elsewhere.
Desirable locations are desirable even on an infinitely-sized map.
Solutions to taxation do not need to be black and white simple rules. The US tax code is already purported to be 70,000 pages. It would be perfectly reasonable to write one tax code for middle class people below a certain net worth that encourages wealth creation, family wealth, credit and investment. It would be perfectly reasonable to have a separate tax code for the ultra wealthy that curtails loopholes, tax shelters, dynastic wealth and offshore accounting. For example, some countries tax net worth over a certain number of millions.
The free step-up in basis at death makes no sense for the very wealthy. The rule originates from the difficulty in determining the basis of assets of dead people. The very wealthy have accountants that track this.
Warren Buffett can pay capital-gains tax AND estate tax.
This is true of basically all platforms, including every major cloud provider.
AWS's playbook can be described as:
1. Provide low level infra
2. Observe what customers build on it
3. Create a general solution and charge a premium for it
4. Repeat, moving higher up the stack.
Not to mention Amazon.com's "Basics" playbook of finding what sells, then knocking it off, releasing their own version (and ranking it higher for search).
The issue there needs to be a mechanism, say an added/increased tax, to extract more value from the companies covering more services or industries due to the economies of scale and other advantages - and then that money funneled into smaller, new(er) entrants so there are competitors that can exist as a fallback/failsafe.
Im not sure I follow. You’re suggesting that the government should somehow get involved to levy taxes on companies based on subjective criteria, like how big they are, and then … fund startups to compete with them?
We already have a Small Business Administration that gives loans to small businesses, including start-ups. There’s also an extremely vibrant venture funding industry out there just waiting to write checks.
Additionally, it would be hard to argue that Stripe has anything like a payment processing monopoly. If you don’t like their products, use one of the myriad other companies offering payment processing solutions.
It's more complex than this but yes, allow smaller competitors to exist long enough to compete by offering similar enough products as a large, evolved ecosystem/platform provides, as to eventually have competition in place to keep fees/how much they extract from society in check.
I didn't argue Stripe has a monopoly but even ogilopolies once mature enough are problematic.
Also of you're trying to argue VCs make investments in companies that ultimately make good decisions for society vs. self-interested - then I disagree.
Most offers for FAANG companies include salary and stock compensation, that vests over 4 years.
So if you were granted 400k in stock over 4 years, you'd get 100k per year in stock (which you can keep or sell, but it's real compensation).
After those 4 years, the company will either give you another stock grant over another 4 years, or they will decide to show you the door - and not offer you anything.
This is incorrect. At FAANG companies, in my experience, you will be given an initial large grant and an additional grant every year thereafter. However, if you aren't seeing upward performance, those annual grants may not fully match the compensation you received from the initial grant, resulting in a dip at year 4 that some folks call "the four year cliff."
This is complicated by the fact that earlier grants tend to be from when stock was worth less, so the are a comparatively high number of shares. So your comp will gradually inflate over 4 years because the value of the stock has gone up, meaning you are taking home more than the company 'intended' to pay you.
It is all up to management discretion. I have known several cases where people's new stock grants were cut to zero in the hope that they'll just quit and save managers from going though the PIP/firing process.
Your total compensation at FAANG is base salary + bonus (usually % of your base multiplied by your perf and company perf) + stock.
When you get promotion your base salary will increase, your bonus will also increase (due to being % of base, but also higher levels have higher %) and your annual stock refresher will be higher, as you are now on new level.
She would get annual stock refresher even without promotion, but with promotion refresher would be bigger and total new comp could have compensated for drop after initial grant has finished.
You can check levels.fyi for comparisons of total median comps between levels at Google.
Where possible, I prefer to utilize short-term, pay-per-use infrastructure for development and testing.