For one job i got in when the company was very small. Interview was like 2 of the other engineers for an hour. When the company got bigger interviews required personality tests, full-day interview schedules, everyone had to interview with at least one Executive-level manager (for line engineers like me that would have been my boss's boss's boss), that sort of thing.
Used to comment to my boss that I'd never have been hired for my own position under that system. As a young engineer I would have hardly been able to speak coherently under those conditions. And it did in fact cause at least one engineer (who had a PhD, so no stranger to being interrogated by a bunch of experts) to break down during the process.
Most of the people I knew who were crushed in '08 were in their early 30s. More expensive than us young guys, with families which made their financial situation less flexible.
Rufo apparently lives in Gig Harbor, WA. I have been to Gig Harbor, and $70k/year isn't going to get you very far there. You'll certainly never be able to afford a house on that.
How many years of working at $40/hr would be required to buy a median house where this guy lives? Because ultimately the dollar amount matters less than the purchasing power.
An experiment I did the other day I found very informative was to "forward-test" my early 20s to see if what I did then would pencil out today. I inflation-adjusted what I made at the time and looked at present market values for apartments I lived in and houses I owned to determine if I could have made it all work today. And I found I couldn't, and it wasn't even close.
After that little experiment I decided I'm completely unqualified to give someone currently in their early 20s advice on what to do.
We tell the youth they need to move halfway across the country to live in a small town to have any hope of affording a house, while their tax dollars subsidize housing an endless horde of workers in the cities which became too expensive for them to afford.
No wonder more and more of them want to burn the whole thing to the ground.
Most of the people saying it also see no problem importing a limitless horde of workers from the Global South and think Miguel who crossed the border last week and mows their lawn every week is a "better American" than you.
My first house was "drive 'til you qualify" too.
It makes perfect sense to me why people are either dropping out or going all-in on highly speculative things like crypto. When possible outcomes are flattened, your best options are to not play the game or to shoot for the moon. Anything else is a sucker's bet.
I looked up the first house I bought in the late 00s on Zillow. Plugged that number into a mortgage calculator at current rates. Plugged my salary at the time into an inflation calculator and then plugged that number into a take home pay calculator.
At the time my mortgage payment was ~30% of take home. Now it'd be ~70% (and of course the larger down payment would take longer to save for).
I looked up the current rent on the shithole apartment I was living in just before I bought the place, plugged that number into in inflation calculator. Rents for a bit above what my mortgage payment was, adjusted for inflation.
So objectively speaking, someone in my exact position today (CS degree, good job) would be worse off than I was at the time.
At least my Boomer and GenX coworkers were sympathetic to how "crazy" housing prices had gotten. Now I guess we've decided it's Zoomers' fault they're even crazier. Another way they have it worse...
Hitman: Blood Money, the first Metal Gear Solid, GTA San Andreas, and I guess I've had Civ V long enough for it to qualify.
I recognize the symptoms; I have the same sickness.
...and it’s getting to the point where even I have a problem with it. And that, it shouldn’t be that way.
I think Sam is ultimately a bit of a degenerate who often finds himself wondering how he came to be the least degenerate person in the room.
The last panel is mocking a leftist comic which has also ends abruptly with the same sort of last panel that says "This comic is about Student Loan Debt"
Bob Barker died last year, so doubtful.
10-12 years ago these people all thought Elon and his "magical space car" were going to save us from "evil oil".
Frankly, when I saw that photo of him I thought "you should not be allowed to vote in that state"
There is no way someone in that condition had the mental faculties necessary to participate in even the most basic level of the political process. For that matter, did he even physically make the marks on his ballot? If not, how could he have possibly communicated his votes to the person who did?
That photo of him should have been used as evidence of voter fraud.
It came out that there was supposed to be some sort of H1B cap of about 85,000/year that was being outright ignored; and something like 10x that number were being approved.
85k is still too many, but that number doesn't turn multiple cities into "Little Indias" like we see happening. Step 0 of a "stop the bleeding" policy would be to simply enforce the policies that exist which are being ignored.
Speaks of restrictive immigration policy
This was all after it came out that companies were hiring "Pickleball Directors" under the H1B program and that it wasn't just "top .01%" engineers (which we all knew, but some tech execs had apparently deluded themselves into believing was the case).
A couple days ago Elon was talking about "GOING TO WAR" over keeping the H1B program and now he's talking about "overhauling" it and supporting a "highly restrictive" immigration program.
I think it's going to be Trump's second term.
According to someone I know who has worked there a long time, they massively increased their headcount; and things stopped being nearly as competitive among their technical staff as they had been when they were (relatively: this is still MS we're talking about) smaller
I met up with an acquaintance in Redmond (where MS headquarters is) earlier this year and was amazed at how much it had changed in the 7-8 years since I'd last been there. It too could be described as Little India.
Had a bunch of leftover hours on one of my contracts, so I've been trying to bill as many hours as I can before the new year within the constraint of still being able to spend time with visiting family.
Construction project around the house I've wanted to do for years should be starting soon.
I used to work for a guy who was early and fairly high up (but not founder level) at a DotCom 1.0 company everyone has heard of. I'd conservatively guess his net worth was high 8 or low 9 figures, and he was easily the most driven person I've ever met. Was one of those people who you wondered when he slept (and frankly, how he ever managed to get or stay married). Raced yachts for a hobby, that sort of thing.
I think about that, and then I wonder how driven someone who's worth multiple thousands of times what that guy was worth must be.
TLDR (if to be believed) UHC kept denying claims for his mom's chronic pain, which he watched her suffer with for years. Ideologically it's incoherent, because (if the writing is to be believed) it's clearly a deeply personal matter he's trying to rationalize.
The assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in 2010 showed a pretty high level of coordination and sophistication, from what I remember of Dubai's investigation.
Around here the Little Ceasars are all run by Indians. During the summer they don't run the AC (presumably to save money), and with the ovens going it's 90+ degrees in the store. It's uncomfortable to be in there a few minutes to pick up a pizza let alone be in there for an 8+ hour shift.