Irony is he will probably burn more shorts with this announcement than he did with the initial set of tweets... and the SEC helped him do it this time around!
Related question regarding burning the shorts. The SEC said the $40 million in fines would go to aggrieved investors in a court approved process. But the people who were hurt the most by Musk's initial tweet were short sellers with stop loss orders. But I don't think they would classify as "investors", considering they profit when TSLA goes down.
Does anyone know how this process works, or do you think short sellers would have a claim to some of that $40 million?
The biggest burns are the people who bought in at $370 thinking that Elon Musk would be selling the company at $420.
Shorts may have gotten margin called, but the stock was skyrocketing on the news. Everyone who bought stocks during the tweet in question is basically able to sue for damages.
Social security will always be around in one form or another. Despite the fact that many Americans detest the idea of a welfare state, we're still collectively bright enough to realize that you can't simply leave no options for the sick, poor, and disabled.
The better question to ask is whether you will be happy living out the twilight of your life on a government controlled amount of money. This amount will likely always gravitate toward the prevailing poverty line. Unlikely to lead to a truly comfortable existence. Definitely not enough to live in any high COL location. Average monthly benefit in 2017 was ~$1,300, and MAX was $2,687 [1]. ~$15-$30K will cover the basics in most lower COL parts of the country, but not much more.
The US is already a welfare state, we're just worse at it than other countries.
In any case, if you are young and aren't happy living out your life on whatever social security pays there is a simple solution: pretend like it doesn't exist and plan accordingly.
Sounds like it's time for a change to the state constitution. Everything is a negotiation:
"Because the state’s constitution bans any reduction in worker retirement benefits, the government’s pension costs will continue to rise as it faces pressure to pay down that debt, a squeeze that has pushed Illinois’s bond rating to the precipice of junk."
I've jumped between a few cities actually. I'll call out the things I wish I would have known:
* winter isn't that bad if you have a heated garage at work and at least an insulated garage (if unheated) at home
* winter is that bad if you park outside
* the downtowns of most major rust belt cities are shockingly cosmopolitan with brunch joints, breweries, and art galleries
* the art scenes are shockingly good because the costs are pretty low
* the airfare can be kind of expensive
* the spring and fall are very, very nice
* the cities are generally managed poorly but the first / second ring suburbs (esp. the wealthier / more conservative ones) are really, really nice places to live
I think Paul Graham made this point, but it's good to live in areas that used to be rich. St. Paul MN, Columbus OH, and Erie PA fit the bill - the old mansions and old town neighborhoods can be really really nice and shockingly affordable if you're used to coast prices. There's less ethnic food generally available but there is pretty authentic stuff in the immigrant neighborhoods and the prices are authentic too.
The biggest 'quality of life' thing is the ease of getting around the low storage costs. In California, it seemed like people could really only have one or two hobbies - in the midwest it's not uncommon for folks to more than half of these items: kayaks, bicycles, motorcycles, boats, fishing rods, tents, cameras, skis/snowboards, hammocks, golf clubs etc. Having winter makes it easier to get outdoors during the warm months, and if you have kids, the schools in the richer areas tend to be very good.
The downsides are the roads can be pretty bad (esp. in Illinois and Michigan), winter can be brutal, the salt can make car ownership expensive, car ownership is critical unless you make it otherwise, and it can be tough to find intellectual engagement.
Just because certain people can't describe or understand the value of a given task or job, doesn't mean it has no value. Clearly if person A pays person B to perform a task, then person B must be creating at least as much value as they're being paid. Who are you or I to judge that value? We're neither receiving the value nor paying for it. If person A is consistently paying more than $2 for $1 of value, then they'll soon be out of money, and the system will unceremoniously remove person A from decision making authority.
While it's nice to suggest that Wall St. doesn't create any value for people, ~20% of our GDP would suggest otherwise. The truth is that Wall St. acts much like Adam Smith's invisible hand. For our system to work, capital must be allocated to optimal uses. Command economies do a poor job of this, except in war time. Wall St. helps us reallocate capital to the most productive endeavors. That sounds pretty valuable to me. Even if the folks on Wall St. don't build your car, they did pool the capital necessary to finance the construction of the manufacturing facility. Can't have one without the other.
As a final point, if the 'caring class' isn't compensated enough, perhaps it's because there is an oversupply of 'caring folks'. Or perhaps they're not really creating any value for others? Perhaps some of the 'caring class' should get creative and find other ways to be caring, or perhaps they should find ways to provide more 'care' with their time so they can command a higher share of the value they create?
Call it whatever job title you want, there inevitably needs to be someone steering the boat. You can get rid of 'PMs' but you can't get rid of the need to set strategy / vision, understand the customer problem, identify solutions, collaborate with design and corral the rest of the organization (marketing, sales, support, operations) to bring it all together. If you don't have a PM performing those functions, then a member of the engineering team needs to step up, or perhaps someone from the executive team. But then guess what... that person is doing the things that PMs do, so I guess you might start calling them a PM...? Or a 'Product Editor'... or 'Program Manager'. All just names for something pretty similar.
When organizations are small enough, the whole team performs those functions together. As you grow it makes sense to have someone double down and own those responsibilities. Though this doesn't absolve engineers of the need to understand customers and help paint the product vision.
Perhaps the better question is 'Where did all the non-technical-purely-business-MBA PMs go?'
The answer is that it is likely a disappearing breed. An MBA won't teach you how to build great software or lead technology teams, so it's foolish to believe that someone with such credentials would be a natural fit to come lead a software organization. Good PMs I've worked with can have a conversation about the technology stack as easily as they can debate a marketing strategy. Great PMs these days need to span the entire 'company stack' if that makes sense.
Lastly, if you don't know why a given role exists, then it's probably because you haven't worked with someone great in that role. There are a number of roles in tech companies I found less useful until I met someone who had mastered the craft - when I saw them in action, it became clear why the role existed and how they could perform a certain function infinitely better than I.
As a last thought, I worked at Intuit a while back and I'm not sure they are a 'shining star' of PM training. They have done a good job of 'marketing' themselves that way, and they are an example of a company that typically has 'less technical' PMs in their organization. This is because Intuit is more of a 'marketing / business' driven organization. This contrasts with Google who is known to favor promoting engineers into the PM role. Neither model is 100% - the ideal is probably somewhere in between.
I worked at a place where agile failed because (1) the "Product Manager" was AWOL (he punched a timecard but never seemed to put stories in) and (2) the lead developer refused to put in estimate for everything. (As the one developer who actually put in estimates, I just got abuse because my estimates were "too long")
Sounds like a nightmare! Nothing worse than an environment where you get blamed for estimating something.
I too have worked in places that called themselves Agile but where everything but.
On the other hand I also was part of a well adjusted SCRUM team where the roles were fulfilled properly and we rolled through the project like a steam train.
The key was to have a really well filled backlog and then wear most of the pain during the sprint estimation meetings, and the whole team sat in on that. This made everybody understand all the features and their potential complexity before the sprint even started, and gave full visibility of the cost of each of these to the product owner, who could de-prioritise something or swap it out in that very session.
The actual sprints then were really straight forward and I really enjoyed myself there.
Prior to that I had plenty of contracts where I get "specs" from PMs, but then have to question each aspect of those, often resulting in me having to ask the product owner myself to decipher what it meant. Inevitably, nobody ever had time and I spent 50% of my day waiting for people getting back to me or work on whatever I could come up with.
Just recently got in the market for home furniture. Found it a bit of a mess. Something like this could be useful - effectively like hipmunk, but for furniture. i.e. make the experience of understanding your options and finding what you want easier.
I like it.
I also noticed you guys are up in Toronto (my original hometown). If you want more candid feedback from someone in the market for furniture, or if I can help with anything else silicon valley related (I live in SF). Let me know.
This article is confusing cause and effect. Bus routes have been opened to cater to people who choose to live in desirable neighborhoods. It's not the buses that make the neighborhood desirable. If all googlers decided they wanted to live in Marin, I would bet that google would send a bus up there in a heartbeat.
I'd imagine it's at least partially a feedback loop. Bus routes are determined by looking at where employees live, and figuring out the optimal locations for stops, which I'd imagine is how the first routes opened up. For new employees/employees moving who are figuring out where to live, though, proximity to a shuttle stop seems like a relevant factor in the decision. If nothing else, not having shuttle service could be a point against living in a given neighborhood. I'd imagine if you took away shuttle service away from one neighborhood (just for the sake of argument), you would probably see a gradual decline in the number of employees living there.
Thing is, it'd be hard to quantify to what extent shuttle service availability influences the decision making process, so I'm not sure how much we can say about the net effect of shuttle routes on demand for living in a particular neighborhood.
Actually, it's showing just that. The were able to demonstrate that the buildings nearest the bus stops were rising faster than the neighbours - and within each neighbourhood. Googlers weren't congregating around the bus stops before they showed up.
Furthermore, it's showing us how much of the price hike we can attribute to the change just to the buses and not other tenant sources.
I work with The Climate Corp as a product manager - there have been no problems retaining employees. In fact, from my point of view, morale is higher than before the acquisition. We are pretty passionate about our mission of helping farmers improve their yields. Our vision is to use data and analytics to help them do that in a more sustainable way. The acquisition has helped accelerate our vision by at least 3-5 years - which is why people are pretty excited... also why we are hiring aggressively.
The Climate Corp is one of the best companies I've worked for - the combination of great (and smart) people, mission, vision and real world impact are hard come by. If you're interested in learning more, I'd be happy to chat anytime.
Yes, they were all white males. Not a great study if they were trying to definitively answer the question for everyone in America. But to suggest the findings have no broader applicability would also be short sighted.
