> This interview has morphed into my own personal economics seminar, and Professor Bankman-Fried is my tutor. He’s as good at explaining the principles of macroeconomics as anyone out there in the world today—and I know this for a fact because I’ve subsequently watched YouTube’s best on the same subject. But SBF teaches me Macro while simultaneously playing round after round of Storybook Brawl.
> Still, I’ve got my answer. And it turns out that I’ve aimed too low. A trillion isn’t enough money to fix the world’s problems, so SBF won’t stop at merely a trillion. It’s an answer that begs the next question, which SBF, ever helpful, has already anticipated: “So, is five trillion all you could ever use to help the world?”
> SBF is now interviewing himself. He slows down for a moment, and I assume that’s because of the cognitive load of doing three things at once. He’s asking good questions (my job); he’s formulating answers (his job); and he’s playing Storybook Brawl (no one’s job). But then I hear the tap-tap-tapping from his fingers start to accelerate, and I realize he’s not slowing down under the load at all. Just the opposite, in fact: This guy is in the Storybook Brawl equivalent of a gank!
This entire profile is incredible. SBF is one of the greatest conmen of all time, the absolute gall to testify in Congress, pal around with celebs, buy the naming rights to the Miami Heat stadium, claim he is "the most transparent", all built on a total scam of stealing billions.
If this guy doesn't go to jail why do we even have jails?
Capitalism wins again! Better than trillions in government and UN dollars. Only productive enterprise and real business activity can lift hundreds of millions out of poverty - there is no substitute.
For Hayek's sake, would you please stop it with the generic ideological flamewar comments? I don't want to ban you and you're making it seriously hard. How many dozens of times have we asked you not to do this at this point?
Edit: actually your recent comment feed is so full of this that it seems you've stopped using HN for anything else. As that is not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for, I've banned your account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
China's unprecedented generational explosion into the middle class happened only after Deng Xiaoping instituted market reforms. Economically, China is certainly more socialist than the west, but far more capitalist than it was in the 1970's.
There was a massive drop in living standards in the former Soviet Union after the introduction of capitalism in the 90es. Average life expectancy dropped something like 10 years, corresponding to millions of dead.
Most communists and socialists will refer to both the USSR and China as capitalist projects on accelerated timelines. They were trying to speed-run from feudalism, through capitalism, to communism.
At least that's what comes up when you mention the problems that these countries have.
Instead of lifting poor class upwards, the west wants to pull everyone else down. Reducing quality of life and regressing in every metric of progress. The future is in Asia, places like Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, India, Malaysia, Singapore. Socialism is so easily captivating to average IQ voter class in USA, it is a fight every generation has to go through. Countless examples of failures won't convince people.
Maybe I should have listed Milton’s books. Just because professor is part of Ayn Rand institute, you're not arguing about the points presented in the lecture, but instead discarding his credibility by association. There is a massive amount of 200+ years of history of Capitalism that's difficult to succintly address here.
Shellenberger's book review (first one that shows up on google search) is just following the same tropes of Climate catastrophization. The article doesn't steelman Shellenberger, but instead reduces it down to "… yet bad science, strawman arguments, cherry-picking facts, and ad hominem attacks on scientists, media, others"; ofcourse written by folks at Yale "Climate Connections" blog.
Climate arguments have no counter balance. The media routinely ignores the otherside of the equation and never provides a balanced view of how we can tackle it. Instead, the zeitgeist created by progressives for last 50 years is that we should depopulate, regress, and reduce quality of life and ultimately become state dependent. The same group of scientists and environmentalists that also ran the campaign against nuclear energy.
It has nothing to do with capitalism, it's all about strong government, strong institutions and the people who understand and pursue a common goal i.e: a synchronized society
Not OP, but I think what he's referring to is communism declining a generation ago:
> Following liberalizing economic reforms in the late 1980s and early 1990s, India is now one of the world's fastest growing economies, as well as the second most populous.
It's not hard, really, given that you will need to make only $1.90 per day to automatically become declassified as poor [1]. If anything, capitalism makes this harder to do achieve [2] which probably explains why the limit is set so low.
Meta, Amazon, hell even Twitter have reached out to me and my neighbors recently (my friend has an interview at Twitter next week). I believe even during hiring freezes these companies carry on recruitment because they're slow and can wait for the ideal role to appear in the future even if there's nothing available right now. So basically you'll get an offer without a job.
During freezes there's often exceptions for teams who've lost people, especially for critical roles. i.e. you can't increase count but you can keep it the same.
Recruiters are usually operating on weeks old info. They never find out when the freezes/cuts are coming until the day of, because any changes would tip off employees and lead to rumors/lower morale and productivity.
Not saying that the grandparent comment is confirmed, but they always keep recruiters busy no matter what until they themselves are laid off. AFAIK Google has pretty much paused hiring across all divisions.
Hiring freezes aside, it is possible to be laying off people and hiring.
Laying off your costly senior employees, while replacing them with cheaper entry-level employees, can be a huge cost saving and the loss in quality or performance may be immaterial.
This will of course depend on what the employees were doing and how many experienced/senior people you keep to supervise and mentor the new employees.
Even in "hiring freeze" situations, this can be done by replacing employees with cheaper contractors.
Yes, it sucks, but it's the reality of the market.
Sorry but sometimes the people hire are the last to know that there is going to be a layoff. Plenty of stories abound about people being hired right into a layoff.
Meta was aggressively recruiting until there was a surprise hiring freeze. It wouldn't surprise me if they were recruiting one week and laying off the next.
Just my 2c: I know friends who work at other companies paying similar wages who immediately try to get ahold of the lists of laid off staff from these layoffs hoping to hire top talent when they're otherwise not even going to hear they're looking.
So I don't know how much this will really change comp levels? Especially with how frequently software people change jobs anyway.
> Wondering how the displaced engineers will impact the rest of the job market
That dream of making local (San Francisco) pay while living wherever you want will quickly evaporate.
I survived as a software engineer through the dot-com crash. This isn't even a crash, this is just seems like a minor correction to "normal" for most of these companies with head-counts through the roof.
But SV salaries were abnormal, and that should be taken into account. There are a lot of us, doing a lot of the same stuff, for a lot less pay out there.
Why? For all sorts of various reasons. And this is now rapidly taking into account the entire globe.
Yes, tech comp is about to come down greatly across the board.
We’ve barely seen the start of layoffs yet, and the Fed is pedal to the metal on engineering a recession. Tech falls first due to highest discount rate sensitivity
Disagree with "across the board". Tech still has a lot of difficult problems and a crazy amount of money to be made, so premium talent will continue to command premium salaries. It's just that a "staff engineer" 4 years out of college won't be able to sleep their way into $500K in salary + stock.
Comp is dictated by labor market dynamics, not by profitability of the product.
If you have 10 engineers of roughly equal skill competing for the same role, the company has more leverage to offer lower comp than if there’s just 1, or less than one.
Profitability just sets a cap on what can be paid.
That being said, I do agree that the best of the best will likely be able to maintain mid 6 figure comps. But it won’t be the norm as it has been.
There’s also theory vs practice. In practice very few companies have a high level of confidence about being able to quantify how much one engineer is worth vs another. Which is why 10x engineers can’t capture significantly higher comp than the median, even in the current (recent) market
Does this logic work for lawyers? "Biglaw" firms are similar to FAANG in that it is a handful of companies that offer very high comp (235k for first year). There is a deluge of folks that apply from all universities to biglaw but generally they primarily hire from top tier law schools and even then not all make it.
Similar for Big 3 consulting firms (BCG, Bain, McKinsey) in that there is a huge application pool for positions but they are difficult to get and provide high pay.
Interestingly revenue per employee (1.2 - 1.8 mil per employee) at biglaw companies is similar to FAANG although i'd guess biglaw margins are higher as you have less other costs (infra).
I just landed a $175k full time base gig that didn't ask about either of those, just terraform and kubernetes and AWS all day long. Also, my resume is riddled with nothing but short term stints since the start of the pandemic, but doesn't seem to have effected my prospects. Now to be fair, I do actually know both python and linux essentials, and can google and troubleshoot my way through most common infra issues. I would say I am at least mediocre enough to get most of the work done in a reasonable time frame at this point.
> tech comp is about to come down greatly across the board.
To be honest the total comps for some FAANG companies had gone into the crazy territory, there was no way for a up and coming startup to compete against comps of 500-600k (or so I had read) that decent engineers were getting.
I mean, there was a way, but in exchange those start-ups had to promise the world and then some, which was not ideal, to say the least. That's how we got lots of "fake" unicorns, which only now are beginning to get back to Earth.
I’m passionate about Bitcoin, Ethereum, Catholicism, the destruction of the state, the lowering of taxes, the betterment of society on individualistic terms, the rise of private schools and the death of public indoctrination. The future is truth and the ruination of government lies. And every day I see more evidence that the socialist order is decaying.
How do you think about individualism, tech and Christianity? There's a difference between an individual and a person with Catholicism I think, and the individualistic approach to life I have heard goes hand in hand with pride, going it alone, rejecting God, others, and ones whole personhood. We live in relation to others.
Another thing we hear is that the modern world is in it's troublesome state because of the individualistic "me-first" selfish view of life. The rejection of Church is because people think they can have all the answers in themselves as an isolated individual for example.
Collectivism / socialism is the opposite to individualism and that's also a mistake obviously - so there's a middle ground which is more social but also respectful of each persons personhood.
I mean, have you thought about this deeply? Its something I've been pondering about - I can see it's right there in these new technologies.
Maybe there's a way to be actually social with the new tech? (where the old "social media" of the past drived us apart.) I don't see it though, just people going it alone more.
The government murdered the son of god which is a foundational element of Christianity.
The Catholic Church is a supranational entity that will survive as nation states rise and fall. No one in 2022 puts a gun to your head to join nor stay inside it. There is no forced tithe. You are encouraged voluntarily to donate money and assist others but unlike the government not doing so is something you have to deal with yourself.
All churches and orders generally have to be self sustaining. The Vatican is not cutting checks - money flows up but doesn’t flow down and they will close churches if they aren’t cutting the mustard. This encourages self sufficiency and creativity. For example my church owns a lot of rental property and has other income generating assets.
Catholic schools are generally far superior to the local public schools. They charge reasonable rates. I live in an expensive city and the local Catholic elementary school is $10k per year which is a deal considering the public school spends $25k per student and you’d have to be out of options to send your child there because of the violence and awful nature of the education (basically ranked 1/10 nationally).
It’s hilarious that you think I haven’t thought about this deeply. What’s more shocking is that people go through life oblivious to human nature and reality. They think by taxing productive citizens and enterprises all of societal flaws can be solved. The true solution is to let all of us work communally to solve our issues and keep the greedy, evil, self serving, and venal politicians away from the wealth we earned with our own hands.
by "I mean, have you thought about this deeply? " I was asking if you had because I hadn't and was curious and am looking for someone who had. Hence the question. Sorry if I offended. I do not mean to imply that you have not. I have not encountered a Catholic tech individualist before (but am a Catholic). It's entirely possibly you are not an "individualist", sorry. Its also possibly that I'm combining two of your interests (blockchain-ish + catholicism) which you have separate feelings and interests about, if that's the case, apologies. I have an interest in mycology and catholicism but I don't have any theories combining the two!
Also, see, I am not the same user(s) who replied to your original comment, but looking at their replies I can understand that you have, what appears to me to be written a defensive response. It was not the one that I was looking for. So I'm sorry. It's cool, brother. Sometimes I get worked up and reply to others still in a heated frame of mind based on something before someone else said, so I can understand when it happens, if it did.
I am curious about individualism and catholicism and these new technologies. I'm less interested in tech and government which is common here in HN, as evidenced by the other responses you got. Maybe you could provide me with the equivalent of some AOL keywords - if suitable. This might be better just to get me started than trying to parse my awkward questions!
It seems to me that individualism is the opposite of communitarianism - both extremes have their problems which Catholicism points out. What do you think? Do you see individualism and libertarianism occurring more often with Anarchist, atheism or neo-paganism or not, perhaps how is Christianity more suitable here? But really, it's this question and how it relates to new technologies. Do these technologies help us work communally, or just a tool like the stuff most of us use to be used one way or the other, or something else? How is it different from a self organising Anarchist community vision? Is it a really New Thing I guess I'm asking?
We are social creatures and I absolutely believe in community and helping each other. My issue is that other people want to use the state to solve all of their favored issues, and fund this by stealing from citizens such as myself. It’s especially bad because the recent vintage of politicians exclusively attack the rich and pretend that purely by stealing from them all the money can be found, when instead they should be advocating for shared sacrifice by all to achieve their aims. It’s class warfare mixed with naivety and it’s lies because the rich are far more nimble and able to avoid such taxes than the demagogues believe. They don’t advocate for broad tax increases because then their “something for nothing” mantra falls apart and suddenly their solutions are far less popular.
In terms of Catholicism I’m not sure there is a lot of writing specifically about how the tech industry and it intertwine. I believe that if you are a healthy individual and have nothing preventing you from working then it is your duty to be a productive member of society to help your family, friends, and those around you. The whole point of the teaching and faith is that it’s universal and timeless - doesn’t matter if we are peasants 1000 years ago or on a space ship 1000 years into the future. Just because I’m in technology doesn’t change anything or make me different from a janitor, doctor, or craftsmen.
In terms of technology for myself I see writing software as not dissimilar to constructing buildings or bridges - it’s an act of creativity that creates something out of nothing and I find beauty in the systems produced. If you are curious about Catholicism or something inside of you is seeking answers it may be worth reaching out to your local parish, they are always happy to chat.
Thanks. I also love the line about "peasants 1000 years ago or on a space ship 1000 years into the future" - we tend to get caught up in our present time and tools. I will try to remember that.
I can see where you are coming from regarding tax and the state, and agree with you on the attack on the rich as a kind of naive resentful class warfare.
Depends on your world view. I give ~40% of my income to a decrepit government where I have no say how it’s spent. My city pays $25,000 USD per public school student and the results have not only been atrocious for decades but are declining year after year. Government jobs require college credentials… colleges whose accreditation are approved by the government, in some circular fashion of reciprocal approval. Our medical system is in shambles. I really don’t know how to convince people that the government has ruined society if they can’t see it themselves - the solution for statists is always to steal money from actually productive people like myself.
Did you consider that perhaps having students from less wealthy and educated families enroll would cause "declining results"? The best way to ensure perfect scores is to exclude underperforming kids from families where parents didn't go to university and/or have to choose between soap and bread at the supermarket instead of educating their child.
I'm still genuinely amused every time I see a Westerner living in a democratic country claim their government is dysfunctional, lying, stealing and bad. First, compared to what country? Second, can't you elect a different government? If enough people agree with you they would vote for it, and if not enough agree then perhaps you are in a minority. If unlike many people on this planet you have a mechanism for peaceful replacement of power it seems strange to call for a revolution.
Have you considered that your market-rate could be 66% up (166*0.6=100) because everybody in your market has to pay 40% and wants to have a certain living standard? Or the other way round: how much will your income fall if taxes would be abolished?
If you want to see change, link up with other productive people. It takes one to get one. Those 40% are kind of a global standard. Instead of fighting big government, why not help to make it productive?
Philosophically the government is the one holding the gun. I want it as tiny and efficient as possible with the minimum number of guns pointed at its citizens. There is no way you can give politicians, nor any human, the exclusive right to giant amounts of money and not expect them to be corrupted. If you didn’t earn the money and you aren’t responsible for keeping the productive enterprises working then you simply don’t care and will never understand. It’s always about stealing more money to feed the ever hungry Leviathan.
And believe me I am linked up with other productive people all dedicated to reducing the size and scope of the immoral and unsalvageable corrupt state.
I see you are frustrated you can’t convince others that government is the root of all problems. Have you considered that you might be wrong?
Serious problems require serious efforts to understand and solve. Calling people names like “statists”, you sound like a toddler following some ideological talking points. Use the Internet and library to expand your perspective. Grow up.
Statist is a term for someone who thinks the state can solve society’s problems. There is never a solution that doesn’t involve the government and never a situation where giving more taxes (and it’s always the rich who must pay - never the masses!) is the wrong answer.
In my view an increasing number of people are agreeing with me. You won’t see it in the mainstream media because they are also statists whose worldview is wrong and intolerant. You are witnessing them scream and cry and whine that democracy is failing, the climate is failing and the world is ending, basically the apocalypse is upon us and you need to be scared and afraid 24/7. Whereas the people I know don’t give a shit and don’t believe those lies. It’s like an alternate planet where hyper-online people actually think the world is ending and all the normal people stopped believing those lies.
The canonical place is Norway for the American left. A country of 5 million people of the same race and culture that has zero immigration and built their socialist utopia on oil and gas.
High taxes are a lie and the seeds of destruction are planted the moment they are put in place. Developed countries like the UK are falling apart.
So... are there any countries in the world that are not socialist by your definition? Maybe China? It has, perhaps, lower taxes and better public schools.
Developed countries were created over centuries. They have a giant amount of legacy cruft and baggage that may have made sense in an older world but no longer does. They have no reason nor incentive to reform themselves and its workers are mindless drones that never think if their work has any value because the institution lacks the market test.
China is an authoritarian godless dictatorship that will put a bullet in your head if you disagree with the dictator. This is the antithesis of freedom and the free will given to each of us.
The existence of overwhelmed workers who don't have any energy (or desire) to think outside of their daily routine is a shared characteristic of all economic regimes in sufficiently large countries. It's not due to "socialism in the US" or capitalism somewhere else. Lowering taxes or improving public school system won't solve that completely. And, just to note, Catholicism doesn't encourage freethinking either.
Catholicism has no issue with science as any scientific fact was established by god and therefore is fine. You may be thinking about Baptists or similar groups with literal interpretations of the bible. The church really doesn't have any mandates other than the Nicene Creed and no one has to agree with everything the Vatican mandates, our priest and deacon both disagree with certain elements of the official doctrine. God gave humans free will and therefore the capacity to sin. You are allowed to think anything you want, there is no mandate.
I saw a post today that Coca Cola pulled their ads but I saw one an hour ago (and took a screenshot as proof). So who knows what the fuck is actually happening
A company like Coca Cola probably plans their ad spend well in advance, and these are likely managed by external agencies. It's one thing to stop planning new advertising campaigns to run on Twitter; it's quite another to reverse course on campaigns already scheduled in.
If you've ever worked at any sufficiently large company, especially where third-party agencies/contractors/analysts are involved, you'd know that "nonsense all around" is in fact the status quo.
Coca Cola would like everyone to know they're pulling their ad spend for all the right reasons, without actually reducing ad spend. They'd love to have it both ways.
People made their companies some sort of missionary situation in their minds. This is dollars and psychology. Did you like the work? Can you get paid enough to come back?
Elon is making this transactional. If you are truly needed bad enough that they will come calling right after a layoff then soak them for 3x. It’s just business.
It’s largely a cultural problem, but money certainly factors in.
There isn’t a culture of trust, where people are encouraged to bring up problems and can instead be labeled as slowing a project down. There is also a culture of deliberately avoiding acknowledging issues in hopes they will just go away. This leads to a lack of decisiveness because nobody wants to stick their neck out to either say “no we don’t think that’s a credible risk” but also don’t want to invest resources in mitigating that risk.
Reddit has a similar number of MAU and 1/10 the number of staff Twitter had. And I don't think their tech stack is all that spectacular, probably worse than Twitter's. Yet, their site runs just fine.
The fact that Twitter just raptured away 50%+ of their workforce and things are still running mostly the way they did before indicates, to me at least, that Twitter must have been one of the better-run engineering orgs on the planet.
I wonder how many redundancies are for technical roles and how many are for non technical roles (the "political/editorial wing" of the company such as the "curation team", the "human rights" team).
I would hope that their production deployments are fairly stable. If the app was crashing and riddled with known bugs at this point they’d be one of the worst run.
I’m betting on the opposite. If it doesn’t completely fail just trying anything is likely an improvement. I’ve never spoken to anyone who liked Twitter. It’s always just a means to an ends
Agreed. He probably didn’t let go many infra people. If some product teams were reduced in size and will become slower at butchering the UI, the user will only benefit.
A couple of former Twitter people I know have made similar comments hearing that plenty of good ops people were cut. That sounds like the usual PE death cycle getting started: they’re not critical to daily operations so things are fine and you can say “look, I’m a smart manager” until something breaks. After a while, customers get tired of declining service and the process accelerates.
https://twitter.com/_ryne_miller/status/1591281729125613570?...