kcorbitt

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391.
by kcorbitt 9y ago
There are still relative bargains to be found in the Bay Area matching my criteria. My rent went up when I moved recently from Pacifica to San Bruno, despite the fact that San Bruno is a suburban wasteland with nothing to recommend it bey
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by kcorbitt 9y ago
If I were investing in property today, I'd be buying waterfront property a 45-60 minute drive away from a vibrant coastal city. I agree with you that self-driving cars will increase sprawl -- people will feel less of a need to live i
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by kcorbitt 9y ago
My frustration with this type of interview is that their costs are entirely asymmetric. The company puts together a set of requirements once, and then forces every applicant to spend 5-10 generally unpaid hours completing it. If that were t
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by kcorbitt 9y ago
I wonder if that's because of the "small business" scale, or because you are in the B2B space, that expects higher prices? I'd be very curious to hear stories from people trying to build B2C products with a one/two
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by kcorbitt 9y ago
There's also the bonus that if we switch to renewables before sucking every drop of chemical energy out of the earth's crust, the leftovers will be a nice gift to our great great grandchildren if we accidentally destroy civilizati
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by kcorbitt 9y ago
Right. As a Google employee, it's awesome the degree to which the company trusts us with future product plans even in divisions totally unrelated to our personal areas of work. Obviously though, as the company grows that makes it more
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by kcorbitt 9y ago
Not the OP, but I have similar habits. My workplace expects me to be productive, and taking 40-90 minutes off in the afternoon once in a while to walk and think helps me be more productive than I otherwise would be, as well as less stressed
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by kcorbitt 9y ago
I'm curious about this. What does it take to make a "good" salesperson by this definition? Just grit and experience, or some innate and uncommon skill? I know there are people who make millions working in sales, but I guess I
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US Household Debt Surpasses 2008 High(nytimes.com)
250 points by kcorbitt 9y ago|418 comments
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by kcorbitt 9y ago
> I can't just give up my automotive expenses, for example, without major and negative impacts to my well being. Sure, if something you're spending money on currently does increase your happiness, then don't cut it out! Bu
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by kcorbitt 9y ago
Increased productivity and production are always good for the economy. But increased consumption is only good insofar as it increases the happiness of the consumer. This is tautologically true: if we didn't care about consumption inc
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by kcorbitt 9y ago
I read the article, but Gen. Milley doesn't make the case for why mutually-assured destruction is no longer relevant (he doesn't mention it at all, actually). After 50 years in which it has arguably been the primary strategic fact
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by kcorbitt 9y ago
> But what happens if/when we get into a shooting war with an adversary that has a real army, a real air force, and/or a real navy? Either the shooting war ends real quick with a diplomatic solution, or the territories of both
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by kcorbitt 9y ago
If I were focused so unapologetically on purity over pragmatism at the expense of playing nice with the wider web ecosystem, I would perhaps think twice before holding my site up as a positive example of the state of web development with Ru
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by kcorbitt 9y ago
Energy prices have been mostly flat relative to inflation for 40 years, and there's a reasonably good chance that they will start dropping appreciably (at least during peak daylight hours) as solar continues to make major inroads.
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by kcorbitt 9y ago
This is an argument for buying a house in a low cost-of-living area with a high quality of life. Easy telecommuting will certainly not be kind to the home prices in concentrated metropolises that can only justify their property prices becau
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by kcorbitt 9y ago
Yes, I am also in favor of auto-enrolled savings programs. I would be happy from a public policy perspective if we replaced the MID with some sort of automatic savings program that was difficult and annoying to opt out of (maybe intentional
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by kcorbitt 9y ago
Totally, there are people who have higher-leverage savings strategies than investing in a 401(k), like paying off debt in your case. In the end, the most important number to track is your savings rate (total consumption / total income)
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by kcorbitt 9y ago
Totally. All else being equal, socking away your money in broadly-diversified index funds within a tax-advantaged account is a more reliable strategy for wealth building than buying a single house in a random market. But human psychology ge
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by kcorbitt 9y ago
From the article: "She goes without a savings account and regularly relies on credit cards to buy toilet paper and soap." Maintaining a relatively constant credit card debt (which is what it usually meant by "relying on credi
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by kcorbitt 9y ago
So this article advocates for the removal of the mortgage interest tax deduction, because subsidizing home ownership leads to a larger economic divide between owners and renters. As a renter, I appreciate the intent, and I also appreciate a
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by kcorbitt 9y ago
I realize you're trying to be snarky, but it's worth pointing out that the original definition of "First World" was the set of countries economically/politically aligned with the USA. https://en.wikipedia
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by kcorbitt 9y ago
> Numerous taste tests have shown this. Sam Walton spent millions on a better tasting drink than Coke, proved it was better in every taste test, and Walmart's coke bombed when it was released despite a heavy marketing push and excel
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by kcorbitt 9y ago
This legislation is a complete mess. That said, I'm bleakly optimistic that if it succeeds in breaking healthcare for enough people badly enough, the pushback may give us an actual shot at a single-payer healthcare system in the US in
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by kcorbitt 9y ago
Personally, I'm hedging my bets by living lean and investing every spare dollar while I'm making hay at potentially unsustainably high wages. I'm also continuing to develop myself professionally, and preparing to move to a lo
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by kcorbitt 9y ago
> Google's LIDAR technology is obsolete spinning-scanner gear, mostly from Velodyne. It's something you'd use on an experimental vehicle, not a production one. Given that (1) Google is spending a whole lot of money to prot
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by kcorbitt 9y ago
Speaking from experience: try this for a few months before you commit to it! I worked from home for 2 years, but 6 months after my son was born I chose to switch to a job with an office. It was impossible to get anything done at home with t
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by kcorbitt 9y ago
Since I'm currently living and working on the San Francisco peninsula, I can actually speak to this from experience. :) My family of 3 lives on a budget of $50k, and yes, our savings rate is >>50%. Of course, you specified living
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by kcorbitt 9y ago
I wish everyone in the developed world understood and internalized this perspective. That goes double for software engineers, who are well-paid relative to the median wage almost anywhere in the world. The rat race is totally opt-in. If you
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by kcorbitt 9y ago
It would be really interesting to do a study of Googlers and see how much time on average they spent preparing for the interview. Would also be interesting to compare that with average preparation of people who interviewed but didn't g

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