Tech Nightmares: Ghostline the flux

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How many quarters after Q1 2016 till Marissa Mayer is unemployed?
	1 or fewer
	2
	4
	Her job is guaranteed; what are you even talking about?

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

My intuition is that the most vulnerable sort of companies are:

1) Startups that don't seem to have a strategy other than "get acquired"
2) Large companies that don't seem to have a strategy other than "buy startups and hope that turns us around!"

Yahoo has definitely been in slot 2 for a while, but so have quite a few other giants. But most of them still have actual profit-generating segments and huge stockpiles of cash -- most of these acquisitions were done with stored cash and shares rather than borrowed money. So bankruptcy is much less likely in that scenario compared with just burning away stock value.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2016 20:01

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# ¿ May 4, 2024 12:20

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

mobby_6kl posted:

Oooh ok, I remember seeing that and it kind of makes sense. I was probably confusing it withe the similarly sounding social thingy. So they might've been overvalued at IPO (whoa) but at least they have something going on there - unless the upcoming chip & pin is going to be impractical to implement, in which case they're hosed too, I guess.

Ahh yes you were probably confusing it with FourSquare, which is a great candidate for the bankruptcy roulette

# ¿ Feb 6, 2016 22:36

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Arsenic Lupin posted:

e: It won't hurt them significantly, but Amazon and Google are definitely going to feel some pain as all the mid-level companies who used them as a cloud platform collapse. My guess is there'll also be a big shakeout in advertising and tracking.

It's really unclear what percentage of cloud business is a large collection of small customers and what percentage is a few really big customers. For instance it wouldn't at all surprise me if 80% of Amazon's cloud business was Netflix and other parts of Amazon itself.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2016 18:56

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Arsenic Lupin posted:

Isn't this ... kind of missing the point of stock options? At worst, they should be at the day's value when you joined.

Yeah, and they joined when the stock was way higher

# ¿ Feb 8, 2016 01:19

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

If I had to guess I'd say that Uber wouldn't need to do that much different to have the Independent Contractors thing be clearly in the legal column. Like not caring about the hours drivers work, letting them set asking prices, and showing those to customers before they book the car.

That's probably still a completely viable app and company (though such a company doesn't have to be Uber).

# ¿ Feb 9, 2016 22:05

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Konstantin posted:

The whole situation with independent contractors is broken and the laws needs to be rewritten from scratch, the way they are now it's way too easy for companies like Uber to screw over individuals. Short version is if you're a one person independent contractor, and you don't have years of experience in a skilled trade with professional licensing, you're probably getting screwed.

If Uber drivers earned ten times as much money as they do now, it seems unlikely we'd be talking about how screwed they are. But the actual amount of money earned isn't one of the factors used when determining if you're a contractor or an employee.

So the situation is a bit more complicated, legally.

I agree with the idea that there's a problem when uber drivers are not making enough money to cover business expenses the way they would if they were classified as employees. But that's basically the problem of the economy having too low wages for large classes of people. Walmart employees are employees, afterall, but we still think they're getting the short end of the economic stick. The solution there is economic policy much broader than employee classification.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2016 22:25

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Marenghi posted:

The entire thing is fairly despicable when we've been in a house crisis since I overheard that story, and it's only gotten worse with many families made homeless. And thousands of houses that would suit long-term residents are kept off the market to make profits off holiday renters of at least double what they would renting long term. That's before taken into account the potential gains from the tax differences.

Err, are you saying airbnb is increasing the number of people moving here? Like dramatic hordes of new techbros that weren't willing to come work until they could pay inflated rates on airbnb listings?

From my perspective AirBNB has been a tremendous enabler for group housing, which has helped put more people into the fewer homes we're actually willing to build here.

# ¿ May 11, 2016 08:03

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

ToxicSlurpee posted:

AirBNB artificially increases demand for housing in an area where supply is already being crushed under the weight of far more demand. As tech bros flock to the area to grab high-paying tech jobs it's just getting continually worse.

Ok, so people buy houses or condos to be airbnb landlords since this is now more profitable. But then they rent out that housing to tenants. How is there "more demand" or "less supply" than we started with?

Meanwhile in my neighborhood there are plenty of "ghost houses" that are owned by real estate speculators and not being rented out to tenants. An AirBNB baron buying one of those would increase the available supply of housing, even if they moved into the area to do it!

# ¿ May 11, 2016 09:47

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Zephro posted:

Does "blue-blooded" mean something different in America? Because that reads like the police are all slumming aristocrats for some reason.

Not that that would make the show much stranger than it is already, I guess.

https://www.cbs.com/shows/blue_bloods/ -- there's a cop show called "Blue Bloods" even though from what I can tell even here the expression means "old money families on the east coast"

# ¿ May 17, 2016 10:10

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Unguided posted:

Imagine if the IT department of a company like Amazon or Google went on strike and shut down the servers for weeks.

Amazon and Google do not have "IT departments", and that is exactly why they do infrastructure better than non-tech companies.

# ¿ May 20, 2016 07:40

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Hughlander posted:

Serious question then, what is the name / informal name of desktop support? The guy who configures your corporate email? Installer of access points? Etc...

Those sorts of jobs are of course still done and are the IT equivalents (Google's term is "TechStop"): http://googleforstudents.blogspot.com/2013/09/a-day-in-life-of-googles-it-residents.html

But those are not "the server guys" as Unguided was implying. It's a different way of organizing the company, where infrastructure tech is core to the business rather than treated like some cost center ran by someone else.

# ¿ May 20, 2016 08:01

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Paradoxish posted:

Yeah, if a fitbit is off by that much then it's completely useless because it isn't providing you with any information that you aren't already provided with by virtue of being alive.

Eh, there's a matter of degree here. A fitbit could be wrong by that much 1% of the time and still completely hit its main use cases such as trend tracking. That's not enough 9's to be a good medical diagnostic tool though.

# ¿ May 28, 2016 01:49

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Munkeymon posted:

Yeah, just use PHP, the sea cucumber of languages

But in a just world sea cucumbers would not be extinct :confused:

# ¿ May 30, 2016 01:06

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

silence_kit posted:

I sincerely believe that some posters in this thread would defend to the death even the most stupid, pointless, and wasteful government regulation if it gave them an opportunity to rag on a startup company.

Let me tell you about my app, a new way to get an on-demand illegally unlicensed interior decorator!

# ¿ Jun 10, 2016 04:16

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Solkanar512 posted:

There's no way that the employees and leased office space makes up for the cost difference between these examples.

I think Linked In owns their buildings. They're right next to Google, so they gotta be worth something.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2016 10:18

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

DoctorTristan posted:

They have ~105bn in cash, but this deal is funded by issuing new debt.

Bond rates have been so low in recent years firms have been doing really strange things such as issuing new debt and then immediately using it to do a stock buyback.

# ¿ Jun 15, 2016 04:05

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Gail Wynand posted:

Friend of mine once had an ad for engineer hiring show up in his Uber app. Not sure how they decided to show it to him, travel to tech industry related locations maybe?

He may have used a coupon code provided at a tech conference.

People who don't live in Silicon Valley really have no idea what lengths they're going to for talent these days.

# ¿ Jun 16, 2016 22:40

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

This is your periodic reminder that news media still report rising home prices as though they were a good thing.

# ¿ Jun 18, 2016 07:21

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

cheese posted:

Selling their 1.5M dollar house to some east coast country club guy who moved out for a tech job is going to improve the housing crisis? No it won't, because the housing crisis you are worried about is not tech workers buying million dollar properties. Its people without tech jobs having access to affordable apartments. And them moving or not moving will have no impact on that.

People emigrating from the state and putting housing inventory on the market will help lower prices, yes. A generation ago when it happened in cities we called it "white flight" and housing prices fell through the floor, allowing poor people to move in.

Supply and demand are real things in the housing market.

# ¿ Jun 19, 2016 00:03

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Jumpingmanjim posted:

Calling this as the top of the bubble.

Nah I don't think they're trying to pretend it's a business, they're just rich people buying something for themselves. It's more like "This is the 0.1%"

# ¿ Jul 1, 2016 02:18

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

cheese posted:

A minor tax on the rich to help out the poor is �a dangerously dumb idea� that is �profoundly reckless and self-defeating�? Amazing.

But why only tax tech specifically? There are plenty of finance industry 1%ers in San Francisco, and I think the city already has a local income tax.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2016 08:13

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

ToxicSlurpee posted:

Let's be honest LinkedIn kind of sucks. I got zero interviews thanks to it and most of the job postings seemed to be "you are required to be bill Gates and also a unicorm."

LinkedIn's core business is selling recruiters access to candidates. The standard fee for recruiters in tech is tens of thousands of dollars per candidate matched. "Recruiter spam" is common talk among softtware developers.

Meanwhile, other industries have dozens of people competing for unpaid internships so that they can get years of experience for highly competitive "entry-level" positions that hardly pay anything. Those are not industries where recruiters use LinkedIn.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2016 08:18

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Munkeymon posted:

This might sound kinda crazy but bear with me here: if you can pass a law to tax rich fuckers then you can also pass a law to ignore their whinging about their view getting ruined. Weird, right?

No you see the problem is companies that pay their workers too much and not at all the landed gentry extracting the highest rents in the nation

# ¿ Jul 3, 2016 00:54

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Stinky_Pete posted:

No, it's more like making a hobby out of brushing your teeth or flossing

You can spend 200 dollars on a fancy electric toothbrush these days. It charges via USB!

# ¿ Jul 20, 2016 21:16

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Unguided posted:

Might as well buy a cheapo battery powered one, they're all going to have a slurry made of toothpaste, saliva and plaque seep into them over the course of a year, even with proper cleaning and regular head replacement, so might as well get the cheapest option.

Alternatively, I can buy the expensive one every year because I am a man of exquisite taste

# ¿ Jul 21, 2016 05:10

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

neonnoodle posted:

In either case, the second that the banking industry gets their poo poo together, they're going to crush you either by acquiring you outright

This is the explicit goal of most venture startups though -- to have an "exit"

# ¿ Jul 29, 2016 01:11

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Shifty Pony posted:

Furries always manage to shock me with the amount of money some of them are willing to throw at anything and everything furry.

And then I think about how unhappy someone must be with their own body/self/situation that they are willing to spend thousands on random porn art commissions which include their avatar fulfilling the fetishes that they themselves can never actually fulfill and it makes me a bit sad.

Let me tell you about a new technology called VR and the opportunities for bespoke 3d modeling...

# ¿ Jul 29, 2016 08:06

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Dr. Angela Ziegler posted:

lol
Godspeed, noble disrupter.

Beepi actually really are pretty strict. I had a roommate move across the country and try to get rid of his car. The car was about 2 years old and not too driven. Beepi was his first choice since they come onsight and guarantee you a good price because of the rigor of the inspection. The inspection was quite through -- I think about an hour and a half.

It failed the Beepi inspection because rodents had chewed the foam underneath the engine block. So he took it to the dealership, who had a car salesman look at it for maybe 2 minutes and then start doing standard carsalesman bullshit on price. He took the deal, but definitely felt like he got screwed in the process (as anyone who interacts with car salesmen does).

Beepi has real opportunities here.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 03:20

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

As bubbly as ad tech is it at least has the ability to target users. That's likely more valuable than the combination of television/print/billboard advertising and those are still somehow enormous industries.

Internet ads also typically have the ability to measure if they're actually working in terms of conversions of actual sales, which has been notably absent from the entire advertising industry for most of its existence.

# ¿ Aug 11, 2016 06:12

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Subjunctive posted:

He's becoming a partner in a law firm?!?

Yeah there's nothing really new about this concept other than Thiel not being a lawyer himself. Law firms have been taking cases on contingency using their own capital since before there was even a United States. They've even been selling shares of future lawsuit payouts to divvy up the risk.

It's actually sort of how the system is supposed to work, since otherwise only clients with deep pockets could ever see a lawsuit through its end, no matter how legitimate their case.

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 01:20

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

namaste faggots posted:

Didn't thiel get a law degree from Stanford?

Welp, then there's nothing new about this at all, unless he let his bar license expire or something. You learn something new every day!

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 04:00

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

It's a bit tricky though. Commuting to work (or even waiting in the mandatory security line) doesn't count as "work time" for minimum wage purposes. Uber probably has some wiggle room there, though probably not as much as they'd like.

This is why we have courts.

# ¿ Sep 6, 2016 02:45

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

nm posted:

Admittedly it was only $28,000, which while not insubstantial kinda pales compared to what Holmes's parent's friends gave (or the small loan Donnie got).

Also this entire thread is about what happens when you give college dropouts money with hardly any strings from random VCs. Most "seed money" is around the few tens of k range.

# ¿ Sep 7, 2016 21:51

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Discendo Vox posted:

"hounded by the government" meaning was subject to an entirely conventional criminal prosecution for scraping massive amounts of information from a non-profit digital library.

Entirely conventional criminal prosecutions are not exactly something to be proud of

# ¿ Sep 10, 2016 05:41

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

If you make enough money on airbnb they report your income to the IRS. You enter it as Schedule D rental income. You can deduct your expenses (or a portion thereof if you live there.)

Depending on the city, AirBNB also collects local taxes at transaction time. The host has no control over this, and the AirBNB platform is smart enough to know when various taxes apply (like not charging local taxes for 2 month stays).

There are a good number of AirBNB hosts who live in a place full time and then go stay at a friend's house when it books. These tend to be in places where everything doesn't book all the time (ie, cities that build enough housing, or resort towns with well-defined travel seasons).

# ¿ Sep 14, 2016 07:26

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

fits my needs posted:

For anyone taking this post seriously, this person willingly lived in a "hacker hostel" and has obviously drunk the silicon kool aid.

Good point, I apologize for commenting on taxes.

# ¿ Sep 15, 2016 05:20

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Arsenic Lupin posted:

Is there any reason to believe that's Mayer's actual CV and not somebody's idea of a joke? Look at the pie chart.

Executives, especially famous ones, don't need CVs for the simple reason that they don't submit job applications. There are specialized executive headhunter firms that work directly with candidates and try to hawk them before companies needing as such.

# ¿ Sep 19, 2016 01:36

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

MeruFM posted:

Yes but they were all really bad.
There was also dogpile, etc that tried to aggregate all the bad searches into even more bad searches. I think Yahoo and Excite were close but they were also bad.
The majority of people I knew still kept a list of urls they typed into manually or copied from a text file.

This was also the time when search engines were competing by showing off how many results they found.

Like literally Yahoo would say "showing 1-10 of 4 million results" and then Excite would try to one-up them by saying it found 5 million results.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2016 08:03

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Gail Wynand posted:

I thought Apple was known for paying slightly below market salaries since they think the privilege of working for Apple is worth the pay cut.

This is true of any company that people decide they want to work for before hearing about working conditions or compensation. See also: the entire video games industry, television/movie production, and most non-profits.

As a general career tip: prefer non-prestigious companies, unless the reason they're prestigious is their compensation and working conditions.

# ¿ Sep 21, 2016 04:44

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# ¿ May 4, 2024 12:20

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

I think the only thing more arbitrary in this industry than hiring of programmers is hiring of tech recruiters. I've had wildly different experiences there -- from an amazing experience with a recruiter seeking me out on freenode IRC because they needed a particular kind of expertise (and I was pretty much the only one with it), to emails with the wrong name on them from someone who clearly hadn't read the first line of my profile.

# ¿ Sep 22, 2016 07:07

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