But many companies have debt that they just roll over. Not many companies aim to be debt free, because it is not necessarily a good goal. You need capital, and optimise its mix. At current rates, issuing debt is attractive.
Wow, this author actually wrote well enough for me to read the whole article. I usually drop out 1-2 paragraphs into these types of longer form stories. Good job and looking forward to reading more.
I think the key difference is that the headline doesn't bait and switch you with the promise of some deeply-buried lede. You're reading it in the first place because you're interested in the author's firsthand experience.
I normally detest long-form because I go into it wanting to discover a tricky horse-betting scheme, but then I have to sit through pages of what some guy's suit looked like and how he held his cigar as he sat down for lunch. This author has her priorities aligned and doesn't abuse or mislead the reader.
With your conda environment activated, you can run pip install requirements.txt. You don't have to use any of the conda commands outside of creating the environment.
I love the discussion on this topic. Classic HN. A bunch of pretty smart people throwing out claims and arguing assertions with no evidence or even an inkling of how they could justify their claims.
Perhaps this topic is especially suited to these types of arguments as economics and financial instruments _seem_ to follow some sort of intuition. The problem is that you can have lots of ideas about what causes something but unless you can build a model that seems to reflect the world properly and then introduce your change and see if it results in the outcome you expected, you have no idea if it is even close to possibly true.
Arguing off intuition is fun and could even give you some ideas but it is ultimately pointless if you don’t test your intuition and correct it if you are off.
Unlike, say, the design of an actual rocket ship (where it is perfectly OK to leave everything to the experts), the economy is the truest form of democracy - of the people, for the people, by the people and all that. You cannot really opt out of it. And ignoring it is generally a bad idea. And to make it worse, someone you don't know and cannot influence (and is generally unaccountable to the elected political class also) controls policies which directly affect your livelihood.
We probably need more discussions, not less. But I agree with you that folks should also spend more time learning about economics. If you think there are good sources for learning the subject, please let us know.
I think there is a desire among people to have a simple guide to what markets are and why they exist, so I applaud the author on the idea and the intent.
However, many of the ideas are misunderstood. A couple months of playing around with a stock trading app and maybe reading some blog posts will not teach you what markets are or why they exist.
For quite some time, a significant amount of brain power has gone into understanding and improving markets. All of this work has resulted in significant complexity.
If I had to pick a place to start, were I to teach someone "Everything they ever wanted to know about the stock market," It would actually be with bonds. Lending money has been around for millennia. It is an amazingly simple, yet incredibly useful, idea. It's also extremely useful as a way of teaching someone about equity. Bonds and equities are intricately linked in their development and in the theory of valuation.
This article could be interesting, given the depth and breadth that one could explore given the topic. Unfortunately, it quickly turns into fluff marketing for the Chinese company they focus on. Is Technology Review accepting money for articles?
Just my 2 cents...If you want to make significantly more, focus on the business problems you can solve, not the technology you know/use. I’m not an “X” developer. I’m a business person that happens to use code to add value.
If this is outside your comfort zone, look for some basic books on business and internalize the fact that until you can tie your knowledge to dollars coming through the door, you likely won’t make significant jumps in pay.
There are numerous posts that have been shared on HN on how to make more money as a consultant/contractor/freelance developer. They are almost 100% relevant to company employees.
I’m not saying this is something you can change tomorrow. It could be months, could be years. Really depends on how quickly you can learn the business you are involved in and where you are starting from. I don’t know you or your situation so this advice is extremely general. Focus on what the problems are your business/clients have which cost them money or find a way to answer a question like “if we do this it costs X and we make Y.” Make sure you drive those types of initiatives and get your name attached to them but that doesn’t always mean doing it alone.
The posts are pretty easily searchable and even if you don’t find the ones I’m thinking of, the process of searching and filtering on its own is important. One thing I had to learn the hard way is that, with a few rare exceptions, no one is going to be your teacher/mentor. Everyone is too busy with their own shit.
Ultimately, if you want to know more or make more, it comes down to finding ways to justify that to the people that can make that decision. Given you make around $85k/year you need to look at the people several years ahead of you in the career track, if one exists, at your company.
If your goal is to make more, you need to be aggressive. Invest in yourself in as many ways as you can. Learn more about software. Start by expanding beyond “web developer”. learn back-end programming, databases, etc. Talk to the people in your company that do sales, marketing, operations, HR. Learn as much as you can about your business or one you want to move into. Experience trumps everything. If you aren’t getting experience that makes you more valuable, you need to move on.
My last piece of advice is more of a warning. A lot of how much you make comes down to luck. Did the interviewer like you for the highly paid job? Did the team you are a part of get the credit for a major win for the company? Or other things that aren’t always within your control. The important thing is that you keep moving forward. Looking for opportunities and driving things to completion. Hard for me to not phrase this in terms of finance...you want to constantly be buying call options on yourself. So that new thing you learn/project you complete that gets your name out there? It is a call option on yourself. Most of those options expire worthless, but hopefully a few pay off big time.
Wow this is great advice, thank you I appreciate the time and effort you took in writing that.
I have a few follow up questions if you dont mind.
>If your goal is to make more, you need to be aggressive. Invest in yourself in as many ways as you can. Learn more about software. Start by expanding beyond “web developer”. learn back-end programming, databases, etc. Talk to the people in your company that do sales, marketing, operations, HR. Learn as much as you can about your business or one you want to move into. Experience trumps everything. If you aren’t getting experience that makes you more valuable, you need to move on.
Its so easy to learn in isolation, but how can you actually turn it into profit? How can you quantify your skills? How does one get good at tha?
Also, why the call option analogy, do you work in finance (just curious)?
In case you happen to see this: The commenter replying to you here is right, but that approach also seems really overwhelming. Something actionable but I think a bit easier along the same lines: take projects or seek opportunities to work closely with your product managers, or whatever your company calls the people whose job is to figure out what the customer / market wants from your product. Basically the people they make the most fun of in Office Space - "I talk to the customer so the developers don't have to" - are really important and great people to learn from.
Created new account to share since my other could easily trace back to me...
Maybe this isn’t super relevant since this is mostly about tech but I’ve found my technology skills are what contribute to give me a huge advantage, even in finance.
All figures in USD. All finance jobs are in research.
23: 50k - tech consulting business
23: 90k - same. Relocate to NYC
24: 110k - negotiated at consulting company
24: 160k = 110k + 50k bonus - move to financial company
25: 200k = 110k + 90k bonus
26: 210k = 120k + 90k bonus
27: 150k - joined small team starting new business in finance
