I am just so sick of it. Just make them pay the toll for once, for god sake. How is this damn different than any other criminal offence. We just need a good example of crashing a patent troll. Somebody should crush them, crush them so hard. Then, maybe we can have a chance to end this maddness.
Economic downturn happens every now and again. That's expected. You cannot change it. What a software engineer should have done was to be prepared for it. I don't see any valid reasons for him to end up in a supermarket job. 2000s crisis lasted a couple of years at the most. He should have had the means to survive comfortably the temporary time period when he was without an income.
The lesson is: Be prepared as if you are going to be out of job anytime. That's a typical mistake of US based people. US is not a social country, you are on your own when shit happens, you should better be ready for the worst case scenario at all times.
Your monthly income is not for you to spend monthly. It's for today and future.
I don't see any valid reasons for him to end up in a supermarket job.
Generalize much? You know based on the fact that he "worked in software" that that he had no valid reason to need a "supermarket job"?
I hope no awful life event happens to you, but when things are going great, it's easy to say others shouldn't be struggling. Then something happens. Maybe you get sick. Or a close relative needs financial assistance. Or you get laid off. I'm fortunate enough to enjoy a comfortable living, but I've been in some really shitty situations in the past, and let me tell you- anything can happen to anybody. If you're doing well, be grateful, but don't assume everybody is in the same situation you are.
I agree, especially with regards to medical situations.
If I didn't have health insurance and had a major medical problem -- first thing I'd do would be to arrange a plane ticket to a medical tourist country. Extended diagnostics + care + treatment (especially without managed insurance prices) in thr US is ridiculously expensive.
And honestly? I'd be willing to go from 98 percentile to 9X percentile care to trim that.
For a significant fraction of medical problems, that is a great strategy. For a large fraction of medical problems, it will be a combination of friends and family close by keeping you alive, or at least, tended to well enough that you still want to live. Long term care in another country probably won't have that support, which is a really big problem long term.
That's assuming one has the ability to sock away enough savings to ease the burden of any long-term unemployment. The reality though is that millions of US citizens do not even have this option, even knowing full well that they need to be saving more. They simply cannot because the cost of living is too great and wages are too low. The fact that the US is "not a social country, you are on your own when shit happens", while correct, is big a problem for all citizens and it amazes me how pervasive this cowboy mentality has become, especially amongst the populations that are living month-to-month and which would greatly benefit from strong social contracts.
We're talking about tech jobs here, not minimum wage jobs that don't provide a living wage.
I think the point is really that most people conflate their NEEDS with their WANTS and end up living hand to mouth because of it. If you are a tech worker in the USA and you don't have extenuating circumstances that eat up large portions of your income (like child support, back taxes, massive student loan debt, etc) and cannot be avoided, then you should be able to limit your monthly expenses to be able to save money. The truth is though, that most people "need" the latest phone, the latest computer, a new car (because apparently no other cars are "reliable"), etc. In my experience just making small changes to your lifestyle can have a massive impact on your ability to save.
I can attest to that. I came to the US half a year ago on a work visa (not H1B) from an European country, with dependents in tow. Earning modest tech salary I was able to "sock away" more earnings in that time than I would be able to in my home country in three years. My observations is that people here simply live a lifestyle that matches their income.
Yeah, people always question why I'm not living bigger than I am. They don't understand putting half their income into savings instead of spending it on the now. The part that gets me is that when bad times come, people will look at my like I'm privileged and should share, forgetting that they already benefited from their extra earnings that they choose to spend instead of save. (To be clear, I'm talking about people who could've saved but didn't. I am not talking about the people who, through no fault of their own, never had a chance to save.)
I think your advice is not generalizable to "tech workers" in general, whose salary ranges, cost of living, family situations, etc. are all over the map. Come out to San Francisco and try to support a family of five on a $90K tech salary. Congratulations if your particular situation allows you to save for unforeseen events in the future, though.
OK, live in a low cost of living area and make a low salary. The point is, I wouldn't assume that every person with a tech job is able to save at a rate that allows them to deal with being laid off for months or years. Everyone's situation is different.
In the fullness of time you will come to experience many surprising changes in life that come out of nowhere and are not in your control and you will have a very different view of this.
People say that and it seems true to some extent, but financially, people rarely fall into the categories of "limitless wealth" and "not a penny to my name." It's almost like a false dichotomy is being implied by this statement, claiming that if you don't prioritize money, you will be left penniless and ruined. That simply isn't true. There are a wide range of conditions between wealth and poverty and studies like this show that you do not need to be closer to rich than poor to be happy.
I think it's more the opposite: that the richer you are the more you can afford to prioritize time. This study doesn't even try to control for that; they measure materiality and a measure of subjective feelings of wealth, but they never measure e.g. parental income.
I think studies have shown that past a relatively low (by SV standards) level of income ($75kish I think) the relationship between money and happiness breaks down.
The argument can definitely be made that the happiness difference between "comfortable and independent" and "Zuckerberg" is not all that great.
> I think studies have shown that past a relatively low (by SV standards) level of income ($75kish I think) the relationship between money and happiness breaks down.
This is true. But while that is low by SV standards, the $75k threshold from the study is targeted to "median america" cost of living.
If you adjust for cost of living and for purchasing power over the 6 years since the study was conducted, you end up with quite a bit more for areas like San Francisco. In fact, you'd probably be looking at more like 175-185k. [1]
That's not intuitive for me. I personally think my threshold would rather be "comfortable and independent without having to work".
Not that I don't want to work anymore, but being able to leave my programming job and becoming a dog breeder would make a lot of difference. And take month longs vacations to travel whenever I wanted.
Isn't that too cut and dry? I think what research like this is trying to determine is at what point additional money does not equate to an equal increase in happiness. If you're homeless, then yes, money becomes a huge factor in your life, because it becomes about survival. But what about the middle-class, the people who have the choice to either worry about gaining extra money for material purposes, or choose to be satisfied with a less audacious lifestyle but live more in the moment.
As per your first link, that's a problem with iOS and the brain dead way they implemented third party keyboards, not Swiftkey. All of them are a little bit glitchy.
So sick of patent trolls. But at the same time I am very angry with big companies who managed to pull through lawsuits when they got sued. They should strike back and crush those low-lifes to pieces.
This sentiment is quite common, but the reality is that patents trolls are simply a few pieces of paper (IP, Articles of Incorporation, Short term contracts for rent and consultants) and thus a difficult target. If you were to challenge and destroy their IP in court, you would prove it worthless and they would disband, recapitalize, acquire more IP and reincorporate.
