You can look him up on Google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=baVVmaoAAAAJ&hl=en
In 2020/2021 he has at least 3 first author papers and a number of co-authored papers and apparently he wrote an impressive thesis. Even if he wanted to continue in academia, in a number of STEM fields, it would be sufficient for a degree. It's not a question of putting in time, it's about output.
I looked at a PDF of the bill that was linked to in the WaPo version of the article. It probably doesn't matter until the House passes its version, but there are funds for AI workforce development for example that might be of interest to those early in their careers.
Thanks, that's interesting to note. The main thing people seem to talk about is the 52 billion for semiconductors which is the "CHIPS" act. Just wondering about the other 200 billion. It looked like $29 billion went to the NSF?
FWIW, this was actually in my wish List on Amazon, so I will eventually get around to buying it. I have Amazon unlimited, so I don't know how much this will help you--the book's description caught my eye and I think it came up as a recommendation. I'll write a review when I get around to reading it (I have some other books in the queue). Good luck!
At it's best, that's what scientific reports is (in a number of subfields)--a place to put research that is reviewed for technical correctness. There may be debate about how well it succeeds, but I think it's useful. I would prefer to have more papers out where people worked on something, found it wasn't necessarily exciting, but it was solid work and it saves other people time.
@eloff I think our replies crossed. I think that the question is whether you are still at a net positive as a result of inflation (consider the counterfactual).
In what sense? In a world of fiat currency, post-Bretton Woods, what does money mean? I am not an expert by any means, but to me, it seems like the USD has value (ignore the rest of the world for a moment) because the US issues taxes that it says can only be paid with this wacky tokens called dollars and if you don't pay your taxes, then bad things happen. The rest follows from there. I think that you are saying (correct me if I'm wrong) that printing money leads to inflation which lowers what you can exchange your tokens for (maybe it takes more of them to buy apples). So, the first question is whether that is actually true. We have seen a fair amount of printing of money in recent years, but fairly low inflation. It's not obvious to me at what point that changes. The second question is whether inflation if it does occur is net bad/good and for who. I think we can agree Weimar Republic style hyperinflation is bad. However, let's say that inflation is 1% is that good or bad? For who? I think this question doesn't have meaning on an absolute scale. I think it has meaning relative to growth (and the productive capability of the full economy). Let's say that the economy is growing at say 6%, but we have 1% inflation--I'm fairly happy with that. But, let's say that we have 2% growth and 1% inflation--I'm less happy. Deflation is deadly (which has historically been the fate of gold based currencies), so we could argue that having a bit of inflation is insurance that we pay to avoid disaster. But, what about beyond that? The typical argument is that it helps drive consumption and encourages investment. Do you disagree?
> We have seen a fair amount of printing of money in recent years, but fairly low inflation.
The money weren’t distributed proportionally to the wealth of the people. Another reason, which though applies only in short- and mid-term, there are various nominal rigidities: contracts mostly use nominal values.
> The second question is whether inflation if it does occur is net bad/good and for who.
Well, that’s a whole nother question. You can create inflation using direct deposits to the holders of money.
It’s getting above my level of expertise but in addition to taxes, mortgages, corporate bonds, and state bonds also play a part.
Also inflation in the range of 1%-3% is considered a good thing because it helps encourage trade and prevents deflation. The amount of interest one can earn in a savings account or CD should also be taken into account.
I guess I'm weird. If I were offered 6 months of severance to quit a job at a successful company where I enjoyed the work and my coworkers, why would I take the offer? I've turned down offers that paid over 30% more because I like where I am. I don't think it's so uncommon.
I agree with you about the decision not to reflexively fire those responsible for the list. Though for the conversation to veer towards white supremacy and for ~30% of the company to leave, I do wonder if something else was going on there. I could be a bad judge of humans, but if it was just one guy overreacting, I would think that fewer people would have quit.
To be honest, I would leave almost any company that offered me 6 months salary in severance, if for no other reason than to work on projects for a couple of months while seeking a next job and then making double salary for four months. I passed up that opportunity once (and it was the right choice because it was my first tech company experience,I needed to build up years behind the keyboard and a portfolio), but I definitely would not today.
I guess it's just a different way of thinking that I'm unfamiliar with. I have turned down other job offers (30-40% salary increase--not 2x) because I like where I am--coworkers, projects, autonomy, city, etc.
I was debating about whether to comment on this--whether I could add any useful signal to the noise. My thought is that is a tragedy. Let me start with the business case. It resulted in around 30% of the company resigning. As a client, that would disturb me. What is the likelihood of new features being added? Security patches? Maintenance? Also, AFAIKT, Basecamp isn't just a product, but a brand, with the founders writing several books on work and this basically wipes out that brand.
But to the issue itself. I've read what I can about it and it's tragic. I'll start by saying that I believe the founders had the right to make the call that they did and give them credit for offering severance packages to those who disagreed with their decision. However, the whole affair is a disaster and a cautionary tale. It seems to have started out with good intent. A group of employees wanted to create a more equitable workplace. They found a list of "funny" customer names and realized that this was a bad thing to have. The founders agreed--mocking your customers is a bad idea. The question is what happened next. I was unaware of the idea of the pyramid of hate. It kinda reminds me of Yoda “Fear is the path to the dark side … fear leads to anger … anger leads to hate … hate leads to suffering.” It looks like the implication is not that funny names === The Holocaust, but rather that a certain context is required for something like The Holocaust to occur. I believe that idea is true, but am not sure if this was a productive path to take. It seemed like the company had decided that the list was bad, to discontinue it, and to move on. The call not to fire whoever made the list doesn't seem to be a bad one. Contexts change and people make mistakes. If people evolve that should be encouraged. Where it seems that things fell apart is in how the CEOs responded to this. It's a really difficult issue and it would seem that discussion could have led to some mutual understanding. Moving to cancel social-political discussion in response (and to announce it in a blog post instead of internally) strikes me as where things took a tragic turn. While it's possible to have a policy of not discussing partisan politics at work (for example, it's not allowed for federal employees), not having discussion of equity issues at work is more problematic. Because for some employees, it's not just a question of doing their job and talking about these things in their own time--because for some, it effects their ability to do their jobs. For an in-person company, there can be something as simple as bathrooms. I'm a heterosexual male and never thought about there being a need for unisex bathrooms until an LGBTQ+ group at work pointed it out. Now in our building we have some. It doesn't effect me, but it means a lot to them. I can picture a woman wondering if she didn't get a promotion because there was something that she wasn't doing at work or if it was because of her gender--for her, it's not an abstract sociopolitical question--it's a question that has an impact on her ability at work. Or, if she's in a meeting and she finds that she's being ignored when she speaks, but men of similar ability are not, then it's not just an abstract issue, but a question of how she gets her job done. I am not even saying that if it happens that men are doing this that they are sexist--they might simply be oblivious to it. By my personality, I have a tendency to talk over people and have to remind myself to let other people talk (I think it's a good idea because then I can hear ideas that I might not have considered and sometimes save myself from doing something dumb). I hope that it's something that I never get called into HR about and would much rather a coworker told me if it was a problem. I think there's a worthwhile set of discussions about workplace culture that are worth having about what it means to be professional in the workplace. Of course there are cases that can go too far. But, a lot of it just strikes me as being polite to people. If someone wants to be called Robert instead of Bob, then if it makes him happy, ok. Other things are related to questions of cognitive bias. For example, if if I want to hire someone, it's pretty natural to use my network. However, maybe I can surface better candidates by searching more broadly. Am I using a good set of criteria in hiring?
But, back to the list. Without seeing it, it's not possible to judge whether was it just in bad taste to mock customers period, or did it have racial overtones in the "funny" names for some racial groups. A lot of the interpretation hinges on that. Also, the perception of whether it was racially motivated or not (unless it was particularly blatant could also vary depending on if one was a member of the targeted group or not. But from the exchange on white supremacy to occur and for such a large fraction of the company to quit, then it would suggest that there were deeper issues at the company and that the CEOs didn't want to engage with those issues.
> I was debating about whether to comment on this--whether I could add any useful signal to the noise.
While I seldom partake in threads, I do read and save interesting perspectives and opinions on topics I am interested in for more personal dissection & discussion (with myself and close friends), and I found your comment to be valuable and worth reading, so thank you for sharing.
