Tech interview preparation

ironchef said:
To be free, not much. To beat dest, that would not be a fair fight. For me. :banghead:

I don't need much money. How many Big Macs can I eat a day? Since I don't need a day job and no one to impress, I only need a couple of T-shirts, a couple of sweat pants, a couple of sneakers, a 15 years old Toyota Prius and a beach house on the sand in Newport Beach. :cool:
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still have to pay accountants to do the taxes, pay rent even if self employed. not completely free
 
nooby_mcnoob said:
It's not a super bull market. Weekly charts below with 200 week MA. The first two below are situations where the market crashed right after the screenshot. The last is today. One of these is not like the other two. Long, long way to go IMO. BTFD until the parabolic move that looks like the first two.

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This is the what it looked like before the most recent correction. Doesn't look too parabolic but it almost was.

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Thanks, but I disagree. My strict self reliance has been detrimental career wise. About 10 years ago, I was offered a lead position on a new product at Microsoft that has been made into a core part of Windows. I could have shepherded this thing for a few years. Yesterday, I saw that developers, not managers, who have been at MS for more than 11 years (from levels.fyi) make about $2.5 million. That is $2.5 million for being around smart people, doing shit you probably enjoy every day. I have not yet made $2.5 million in any given year so this is my high water mark. I have a friend who DID take a similar job at MS and is now head of some global thing. Safe to say he makes more than 2.5 million.

Many years ago, as a kid, I spent a few months in a youth jail. A guard removed my mattress as a punishment and I slept on the floor for the remainder of the time as I refused to sleep on the mattress even when it was returned. The things they tried to do to break me were innumerable from burning my possessions to stealing my money to placing me in a room with a literal crazy person. For almost 20 years afterwards, I kept sleeping on the floor. It was my way of saying that no one will have control over me. That definitely affected my career choices.

Now, I sleep on a bed, but it was only after I worked at the hedge fund that I was able to shake that mental issue. There are still times when I want to sleep on a floor, or be in a small room and sleep in there but the issue is mostly gone.

The point is that $300K is peanuts compared to what I should have been making but it's the minimum I require to waste my time.

And that, my friends, is why I am so fucked up :)
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So first off there aren't any software developers at Microsoft making a salary of $2.5M dollars (maybe Yen?) a year, year after year. There may have been some combination of stock bonuses and stock appreciation that hit the perfect combination such that someone made that one year (although I doubt even that) but that's a far cry from salary. Note that your source is a single, anonymously reported compensation reports on levels.fyi, where the vast majority of the rest of the top salaries are in the $500k range which is the actual top take-home for the top developers as MSFT. You're anchoring on what is probably a made-up number (the combination of salary, stock, and bonus they put in doesn't even make sense) and even if it's not made up it's a far cry from the average of the top salaries, so very selective vision in play there.
Second, it's almost vanishingly unlikely that anyone is initially hired at a salary of $300,000 as a software developer unless they're being poached based on their performance on a rival's high profile project or in a few cases where you're doing something super obscure in a high margin field with a severe talent shortage, like if you were an FPGA developer 5 years ago. It's very likely you could end up making $300,000 a year if you provided that much value to a company, but you need to prove that first.
To the extent you care, and coming from someone who runs a software company, you're putting out a pretty unreasonable expectation set for a developer. I'd be happy to pay you $300,000 a year, heck I'd even be happy to pay you $2.5M a year if you were the key to bringing in the profits to support that. A developer would need to provide some support for that upfront or through their performance though. The whole "what I should have been making" because "I saw a single anonymous compensation report online for MSFT" and "I could have had a job at MSFT a decade ago" attitude not only doesn't work, it puts you out of the hiring pool entirely pretty damn fast.
 
nooby_mcnoob said:
Ah, Sig is ignored. Blissfully ignorant of whatever he is saying. So nice.
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I'd love to know specifically what I said that was "ignorant"?

Was it the part where I pointed out that relying on a single anonymous salary survey online that was out of line with the dozens of other surveys there, hundreds of surveys elsewhere, and my own experience as a owner of a software firm was a bad idea?
Was it the part where I said a random jackass with an attitude isn't going to get hired at $300k starting salary anywhere absent a couple edge cases?

Seriously, I'd like to learn from you but it's damn hard to do so with a statement as vague as "Blissfully ignorant of whatever he is saying. So nice." Is that really all you can come up with?
 
ironchef said:
Never have to work a day job again, not even trading, and worry about living expenses no matter where I live.

It can be done for us worker bees. I have been free for more than a decade.
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Yeah, get married to a rich chick.

I'm very confused. So you are free by your definition, but you also trade? Why trade if you are free?

Humans are not very good at being idle. Let me see if I can dig up the video...


The slide in particular:

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On Work
Kahlil Gibran

You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.
For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons,
and to step out of life's procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.

When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.
Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?

Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune.
But I say to you that when you work you fulfil a part of earth's furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born,
And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life,
And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life's inmost secret.

But if you in your pain call birth an affliction and the support of the flesh a curse written upon your brow, then I answer that naught but the sweat of your brow shall wash away that which is written.

You have been told also that life is darkness, and in your weariness you echo what was said by the weary.
And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge,
And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge,
And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,
And all work is empty save when there is love;
And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.

And what is it to work with love?
It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart,
even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.
It is to build a house with affection,
even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.
It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy,
even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.
It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,
And to know that all the blessed dead
are standing about you and watching.

Often have I heard you say, as if speaking in sleep, "He who works in marble, and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone, is nobler than he who ploughs the soil.
And he who seizes the rainbow to lay it on a cloth in the likeness of man, is more than he who makes the sandals for our feet."
But I say, not in sleep but in the overwakefulness of noontide, that the wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least of all the blades of grass;
And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by his own loving.

Work is love made visible.
And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger.
And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine.
And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man's ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.
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