I've also been in a few interviews where the company was being evasive about the salary range. In every case it was below market and the hiring manager was just too embarrassed or too scammy to state it. Hoping they would hire someone desperate enough (ie "exposure").

No words on low IQ but absolutely nothing about being a genius.

Also, a paragraph which may point at mild psychopathy as a good trait to have. Which is absolutely in line with top leadership.

> intelligence is negatively correlated with success in business

Has anyone ever seen a negative correlation on a graph? It implies the most successful businessman are practically the dumbest people to exist. It's an extremely foolish, incorrect assertion. GP and downvoters must be amazing at business.

Yeah I'm not convinced there is any connection between intelligence and business acumen.

> In fact intelligence is negatively correlated with success in business.

is BS if you're "not convinced there is any connection between intelligence and business acumen."

Elon… is not that smart. Take the “hyperloop” for example, invented in the 1800’s, IIRC. When I considered it in the 90’s as a thought experiment, I quickly realized how dumb it would be. The earth moves, all the time. The pressure wave of a failure somewhere in the system would literally kill everyone on board. If any parts were above ground, a simple sniper bullet from several miles away could kill hundreds of people. I was a teenager, simply writing a report for school. In my report, I quickly (within hours of discovering the idea) realized the expenses and risks of maintaining such a thing would quickly overwhelm any benefits. Yet this “novel idea” a random billionaire came up with is somehow different? I don’t think so.

I could go on with dozens or potentially hundreds of examples where it’s clear he didn’t apply any critical thought at all.

Just to be clear, I’m not saying he is dumb. He just doesn’t think things through before saying them out loud. I think the majority of normal people do this. In other words, I think he’s a normal person who got lucky, and works hard to keep what he has. Just like everyone else. However, we live in a world that idolizes lucky people…

Once someone gets to Bill Gates level intelligence, I would agree any additional steps beyond that probably negatively correlates with grit and 'a certain irrational headstrongness' to a sizable amount, so much so that it noticeably reduces chances of business success.

Your confusing reasonably trained in a narrow area with intelligence.

How do you define intelligence?

"A very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings—"catching on," "making sense" of things, or "figuring out" what to do"

Lets examine the parameters. In order to start a new business one has to be able to cover startup costs and live on your savings. Lets look at average savings as a starting point.

https://www.zippia.com/advice/american-savings-statistics/ About 33% have 10,000+ and 42% have less than 1000.

Even 10k is really very little in truth just a little runway until you can either acquire additional funding or crash and burn.

Lets inject some reality. Half of America has basically nothing. Another 25% would have to sink the majority of their accumulated wealth into such an endeavor with a 50 50 chance of existing in 5 years. They COULD do it but it would be both scary and dangerous and half of them would end up ruined. It's like saying I could climb Everest.

I could scrape up the funds for the plane ticket and its possible I might survive the trip but anyone saying "most people could climb Everest" would be talking nonsense.

There are plenty of ways to start a business without instantly giving up other employment.

-some ramble about how it’s all too hard

Excellent debating style right there!

Increasing costs and inequality rob us of the future surpluses that would be produced by such endeavors. Should we want to enrich our society it isn't sufficient to pretend opportunity exists we just endeavor to actually support it.

The rest of your response is similar to your previous rambles about how it's all too hard, despite the countless examples, a mere google search away, of people who have started and run businesses in Western countries without instantly starving to death, or whatever your mostly-bullshit argument is.

This or worse is about half the country

You need expertise, time, and money to start a business. The majority of people lack not one but all 3.

This is probably why only 9% own an established business. Indeed jp Morgan says that future business owners on average start out substantially wealthier.

https://www.jpmorganchase.com/institute/research/small-busin...

Which supports my assertion that the majority are ill positioned to start a business.

Money buys time, money buys relevant expertise in, wealth makes risk tenable because failure doesn't mean homelessness, money and financial health in fact buys access to borrowed money.

Everyone could just do what only 9% of people do is an incredibly privileged thing to say it's like Zuckerberg saying anyone can have a website or bolt saying anyone can run.

It's insulting.

I guess some elements of capitalism need people with your defeatist outlook, to be lifelong wage slaves.

There are a lot of as you put it "wage slave" businesses which have 45 people making barely enough to live 4 folks making 20% more in semi-supervisory positions working 60 hours a week with lots of unpaid overtime effectively making less per hour than the grunts and 1 guy making a decent living.

You can accurately say that any of the guys could in theory move up but the logic breaks down trying to apply it to the group as a whole with one position essentially worth having anyone COULD move up but EVERYONE never could.

Society is essentially so constructed in the large. We can't all sell each other financial products. If we want society to function we will have to have a whole lot of people who are modestly compensated and I don't just mean french fry cooks. There are a lot of positions that are both challenging and necessary that really aren't paid that much. These people aren't all stupid losers and they aren't all too stupid to be business tycoons. They fit into the slots that society made and if we want people to move up we ought to do a better job at creating such slots and allocating resources to them.

Bemoaning the fact that people haven't pulled themselves up by their bootstraps is basically useless.

What business did you start?

You simply don’t get to put all your focus on making your business succeed without being a bit “blinkered”. That’s what focus means.

Some services vary in price by huge amounts.

Use Google to research how much it costs to have a company logo professionally designed, and you'll find you can spend anything from $5 (remote fiverr designer slaps your name on a stock template) to $5,000,000 (fancy ad agency rebrand for a fortune 500 company)

So I can see how someone could accidentally make an insultingly low offer for some services, despite having tried to research beforehand.

It turned into a series of email flames from an "entrepreneur" that involved references to Frodo and the Ring.

Needless to say, the company burned out super-fast. The guy running the company didn't realize that he has to pay market rate in order to attract talent; and if he can't pay market rate, he has to reset what he's trying to do in order to meet his budget.

He kept pressing me for a salary number and I gave him one below market rate, well below what I ended up getting on another offer.

To top it off, he went on some dumbass rant about government handouts, "no one wants to work anymore", etc. Dodged a bullet there I guess!

Were you trying to get hired? If so, why would you do that?

If you say 100 quatloos, then go through 3 rounds of interviews, discussions, and they offer your 100 quatloos, you'd be an asshat to complain about salary.

And the employer would have every reason to think you're a dumbass.

Note that refusing to answer is fine, but being entirely dishonest (a random number, eg "any response"), would make me believe you are utterly untrustworthy.

I was required to put a "desired salary" in an application form. It was a required field. I wonder if the employer sorts by lowest?

For what it’s worth I do believe that wikimedia could allocate more of the dollars they have to their “core competencies”

Uh, those that stormed out did it right after the salary piece, and they didn't put it together?

It sounds more like an example of 'cultural density' -- not wanting to realize or acknowledge something that's at odds with what your local culture desires (in this case, the desire to pay as little as possible).

They were able to become fairly profitable with full-time engineers, eventually, and ended up paying above market rate, last I heard.

When I told them they stared dumb-founded at me and said "but that's more than I make". We didn't talk about it again, as I don't know where you'd start explaining how capitalism works to a manager in a bank.

He gave notice after a week, and one of the founders took him aside and asked why. Turned out he was their third DBA in a couple of months and they didn't understand why they were all leaving on such short notice. He was pretty gentle in letting them know...

The most upsetting part of this is they were most certainly paying insane prices for that contractor, and probably weren't even offering you half of that. Businesses are so comfortable at padding another business's pockets with obscene mark up, but utterly refuse to let even a little of that money go to the "workers"