chubbyFIREthrwy
chubbyFIREthrwy on Hacker News
(Edit: Or, even better, why not, like migrate to a question that heads off the misinterpretation in the first place e.g. "Why do you feel this role is a good match for you?" I think you know why.)
Remember, everyday communication constantly has (far-more-obvious) misinterpretations that, in hindsight, with sufficient logical strength, one party could have avoided entirely. Those who are actually good at communication, at "talking about facts", can easily identify the mismatch and narrow down what they want. This remains true regardless of how obvious a thing one party missed.
So yes, I get it, you can derive a better interpretation. That's beside the (original) point about, why can't you ask for what you really want? Why would you say something like, "[uhhh, oh crap, I have no self-awareness...] Just, whatever you interpret the question to mean"?
And, as with the other commenter, it's kind of funny that you're discounting the possibility that an NT would ever be in a position where they can't/don't want to ask the question they really want to, and are in a position of power to expect the interviewee to volunteer it. ("Yes I'm desperate enough to really need the money and make up some story about how I really like your company/line of work to cover it.")
If what you describe were the only issue, it would, at most, be a minor hiccup while the interviewer clarifies what they actually want in the answer -- i.e. are they validating that you have reasonable expectations about what you can get out of the job? Or that you have relevant qualifications? Both?[1]
If they're utterly stymied or write off the applicant on the basis of that answer, then yeah, that would validate the point that they're bad at "talking about facts!" Ditto for the other two examples, like where they interviewer refuses a chance to clarify, and leaves it open to guessing the secret desideratum.
Also, FWIW, it's kind of generous of you to discount the possibility that they're looking for indicators that you're desperate for work that they can't ask for directly.
[1] Note that another reply gives a different "obvious" interpretation, the confrontational "Why should we care?"
Like, if someone replies, "I need the money etc" why can't NTs better clarify what they mean? For example, "Okay but why this company/role/specialty" as opposed to <alternative>?" If someone lacks the self-awareness to narrow down what they're looking for in a case like that, and just writes off the interviewee as deficient somehow, I'm happy to label the interviewer as being bad at "talking about facts".
I've had a case where I got a similar kind of prompt, and I asked a clarifying question to better get at what he was looking for, and he replied, "Just, whatever you interpret that to mean."
Like, what? You're the one asking the question, and you don't know what you want out of it? You'll knowingly let the interviewee "interpret" it, in a possibly incorrect way?
There was a reddit thread I'll try to find where they were asked "What's your favorite drink" and they replied "water" to which the follow-up was "come on, you can do better than that". A lot of commenters said, "oh yeah obviously that was an attempt to get you to see if you can intelligently defend your preference" or whatever. Okay, but the interviewer can also clarify what they're looking for!
Is it really (always) a bona fide occupational qualification to be able to guess the wishes of someone who's making no effort to express them on their own end?
I shut it down in July of that year because it was raising my electric bill by like $100/month. Possibly the biggest financial mistake of my life.
I remember having this feeling hit me hard when I read the part of the Richard Feynman book when he calls a woman a selfish wh--- and that results in her adamantly wanting to sleep with him.[1]
If you can shuck the siren's call of the mob, you can sympathize with the incel and MGTOW crowd who felt they weren't taught the right model.
I've kind of taken it on as a life motto: "No cheat codes." If there's something that magically works, it deserves to be exposed so everyone can use it, and also learn why it works. That is, everyone deserves the same hack. Yes, even when it costs my information monopoly.
[1] Blog post summarizing it: https://geekfeminismdotorg.wordpress.com/2011/01/05/feynman-...
I had the opposite problem for the 2022 tax year: I turned out that, with investment losses and no earned income, my adjusted income was below the poverty line, which ... means your ACA healthcare subsidy is cut off entirely!
https://www.irs.gov/affordable-care-act/individuals-and-fami...
The "logic" there (from reading discussions of the cutoff) is that, "well, if you're below the poverty line, you should be on Medicaid and not on the ACA exchanges at all, silly!" Okay, but if you have wildly varying income, and a high income from previous years, you don't know that you'll be "in poverty" this year, and won't qualify because of the past year.
I was tempted to update my taxes to claim phantom income from my imaginary cash-based business, which would then get me the subsidy, but that feels ick.
(Which, I know, being retired on crypto, I also feel ick about taking the subsidies to begin with, but that's a different issue.)
I was pondering that tradeoff myself two years ago, having retired early from crypto. The only issue is, to get the 2.5% you had to show Fannie Mae-acceptable regular income. Which is still possible: the FIRE people have a system for putting your money in a trust that pays it right back to you[1], then waiting two months to establish a history, and then you dissolve the trust once the mortgage is finalized and you've closed and moved in.
I would have done that myself except that it would involve putting a big delay on my search. Early comment about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31000286
[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/fatFIRE/comments/ojs18l/obtaining_a...
Earlier comment with context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31000286
I agree with claytongulick's point too, I'd feel bad about applying anywhere with this intent.
But that doesn't explain my situation, where the 30 years of mortgage payments are already there, with no need to validate income history.[1] And before you argue, "but you could go to Vegas and bet it all on black", a) that wouldn't explain why Fannie suddenly becomes okay with it if you set up that artificial trust, and b) the conventional mortgagee has at least the same risks to being able to keep up that income.
>Like, maybe the person in the tweet _does_ have the same risk as, say, the average person earning the same average income, but there's no way for the bank, or the tweet reader, to know that without substantial work.
I addressed that -- even if he increased the down payment to get risk parity, he would still pay a huge interest rate premium over conventional.
>Even in countries which doesn't have a Fannie Mae equivalent, self-employed mortgage lending is generally treated specially.
Other countries don't have a Fannie equivalent, in the sense of "lender that makes artificially-low-interest, 30-year-fixed mortgage loans". In those countries, I (or the tweet author) would establish that my loan has risk parity with the lowest-risk mortgages and would get the lowest rates. But in the US, even if this guy worked with a bank, who validated that he was such a low risk, they wouldn't be able to sell it to Fannie, and he'd have that huge (or variable) risk premium.
>They should be going to a specialised lender.
On that point, agreed, but it wouldn't change the core insight about Fannie being a "stupid" lender that can get people artificially good terms for stupid reasons.
[1] And, in case it matters, Fannie only looks at about 2 years of history, from whence they conclude that you'll definitely earn that much more for 30 years.
Depends on what your model is. If your model is, "banks want easy money, and will lend to low-credit risk people" then it is surprising, because the same risk should get the same rate. Finding out that the market is dominated by an entity with artificial constraints on its lending standards, and which doesn't care about long-term interest rate risk, is then a surprise.
>Others can help you,
Not really. The other alternatives get a loan, but not at the Fannie-subsidized sub-3% rate.
>[Mortgages are easy to get in the US] Only if you're employed. Most mortgage lenders here are middlemen who sell your mortgage to Fannie and Freddie, and they have pretty strict guidelines on what they'll buy.
That is, most lenders don't actually use their own judgment about what counts as high risk or what is an appropriate interest rate to charge, but are simply planning to resell to Fannie/Freddie, and thus copy-paste their standards.
This ... was a shock to me. I had always assumed "banks are happy to lend to anyone who doesn't need the money". Then I retired on crypto gains and tried to get a mortgage (mid-late 2020), where I saw the very same disconnect -- even with liquid assets more than twice enough to buy the place outright, it didn't matter. Nor did arbitrarily increasing the down payment. Anything above 50% down didn't affect the rate, and even then I'd pay above 5% interest, when conventionals were getting under 3%.
To show you how absurd it is, the FatFIRE[3] people advocate getting around this by setting up a trust that pays your own assets right back to you.[2] Apparently, if the trust would live for 3 years, and you've already taken two months of this "income", Fannie considers that just as good as a super-reliable W2 income, and will treat it as conventional. Then, you dissolve it after buying and invest the money like you would have before.
I ended up just paying cash for the place, which has its own advantages: you can beat out tenuously-financed offers with a lower bid, and you avoid some of the closing costs and mortgage expenses. It still would have been nice to lock in 30 years of 2.8% interest to apparently-clueless banks.
Final note: This guy should be able to get a loan, since, even with the income fluctuations, it's consistently high, but yeah, it wouldn't be conventional with the absurdly low 30-year-fixed rates.
[1] https://twitter.com/AzazelAyers/status/1513784320225206272
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/fatFIRE/comments/ojs18l/obtaining_a...
[3] FIRE = financially independent and retired early
(Throwaway because of personal details.)