rjf1990

This is a pretty terrible analogy.

It's not a retailer; it's a marketplace. Marketplaces don't get commoditized. Is there another Ebay out there?

Retailers can purchase the inventory at will, then earn the demand. Marketplaces have to earn both sides.

Airbnb was not the first here; Homeaway has been away for a long time, owns all the web properties, and has far better SEO. Airbnb is kicking their ass.

Sure their dominance won't last forever, but no company's does.

I disagree with this comment but understand the spirit behind it. This incident just shows the immaturity of the reddit community. People get let go all the time. At the risk of sounding like a monster, it's just business. Nobody knows the reasoning behind it, yet a bunch of people happen to have 'power' in this instance revolt, despite how childish it is.

I'm also not a professional programmer, but I used to do a lot of data analytics for a large company which required lots of SQL.

I often used excel to track my code and keep it organized. Part of this is that most of my work was done in excel; the SQL queries were just to get the data workable. But, so many things would change and it was easy to use the concatenate features of excel to change variable names, table names, and stuff like that.

While this makes total sense, there are in fact roles where working more makes you progress faster. I feel that this is less the case in programming roles. But, in many business roles, working more allows you to learn more about the business, which in turn allows you to contribute more. As long as you are in a meritocratic environment (as I was in), where results are rewarded with advancement/higher pay.

As a carpenter and programmer, I think this stretches it a quite bit, but still funny.

It's clear that most people commenting on this do not understand finance. If you look at Tesla's financial statements it's clear that they should have a junk rating.

While the term "junk" sounds bad, it is simply a rating of riskiness. From any objective standpoing, Tesla is a risky company. They have had negative net income over the past 3 years. You need income to have positive cashflow (excluding financings of course) and you need cashflow to pay off debt.

Do I think Tesla is going to change the world? Yes. Do I think they will survive? Probably. But from an objective, financial standpoint, they are a pretty damn risky company. Stop putting down the ratings agency for doing their job. The financial statements really do tell the whole story.

Even though I'm not a father I very much enjoyed this piece.

Sure, there are a lot of companies that initially sounded like bad ideas. But there are ideas that aren't just bad; they aren't thought through.

I hear dozens of people tell me about an idea and it's apparent that there's no chance they will succeed with this. A lot of time they're trying to enter a market they know nothing about (as this article described), for example finance students trying to do a clean-tech startup. Other times, it's the market opportunity. These ideas that suck so badly are just people who haven't been around startups to realize how to think about them. They're the kind of people who I wonder if they've ever read The Lean Startup, PG's blog, or any of the commonly-accepted startup wisdom.

Agree with this article 100%. The reason I discarded programming (and went into Mechanical Engineering)sophomore year of college was because I was frustrated with the syntax issues with C++. Years later, once I learned Python, I started experimenting with other languages and learned to deal with the syntax. Syntax isn't a big deal for people who are used to it, but for people who are deciding whether to be interested in programming or not, syntax can but a huge turn-off.

Interesting, especially the part of making it mobile-only. Seems odd to me but I'm sure they have a reason behind it.

Also, part of the reason why Costco and Sams are so expensive is the fact that they have no signs, which forces people to search for things and come across things they need. Also is this startup planning on charging a membership fee?

It makes sense if you understand how the deal process works.

It's unlike other industries where you can plan ahead and delegate accordingly. If you're building software, you have the luxury of a 6 month plan with set milestones and deadlines. With deals, the work changes several times per day based on demands of the client. If you're the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company bidding on another company worth several hundred million, you're going to have questions and requests every step of the way. Investment bankers have to respond to those requests in real time.

Because of the dynamic nature of these deals, 2 people working 40 hours per week is less productive than 1 person doing 80. Each person on a deal has to be intimately familiar with the deal, and hold a lot of information in their head. The incremental communication (and potential for miscommunication) that would occur between 2 40 hour workers simply wouldn't work.

A few big deals per year is what you see - they only get paid when a deal goes through. Depending on the division, it's not uncommon for 1/10 deals to go through, and that doesn't even include the pitching that does on.

Also, it's not 80 hours of straight work (most of the time). There's a lot of down time while you wait for clients to respond. Another reason why 2 40 hour workers wouldn't replace 1 80 hour worker.

As crazypyro said, deals move fast. These are often billion dollar decisions clients are making. If a bank can't turn it around quickly, they'll lose the deal. With only a few deals going through every year, they have to keep them.

The unpredictability of client demands makes division of labor much more difficult. This article does a good job of explaining why investment banks cannot simply hire more people.

http://www.mergersandinquisitions.com/why-you-actually-work-...

Sorry, I've come to use the terms interchangeably. That's what happens when your friends are all investment bankers.

I got a lot of BS answers to this question when I wanted to be an investment banker. The only reasonable answer I got is that it's a low-risk way to make a ton of money. Instead of risk you give up your life and/or health.

Startups are rarely as bad as banking, where you can do 100 hour weeks several weeks in a row, have vacations canceled, miss weddings and funerals. Even though you're expected to work more at startups, most founders realize their employees need time off. I could be wrong, but I'd say a majority of startup employees work less than 60 hours per week.

Also the work at investment banks is boring and monotonous. Doing 100 page pitch decks, knowing very well that 90 of them are going to get thrown out.

I thought it was cool detective work and proved a good point, despite not being "particularly ingenious".

Definitely "first world problems", but great suggestions.

This is exactly why even though I graduated with an engineering degree, I went straight into business.

I didn't want to have to make that jump to management. Rather, I started with an analytical role and moved up (well I actually left soon after).

While there aren't many exec-level programming jobs out there, there are plenty that still require analytical skills. While none of the execs where I worked crunched numbers themselves, they reviewed other work and poked holes in business analyses. I think analytics career paths are perfect for the people who like engineering but want the upward mobility into management.

Pretty sure all the teams have been accepted/rejected at this point.

I went to a high school that was full of rich kids. Not filthy rich, but rich enough to have a sense of entitlement.

This sort of outcome is almost the norm. Out of the people I knew, I wouldn't be surprised if over 50% went to rehab at some point. Every couple months you hear about the son of surgeons or lawyers getting arrested for something big, such as armed robbery or dealing of hard drugs. I'm glad this article was able to shed some light into why.

I think the fact that it's in Snapchat combined with the disappearing messages will yield different use than FB messages. I think it'll be used for when I'm bored and feel like sending silly messages, rather than serious conversations.