idoby

How is this a tangent, or flamebait? I'm just pointing out that he's literally whining about a job I'd love to have and not seeing how lucky he is.

So he gets to take other people's money, invest it and take a cut without actually, like, having to do any actual work, but he's getting ignored at parties?

Damn it, where the hell do I sign up?

There are some artists like that, sure, but plenty? I doubt it...

Then you were motivated by curiosity, which is great, but what if you weren't curious about the perfect espresso and knew that nobody would drink it. In this case, why make an espresso? You'd probably prefer to spend your time doing something else, right?

I find that internal motivation is mostly a myth, that is, the part where people expect to just have infinite drive out of nowhere.

The cooking analogy is good but here's an IMO better one - would you make a movie if you knew for certain nobody would ever watch it? I wouldn't.

You want to get a PhD - why? Is the PhD a mountain to climb or is it a pair of boots that will let you scale a mountain? Both answers are legit, but I think you do need to agree with yourself on one.

Motivation ex nihilo doesn't exist. Humans are goal-driven and averse to spending time on teleologically neutral things (enjoyment of the activity itself is, of course, a legit end on its own).

I'm very curious to know this objective reality and how to discover it.

I don't see you complaining about, for example, brokerages, dealers and exchanges providing liquidity by fulfilling your orders even though the market won't at a given point in time. This can prevent a security from falling or rising in value where it otherwise would have, and directly works against an investor who was hoping for a rise/fall in price.

Regulators don't work "for investors", they work for lobbyists, they want to keep the markets running, and for any given policy, someone will win and someone will lose.

I don't see how the Hertz decision is any different, except I do see how taking the opposite position can hurt the markets, either by creating a chilling effect on low-mktcap companies listing or by creating uncertainty in the legal environment, which investors really don't like.

Just look at the number of Israeli companies who won't list in their home turf, TASE, or companies who have and pulled out. A lot of it has to do with TASE imposing unreasonable requirements. Otherwise raising money domestically would be a no-brainer.

You don't know it to be worthless. Hertz proved that, because their stock went up (hence not worthless).

Less-than-ethical according to who?

If you're buying indices then you have explicitly given up control of a portion of your portfolio to them, and they can lose money as well as gain. Sounds to me like you're just complaining because you lost money because of this move, but symmetrically speaking, you could have gained.

And to be clear, I'm not long or short Hertz and have never been (unless some index or fund I'm holding happened to buy their stock).

Can't see why they shouldn't be allowed to raise funds by selling stock. People are free to buy or not to buy, at their discretion. Govt/courts shouldn't be picking winners and they shouldn't be picking losers either.

"Bad" and "good" are meaningless judgements in this context. You're about to graduate, so you wouldn't be expected to have any real experience, but you do have experience building and running an actual product. Seems to me like you've got the time ahead of you to try running your startup and either succeed or fail, in which case you'd have enough time to restart your career as an employee.

My only advice would be: the founder mindset is very different to the employee mindset, and you'd have to take that into account, and, don't quit your CS degree if you're within 1 year of graduating.

At this rate, looks like I'm about to be pursuing a Replica of Science degree...

Hard to separate "true nature" from the way I view things, so I can't really tell. Another person might view things differently and write a completely different story.

Do you think people would read this though? Maybe in blog form?

Not sure I consider "huh" to be an actual word. If so, I'm pretty sure blowing raspberry also exists in all human languages, and some non-human.