jglamine

Yes, that's the joke. I think the parent post was sarcasm.

Fidelity has been killing it with their passive investing options. Zero expense ratio funds, cash management account.

I am going to switch, will save perhaps 30k in fees over next few decades

The book is very famous! I would guess more people have heard of it than read that specific BAM post.

What's the difference between a polisher and a tumbler?

Agreed. Even the title set of immediate ChatGPT alarm bells. Please write in your own voice!

There are many upvotes so clearly people like the guide. Congrats on documenting something useful!

Is anyone else immediately turned off by articles like this written in "ChatGPT voice"? The information in the guide might be good, but I didn't make it past the introduction.

I've been burned too many times by LLM-slop. If an article is written in ChatGPT voice, it might still have good content but your readers don't know that. Editing for style and using your own voice helps credibly signal that you put effort into the content.

IDk, I feel like they're doing the thing where you list people they don't like, then list other worse people and kind of imply the first set are related / just as bad as the second set.

It's a motte and bailey where if people accuse you of doing that you retreat to saying "no see they're separate lists".

This is speculation, but I suspect he may have gotten a settlement from Google. Any settlement would likely include a gag-order.

It would explain the early retirement + lack of work history.

But yes, family money is also a possibility.

No, and you can see my post history to verify this.

I think that's uncharitable. He was a regular SWE who got cancelled. Granted I have not followed him closely but I haven't seen him claim to be a genius or special. Sure he went to Harvard, maybe he had wealthy parents (IDK his background) but neither of those are crimes.

I don't think he's the activist people make him out to be. He went on a few podcasts early on but has generally kept a low profile. I'm not under the impression he's doing the paid speaker / podcast circuit. Probably just living his life.

After he was cancelled probably nobody wanted to hire him, maybe he left tech completely.

But yes, agree it was weird to include him next to the other names. He's not like, a billionaire founder.

This essay is weird. The author lumps James Damore, rank-and-file software engineer, in with Marc Andreessen and Mark Zuckerberg. Damore hasn't updated his LinedIn since 2018 - he might not even work in tech anymore?

It closes saying they need to stop reliving their glory days and be good fathers and not the town drunk. Those are serious accusations - being a bad father and a drunk. The author doesn't give any evidence for either.

I really enjoyed both your blog posts. You've clearly thought about this a lot and explained things well. I'd love to subscribe to be updated on your next post (even if it's not for months/years). Any chance you could add an RSS feed to your blog?

The book Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers explores this question. It was written in the 80s as an anthropological study of the ethics of middle managers at large companies. It still holds up today!

The book is descriptive - describing the ethical norms in large corporations, but it doesn't make a value judgement on whether those norms are good or bad.

A fascinating read of you're curious about the structural reasons for this sort of behavior. Really interesting to see how people act by different ethical codes inside vs outside of work.

It's not ideal, but also not likely to change. Understanding the structural reasons why it is the way it is has helped me to be less surprised / angry by things like this which I can't change.

Makes sense. They want customers to browse using the Netflix app where they can promote their own content. If customers get in the habit of browsing in Apple TV, Apple can promote their own shows and eventually cut Netflix out.

Same reason when you open Netflix it shows new recommendations first, with the option to continue in-progress shows below. Most users will choose the latter, but they don't put it first because it hurts product metrics.

Your other comments seem human though!