ojbrien

Here's the indicators that bloomberg uses for constructing the factor:

1. Gross tertiary enrollment ratio

2. Percentage of working-age population with advanced level of education

3. Annual new science and engineering graduates as a percentage total tertiary graduates

4. Annual new science and engineering graduates as a percentage of the labor force

I find the use of this statistic really frustrating, if you're say an average westerner with $10,000 of debt and $2,000 savings - your net wealth is -$8,000. If on the other hand you sift through garbage somewhere in Africa and earn 50c per day your net wealth is ~$0. By this metric the garbage site worker is wealthier than the Westerner fresh from university.

Why is a degree necessary for this position?

1. You seem to be implying that there's something wrong with share buybacks but aren't explicitly stating it. I'd be curious to know what your criticism of share buy backs is?

2. Anecdotally, I still think EPS is by far the more widely used metric. EPS numbers can be negative so there's not much use for loss per share numbers, and most public companies have positive earnings.

3. This I agree with, SNAP's lack of voting rights is really concerning and initially SNAP didn't seem to traded at a discount because of that. It's worth noting it's down over 40% from the price it traded on the day it went public, although potentially for other reasons.

I also generally agree that people would be far better off if they educated themselves a little better on what they have their money invested in.

Yeah but as capital gains I believe, whereas a cash dividend is taxed as income (Income is taxed at a much higher rate than capital gains)

I'm sure you're right about not having quite as much elbow room at google compared to other companies - but saying that I'm not sure strictly enforcing a style guide is great example a developers freedom being quashed.

Anywhere you're working on a codebase that you want to be maintainable having a style guide that is strictly enforced seems like a no brainer. Keeping in my mind google could have any number of developers working on a codebase