I wonder how much of Best Buy's success can be attributed to using 'emotional intelligence' to 'build relationships' with gullible people and sell $1,000+ HDMI cables to them. Does it happen a lot? Probably not. But selling one of those a week will likely pay for at least one salesperson's wage for that week.

I haven't shopped for myself at a Best Buy and years (and the last time I did, it was for CD/DVDs). And the salespeople trying to 'build relationships' with me are just awful. But that's likely because I'm a misanthrope.

I know what I'm getting into when I go to Best Buy. I'm going to go help a friend buy an overpriced laptop because they want my help since I'm an 'IT guy' and they want to shop at Best Buy for some reason.

Best Buy employees don't get commission. When I worked there 5 years ago, management encouraged us to add services to bulk up numbers, but employees never really cared because it never comes back to hurt them if they don't.

For those cables, I doubt you could find an employee that would recommend them to a customer. For accessories, the focus was more on the count attached to an order. Cheap HDMI cables were usually the recommendation because it would add something to the order and customers were more likely to get them over the $100 cables. Those overpriced cables are sold because there is always some customer that only wants to buy the best of the best and Best Buy is glad to help them with that.

So you are likely to get some salesman pressure, but it's not what people think it is. The pushing usually comes when you are checking out and they offer the protection plans. But again, if you tell them no, that's usually the last you will hear of it because it doesn't really mean much to an employee if they don't attach it.

You will find a crazy employee every so often that thinks acting like a car salesman will make them management's favorite person, but I think you could find those people at most jobs.

I didn't mean to imply Best Buy employees get commission. I only called them salespeople to distinguish the people who roam the tech aisles rather than work the register, Geek Squad, etc.

Anecdotally, I've definitely more than one employee try to steer me to the overpriced cables when I was just looking for a quick HDMI cable. I typically just ask them if the decently-priced cable fits into the HDMI spec. By that time they usually figure out it's not worth the time to try and upsell and move on.

Must depend on the org and how you do it. My personal experience is that if you are open and up-front with going to a competitor, they'll cut your access and pay you for the remaining time left on your resignation letter/month.

If you go to a competitor and aren't open about it? You might find yourself terminated with no additional pay.

And it makes sense. At Amazon, most people have varying levels of customer data and/or confidential company data. Amazon has to protect itself from data exfiltration/data theft.

If someone was going to steal company info for a competitor, they’d do it before they gave notice that they were leaving. And they wouldn’t tell their current employer where they were going.

This might catch extraordinarily stupid people from conducting industrial espionage, but really I see it as the company encouraging people to not give any notice at all (which, remember, is just a courtesy) when they quit. It’s shortsighted on the company’s part.

"The biggest roofing company in my state, Salazar roofing, is American owned and operated." <--- This is a big part of what's happening.

Most people screaming about how 'Americans' won't do jobs like farming or construction will look at a company named Salazar and assume that Salazar uses undocumented labor. These people will also drive by construct sites, count the number of white workers, and use that as a proxy for how many Americans are working on that job.

There are plenty of construction companies that are still using undocumented laborers.

In 2015 when my grandparent's home was being torn down and rebuilt, our construction company used Peruvian and Portuguese undocumented labor, supervised by citizen foremen. We had to use our own electrical and plumbing to ensure it would pass city inspection (rather than have delays with corrections during intermediary visits) and complete on time.

Doubtful. Why? Because any under the table wages are taxed to the company or owner (if sole proprietor). Why pay your employees' taxes?

You're always paying your employees' taxes. Documented workers with social security numbers need employer-provided SS and Medicare taxes paid for their "over the table" wages. A company pays fewer of its employees' taxes for undocumented labor.

Undocumented labor doesn't pay income taxes. So the money is actually taxed in the company.

The net taxes paid is lower if an employer can avoid paying social security and Medicare taxes. Taxes on corporate income are lower (especially if the corporation can find a way to route that money to capital expenditure).

20% to 30% of an employee's income is straight up income tax paid out of the employee's income. If the employee is under the table, the employee's income is lumped in the employer's for taxable purposes. Social Security and Medicare taxes are maybe 1-2%. Look on any pay stub.

The employer still keeps more money, even if they're paying more in taxes. The employer may end up paying 20% of their income out in taxes, but they keep the other 80%; they're still out 100% of the money they pay to the employee, and if the under-the-table employee costs less than the over-the-table employee, they keep more money at the end of the day. Who cares if you're paying more tax if you have more cash?

And that's before we factor in that the over-the-table employee also costs SS, Medicare, unemployment insurance, overhead costs to administer all this because they clearly don't only have one employee, the list goes on.

I can only speak from my layman's understanding of US law. In the US, there's a doctrine prosecutorial discretion. Basically the police and prosecutors can choose whether to arrest and charge someone for a crime.

> "Maybe in places where code law is mostly binding, there’s a lot more pressure on the legislature to keep the law books up to date with the current norms of society."

In the US, where everything is so entwined with politics, there's a lot unenforceable laws still on the books.

For example, the US Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws in 2003. Last I checked, Texas still has a law on the books criminalizing sodomy. Sure Texas can't enforce it, but the conservative majority in the legislature won't actually repeal the law because politics. Similarly, when the US Supreme Court ruled that banning same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, Texas had to recognize same-sex marriage. But there was no law allowing same-sex couples to divorce. So there was this weird limbo wherein you couldn't get divorced if you were in a same-sex marriage.

America is weird.

There's a difference between laws that exist but are rendered moot by a court ruling it unconstitutional, and laws that exist and are constitutional but are just never used, and laws that exist, and are probably not constitutional, but aren't used, so have never been challenged.

For all intents and purposes sodomy was made legal by the 2003 precedent; that those laws are still technically in black-and-white doesn't mean they're in force.

But there are lots of laws that are still in force but aren't actually picked up and used much. They're still there, though. For instance, hardly anyone was prosecuted for Espionage Act violations for decades, but nobody disputes that the DoJ can dust that law off and start using it again, subject to the current jurisprudence on free speech etc.

Largely a distinction without a difference.

The fact they have money is what gives them the power to say no.

- Someone asking for a meeting/to connect? If you have money, people come to you; so it's easy to say no to networking opportunities. No money? You have to take networking opportunities as they come.

- Someone offering you a job/investment opportunity? If you already have money, you're not worried overmuch about a wasted opportunity. Because at the end of the day you're still secure. If you're unemployed and worried about where your next meal comes from? You have to jump for it.

(Pst. This is also why 'essential workers' are underpaid. Because they have no negotiating ability when their only other option is financial ruin.)

I could keep going on, but if you're not getting the idea you're either: 1.) Being willfully obtuse; or 2.) Someone who has read the Fountainhead too many times (i.e. you're being willfully obtuse).

Exactly. At the other end of the scale, consider how much practical freedom people with no money really have.

Being able to say 'no' is nice, but some people would love the opportunity to say 'yes' for a change.

Whats wrong with the Fountainhead? That book is great. Did you actually read it and not like it?

Really not impressed with the obligatory "really impressed with transparency" pat-on-the-back under every incident report for a big corp screw-up that provides any details at all.

And stating to the press the clearly malicious payload is "non-malicious" (assuming TFA didn't lie about Twilio's statement)? That's ridiculous.

Even if the payload was not malicious when they looked, it could change at any time. I don't see how that can be confidently labeled non-malicious.

When talking about screw-ups on AWS, public incident reports try to obfuscate and spin the Hell out of issues that boil down to "really, really stupid configuration issue".

They owned it. That is more than can be said about other large incident reports that I've seen regarding AWS.

AWS's shared responsibility model is clear. AWS is responsible for security of the cloud. The customer is responsible for the security in the cloud (i.e. the customer's resources). By the way, enterprise support customers do get access to well-architected reviews by AWS.

If you ask for help from AWS, AWS will provide it. It may not be free, but it's available.

Even if AWS were to start proactively auditing customer setups, how in the world is AWS supposed to know what a customer's usecase is? Nevermind the fact it's a breach of the customer's privacy to just go rooting around in the customer's account without permission.

But let's assume AWS is going to take responsibility for customers' configuration decisions and violate customers' privacy by proactively auditing their accounts. Would AWS auditing Twilio's configuration here work?

The default is for S3 buckets to be private. The customer has to take specific, affirmative steps to give s3 buckets public access. You really have to jump through hoops to make a bucket public accessible.

Since the Twilio chose to make their bucket public, AWS auditing Twilio's setup wouldn't be helpful. AWS would just assume the Twilio knows what they're doing. How is AWS supposed to know there is a misconfiguration? Because Twilio clearly decided to make their S3 bucket publicly available.

Never heard of this in my organization. Have heard whispers of it in some corners, but not from anyone currently employed by Amazon.

This is why I've always felt Robinhood is evil.

It is trading platform that combines 1.) user engagement/gamification with 2.) targeting a core userbase of young adults that are both financially unstable and inexperienced. It's disgusting and immoral.

This is the epitome of late-stage capitalism. Extract as much money as possible from gullible users. Except we're not maximizing screentime anymore to leverage ad revenue and micro transactions. We're maximizing screen time to drive trade volume while letting people make financial decisions that can literally ruin the rest of their lives.

Well, at least Robinhood's platform hasn't directly led to young adults committing suicide. Oh, it has? Nevermind...

>"There is some truth to the metaphor, but I wonder if it’s doing more harm than good."

In my experience, whether the metaphor does more harm than good really depends on the individual patient.

When faced with the chemical imbalance metaphor, some people will bristle and say they're not "broken." Or they'll feel disempowered because they feel like they can't do anything but take a pill (or three).

---

For others, it lifts a weight off their shoulders. Most people battling with mental illness have struggled and tried various coping mechanisms to feel "normal." The understanding that the issue chemical, not behavioral, lets some people forgive themselves.

Instead of "not being normal enough", the cause is external; it's something they can't just brute force their way out of. Externalizing the issue lets the person stop feeling guilty that they weren't able to solve their own issue. This clears the slate for the person and leads them to a path toward recovery from mental illness.

NOTE: I'm not a doctor. But everyone in my immediate (and most of my extended family has been diagnosed with a chronic mental health issue. So has my wife, our girlfriend, and many others in my life. So it's well-founded anecdotal evidence. And, for what it's worth, I'm in the second cohort I described above.