A tangential note - U.S. Federal Housing agency (FHFA) is currently led by William J. Pulte, who is the grandson of the founder of PulteGroup, one of the largest residential home construction company [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Pulte ].
A tangential note -- these days when I'm casually reading through job postings, a lot of companies mention in their job requirements something along the lines of "Must be familiar/knowledgeable about GenAI technologies (RAG/MCP)" even for roles that are not strictly related to GenAI.
When you look deeper into most of these companies, they seem better off using third-party services (like Claude/ChatGPT) instead of building their own GenAI models, MCP servers and whatnot. This is not considering that the domain they are operating in would have no apparent and obvious gain from utilizing GenAI (sure, they can buy ChatGPT/Claude organization subscription and that's all they need). I don't know if this is the indicator of how big this AI bubble is, but it sure is interesting...
>DOGE did great work, and continues to do great work.
Ok, prove it. Your claim warrants that. From what I've seen, DOGE's claims of savings are mostly made-up or erroneous. Not saying the federal government doesn't need efficiency improvements. I'm just saying the way DOGE (and musk) went about is just the typical musk's way of doing things (b.s. claims not backed up by actual facts).
P.S. I rarely get involved with political discussions on HN. But you got me interested first time.
> Not saying the federal government doesn't need efficiency improvements.
I'll say it. The federal government is not bloated and it is broadly efficient; therefore a DOGE-like effort to fire people at the executive level is unwarranted, and itself an instance of waste, fraud, and abuse. So far we've given the people saying the government is inefficient too much latitude and deference without having to prove their position.
One thing we keep letting slide, even on this site where we value precision of words and evidence, is letting them say "efficiency" without defining it. Whenever someone says something is "efficient" you have to ask "by what metric?" Saying something is efficient or inefficient is meaningless on its own, it needs further specification to draw conclusions.
This paints a picture of a federal government that's able to stay a fixed size as the country grows by offloading critical functions to local governments. That's exactly what everyone here wants the government to do, and it's doing it.
We also let the people saying the government is rife with waste, fraud, and abuse to keep saying that without contending with the IG system. How has that system failed so badly at policing fraud and abuse? I know the answer (they haven't failed at all, they're very good at what they do) but the people supporting DOGE efforts seem to not be aware of IGs at all. How much fraud has been persecuted by DOGE versus the IG system? The answer is DOGE has not prosecuted any fraud whatsoever.
I'm approaching mid-forties. As a former Buddhist (up to like the age of 13) turned atheist, I find all the points the author shared in this PDF agreeable.
Being self-reliant (being able to find happiness even when alone); being self-aware; being aware of others (including others' feelings, motives, perspectives); focusing on the journey; acknowledging that 'luck' has a non-negligible role in one's life; preparing our minds for inevitable death with calm acceptance; so many things the author's view resounded with in my opinion and experience.
As an older person, I found these agreeable too and well articulated.
I could put the nine bullets into 2 broad buckets.
1) and 6) pertain to being in the ego - but one that is principled, seeking clarity of cognition and be willing to correct self-deception. truth and intellect.
2), 3), 4), 5), 7), 8) and 9) pertain to awareness, being in the here and now, dissolving of the ego, universal consciousness, truth and happiness.
The first bucket posits an ego but one that is principled, and the second bucket seeks to dissolve the ego and attempt to tune into the cosmic energies. yin and yang.
I generally agree with the thesis of the blog post.
I'd like to add that I feel frustrated when try out a screen at a museum and it not working (malfunctioning). I have been to NASA's Kennedy's Space Center (KSC) many times (like 5-6). Although they have got most of the exhibits working in good order, some of them are broken or not functioning well anymore. I still appreciate KSC (am an annual member), but I wish there is some philanthropist or the government fund to renovate these museums periodically...
I left Amazon due to RTO. They hired me as a fully remote employee (I was told that the VP of Prime US was one of those who signed off on my remote arrangement). Anyway, a year later, they asked me to move to Seattle or Virginia (wherever their second office is) or Chicago (there's only like one or two directors from my team located there; most of the team are located in Seattle or Virginia). I started looking for a remote job and in 3 months, I was out.
Things I didn't like about Amazon:
- you get paid once a month (basically, you'll letting the company use your money for free)
- if I remember correctly, you get your RSUs vested at the end of the year for the second year (I think it's like 20% of your total comp)
- your comp is heavily reliant on RSUs for the third and fourth year AND the base salary was below 200K
- some of the things they do are cult-y
- too much writing instead of building prototypes
- some folks there practice resume-driven development regardless of whether it's actually good for the org/group in terms of maintainability, simplicity, etc.
Having said that, I met good coworkers and worked in a good team (luckily) although our on-calls were sometimes brutal (like hundreds of tickets a week during the on-call).
Amazon is odd that way. Everyone has a base that low, even VPs. All of the comp is in RSUs and hiring bonus for the first two years. Even someone with a total comp of $1M a year will have a base salary of $250K, and a hiring bonus of $700K a year, and then RSUs that in theory make up the rest, as long as AMZN goes up at least 15% per year.
When the stock was on a tear, some people would make 2x or 3x their expected total comp. But on down stock years, you could end up at 80% of the promised comp.
Until circa 2022 (IIRC), the absolute maximum cash comp even for someone like Jassy was $180K. They lifted that and then the next year made the RSU comp even worse (e.g. limiting your upside on annual grants by focusing on out year 1)
It was $160K until 2022. I started in 2022 right after the limit was doubled, but they weren't giving anyone the full $320K because they "wanted to leave room for base salary growth".
Twice a month is the usual trend here in the States.
This sounds like the types that enjoy a big tax refund, ignoring they had it to begin with. Unless adjusting tax withholdings, one also gives a free short term loan to Uncle Sam regardless of the cycle.
Contrived. At a point this is admitting a failure or unwillingness to budget.
It looks very weird if a congress-person in the US votes against the party, isn't it?. In Brazil it is not that unnusual.
In Brazil vote-buying happens through suit-cases full of dollars, in the US it happens through lobbying and promises of cushy jobs after you leave congress. Both are bad but suit-cases are much worse.
This is also why it is so hard to actually enact reforms in Brazil, literally impossible to pass any big reforms without bribing a lot of people. Some politicians will actively vote against passing bills just because they didn't get a kickback.
Lobbying is just corruption legalized. The only reason they use suit-cases and underwear filled with money in Brazil is because the corruption hasn’t developed the same veneer of legality yet.
The ideal amount of corruption is not 0, but equating lobbying to suit-cases is disingenuous. Suite-cases are far more damaging and cheaper way to get congress votes and only brings the most unscrupulous people who want to plunder the most out of government intervention.
There are of course multiple ways to do multi-party systems, and the Brazilian system is quite different from some other multi-party systems.
IMHO the state of things in the US seems unique dysfunctional. None of the major institutions really work as were intended. The constitution is so hard to change that it's effectively ossified, which results in the Supreme Court deciding on huge swaths of life. In a healthy democratic system, many of these should be decided by democratic vote and not a tea-leaf reading of a vague 250-year old sentence.
