OracleOfDelphi

Recent posts

• Do billionaires want more money, or a bigger share of the whole economy?

  One mistake normal people make when thinking about billionaires is assuming they still relate to money the way upper-middle-class people do. They do not. For a household making $90k, another $50k changes life materially. For someone making $500k, another few hundred thousand still changes optionality, status, schools, neighborhoods, stress levels. But once you reach extreme wealth, consumption stops being the point because human consumption has limits. There's only so much you can buy and you…

• Kalau kamu bukan miliarder, kenapa kamu memilih seperti seorang miliarder?

  Salah satu narasi paling efektif dalam politik Amerika adalah meyakinkan para profesional biasa bahwa mereka berada dalam kategori yang sama dengan miliarder. Pasangan berpenghasilan $220 ribu setahun di kota besar tetap bergantung pada gaji. Mereka masih mencemaskan PHK, biaya tempat tinggal, layanan kesehatan, pengasuhan anak, dan masa pensiun. Mereka tak bisa membeli pengaruh politik. Mereka tak bisa menggerakkan pasar. Mereka tak bisa bertahan tanpa batas dari aset yang terus naik nilainya s

• क्या Zelensky असल में वह सब कुछ है जो "manosphere" बनना चाहता है?

  Zelensky इंटरनेट के कुछ कोनों से इतनी अजीब नफ़रत इसलिए बटोरते हैं क्योंकि वे उस कहानी को ख़राब कर देते हैं जो ये लोग मर्दानगी के बारे में ख़ुद से कहते हैं। कहानी सीधी होनी चाहिए। असली मर्द दबदबे वाले, शारीरिक रूप से आक्रामक, भावनात्मक रूप से ठंडे, संस्थाओं पर शक करने वाले, और शर्मिंदा न होने वाले होते हैं। यही बकवास Andrew Tate और उसके चेले GenZ को बेच रहे हैं। वे नेतृत्व को एक मुद्रा समझते हैं, एक तरह की हमेशा चलने वाली सामाजिक धौंस की होड़। इसीलिए उस पूरे ecosystem का इतना बड़ा हिस्सा सनक की ह

• Kenapa perusahaan sekarang lebih memilih menjual langganan ketimbang produk?

  Contoh printer HP itu sampai sekarang masih gila buatku. Buat banyak pengguna, printernya berhenti bekerja, bukan karena ada yang rusak di dalamnya, tapi karena langganan tintanya habis dan perangkat lunak pabriknya menonaktifkan kartrij yang sudah kamu miliki. Printernya jelas-jelas ada di situ dan begitu saja berhenti bekerja

• Você tem que ficar abaixo das metas para ser promovido?

  Três anos atrás eu vi minha gerente bater todas as metas trimestrais por dois anos seguidos. Dashboards limpos. Verde em tudo, o tempo todo. Ela era a pessoa mais confiável do prédio, e no ciclo de planejamento seguinte o time dela foi reduzido em quatro engenheiros de 35 e enfiado embaixo de outra pessoa. Ninguém apresentou isso como punição, e sim como "eficiência" e "queremos investir em outro lugar". A lição ficou clara assim mesmo, e não só para mim. Infelizmente, nunca para a minha gerente

• Faut-il rater ses objectifs pour être promu ?

  Il y a trois ans, j'ai vu ma manager atteindre chaque objectif trimestriel deux années de suite. Des tableaux de bord impeccables. Du vert partout, tout le temps. Elle était la personne la plus fiable de l'immeuble, et au cycle de planification suivant son équipe a été amputée de quatre ingénieurs sur 35 et rattachée à quelqu'un d'autre. Personne ne l'a présenté comme une punition, mais plutôt comme de l'« efficacité » et « on veut investir ailleurs »…

• Does the 401(k) quietly draft us all into supporting the billionaire class?

  One of the most consequential things America ever did was replace pensions with 401(k)s and then funnel millions of ordinary people into the stock market through index funds and retirement accounts. Not because it turned most Americans into capital owners in any sense. Stock ownership is still overwhelmingly concentrated at the top 0.1%. But it gave enough people partial exposure that the public started emotionally identifying with the interests of the asset-owning class. That changed the…

• Is it execution, not innovation, that actually makes companies succeed?

  One thing that starts looking fake after enough years in tech is the obsession with “disruption” as the explanation for every successful company. The winning company simply executed better than everyone else in a market that already existed. Facebook was not some impossible conceptual breakthrough. Social networking already existed. MySpace existed. Friendster existed and the majority of features Facebook had were present in these 2. People already understood the product category immediately.…

• If you're not a billionaire, why do you vote like one?

  One of the most effective narratives in American politics is convincing ordinary professionals that they belong in the same category as billionaires. A couple making $220k a year in a major city is still dependent on salaries. They still worry about layoffs, housing costs, healthcare, childcare, and retirement. They cannot buy political influence. They cannot move markets. They cannot survive indefinitely off appreciating assets while borrowing against them tax-efficiently. They are not living…

• Do rich people really take the same risks the rest of us have to?

  Rich people talk about “taking risks” the way toddlers talk about surviving the wilderness after spending ten minutes in a backyard. Upper-middle-class people are especially incredible at this because they genuinely believe they’re self-made warriors despite having enough financial cushioning to survive a small economic collapse. They’ll tell you about the time they “had nothing” right before casually mentioning their parents covered rent, they stayed on the family health insurance until 30,…

• Will incentivizing engineers to use AI backfire?

  A company can ruin almost any good tool by attaching the wrong metric to it. Incentives are all that matter in the workplace, be them financial benefits, status, promotion... Workers work with incentives. You and me too. Practically everyone does things because it benefits them or their loved ones. Hence, at work, we end up doing what makes us get promoted, get more money, get more job security... We're not the owners of the company, we're an employee. We look out for ourselves. That's ok.

• Is there any way to wear a Rolex and actually look good?

  I genuinely think Rolex may have achieved the impossible: becoming a luxury brand that makes everyone look worse, while getting them to pay thousands of dollars. Which sucks, because a lot of their watches are beautiful. The Submariner is basically a perfect design, iconic for a reason. But the second that crown logo enters the equation, your entire aura changes like you equipped a cursed item.

• Are the rich actually socialists who will never admit it?

  Lower/middle-class people often misunderstand what being rich really means. They imagine a larger balance sheet, a nicer house, better vacations, and more freedom to buy convenience. That is part of it. But not even the most important part.

• Did Chromebooks make Gen Z hopeless with actual computers?

  The current panic says AI is making people worse at thinking. Maybe. But if you want to know why so many younger workers are fluent with apps and so shaky with computers, AI is not the first place to look. The deeper break happened earlier, when schools and institutions decided that students should interact with managed appliances instead of actual machines, like Millennials did.

• Are companies now incentivized to sell subscriptions instead of products?

  The HP printer example is still the nuts to me. To many users, it stops working, not because anything inside it broke, but because the ink subscription lapsed and the manufacturer's software disabled cartridges you already owned . The printer is physically there and it just stops working

• Should you really emulate famous tech CEOs, or did they just get lucky?

  I think a lot of famous tech-management advice only looked wise because of the environment around it. Rising stock prices, captive talent, and equity upside made a lot of bad management survivable. Most organizations do not have those shock absorbers, which is why I think people should stop treating founder mythology as management advice.