Pretty common artifact that take-home challenges are being more widespread now that the labor pool is oversupplied with tech talent looking for jobs. Companies need new ways to filter for candidates that are willing to do whatever it takes and work the hardest. The easiest way to do so is give them a "three hour" take-home assignment and see if they are willing to do it.
Doesn't this approach self-select for people who
- value their time less,
- don't have other things to do (family, hobbies, side-projects),
- unemployed people
It's one thing where companies are applying this to 1000 applicants for an entry level position, but they also use this tactic when they reach out to you and tell you how excited they are about your background and resume.
In reality they didn't evaluate your background or resume and are just cold-calling you to fill some portion of their "funnel", then ignore all their excitement and reasons they reached out to you and have you jump through random hoops.
I think it's very clear that her tickets were worth much more than $1000 - especially when 15 million people competed for tickets for only 1.5 million fans.
Mine is 275/mo for Kaiser at a high deductible but still gives me the amount of coverage I basically used when I was employed (Physical + maybe one additional visit per year). Single person, 26, no kids.
What exactly happens when there is a bubble in the private markets? And what happens when it crashes? Does it affect the public markets in anyway?
In other words, if I believe there's a huge bubble in the private valuations of unicorns likewise proven by companies like Wag or WeWork, will it A: Affect my 401K and mutual funds I have in Vanguard and B: Is there anything I can do to short it?
Probably the best way to take advantage of a private market bubble is to sell into it. In other words, pitch a trendy idea to an angel and raise money. Or if not that, sell something that is consumed a lot by bubble participants. In other words, in a gold rush sell mineral claims or shovels. It's much more feasible to do that then to short private investments.
Take the barbell strategy — make sure to exit any less liquid investments (e.g. stock), and then extract capital from the bubble by raising money. When the market crashes, use your cash to purchase cheap assets and/or failing companies, and then work towards profitability.
Absolutely do not: become a VC, work for a startup, or place your capital into some kind of ‘growth’ fund indexed to tech. Don’t buy real estate in urban areas and don’t borrow.
Raising money in the bubble doesn’t do anything if you can’t liquidate from the company with good terms and you’re paid a startup founders salary right?
WeWork begs to differ - get the highly funded startup to purchase your own property/contracts to extract the value out of the startup and into your own pockets. Then when the economy/startup tanks, leave and let somebody else pick up the pieces.
In a bubble, your terms and leverage as a founder are better, including self-comp, voting shares, and funding runway. Raising money is always risky (hence the barbell), but you have unlimited optionality compared to a desk jockey.
I quit my job at a growing unicorn startup this month. It was my third tech job in an IC role and after working for four years out of college I felt just like you did. Completely bored going into work each day but making so much money for my hourly work output it felt too trapped to quit.
But I did eventually because the decision to trade time for money felt worth it. I felt that if you don't give yourself a break to try something besides big tech work it's hard to do so again at a later point in your life with a mortgage, kids, etc...
Now I'm surfing every morning, running a lifestyle business (https://www.interviewquery.com), and hanging out with friends.
Interesting. Pretty standard concept and bloated market for software engineering that’s not too common in data science right now. There’s also not really a standardized data scientist curriculum at this point so it’d be interesting if the market is big enough for it to take off.
