This was one of the worst written, saddest pieces I have ever read. It's full of idiotic commentary, unjustified praise and just plain ignorance. Out of the dozen+ remarkably stupid quotes I found I'll share this excerpt:
> That’s when SBF told Sequoia about the so-called super-app: “I want FTX to be a place where you can do anything you want with your next dollar. You can buy bitcoin. You can send money in whatever currency to any friend anywhere in the world. You can buy a banana. You can do anything you want with your money from inside FTX.”
> Suddenly, the chat window on Sequoia’s side of the Zoom lights up with partners freaking out.
> “I LOVE THIS FOUNDER,” typed one partner.
> “I am a 10 out of 10,” pinged another.
> “YES!!!” exclaimed a third.
> What Sequoia was reacting to was the scale of SBF’s vision. It wasn’t a story about how we might use fintech in the future, or crypto, or a new kind of bank. It was a vision about the future of money itself—with a total addressable market of every person on the entire planet.
> “I sit ten feet from him, and I walked over, thinking, Oh, shit, that was really good,” remembers Arora. “And it turns out that that fucker was playing League of Legends through the entire meeting.”
Lo and behold. The intricate, behind-the-scenes scheming of the highly educated financial elite, revelead at last. All predicated upon the grand vision of... buying a banana with your "super-app". No wonder we're going through a much needed correction, some people need to be weeded out of decision making roles ASAP.
> As the newest senior leader on Shopify’s engineering team, Polinsky will lead Shopify’s efforts to build its e-commerce infrastructure and will lead the company’s efforts to double its engineering team in 2021 by hiring 2,021 new technical staff. [0]
> “Engineering hiring is probably the biggest limiter to Shopify’s growth,” Harley Finkelstein [President of Shopify] said in an interview after the results. The company had hoped to hire 2,021 new engineers this year and current conditions mean “obviously, it’s hard to do that,” he said, without disclosing the number that have been hired.
A tight market for talent is a worry for many industries but none more so than technology. Universities are not producing enough new engineers and the entire sector is competing for graduates, Finkelstein said. [1]
As of today they only have 10 open positions in the "Engineering & Development" department, the majority of which are for Staff/Tech Leads. [2]
Perhaps it would behoove Shopify to put a bit more thought into their hiring strategy; rather than just wanting to inflate engineer numbers as a vanity metric via jingly campaigns (2021 on 2021). "Just a number on the page".
Fun read, seeing as how this paper is from the late 70's, it would be interesting to know what comments the author got as part of his RFC for Japanese, Norwegian and Swedish.
> It's similar to data engineers thinking they will do real ML some day and their data job is just temporary...
This is unfair to DEs, not to mention inaccurate as of 2022. The statement assumes DEs are yearning to do "real ML" while suffering in their "data job" and waiting for a chance to move "upwards". Data engineering is a terminal career path by itself which may or may not support a dedicated ML function. In fact many of my DE colleagues switched from DS/ML/DL citing "model fatigue".
Now, "ML engineers" spending 90% of their time producing a workable dataset to get to the "real ML" is a different discussion.
> Nothing discloses real character like the use of power. It is easy for the weak to be gentle. Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the supreme test. (...) -- Ingersoll
There's a difference between knowing and understanding and the older I get the more I understand just how true this is.
I would also add the cliche that with power comes responsibilities and most people don't respect that responsibility. Mistakes happen and obliviousness is a thing (communication is never perfect), but I've been shocked by how cavalierly some people will wield power that has real effects on other human beings many times in the past.
I also had it wrong, and thought it came from Lincoln originally.
Per Reuters Fact Check team:
> Misattributed. There is no evidence Lincoln ever made such a statement about testing a man’s character. The author appears to be Robert G. Ingersoll, who used this phrase to describe the 16th president of the United States on several occasions in the 1890s [1].
The case of gentle snow-trolls susceptible to tickling existing in Tolkien's universe made me quite curious. The following turned up after a brief research session:
> Snow-trolls are mentioned only once in Tolkien's works, in reference to Helm Hammerhand stalking his enemies "like a snow-troll" during his sorties against the Dunlendings in the Long Winter. The trolls who lived in the Coldfells in western Eriador may have been similar to these. [1]
And the actual passage, from The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A, "The House of Eorl":
> Helm [Hammerhand] held the fortress during the Long Winter. He blew his great war-horn, and broke through the Dunlending ranks, clad in white, stalking men like a snow-troll slaying them with his bare hands. However, his sons Haleth and Háma were slain and Helm grew gaunt because of grief and famine; still his horn would fill the Dunlendings with fear each time it was heard. During one of his night sorties Helm died, possibly from famine and cold; his body was discovered frozen in the snow still standing. [2]
I would say the "stalking" and the subsequent "slaying" similitudes rule out the gentle qualities of the snow-troll.
For the record I haven't watched RoP yet; something feels wrong about this interpretation of Tolkien's work and I think I'll save myself the disappointment.
> Huge losses at SoftBank’s flagship Vision Funds will force the company to begin “dramatic” cost-cutting after plunging technology valuations and a weak yen drove Masayoshi Son’s embattled conglomerate into a record ¥3.1tn ($23bn) quarterly net loss.
> In a press conference that Son himself described as “depressing”, he admitted that his famously aggressive global investment strategy should have been more selective, adding: “I am ashamed of myself for being so elated by big profits in the past.”
I am surprised by and appreciate Son's public humility. Seems quite rare for any billionaire to publicly admit they got greedy and express remorse or regret.
> That’s when SBF told Sequoia about the so-called super-app: “I want FTX to be a place where you can do anything you want with your next dollar. You can buy bitcoin. You can send money in whatever currency to any friend anywhere in the world. You can buy a banana. You can do anything you want with your money from inside FTX.”
> Suddenly, the chat window on Sequoia’s side of the Zoom lights up with partners freaking out.
> “I LOVE THIS FOUNDER,” typed one partner.
> “I am a 10 out of 10,” pinged another.
> “YES!!!” exclaimed a third.
> What Sequoia was reacting to was the scale of SBF’s vision. It wasn’t a story about how we might use fintech in the future, or crypto, or a new kind of bank. It was a vision about the future of money itself—with a total addressable market of every person on the entire planet.
> “I sit ten feet from him, and I walked over, thinking, Oh, shit, that was really good,” remembers Arora. “And it turns out that that fucker was playing League of Legends through the entire meeting.”
Lo and behold. The intricate, behind-the-scenes scheming of the highly educated financial elite, revelead at last. All predicated upon the grand vision of... buying a banana with your "super-app". No wonder we're going through a much needed correction, some people need to be weeded out of decision making roles ASAP.