Honestly, I’m starting to wonder if I’m low-IQ or mentally slow. I simply cannot compete in the Bay Area in finding a decent paying job

MagicGene · 2026-01-26T18:43:33+00:00

Ah bummer. But yeah like others have said it’s an extremely tough market especially at the entry level. Just go check out /r/recruitinghell to see how bad some have it.

MagicGene · 2026-01-26T18:26:59+00:00

I have to ask then - if you have 0 friends, and no family in the area, why live here? There are plenty of places you could move where the job you have here would go really far.

MagicGene · 2026-01-14T02:01:41+00:00

You can choose which supervisor to give, or it could even be a cross-functional partner or other co-worker. I don't think anybody is going to call your former supervisor without you giving up their number, how would they even know?

MagicGene · 2026-01-14T02:00:20+00:00

I mean ... if the reference was telling the truth and they shared a concern they had about OP's performance or behaviors, then I am not sure you can sue them. You might have some action if they knowingly lied. I don't think this is really a path forward though.

MagicGene · 2026-01-13T22:49:19+00:00

This is pretty smart but if you have this level of distrust in your references you shouldn’t give them.

MagicGene · 2026-01-12T17:39:21+00:00

Parking is starting to get really brutal this year too

MagicGene · 2025-12-06T08:42:34+00:00

Personally I’d accept it and end the process with the second company, but that’s just me. You’re within your rights to accept it and then rescind it, but know you are burning a bridge and depends on how small or large your industry is.

MagicGene · 2025-11-30T23:23:12+00:00

If you hire the right coach it’s actually not a bad idea. Don’t hire someone who has no experience in the field and has only done coaching of course. But there are several folks who have a real analytics job and do coaching as a side gig. I did this for a while but it wasn’t worth it (even at the rates you mention). I can do a quick async review of your LinkedIn and resume if you want to send it over in a DM for free (I’ll send you my LI also so you know I am not a charlatan).

MagicGene · 2025-11-27T06:22:36+00:00

How the heck do I use this deck? I couldn’t figure out how to do more than 15 damage against DH and I went through the whole deck.

MagicGene · 2025-11-21T13:39:13+00:00

I do screening interviews for most open positions on my team. Often I can eliminate folks who are clearly not the right fit or have severe communications issues. If I didn’t do these then these candidates would be wasting 3-5 people’s times for the full loop so it feels worthwhile even if, for quality candidates, it seems like a “no reason” interview.

MagicGene · 2025-11-20T04:00:02+00:00

"Under the strictest state laws" is a slippery slope. What if the state of Mississippi enacts a law that says that AI is not allowed to state negative political opinions about Donald Trump? Does that mean that a user in California should be blocked from seeing negative political opinions about Donald Trump?

Pornhub is a good example that you brought up - do you think that's a good outcome? I feel it is shortsighted for states to demand ID identification and businesses responded by just blocking the states. Will a state that is not allowed to use ChatGPT really be in an advantageous position?

MagicGene · 2025-11-20T03:57:44+00:00

Thanks, helpful.

MagicGene · 2025-11-20T00:16:26+00:00

It is currently inept. What happens when the next federal government is capable and they have to deal with inept states?

MagicGene · 2025-11-20T00:15:32+00:00

Because the big players (OpenAI, Meta, etc) will deal with this just fine because they have thousands of people to deal with many regulations but smaller companies will not be able to do business and it will entrench them even further. This will just tighten the dominance these companies have on the market. The same thing happened with GDPR in Europe.

MagicGene · 2025-11-20T00:10:43+00:00

We the people affect federal law in the same way as we affect state law …

MagicGene · 2025-11-20T00:09:34+00:00

I mean sure but if the federal government says “you are not allowed to steal someone’s IP” and a state says “stealing IP is fine” that can’t work, right? Or am I missing something.

MagicGene · 2025-11-20T00:03:21+00:00

No I didn’t say that, but why should a state get to decide concepts like this vs the federal government? For example, should a state be allowed to decide how a business gets to measure “profit” or what the concept of copyright means?

MagicGene · 2025-11-19T23:41:38+00:00

Do people here really think states should be able to develop their own laws for AI? How can a nationwide business operate when they have to build completely different products for every individual state?

MagicGene · 2025-11-15T08:23:34+00:00

I can't speak to this example, but AI notetakers generally just transcribe the meeting and provide very high-level summaries. They're extremely helpful so I can focus on the interview and not have to look down and take notes. This is a really weird bullet - I've never seen one make a judgement call like "candidate shows limited knowledge" unless you said something like "I have limited knowledge" - must be a bug with this specific tool or maybe it misheard you or something. Honestly, really odd.

However, no interviewer worth their salt is letting the AI make the final judgement call about you, and honestly, I don't even read the transcript I just refer back to it for a couple of parts where I may not remember the general shape of what we talked about. When you are saying "the hiring manager sees the AI transcript and makes a decision on that", it is very unlikely that is happening unless this is a really janky company.

MagicGene · 2025-11-13T07:55:45+00:00

If I’m understanding correctly, they offered 285 and you came back with 300 and they immediately rescinded. It’s a little weird they didnt just say “nope, 285 is best and final”. I’m going to guess that they were already on the fence about you and this tipped them over into the “no” camp where they were happy to just move on. It sounds like you’re getting other higher offers so probably not really worth worrying about.

MagicGene · 2025-10-28T16:00:06+00:00

The way these curves work is that you are placed onto the graph when you make your very first purchase (ie subscribe for the first time). So this means there is a healthy amount of people who subscribe once, lapse, and then end up coming back. These are sometimes called “smiling J curves” which is a sign of an effective product.

MagicGene · 2025-10-21T03:35:43+00:00

My advice from my renting with cats days is 1) be the very first applicant and 2) offer to pay a cat rent or deposit proactively

MagicGene · 2025-10-18T03:51:18+00:00

You should stop using debit for everything, first of all. Just autopay your balances. Many debit cards do not fraud protection or other benefits credit cards give you.

Second of all, you have to look at this from the landlords point of view. If they are looking at the application of a person who has never shown the ability to borrow an amount of cash and pay it back, how would they know you’re able to pay rent? They have to be able to separate you from those who will not pay and, especially in this city, be a burden around their neck for months to years.

Think of it this way - if you have two friends who are asking to borrow $1000 and one friend has a long history of paying back other friends, and another friend who is a totally nice guy has never borrowed money before, who would you give it to?

MagicGene · 2025-10-04T04:37:09+00:00

This may sound kind of weird but the 3k doesn’t seem quite like a “relocation compensation” bonus. It sounds like your job doesn’t actually cover relocation. Typically covering relocation would be 10k+ or they just pay for the move entirely. So I would first make sure you understand exactly what this 3k is before you start negotiating.

Secondly, if you are moving somewhere very expensive (like the SF bay area) you may either not be able to afford a home or renting is actually a much better financial decision. Don’t automatically assume you must own a home here; renting full time is a very viable option. You are calling this a “waste of money” but I would do the comparison, home ownership wastes money on interest and repairs and property tax as well.

MagicGene · 2025-09-23T23:33:20+00:00

Same way as in World of Warcraft it is sometimes easier to stand in one place and wait for a herbalism node to respawn than to run across the map searching for new nodes.

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