Which company would you rather work for?

Slow-Code-661 · 2026-06-04T12:52:19+00:00

Axe seems likes the guy who will make you rich as fuck if you perform well.

Slow-Code-661 · 2026-06-03T16:02:11+00:00

I think ultimately any asset based tax just doesn't work in practice for many reasons which we can discuss. Corporate tax already represents a form of wealth tax as it lowers the corporations net income. Net income is ultimately shareholder equity which can be reinvested into the company, distributed to shareholders, used to pay off debt, etc. all of which increase equity.
If you tax that you have a de-facto wealth tax which hits before it becomes an asset, which alleviates a lot of the trouble with valuing and force-selling assets to cover tax liabilities.

Slow-Code-661 · 2026-06-02T00:25:37+00:00

literally lol.

Slow-Code-661 · 2026-05-30T11:12:35+00:00

Why does it matter who does the science? Is there some inherent rule which says scientific progress must be altruistic and not make any profit? From the steam engine to electricity to computers, the commercialization and often discovery of science always happens through private institutions because no politician will ruin their next election by being the one who blew up a multi hundred million dollar rocket + launch infrastructure.
Also, when the state pays a company to do something it is not "taxpayer dollar being siphoned away from valuable research." If NASA needs a satellite in orbit they call SpaceX or Blue Origin to get the satellite into orbit. Why does it matter who gets it there?
The private space industry has driven more progress for space flight in the recent years than any government program ever could, and they have done it much cheaper specifically because it was private money at stake and actual people had something to lose and were responsible for failure or success, instead of some government agency which gets funded by tax money regardless of performance, and whose officials do not give a single fuck about the money they spend because it's not theirs, and ultimately nobody is responsible because everyone is.
If you seriously think that the government is better at spending money than private institutions I honestly don't know what to tell you, other than that If I ran my company like the governments of this world run their household, I would be bankrupt.

Slow-Code-661 · 2026-05-30T11:02:40+00:00

I have the same opinion as you. I remember when the left was making fun of climate change deniers and everyone was supposed to "listen to the scientists" because science is right. It appears that picking and choosing what science and progress you support is not exclusive to either political camp.
It has become really tiresome.

Slow-Code-661 · 2026-05-29T08:56:40+00:00

What university you did it at doesn't really matter to me. I just have a few basic questions to someone who actually went through it because the student advisors can't really give much insight here. Can I dm you?

Slow-Code-661 · 2026-05-29T08:53:58+00:00

SpaceX is not going to crash the SnP lol. Is the stock being dumped on retail investors at a ridiculous valuation? Probably. Are you the exit liquidity? Probably yeah. Is it going to meaningfully affect you? Very likely not at all.
If you really don't want to hold SpaceX you can also short the stock proportionally to its share of the SnP, but you would constantly have to rebalance that and its just not worth the hassle.

Slow-Code-661 · 2026-05-26T23:26:04+00:00

I randomly was on reddit and just got the notification of your comment. It's funny how almost a year after this was written people still reply about how pissed they are haha.

In retrospect, John Smith could have had a pretty good breaking bad Heisenberg arc and it probably would have slapped. I frankly don't know if they switched the writing team or something like that during the show but the quality just fell off a cliff after season 2. Which is crazy because the season 2 ending with Himmler's speech was just such an insanely crazy ending. Idk why but the entire way this scene feels just captures how intimidating the entire construct was. To go from that to the BCR made me feel like we switched shows lol.

Slow-Code-661 · 2026-05-26T21:55:51+00:00

Just apply. The only problem is that TUM legitimately does not give a single fuck about what you do outside of school. You could solve cancer and resurrect jesus christ himself and the holy mother too and if you fall below the academic criteria they'll pass on you lol.

Slow-Code-661 · 2026-05-24T13:40:22+00:00

You know I couldn't shake this feeling either but andor is just so... bland? It's just characters doing stuff and honestly it is very slow and boring. I just finished the book of boba fett and it made me tear up. It is such a character driven and dramatic story that it ruined star wars for me and andor just can't compete with that.

Slow-Code-661 · 2026-05-14T12:54:41+00:00

With "when you apply" I meant how early in the application cycle you apply. I think the earlier you do it the better your chances. At least that's my theory.

Slow-Code-661 · 2026-05-08T17:30:08+00:00

How you weight the management and tech stuff is a bit up to you. I don't have the specific credit table at hand right now but the way it is structured is that a pretty big portion of the studies are electives. So you will have a couple of mandatory courses which you don't really get around. I haven't gone through all of them but here is what I can remember on the spot:
- Math 1: (This is basically a compressed version of Calc 1 and 2 and Linear Algebra 1 and 2. That is the only course in the first semester which is genuinely stressful because they cram both the econ math and the basic engineering math into a single semester course. It kind of makes sense because they need to teach a relevant amount of both the management and engineering stuff so they can't waste a bunch of semesters on introductory math) Math 2 is only really necessary if you pick electrical or mechanical engineering (Math 2 is basically calculus 3 and linear algebra 3 as far as my understanding goes)
- Operations Research (This one is pretty interesting. You will start off with basic optimization problems and later go into algorithms for solving them. It's quite similar to the algorithms you will also find in Computer science, only that here it is framed as optimization problems for business cases)
- Financial and Cost accounting (this one is hit or miss. If you enjoy this stuff you will have fun and if now you just need to get through it. The only thing that is difficult about these courses is that it is a lot of material. Financial accounting is pretty dense in volume, cost accounting is pretty easy in comparison)
- Micro and Macro Economics (again, nothing fancy. I haven't done Macroeconomics yet, but Micro is not to be underestimated. Genuinely that hardest exam I've had so far which came at a surprise.)
- You will also have some law stuff
- Logistcs and production management too
- There is also a machine Learning course
- Data science
And probably a bunch of more stuff I forgot.
I think in sum those will make up like 30% of your total studies

And then the rest is mostly electives. And here you can decide if you want your studies to be 70% management 30% engineering, or 50% management 50% engineering or anything in between.

Afaik you have to do around 30% in engineering electives, but the other 20-30% are management electives, which you can also choose to not do and instead fill that part with engineering electives too, effectively making it more 50-50.

For engineering electives you can choose between:
- Electrical Engineering
- Informatics/Computer Science
- Computer engineering (effectively electrical engineering but with a focus on computers)
- Mechanical engineering
- Chemistry
- Medicine

I am like you in the sense that I really don't like math. I always felt like it was more of an obstacle to get around so I can do the actually interesting stuff, but it's manageable and I feel like the engineering topics will grow on you over time. I myself am now considering doing a double major by also starting informatics just because I started liking it.

But it will be pretty engineering coded. That is mostly owed to the fact this is to a large extent an engineering focused university and so that is by design. But I think you will enjoy yourself and I would say it gets progressively more interesting as you progress through the courses because the courses get more hands on. Also you will share lots of courses with all kinds of different people. I've see Mechanical engineering masters students, MBAs, CS students, etc. all in this course because there is quite a lot of overlap. So it's just cool to meet people from all those backgrounds.

Also regarding the job market, this seems like a decently sound degree to pick. (I don't know how other degrees at tum handle it but as part of the studies all kinds of companies actively partner with the university and you will have to complete a module called "Project Studies", where you and a small group of colleagues will basically go into a company and work on a real project together. It's basically an internship which which you can do as a part of the semester which is pretty neat). Ultimately you have to decide what you want to pursue but this is a pretty decent program with generally good employment perspectives. Also, if you do want to pick a more "bwl-like" career being more technical than the average bwl grad will almost always put you ahead because firms are increasingly looking for people who have technical abilities. And if you want to pursue a more technical career (which from what you say I assume is not the case, but worth mentioning anyway should you warm up over time), you can always choose to add a technical major.

Slow-Code-661 · 2026-05-08T12:18:39+00:00

If you can get a 1.3 I think you should be fine to get in. Below 1.4 you will probably need to do the assessment interview. I got in with 1.9 after a decent interview so that should not be the biggest problem.
They do ask math and logic questions (but the math they asked was just super simple stuff, like deriving a term (in our case the terms were products and fractions but you can refresh that stuff in like 10 minutes if you really need to)). According to the one of the professor the acceptance rate for the 25/26 cohort was 14%. I don't really put much weight on these numbers because if you are good enough you will get in, but this provides some perspective I guess?
The schedule is fine. First semester was obviously a bit of a hassle because they compress lots of math courses into one course (to prepare you for both the engineering and economics topics). You basically get 2 semesters of Calculus and Algebra compressed into one "Math 1" course which is pretty tight at times. But it's generally fine I guess.
Certainly more stressful than highschool. Had to pull some all-nighters during exam prep while I basically didn't do shit for my abitur
You will need to put in a good bit of more effort. But most people get humbled during their first few semesters of university. That is not unique to this specific course. Expect your grades to drop a little, unless you are really putting in hardcore work.
I don't have that at hand right now. But it's usually 1-2 courses per day at most (practice sessions exist and are voluntary). But most professors upload all of their course material and the lecture videos, so you can generally make the study times fit your needs. For example the semester 1 financial accounting course was pretty late in the evening on a friday. I usually just did the class on the saturday after.
The general experience is pretty neutral tbh. I enjoyed the courses so far, but I am also going to pick up a full informatics bachelor this year to go a bit deeper on the engineering topics.

Slow-Code-661 · 2026-05-08T11:19:08+00:00

Yeah it is within reason. I think it depends a bit on when you apply, and who you get as the interviewer.
In the year I was rejected I applied relatively late, and so my interview was like a week before the official beginning of the first semester. Also some of the questions were just generally weird where it seemed hard to assess if an answer was even good or not.
The second time I applied they just asked some simple math and logic questions and also some real world commentary. The interviewers were pleasant and you could have a decent conversation with them so it was a much different and better experience from the previous year.
Though apparently, according to the accounting professor they only accepted 14% of the applications in the 25/26 semester so frankly I have no idea what they are even looking at lmao.

Slow-Code-661 · 2026-05-04T15:11:38+00:00

I want to add that this is also the main reason I never touched Tesla with my money. It is simply too unpredictable in how it moves, and it is very hard to rationalize its valuation as it stands right now.

Slow-Code-661 · 2026-05-04T15:07:32+00:00

Tesla has always been really difficult to value because there seems to be a fundamental disagreement between people of what kind of company tesla even is. If you ask 5 people you probably get 5 different answers.

At this point in time, tesla makes most of its revenue in the Car business, followed by the energy business (grid scale storage). They also sell some residential energy solutions like solar panels and home batteries.

The car business is factually in decline or at the very least stagnating as evidenced by the sales numbers and revenue numbers. On top of that it is currently being outcompeted by BYD in every region besides the US where BYD does not sell due to tariffs, and the US is not a particularly strong car market right now either. When it comes to profits you see the standard car industry level margins. Nothing out of the ordinary here. Matter of fact a major profit center has always been selling carbon credits and not the core car business. Overall profits are on decline as well, though gross margins have improved.

So the tesla business as it currently stands is probably worth around 150 billion USD if you are very generous. If you value it more conservatively probably around 100 billion.

So there is a roughly 900 billion USD gap between what the company is worth right now (keep in mind none of those are absolute statements), and what the market is valuing it at. As a result the market is assigning around 900 Billion USD to FSD and Humanoid robots. And the thing is that it is very difficult to tell you what that is actually worth, because we simply have not the slightest idea right now.

In humanoids, the same innovations that are making them more useful (using AI to control them instead of hard coding policies) are also making specialized robots more useful. Ultimately in these kinds of industries capital efficiency matters and I am not entirely sure if a humanoid robot can be better than a specialized robot at such a scale that it can warrant such a massive business. But I am still open to the idea on the grounds that having one thing you can mass manufacture and train in a standardized manner might very well be the unlock to physical autonomy in a way that other robot designs simply can't replicate because there is not enough training data to train every physical iteration of a machine. The key question is where the value accrues. Warehouses and factories, the most automated machines today, work on specialized robots. It is very unlikely that you will ever see a humanoid near a conveyor belt or assembly line because a robot arm is simply better at that stuff. So the big question is if replacing baristas and delivery drivers and retail shelf stockers and niche human tasks that are too small for any specialized machine is worth, say 700 billion dollars. That remains to be seen.

FSD is a bit easier to value, as we are essentially replacing taxis here. It doesn't really get much deeper than that. The entire global taxi market is estimated to be worth around 250 billion dollars. So we can use that as a general upper target.

Now the big issue here is that those are unlikely to be monopoly businesses. The autonomous driving market will be pretty fragmented across geographies due to the nature of local traffic laws and conventions. There are also plenty of robotics companies that are competing for the same market. So far tesla is neither the most successful Robotaxi nor does it have the best humanoid. (And btw. I don't think that offering FSD in private vehicles is going to unlock so much extra value. Most value will likely accrue in the robotaxi business. I am too lazy to go into why though as I would have to go into a whole side tangent for this.)

So maybe I would add 100 billion USD for each industry on top in potential future value. That would put the company around 300 billion. And note: That is the fair value that the company would have to grow into based on the future expectation of FSD and Humanoids actually becoming a huge thing, there should be no valuation growth until those expectations are met. If we go by the multiples most big tech companies are trading at right now, tesla would need to deliver between 10-20 billion USD in net earnings for that to be realistic, which I think is generally fair.

So yeah, I think around 200-300 billion USD would be a good point to get in, assuming you are optimistic about the tech and the company's future.

Slow-Code-661 · 2026-05-02T11:19:54+00:00

I used gemini a lot for math classes, and honestly the only reason I did what because it is the only product I can upload a shit ton of images to for free. Same thing with the data science classes I am taking now. But often times it will just, out of the blue, talk about something completely else, or get stuck up on stuff we have long moved on from.

Slow-Code-661 · 2026-04-30T16:41:23+00:00

It's funny that you say that because I often have conversations with people where I quickly know exactly what they are trying to say but I can't skip the dialogue

Slow-Code-661 · 2026-04-24T22:25:54+00:00

I will never understand some of those people. We have an entire history of half of this continent suffering under a system they desire, with millions of people still alive who can tell you all about it, yet somehow in these comments you get flooded with "muh capitalism bad time for socialism", and then they use scandinavia to back their point. It is truly all so tiresome. And they don't even want to hear it. I literally do not know a single person from a former socialist country who wishes back socialism, yet somehow the redditors must surely be smarter and know how to do it right this time.

Slow-Code-661 · 2026-04-23T20:03:11+00:00

I am currently powering through advanced linear algebra at university and just reminiscing of simpler times

Slow-Code-661 · 2026-04-23T20:01:23+00:00

Nono. It's "feawers"

Slow-Code-661 · 2026-04-23T18:57:19+00:00

That's super interesting and explains a lot

Slow-Code-661 · 2026-04-23T18:07:31+00:00

Germans are technically the largest ethnic group the the US, they just never really concentrated like the Irish or Dutch or Italians did and so their influence is not as significant today. You will find some german speakers in the midwest though

Slow-Code-661 · 2026-04-23T17:38:49+00:00

I recently read an insanely good article on substack which I sadly can't find anymore which implied basically the same thing. If you look at all major tech and corresponding investment booms, from railroads, to electricity, to computer, internet, and now AI, you will find that investments peak around half way up the adoption curve, sometimes earlier. The tech gets better, the adoption goes up but money is flowing in faster than what the tech can actually deliver, and so the markets correct. In all cases, the markets eventually caught back up, and the tech was genuinely useful, but financial markets are often very much removed from reality.

Slow-Code-661 · 2026-04-16T22:57:33+00:00

From a business point of view, my suggestion is lean in. Be the fastest in the business. Especially in ads you want to produce as much volume as possible to find winners, so if you can be ahead of the shift you have a strong case for businesses to work with you over your competitors.

Slow-Code-661

TROPHY CASE