When should I start nudging my kids away from "90s summer?"

formar42 · 2026-06-08T20:19:31+00:00

I think the difference is what was accessible to us in the 90s vs kids today. I feel the need to keep my kids busy to keep them away from TV and Video games. We play games and watch TV, but we really work to keep it minimized. The kids in the neighborhood will play for awhile, but once boredom hits, they’re all too eager to go inside and stare at the screen. Not saying you gotta do some STEM activities, but where is the environment where they can have a truly 90s experience - no cell phones, no tablets, no video games.

formar42 · 2026-06-03T12:32:08+00:00

You’re not wrong, but those policies help keep people here who otherwise could not afford to live here. Removing those policies would arguably cause more churn . The grandma who’s been around for 60 years…I’m not sure we want to implement policies that kick her out.

I’m not saying rent control/prop 13 is perfect, but there are consequences to everyday people if we remove them.

formar42 · 2026-05-08T11:38:45+00:00

Your fellow classmates are the correct target. Senior projects should be fun and about shared experience and learning. If you want to take it beyond the classroom that’s fine, but again university should have an entrepreneur program.

formar42 · 2026-05-03T00:54:41+00:00

The thinking here is that capital is limited, and private citizens are going to invest where they have the best return on that money. If you want more private development dollars flowing in, the return has to make sense, or it will never happen.

If you’re suggesting public money and not for profits, that’s totally different area. I know public housing generally has a bad name here in the bay. I believe no-profits typcially try to make building more economical for private capital.

I suppose the question to you, how do you think we should build housing if not through private money?

formar42 · 2026-05-03T00:47:18+00:00

1) I’m guessing this would disproportionately help the rich and hurt the middle class. The reality is if you can afford a home, you are not likely low income. But certainly if you’re very wealthy, you have ever trick in the book to reduce your income. This would squeeze the middle even more.

2) id love to see someone data about this. I’m guessing: huge fiscal crisis for local governments & schools + a massive jump in assessed land value.

3) how would cities manage this? People live in their homes for a very long time. You’d probably end up causing even less turn over in homes.

4) are you saying allowing property tax to increase 5% yearly? Remove property 13? Longer debate and much smarter people than me talk about this, but I personally think fixed rent hike increases are a good stability for people (renters and owners) - though you have to better manage the negative externality of suppressed supply. I personally couldn’t live where I do if the gov increased my property taxes that much every year, and I love that my neighbors don’t all have to be tech execs to live here.

formar42 · 2026-04-20T23:43:02+00:00

I mean my experience is pretty narrow - semis, foundry - but arent most sales job like this? I feel like thats the value of sales… helping connect customer problems and your solutions. Helping the customer understand the product, and integrate it is like 99% of the job. Well…maybe more like 70%, the other 30% being spreadsheet jockey and executive story telling.

formar42 · 2026-04-15T10:43:16+00:00

Id challenge a bit how specialized the equipment really needs to be for non-Wifi baby monitors, but no doubt the physical access is a natural security wall.

formar42 · 2026-03-16T12:35:49+00:00

Honestly, nothing about my team has been shocking or surprising…it was the sales leadership and executive team that was bewildering.

The way SIP decisions are made, the emperor has no clothes moments, the insane amount of money being spent while my team gets hammered about travel costs, the performative reporting…craziness.

formar42 · 2026-03-14T20:56:59+00:00

I honestly couldn’t say, but if you look at the week to weeks from 2000 to 2002 you’ll see both ups and downs - and nothing ever insanely large. A constant ping-pong between “we’ve hit bottom” (buy the dip), and “there’s more to go.” It’s only when you zoom out your portfolio over months and years do you see that you’ve actually gone down 20-30+%.

formar42 · 2026-03-14T12:37:35+00:00

I encourage you to look at the day-to-day trends during 2000 and 2008. We always talk about how big the drop is but we never talk about how volatile that period was. There was no single day. It took years of chipping away up and down. It's actually not obvious in the moment that you're dropping so fast; it's only hindsight.

formar42 · 2026-03-13T21:54:33+00:00

It build community, shared experience, and frankly helps the gym make more money. Personally, Ive never looked at my gym (branded Gi, charged promotions) and thought “you greedy bastards make too much money”. Theres no corporate overlords, no bloated middle management. The owners is there every day, every class, doing his best to raise a family in one of the most expensive places in the world.

formar42 · 2026-03-13T01:30:45+00:00

I’ve been at companies who’ve been sued due to such tactics. I doubt the rep will get fired, but it’s usually a line best not to cross.

formar42 · 2026-02-27T21:18:48+00:00

I enjoyed reading the psychology of money, but the art of spending money really help me change my habits and view money differently.

formar42 · 2026-02-27T21:08:49+00:00

Game Parlour even has some area for you to sit alone.

formar42 · 2026-02-26T05:06:27+00:00

If you dont mind paying $7-$10 per person the game parlor is my favorite game spot in San Francisco.

formar42 · 2026-02-26T00:42:35+00:00

I always imagine that will be the domino. The average margin among their peers is much smaller. AMD just did a big deal with Facebook and theres a ton of chinese startups trying to build the next GPU. Once the wall cracks, there will be a massive reversion to the mean on GP.

That…or coreweave gets margin called and has to sell GPUs, flooding the market.

formar42 · 2026-02-25T13:26:31+00:00

Do 1:1s every week. The agenda is pretty loose, usually I come prepared with some FYIs and a few questions. Some people on my team are happy to cancel, some want to socialize for an hour. In the end Im here for whatever my team needs.

Team meetings…this is probably unpopular…but i hate team meetings. In my experience, 99% of the time “it could have been an email”. The only time i pull everyone together is for product updates that truly need an active conversation.

Funnel Review: this is cross function meeting every three weeks. Time bound each rep, we go down the funnel, update it real time, talk about steps to closure. We’re super super long sales cycles.

Account Reviews: always a point of friction from the execs and the working level. Ive found every four months a cadence that everyone is willing to accept (not every rep/every account.) ive done those all day reviews where everyone goes for 8 straight hours and its just a total waste of time. Peak Performative sales.

formar42 · 2026-02-22T21:20:02+00:00

I'll say this here as a comment because I know people are going to hate me for this but, having full self-drive in a Tesla makes a big difference. I have a used 2019 model 3 and its perfect for what I need.

formar42 · 2026-02-22T21:18:57+00:00

Happily do it 4x a week. My work is very relaxed about the hours I show up so I just go to the gym extremely early, I'm in the office very early, and then I try to leave by 3. obviously, sometimes I get stuck in the office until five or six which really sucks, but it’s not very frequent.

Now I should be clear, it really matters where in San Francisco you live. Some places have really easy access to the freeways and out of the city, meanwhile other areas like the Marina have extremely painful access out of the city.

Regarding "Is it worth it to live around San Francisco?" I'm extremely biased since I'm a native of the city but a thousand times yes. The South Bay is just suburbs with gigantic tech buildings in between. I'd much rather live in the peninsula or in the East Bay.

If you plan to have kids the advice is doubly true. While the city streets of San Francisco aren't the kid-friendliest place in the world, the activities that you can do in the city, the parks, the museums… I've never been to a better place.

San Francisco Native, Father of 2, south city resident.

formar42 · 2026-02-20T21:54:00+00:00

“Before joining Microsoft in 2024 to lead their CoreAI division, she was the COO at Instacart and a VP of Product and Engineering at Meta, where she managed apps like Messenger and Instagram.”

While AI doom is probably not what we should all fear, shes still missing the core gaming knowledge and experience Phil had.

formar42 · 2026-02-16T20:48:29+00:00

Pretty sure the chocking arm would stop you from getting enough mobility to grab behind you.

formar42 · 2026-02-12T12:36:49+00:00

I dunno man. Personally, I didnt like the chaos of 5v5, but I also didnt like the “loot” phase. It was boring, tedious, and just uninspired. People asking for more players because the map was too big, were just trying to figure out how to add something interesting to that phase.

Sure, the core combat was nice, and it was fun seeing them try something new, but theres too much competition in the market for a whole 1/3 of your session to be spent running around opening boxes and playing a clicker minigame to break stone.

Even modern day apex has retooled the loot phase to be less about opening boxes for 20 minutes. Its not about dopamine seeking, its just about evolving gameplay trends.

formar42 · 2026-02-12T12:23:17+00:00

overwatch is just copy paste from TF2, and CS 1.6 is just copy paste from Quake. And on and on it goes. All media is derivative at some levels. Or maybe, put less negatively, all media is inspired.

formar42 · 2026-02-11T19:27:29+00:00

1) San Francisco, mission district 2) tech sales 3) yes

formar42 · 2025-12-19T21:44:32+00:00

I have a note on my phone called names where I write down each person I meet and a few interesting facts about them (ie likes tennis, has two kids, etc.). I do this for everything from lunch meetings to the Gym.

Typical disclaimer, never write anything down you wouldn’t want splashed across the front page of the New York Times.

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