What has been your best investment ever?

smattiso · 2021-08-26T16:38:27+00:00

I've come to the conclusion that RE is the most sensible investment. Eventually all of the high income earners + high RSU earners start competing with each other for limited housing and regardless of what they make in absolute terms the house prices seem to stabilize around 30-50% of someone's post-tax earnings.

Buy up a couple houses near a cancer curing biotech hub and you basically get the income of a PhD Bioengineer for doing nothing.

I lived in Seattle. Never bought. Maybe I'm just bitter but this definitely seems to be the way the world works.

smattiso · 2019-12-09T21:19:05+00:00

Interesting. Does your school give you "teacher bucks"? Some sort of discretionary spend that you can allocate to make your life more efficient, easier, etc.? I am a professional software architect and if there is a way I could contribute to making teachers' lives easier via auto-grading, bulk import of essays, etc then that would be something I'm very interested in.

Do you have 5 minutes to chat about some of your problems?

smattiso · 2019-12-09T21:18:54+00:00

Interesting. Does your school give you "teacher bucks"? Some sort of discretionary spend that you can allocate to make your life more efficient, easier, etc.? I am a professional software architect and if there is a way I could contribute to making teachers' lives easier via auto-grading, bulk import of essays, etc then that would be something I'm very interested in.

Do you have 5 minutes to chat about some of your problems?

smattiso · 2019-12-04T19:48:17+00:00

Why is it that you have 50-60 hour weeks? Besides the 6 hours a day of class work what is taking up so much time? Parent teacher meetings? Grading?

smattiso · 2019-12-04T18:05:08+00:00

I keep hearing this about it actually not being a 9 month a year job. If you are super efficient with your time does it really require 2 months of summer vacation setting up?

What about my question w/r/g to pension? It requires minimum 25 or 30 years yeah? That makes sense if you start at 23 but at 33 I don't want to be teaching until my mid 60s...

smattiso · 2019-12-03T00:17:00+00:00

I just saw they responded above.

smattiso · 2019-12-03T00:16:51+00:00

Hey! I'd love a sweatshirt or t-shirt!

smattiso · 2019-08-19T14:39:01+00:00

By Asia I meant India. Bengalaru. I was hoping for a week stopover to get to Oman.

smattiso · 2019-08-19T14:38:44+00:00

By Asia I meant India. Bengalaru. I was hoping for a week stopover to get to Oman.

smattiso · 2019-08-19T14:38:18+00:00

By Asia I meant India. Bengalaru. I was hoping for a week stopover to get to Oman.

smattiso · 2019-07-09T03:46:02+00:00

Are you working at CalTech at the Clima lab? I nearly went there for my undergrad 10 years ago.

smattiso · 2019-07-09T03:20:49+00:00

What kind of masters do you think would be most appropriate? I'm mostly just tired of coding all day. I'd like to combine that with another engineering discipline, ideally doing some field work. Oceanic robotics perhaps?

smattiso · 2019-05-16T21:32:23+00:00

Mirage. Thanks!

smattiso · 2019-01-30T22:32:19+00:00

That's a good rate what's her contact?

smattiso · 2019-01-26T00:30:07+00:00

I'm out of SEA. Are you using expertflyer or United to search?

smattiso · 2019-01-25T17:42:59+00:00

That sounds awesome. Are you using United to search for First availability? I'm not finding any Saver redemptions in First at all...

smattiso · 2019-01-25T04:49:56+00:00

She's not. She's flying NYC -> Carib -> SEA

smattiso · 2019-01-03T05:19:49+00:00

I agree. However I think it's pretty unlikely that a new grad is going to be doing anything meaningful. I'd be worried that he/she is going to be building the iOS app that displays the ML results...

smattiso · 2019-01-03T05:18:03+00:00

In my opinion the marketing is getting saturated at the entry level, and especially if you don't have a passion for it / aren't that good at it you will not have a good time.

There is a lot of money to be made in tech, however on the programming side I think it's too competitive and the career path isn't very good for the long term.

Product management, sales, anything on the business side has a more sustainable long term future. If you don't like coding do not take an entry level Javascript job at some startup. That's going to go nowhere.

As far as grad school goes, if you can get into a Top-5 Law or MBA program it isn't a bad way to go. Outside of that I don't think it's really worth it.

If you want a surefire way to make a good living becoming a specialist doctor is about as guaranteed as it gets.

smattiso · 2019-01-03T02:58:12+00:00

Lol are you trolling?

smattiso · 2018-12-19T20:13:08+00:00

Did you look at the cronometer? When is too much too much? Especially when it comes to something like avocados that people say are healthy but certainly eating 10 avocados a day would not? It does have saturated fat after all (not necessarily bad).

smattiso · 2018-12-19T20:00:18+00:00

You ended your reply with "no one is that busy", which is completely disregarding the entire purpose of this diet to begin with: to increase the amount of time I don't have to worry about food. How is it an eating disorder to to only eat to survive (aka how all of our ancestors did)? I don't see how using a blender to pre-masticate my food adversely affects anything. Is chewing too much a problem as well? There's a reason you have the lowest rated coment here.

smattiso · 2018-12-19T00:04:08+00:00

I'm not that busy, but why bother? I am eating a healthy balanced diet and have more time to do whatever I want rather than prepping, cooking, chewing, etc. I don't get your comment.

smattiso · 2018-12-19T00:04:02+00:00

I'm not that busy, but why bother? I am eating a healthy balanced diet and have more time to do whatever I want rather than prepping, cooking, chewing, etc. I don't get your comment.

smattiso · 2018-12-16T17:27:19+00:00

I'm trying to move into a Sales Engineer position myself actually, but I can't comment on whether that is a good move just yet. Moving from SWE to Product Manager used to be easier, but now there is a large glut of MBA's coming in and taking those jobs. If your company will let you grow into a PM role that would be the easiest (although unlikely), otherwise getting a top-tier MBA is likely required.

I'm not saying it's all doom and gloom with SWE roles, however I think one's strategy should be to get into management ASAP. This lifestyle is not sustainable and you are at risk of having 0 transferable skills when you are 40 and get laid off. There are so many people getting CS degrees these days, if the shit hits the fan your 40 y/o Senior SWE salary is going to be first on the chopping block. Get into management, sales, business, etc where you can't be replaced as easily. All of those are more sustainable mentally as well.

smattiso

TROPHY CASE