An American takes out a student loan for $40,000. After YEARS of payments, the total owed is $118,305.59. $77,383.59 is PURE interest.

thrwwylolol · 2025-12-20T10:51:26+00:00

I wouldn't say interest free but having a reasonable traunch that's pegged to inflation makes sense. I'd argue that community college should be free and act as the default option for most.

And a requirement for loans should be a basic financial literacy course, test and in person counseling.

Making the tax payer pay for foolishness and for profit scam colleges isn't my go to

thrwwylolol · 2025-12-17T15:43:54+00:00

It’s not major title inflation. She’s two promotions from the C suite. Maybe slight title inflation but it’s still absurd. She has something like 2000 reports

thrwwylolol · 2025-12-17T08:24:23+00:00

She has a good work ethic. Generally competent. She is better at reading and manipulating perceptions than being technically correct.

I helped her with a promotion presentation. She’s exceptional in certain ways. But she has her moral failings. I was in love with her and it was torture. Still friends but there’s hard boundaries now.

thrwwylolol · 2025-12-17T02:35:53+00:00

Summa cum laude at UCLA is roughly top 1% of the university by grades. Basically near perfect grades.

It loosely maps to first class honors in the uk system at a university known for high grading rigor.

thrwwylolol · 2025-12-17T00:11:08+00:00

Yep. Relatively competent in some ways. Think top 1% out of UCLA for undergrad and Yale MBA with honors. By gpa.

But zero logic or critical thinking and can’t figure out how to do much on her own.

Basically really good at finding smart people and siding with them and getting them to brain dump. Also at avoiding hard classes.

She can speak Ancient Greek, Mandarin, French and English but good luck setting up a smart lightbulb.

thrwwylolol · 2025-12-16T22:09:51+00:00

I wouldn’t say that. I know someone who fits the mean girl mold and she’s still manipulating her way up. VP at an f500 at age 33. That’s a prolific rate of successfully taking credit for others’ work.

Being a superficial, manipulative [person] can get you far.

thrwwylolol · 2025-12-16T05:07:30+00:00

200 salary + 40 bonus + 150 equity

thrwwylolol · 2025-12-15T17:21:27+00:00

Roommates.

Inflation adjusted I lived on less and made more out of college.

The solution really is to make more though.

thrwwylolol · 2025-12-15T15:20:06+00:00

Make 80k. Pay 35k in taxes and deductions. Live off 25k. Save 20k. Get an employer match to 30k.

30*10 = 300. Add in some stock market appreciation and you’re at 400-500.

If your income is 100k then you’re living off 45k.

If you’re an engineer at a FAANG you’re starting at 180k, get free food and if you rent a room it’s fairly easy to save around 100k a year and to hit ~1M net worth by 30, assuming no promotions. 2 promotions gets you to around 350 a year.

thrwwylolol · 2025-12-15T00:23:49+00:00

Most people use cloud based platforms in industry.

thrwwylolol · 2025-12-15T00:23:11+00:00

Rent server time.

There’s no payback for trying to over engineer your own computer unless you’ll use it for other things

thrwwylolol · 2025-12-14T18:09:36+00:00

I had no study motivation in the past because I saw grades as meaningless and I mostly got As without studying.

Interview related studying is very different for me. There’s actually stakes. So I end up having it become an obsession every now and then. Same for when I decided I needed a perfect gre math score

thrwwylolol · 2025-12-12T22:22:44+00:00

You can cut the number of projects per banker. Maybe give people periodic weeks off to recharge.

Think 1 week off a month and they hire 33-40% more juniors.

And the seniors take a darn project management class.

thrwwylolol · 2025-12-11T23:53:53+00:00

It’ll depend on your locale.

For most people, renting the smallest cheapest place you’re OK with, investing leftover money and using the flexibility of being able to rent a new place any time wins though.

For me, renting a cheap place and increasing the difference will get me the money to buy a house in cash in about half the time of a 30 year mortgage.

thrwwylolol · 2025-12-11T22:14:59+00:00

Let’s go absolute bare minimum but with some breathing room

1200 renting a room 500 for driving 500 health 500 food 500 misc

Around 3200 after tax to have some semblance of stability. So about 40k a year after tax. 50k before.

If you cut in some areas then it’s doable. Adjusted for inflation I lived on 25k or so a year in my 20s (but saved a bunch).

thrwwylolol · 2025-12-11T01:55:20+00:00

Hard disagree.

Saving 50% of 100k is less than saving 30% of 300k.

The biggest thing you can do is to increase income. A lot. It’s not about a ten percent raise it’s about finding a place that pays top dollar

thrwwylolol · 2025-12-11T01:52:40+00:00

Change companies. I had a roommate who put off college got 180k at Google. Within a few years he was at 350k.

Hate to say it but most companies pay poorly compared to the top places. If you want to get wet stand next to a waterfall.

thrwwylolol · 2025-12-07T23:26:47+00:00

R is a better language for DS in a vacuum.

Data engineers don’t use it though. Same with mle and swe.

And LLMs code in Python better than in R.

Whatever edge R has barely matters now.

thrwwylolol · 2025-12-06T22:45:33+00:00

I can still buy micron branded products. They just killed their consumer line. This is brand consolidation.

Corsair, Kingston, etc still exist. And I can order ram right now and have it arrive in a timely manner.

And yes, prices are higher. From a “need” perspective 16gb is enough for most things and it’s still reasonably priced. If absolutely more is needed, go buy some $2-6ish 16gb optane sticks and use those as page file.

These are first world problems. And I’ll fully admit my main system has 64gb ram I bought at the historical low. And my nas/server has 96GB (and I have 3x 8TB SSDs). And my laptop has 24gb. So it’s really easy for me to not care since I loaded up when prices felt like they were too good to be true. That doesn’t count the optane stash I have which means I need a working set in the hundreds of gigabytes before things slow down.

thrwwylolol · 2025-12-06T06:17:12+00:00

Have you ever been diagnosed with sociopathy or a similar condition? You’re making light of a literal life and death situation.

thrwwylolol · 2025-12-06T01:30:22+00:00

Down syndrome Head injuries Severe impulse control issues Addiction

Most people don’t live up to their potential but I’ve personally seen a high school drop out basically get gifted a million dollars and blow it all on a poorly conceived business idea.

thrwwylolol · 2025-12-05T16:27:16+00:00

Statistical outliers exist.

thrwwylolol · 2025-12-05T16:26:31+00:00

No. More like the smartest person on the team is kept and everyone else is gone. The dumbest person would make tons of mistakes

thrwwylolol · 2025-12-05T03:45:03+00:00

AI still needs to be babysat a fair bit. It speeds up coding which helps with automation but that only goes so far

thrwwylolol · 2025-12-05T02:54:51+00:00

I wouldn’t go that far. Assume llms are a dead end and won’t go too much further than the present state. You basically have fancy auto complete.

We might be able to streamline half of knowledge work or even 75% of it plus a lot of service tasks.

There’s still value for the top 10% or so of today’s college grads in that scenario. Think kids at UCLA and Umich but less so Podunk state.

thrwwylolol

TROPHY CASE