As always, I was working on modifying a CRUD program. It's been a while since I read through the documentation carefully and worked on it, so it feels refreshing.
I think a lot about a mismatch of effort these days. Here's an extreme example: I spend an hour drafting a doc outlining our engineering strategy for the next few quarters (or if we're in a startup, maybe writing up my product vision.) I share it with you to get feedback and comments. If you plug it into Claude and send me back an AI-formatted list, with sections like "the real insight (read this first)", we have very different ideas about where our value comes from and what deserves our effort, even though on paper I drafted a doc and you reviewed/expanded it.
I think it's fine to provide AI input if you disclose it, in which case you could encourage me to just plug it into Claude myself next time.
And I agree there's gray area: the AI output might be the result of a long conversation, shaped by careful prompting and context and guidance. The writing is AI generated, but the thinking is human.
Nice pov.
I spoke mostly from an engineering perspective.
When revisiting my corp career in executive position I agree!
However when writing strategy documents and stuff like that I think that the AI is mostly corrupting the idea and making it extremely verbose.
If someone manages to make the AI speak straight to the point with the vision based on what they want to communicate, that, to me is completely fine too.
What is kind of sad is that in the old times we would value a lot the folk that went and wrote a memo, put a lot of thought to it and so on.. Now literally you just plug claude in your notion and you have the document.
To me, this kind of speaks about "the value was never really in the document itself"and more in the understanding of the doc. You can delegate a lot of stuff to the AI but you can't delegate understanding. So when you're presenting it to the exec committee, or circulating it, does not matter what claude/gemini/gpt wrote down, it matters if you understood it, agrees with it and understand that this represents your positioning.
What I see w a lot of juniors, on the other hand, is that people really just copy and paste or shallow understand what was wrote. Delegating too much like that removes the human-seed and makes it kind of worthless
I feel like both the point you quote and your response are valid, and not mutually exclusive. It's great that you were able to avoid lifestyle creep and that $200K felt like a lot of money that "had a huge impact on my later financial condition, and enabled me to do many things". And I think Katrine (from the article) feels like that should be a lot of money. I don't see lifestyle creep playing a role in her life. Instead, another person they quote says:
> [Ms. Gan]she saw the strain on friends who were earning below $200,000, for whom rent, utilities and groceries consume nearly everything that comes in.
I don't understand how rent, utilities, and groceries consume nearly everything that comes in unless you're vastly overspending in one category. If she's paying $60k in taxes then she's got $140k left. That's over $10k/mo. How can someone spend that much without lifestyle creep?
I understand that one could feel pinched at that salary, when including saving for down payment, future kids, and retirement. But that's different from saying the basics consume nearly everything.
So, per the article, it is apparently difficult to find a one bed apartment for under 5k a month. Assuming that's true, half her take-home salary going on rent would get her a lot of the way there!
Even if someone were spending $5k on housing, how do you spend $5k on utilities and groceries (not dining out, it says groceries)?
Also, not having a roommate straight out of college is typically a lifestyle bump in itself. Most people have roommates in college, so getting a place solo is an upgrade.
It's possible, but that would be a pretty relevant detail to leave out. Someone who's getting paid in carried interest is in a very different boat than a run of the mill employee.
I was making a guess based on having earned less and more than that amount. Just checked with ChatGPT and its estimate for a single person with no mortgage interest was $46k in income taxes and $13k in payroll taxes.
I'm confused about the quote, because the numbers do not add up to me. Elsewhere in the discussion SV apartments are quoted at $3500/month. When I rent, utilities tend to be under $100, and groceries are about $400. Let's be generous and say "utilities and groceries" are $1000. So "rent, utilities and groceries" are $4500/month, at total federal + CA state tax rate of 40% (estimating high), that means $90k/year to break even. I'm not sure what Ms. Gan filtered via the reporter thinks "consum[ing] nearly everything that comes in" means, but lets say 80% of income that's $112k, although that would still be a $20k/yr surplus (and a 5 month cushion). So there's quite a lot of room "earning below $200,000" and financial distress. If the article meant "less than $100k" I could believe it. Or perhaps Ms. Gan's friends' "rent, utilities and groceries" comprises more things than it literally means?
Saving for retirement should be in the list, along with gym membership and entertainment. Transportation. Why is the default budget "rent, utilities, groceries"?
> His agnostic leanings and heterosexual orientation align with a more liberal political stance.
That's a very safe guess
> He is susceptible to confirmation bias, in-group bias, the availability heuristic and out-group homogeneity... he may also be prone to excessive phone use, binge-watching TV shows, and impulse buying.
I wonder if there's a single trainer in Kenya who is responsible for some of the conventions we see so often. Maybe (s)he just really likes full stops and used them in all of the training examples.
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