Define "net loss to the society." Society is just a group of individuals. If my counter-party was a democratic aide hedging that they wouldn't have a job come January, was it a real loss for them? The money I've earned on prediction markets has certainly allowed me to spend more money in the economy. What if a trump supporter watching the market saw what a longshot it was and decided not to go to the Capitol on January 6th?
I realize I'm an N of 1, but I've participated in prediction markets since 2019 and am just above 5 figures in profit. Not life-changing money, but it certainly doesn't hurt.
I'm pretty conservative in my predictions and just think there is a lot of free money on these sites. Maybe that just supports the sentiments of this article and most of the negative comments on this post.
There are certainly cases where I got run over by the steamroller picking up nickels, but in general that's few and far between. A good example is getting trump losing the 2020 election at 90% after the election in November. If you find those types of markets and compound the earnings it's a pretty nice savings account.
I've also been burned by insider trading and vague rule interpretations but at this point, you chalk it up to the nature of prediction markets. I now try to stay away from markets that are more manipulative (e.g. mention markets).
I don't understand the hostility to prediction markets. There are definitely hedging opportunities and we're all adults.
I worked in a hat factory as a summer HS/college break job. I stood at the end of a table and inspected the initial wool cut outs that would eventually be formed into the hats. The hats would go through a machine that sprayed them with god knows what chemicals, someone would capture them out of the machine and place them on the table, while the rest of us at the station would turn them inside out and hold them up to the light to look for flaws (thin spots).
I would look at the clock every 45 minutes to see that only 10 minutes had passed.
I was one of the lucky ones though because every hour or so, I got to move to another station to hang newly-formed hats from another station on a drying rack that would take them to the next floor.
I came across this article after Googling the Jefferson quote cited at the beginning of the article: “How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.” I heard that quote this morning in a podcast interview with Ken Burns and it hit real close. I thought it might be helpful to any other worriers out there as we start the new year.
I've been doing work in Salesforce for the last 7 years in two different positions. Both are smaller companies in the Midwest (smallish city of ~100k if you include neighboring towns). I know of at least one other company in the area that is built on Salesforce. It's not the most exciting work in the world, but it's work that I know is providing value for the companies and people I work for/with.
Pros: Salesforce abstracts a lot of the DevOps/database work that I don't have a lot of experience with and lets me focus on building the applications we need. Much of my current work is building out Lightning Web components, which is your basic JavaScript web development work built on top of some pre-existing components provided by Salesforce. There is a ton of documentation and it's easy to pick up on things you need to learn.
Cons: Salesforce has a lot of quirks to it that you'll become familiar with as you get into it. Build/test/deploy cycles are slower than normal, but they are working on tools to make that experience better. In some ways, their focus on no-code is nice and it's really easy to get simple things done. In some cases though, it feels easier just to write code to get things done, especially if you suspect the feature you're working on will get more complicated over time.
All in all I'm not sorry for getting into this space. I've had enough variety in my jobs that I've done some work outside of Salesforce and I don't feel pigeon-holed. The Salesforce ecosystem seems to be growing and their is a lot of work available. I'm in my mid-40s so if I can get steady work over the next 10-15 years with decent pay, I'll be more than happy continuing work in this space.
FYI: I haven't bothered with any paid certifications though I do complete Trailheads when I need to learn something new as a way to both learn things and provide a signal to potential future employers that I know what I'm doing.
Every morning my dog wakes up full of energy, rushes down the stairs, and anxiously awaits as I get ready to take her on our morning walk. It's a good reminder on how to approach each day, even when I wake up tired and grumpy. Her days are all the same, walk, eat, nap, eat, walk, nap, eat, walk, sleep. If she can be excited about that, I can certainly appreciate the variety I get in my days and make the best of them.
I have always struggled with this issue as it feels like you're abandoning your team and leaving them hanging. Especially when you like and respect your teammates. At my last job I was the sole developer in the company and responsible for a major project for our biggest client. My job previous to that I worked as a consultant and was the PM/main developer on two different projects. The guilt I felt in leaving was real and was something I struggled with to even accept the new offers.
That being said you have to do what is in your best interest. In both cases, the move I made was just what I needed at the time and improved my outlook and passion moving forward. To make up for some of the guilt, I worked like hell the last two weeks, cleaning up as many outstanding issues as I could and documenting everything I could. I also made myself available for questions after I left, though you want to be careful about committing too much time there.
And guess what...in both situations the company moved on and eventually got past the initial hurdles of replacing me. It's likely the same will happen in your case and you'll realize you spent way too much time worrying about something that should you decide to leave, is no longer your responsibility.
My junior year in college, I had a semester from hell where I took AI, Distributed Programming, Operating Systems, and a 400-level Math class all together. One morning as I washed my hair in the shower, still in a state of sleep-deprivation from a long night in the lab, I kept thinking to myself that if I didn't setq my hair (or was it setf?), then it wouldn't really stay washed.
When I finally woke up and came to, it was a mix of laughter at how out of it I was and worry that I was slowly going mad.
I'm very interested in the Chainlink project ($LINK). Decentralized Oracles providing real-world data on-chain seems to me to be a no-brainer. A good example that's talked about is crop insurance. Aggregate regional rainfall within a certain geographical area from several different sources into a single value, that is then used to guarantee the terms of a smart contract seems to be a pretty useful thing. This type of use case is applicable to any number of decentralized financial products.
Same here except I have the Oculus Quest which I purchased for our family for Christmas. Just the Amazon Prime app and Netflix app were reason enough to buy it for the different viewing experience it provides during these times of spending so much time inside of the house. It really feels like getting out of the house when you watch an Amazon Prime show in a large theatre with a cinematic screen.
I read Siddhartha three years ago. I realize this is a long quote, but when I read the passage below, I had a huge rush of emotions and joy. It's been easy to forget this passage with everything that has happened over the past year. Thank you for the reminder that I wish more moments of my life were like this one.
>>> Siddhartha learned something new on every step of his path for the world was transformed, and his heart was changed. He saw the sun rising over the mountains with their forests and setting over the distant beach with its palm-trees. At night, he saw the stars in the sky in their fixed positions and the crescent of the moon floating like a boat in the blue. He saw trees, stars, animals, clouds, rainbows, rocks, herbs, flowers, stream and river, the glistening dew in the bushes in the morning, distant high mountains which were blue and pale, birds sang and bees, wind silverishly blew through the rice-field. All of this, a thousand-fold and colourful, had always been there, always the sun and the moon, had shone, always rivers had roared and bees had buzzed, but in former times all of this had been nothing more to Siddhartha than a fleeting, deceptive veil before his eyes, looked upon in distrust, destined to be penetrated and destroyed by thought, since it was not the essential existence, since this essence lay beyond, on the other side of the visible. But now, his liberated eyes stayed on this side, he saw and became aware of the visible, sought to be at home in this world, did not search of the true essence, did not aim at a world beyond. Beautiful was this world, looking at it thus, without searching, thus simply, thus childlike. Beautiful were the moon and the stars, beautiful was the stream and the banks, the forest and the rocks, the goat and the gold-beetle, the flower and the butterfly. Beautiful and love it was, thus to walk through the world, thus childlike, thus awoken, thus open to what is near, thus without distrust. Differently the sun burnt the head, differently the shade of the forest cooled him down, differently the stream and the cistern, the pumpkin and the banana tasted. Short were the days, short the nights, every hour sped swiftly away like a sail on the sea, and under the sail was a ship full of treasures, full of joy. Siddhartha saw a group of apes moving through the high canopy of the forest, high in the branches, and heard their savage, greedy song. Siddhartha saw a male sheep following a female one and mating with her. In a lake of reeds, he saw the pike hungrily hunting for its dinner; propelling themselves away from it, in fear, wiggling and sparkling, the young fish jumped in droves out of the water; the scent of strength and passion came forcefully out of the hasty eddies of the water, which the pike stirred up, impetuously hunting.
>>> All of this had always existed, and he had not seen it; he had not been with it. Now he was with it, he was part of it. Light and shadow ran through his eyes, stars and moon ran through his heart.
>>> there are ways to expand your communication and presentation skills without moving back to entry-level or taking a huge pay cut
Toastmasters is a great place to get more experience with communication and presentation skills. Find a local group and jump in at whatever pace you feel comfortable with.
This path worked for me. I recently started a position at a credit union that focuses on serving customers typical banks/credit unions won't touch. Every week we get to hear feedback from customers who are grateful that we've taken the time to look beyond their credit scores and see how we might be able to help them out of their particular financial distress.
I've always enjoyed programming and never had any job I absolutely hated. But I've never really felt excited about the mission of my employer before and it makes such a difference in my daily attitude and motivation. I can really get behind the "teach a man to fish vs. give a man a fish" approach we take. I think it also helps that the results of our efforts directly impact the community I live in vs. a change the world type vision that a large corporation would have.
On top of it all, I got a nice raise to come here, especially when you include the benefits package. So don't resign yourself to the fact that you'll have to take a pay cut.