I think it is very easy for the average person to forget or not realize how incredibly easy it is to get calories into the body and how little food is necessary to do so. Most people in the world (I know, this is not everywhere and everyone), live in an era of food abundance. It's cheap enough, extremely accessible, often easy to eat or ready to eat, and that has simply made it very convenient to get calories in, often while barely thinking about it. Mindless eating, not thinking about what you should eat, etc. All of these factors have played into why obesity is such a problem (at least in the USA).
One of the biggest weaknesses of a non-technical founder looking for a technical founder are basically the following:
* Not really having 'much' to bring to the table other than the idea and self-proclaimed knowledge of the problem and domain. As the article mentions, having some capital already, having some sort of following or verifiable reputation or whatever would help a long way.
* Not really having any kind of story around "What have you tried so far?". The least sexy conversation is one where the non-technical founder is telling you about this "new" thing to work on and build and the reality is they've only been thinking about it for like 2 months and haven't really "done" anything other than some cursory research. Like, for example, if they don't have capital at all yet, have they tried before they came to you?
This is pretty well said. I tend to agree and as a founder of multiple companies, as a well an engineering-background co-founder myself, I have definitely had interactions with "non-technical" founders looking for people (like me) and totally got the vibe of the needing a "technical co-founder" because they just need some "coder" as if that's the missing key to success (or whatever).
That said, there are plenty of very smart, driven, people who are not software engineers who don't think of a technical co-founder that way. So it'd be wrong to paint with a super wide brush on this.
This is true except FoxPro really was more of a 'normal' relational database model. It just had this 'tabular' view for its Database Viewer client front-end. FoxPro was certainly not a 'spreadsheet' product in the sense that Excel is.
Remember when a T-1 line was considered to be like the god-level status of internet connections? Whoa.... 1.5Mbps!? Later, more affordable DSL speeds would reach single-digit Mbps and it felt like being on another planet.
Now all of those speeds feel like they're dial-up modems.
This rationale doesn't make a ton of sense. Say they had paid you more. You'd still have these back issues. You wouldn't say, "I have these back issues every day of my life now but at least they paid me $2X instead of $X" ...
The whole premise of comparing a company to a family is not only flawed. It's just straight up incorrect/wrong. Very little about companies and the way they run and operate looks remotely like a family.
It does, but temporarily. If layoffs caused terrible, permanent, irreversible, core damage to a company, then companies would stop doing them. But they don't. It's not new, it's part of the up and down cycles of markets.
If we don't like layoffs, then we should also not like crazy hiring sprees either because of their recklessness and waste.
You mean like how crowds of people at live music events ALL have their stupid smartphones up recording the same damn recording which they should be paying attention to and absorbing the experience and living in the moment?
Forget what people should do, look at what people actually do.
Affordability is a factor, but also one of several. Affordability, among other issues, certainly would lead some couples to decide to have fewer children than they otherwise might (1 instead of 2, or 2 instead of 3).
Besides affordability, more recent generations focusing more on career, quality of life, freedom, overall thrill- and experience-seeking, has led people to make lifestyle choices that do not involve children, as children can be a hindrance to some of those lifestyle choices. Because of those choices, many of these same people simply don't value children [of their own] as much and thus have fewer or none at all. Career aspirations, increasing wealth/income, and keeping a majority control over one's time and obligations has become more important than accepting the stresses and challenges of raising one's own family, even when considering the special kind of joy that also arises from pursuing that endeavor.
Adding onto that, say what you will about organized religions, but the increasing level of secularism is perhaps also a factor in leading to a declining birthrate, as most organized religions tend to "bake in" a kind of enthusiasm and social "nudging" to have more children.
This can 'sort of' be done thru loan assumption. But it is a provision that only some loans have. And it isn't tied to the borrower but to the asset. Example would be you were selling your house and a buyer wanted to 'assume' your mortgage. They could actually do that where they take over the remaining principal, a loan assumption provision would allow that. Granted, the buyer would still need to come up with the cash for the rest of the price of the home (selling price - remaining loan balance) and to do that, the buyer would either need to bring cash to the table or get a 2nd loan to make up for that difference.
I messed around with it. First, it didn't look one bit like myself as a younger me. It was like an artificially blemish-free version and it even tries, haphazardly, to fill in a receding hair line. To be honest, it was funny.
I'm sure people's reaction to get teary-eyed have less to do with the literal-ness of the filter and more of a surfacing catharsis deep-down that people have about the passage of time, lost opportunities, distant pain or hurt, disappointment, and also perhaps a nostalgia for once was growing up. It's a pretty human thing.
Ya know, I remember a time when Airbnb was still pretty new (this would be 2010 or 2011 or so). Didn't have all the fees and other bullshit UX problems they have now. And it actually was pretty cheap. Often, you could get an interesting, cool, or off-beat room or whole unit/place/house for cheap and often the same or less than competing hotels. This made it compelling.
But then, one time, trying to get check into a place and the combination padlock or whatever wasn't working to get the key inside and I couldn't get ahold of the host took another 2 hours, I was like, I don't have time for this crap. That sort of problem would NEVER happen at a hotel.
And now, 12+ years later, while some things have improved (like keyless entry and whatnot that lots of hosts have finally), the situation is worse in many other areas, including cost.
Generally speaking, hotels work better for me. No bull shit fees (except some of those resorts that throw in the ridiculous daily 'resort fee' on top of the room rate, which is not reflected when you are searching and booking the room, except in fine print). No bullshit like cleaning up the room/place before you leave (isn't that why you are paying a cleaning fee?).
It's possible, yes. Empires rise. Empires fall. Toyota will adapt and 'missed the boat' implies that that's it; they're done. They're absolutely not done. They were also miles ahead of others when they introduced the Prius in the 90s. It's not as if they haven't been engineering and mass-producing electric powertrains for a long time. One strong reason they have not missed the boat? No one yet producing an EV right now even comes within arms-reach of Toyota's quality. People forget that it is, in fact, Toyota's legendary quality+reliability+value that makes it a brand people adore and come back to again, and again, and again. When they make an EV (and they will, eventually) that it is as good as the quality Toyota has built its foundation on, they will absolutely CRUSH it.
You answered your own question. Yes. Who removes a CEO? The Board. If the Board does their job (correctly), then they will make the right decision to release or retain the right CEO.
If the Board fails to do its job? What, then? Yep, shareholders have to intervene.
Which leads to what happens if the shareholders themselves don't figure out what to do or the right-decision to be made? Well, they lose a bunch of value as the company's value [eventually] plummets.
Seriously? What 'fairness' exactly is it people want when companies do layoffs?
"Hey, we are laying off 3,000 people. Because of that, I am firing myself and the company will no longer have a CEO and will have to find someone else, starting immediately. In addition, I plan to donate all of my life's savings and file for unemployment like everyone else and, if needed, live in my van down by the river. I hope this makes everyone feel vindicated and that the scales of justice remain balanced. God Bless."
I think your argument is advocating that the 'person who probably wrote half the damn code' should get a lot more, right? What should that person have gotten, exactly?
Either they did not negotiate for a better package with compensation and equity early on OR sadly, they joined too late. If they wanted a lot more equity (and therefore risk but also potential for a high return like Musk or Bezos or whatever), then they would have needed to join super early, or better yet, have been a co-founder to a Musk or a Bezos or whatever.
But they weren't, so no, they don't get anywhere near the sharing in the big reward, just a small or tiny slice.
My pet theory is that tipping became more common by almost accident. As the proliferation of various kiosk-based credit card processing machines took place (Square, etc.) where a little screen gets shared with a customer, the 'tip' step was either so easy to be turned on by the store/merchant OR it was even defaulted to on when the merchant applied for their credit card processor account and then the merchant just kinda left it that way; not enough people complained loudly enough or cared to do so, and so it stuck. Repeat tens of thousands of times across stores that opened or switched their CC processing over the years, even for places that didn't traditionally accept tips, and there you have it. Tip tip tip everywhere.