I agree. No need to make it emotional and confrontational with a “respect” interpretation in my opinion. Of course this is hard but if I can do it I imagine the best approach will be to simply make the best choices for my career while recognizing management has their own bizarre incentives I will never understand.

I simply buy a weekly newspaper and read it. I’m always 1-1.5 weeks behind so I never feel as “emotional” or follow things that closely. I want a general feel for some of the things happening in the world and that is it

I did a CS undergrad and skipped compilers, O.S., DBs, and many others cause I just took as many crosslisted math/CS electives as possible (at least a theorems or math heavy course like automata if I couldn’t do better), then the minimum CS requirements to graduate

Taleb is smart etc but he’s basically a rambling eccentric who I ignore at this point

This is what they did at my undergraduate university

Do all of these in order first:

Calculus 1 and 2

Linear algebra and multivariable calculus and an introduction to proofs / logic course (you are ready for some electives at this point)

Ordinary differential equations

Any of these can be done concurrently, choose one Analysis and one algebra :

Advanced calculus (eg “understanding analysis” by Abbott)

Linear algebra in the sense of finite dimensional vector spaces

Easier abstract algebra (senior level classes are eg Artin and rudin, these ones are more elementary textbooks)

Core Senior level courses that you take if you want to get good at math:

Analysis sequence (1 year on baby Rudin)

Algebra sequence (1 year on artin)

Topology (munkres)

Electives:

Probability (can be done after multivariable calc)

Linear optimization (after linear algebra + multivariable calc)

Logic (compactness completeness godel etc whatever, can be done after intro to proofs course but will probably make less sense if you didn’t study some more stuff first)

Numerical analysis (after ODEs I guess or calculus + linear algebra if you want to skip tht stuff)

Statistics (after probability)

Combinatorics - after calc 2 and linear algebra

Geometry - after multivariable calc, linear algebra, proofs

Intro Differential geometry: after advanced calculus

Don’t really have much more knowledge for graduate courses etc. or even some common ones like complex analysis. if you know the senior level core stuff you’re probably “good enough” to make some progress on a lot of things. Each of these classes is 100-200 hours of total study so it seems odd to me that someone will just try to study it on their own by there you go I guess

I believe this might be more prominent among uneducated folks of (at least in my neck of the woods) non-mainline American Protestant denominations. At least the doctors of the Catholic Church will specifically talk about preparation for death, dying well (also mentioned by Fred Rogers in the documentary I saw about him), etc.

More simply, it's not easy to let go of someone you love and say goodbye to them.

It's not fair to the person ready to die, but there's a lot of pressure put on people (through TV, movies, friends) to fight for those you love, even when they don't want you to.

Catholics tend to be on the “full code” end of the spectrum; part of the whole “culture of life” thing.

I can't disagree with that.

As a whole, I think that Americans are woefully unprepared for end of life care. I encourage people to have an advance directive on file.

Sometimes I wonder if people are actually really good at thinking in groups but the thought process is just too terrifying and different from what we could understand as individuals

So it’s not clear that the Idaho kid isn’t better than the average MIT admit, but it’s also not clear that he’d do better at MIT than going to his state or Montana state or something. (I mention this not to throw out state schools in the west but because one of the best texts on my area of research is by a guy from Montana State)

Does that mean that the market is simply devaluing capitalists?

I think that Gravity’s experiment is a sign of society waking up to other viable operating models. Capitalism is just one way to do business, but it comes with some downsides that are now well documented. I doubt anything of value would be lost if the goalposts got moved away from “capitalism by default”.

I’m not sure of numbers but I’d imagine a 70k salary would mean higher than purely salary costs (depending on company industry etc) after other expenses

Probably more like 90k-110k.

Typical burdened labor rate is 1.3x to 1.5x of annual salary. Exceptions exist, but usually it’s clear why that’s the exception (e.g., exceptionally generous benefits for a competitve labor category, local laws, etc.).

Thanks for your post, I’ve removed the numbers from mine as it appears they were likely quite inaccurate

What? Are you including a large private office in costs?

Obviously there is a cost past salary but it’s not over 100%

correct.

in the US, there will be an extra ~10% above that for FICA/unemployment. The company will probably shell out another ~$12k for health insurance (I'm speaking averages here - I know some companies are very generous, and others aren't). Factor in some x% salary matching in to a 401k - say another 5%, and perhaps some other perks. Let's say there's another ~$20k on top of the $70k - that $70k employee may cost the company $95k.

If you then want to apportion office/equipment costs, you can do that too, but that $70k employee is not costing $140k (unless, perhaps, they're being very generous with some shares and there's a cost associated with that, and perhaps tuition reimbursement, company car and some other perks on top of what was mentioned above... maybe). Those sorts of things aren't generally given to someone in the US making $70k.

sure - wasn't trying to correct you, just to add on in the same vein as you were posting, that's all.

To be honest, my number was based on my rembering of opinions from people who were in management but were certainly not experts on HR budgets or something. So it could be very wrong

It’s the right idea but a bit inflated :) 100k total cost for someone making 70k may be a better starting spot for a guess.