HamsterHookah

Brother? Being able to be customer facing and learn social polish and executive presence is pretty easy for social people, and social people are invariably the rainmakers for most firms. You don't need a degree to be social of course, but college acts as a finishing school in that way and fraternities back in the day were instructional (e.g. mandatory shirt and tie and constant reminders of how to dress appropriately to behave and represent yourself and your institution in a successful light, etc. I understand fraternities went away from a lot of that and became a party/abusive place, but that's another discussion).

I was going to let it slide.

If it's anything like American, that will expire soon. I'm actually in a mild depression about losing my Executive Platinum come March--they kept extending it for me since 2020 but finally put a halt on it.

Peace to you, my friend. I love you, regardless of it all.

Northeastern if I recall. No offense, but prime example of the old model. Paying premium money for a second-tier school (albeit making waves and on the come up the last decade+). IMO.

History (in some circles) looks favorably on those people, right? I assume an old hippie like you would appreciate Vietnam war draft dodgers, at least.

Also to your point: it's never been easier just to get a piece of paper that will accomplish the rote and administrative task of clearing the low bar of a background check that says "Yes, this person has a BA". Every regional, directional fourth tier school offers a degree, probably mostly online these days, that can be had cheaply and looks like a continuation into 13th grade. It's just the question of putting the effort and money into it, I guess. Not all degrees have to be from UT or A&M or whatever. They don't even have to be from Sam Houston or UT Arlington. In fact, it could be argued your ROI is better to just knock out some cheap degree for undergrad and get a job quickly with that degree or go to a prestigious graduate school versus sinking a bunch of money into a state school (non-public ivy) or private school (non-ivy) and stopping at a bachelors.

How many years (decade?) are we removed from commercial pilots being no different than bus drivers. Maybe a better analogy would be truck drivers. In need and in demand with a specific skillset, but not really prestigious or interesting and definitely devalued.

In other news, I for one was not surprised he made the $300M payment. He is free to mess around but when it comes to the banks they will keep him in line, I think. Further, it appears that Tesla stock has been roaring back. I don't know why or how, but the market is irrational.

Username checks out?

That's awesome. I think it exposes a bit of a drawback though (maybe not for your wife) in that, to use job knowledge/experience in industry as a proxy for degrees/advanced degrees, to an extent one is beholden to an industry. You lose the privilege of being able to re-invent your career or change industries or professional interests and move around laterally.

Anyone seen this guy around?

While you are obviously correct that what happened over the last decade has been the build-out of the company’s owned-and-operated logistics network, and the sheer number of employees over that time show what a massive investment it has been, I'm not sure how you can quantify or break that out. I also agree that having a job at Amazon can mean something different depending on your department and not just from seasonal workers but even Amazon vs AWS vs the 100+ product lines therein. Not sure about getting a job at Amazon without a college degree but I'd imagine it'd be hard to get an L7 graded job there without a good one coupled with good experience, to your point. Employees Amazon Apple Google Meta Microsoft 2013 109,800 80,300 53,861 5,794 99,000 2014 149,500 92,600 47,756 8,348 128,000 2015 222,400 110,000 53,600 11,996 118,000 2016 306,800 116,000 61,814 15,724 114,000 2017 541,900 123,000 80,110 23,165 124,000 2018 613,300 132,000 94,372 33,606 131,000 2019 750,000 137,000 114,096 43,030 144,000 2020 1,125,300 147,000 132,121 56,653 163,000 2021 1,468,000 154,000 150,028 68,177 181,000 2022 1,544,000 164,000 186,779 87,314 221,000

Hmm....weird. I got that from NYT btw: https://www.nytimes.com/section/business/dealbook

Not that interesting when you consider Amazon is the nation's largest employer (by an order of magnitude), so it stands to reason.

I posted it the other day to make a point, but really everyone should be required to read/listen to DFW's commencement speech from 2005 at Kenyon College:

An interesting read on how bad studies and folklore can entrench and create a culture, as it pertains to police: The Police Folklore That Helped Kill Tyre Nichols A 1992 study claims that officers who show weakness are more likely to be killed. Law-enforcement culture has never recovered. https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-police-folklore-that-helped-kill-tyre-nichols

Pop Quiz: Which of the following is the best-performing asset so far this year? Bitcoin The Nasdaq composite The S&P 500 financials sector Tesla

To the OP: there are a lot of jobs in the tech industry where folks don't have college degrees. After a period of time and years of experience, there is a tipping point where your experience is valuable. I've seen people without college degrees but 15+ years of salesforce.com admin experience, for example, get $240k jobs and be product owners for a Fortune 50. The tech world is littered with people like this and not all of them are overtly technical (which is the easiest path to be seen as obviously valuable to an organization without a degree). That said, the road to that is very painful. Many, many years of being underpaid and doing grunt work and you are paying your dues for not having a degree. It would be far better just to pay a lump sum to a degree mill (online college or directional regional university, etc.) and get a piece of paper and start with a leg up, IMO.

Our boys at the Gug are being sued: The Guggenheim is being sued over a Picasso masterpiece by the Jewish heirs of a previous owner, who they say was forced to sell the painting as he sought to flee Nazi persecution. (NYT)

It's very easy to say all the things you said, I agree with them in theory and on paper, but when it is you or a loved one, then the "Trolley problem" of have someone you know vaccine injured or potentially have someone's grandma 9 states away die because of a butterfly effect, is a bit more personal and real. And some of these vaccine injuries are causing autoimmune issues that do cause things like immunosuppressants and could lead to death.

I thought I read the Dallas Aquarium actually shut down/went out of business a year or so ago...

I'd be very curious to hear what Kaling and her team has to say about it as well as the studio / streaming execs. There is the weird dynamic in investment banking where you are a high powered trader at say Goldman or Morgan Stanley or wherever right. You lose the bank $100 million dollars on a bad trade. You actually "are the guy who lost the $100 million dollar trade" and become a minor celebrity in the bank and the industry and generally are treated as if you are competent and have aplomb versus being derided as a loser trader who will never step foot in a bulge bracket again and will be blackballed from the industry. The fact that you were a) trusted to make swings with that much money and b) lost it in such a fantastic fashion and c) had the balls to make the trade make it to where this guy is attractive. Nobody loses that spectacularly without also having won big bets in the past, right? I wonder if people are looking at this massive failing and see it fail so hard that people are like hey, this actually isn't bad and it's good. It's opening doors that wouldn't be open if it were just disliked and a 4/10 of organic bad ratings and the eventual quiet cancellation of a failed project.

Seems like there is universal derision for this content, but I have to think there is some bandwagon or Streisand effect going on that got it to a 1/10 or whatever historical low.